Conference napalm::commusic_v1

    anytime the media gets assigned a story, they will go for the cliche',
    the stereotype, the catch phrase, the lead line, simplification.
    Don't challenge preconceptions, cater to them. After all, it takes
    time and education in any given subject to get not just the facts
    but the reality behind the facts, and, after all folks, they've
    got a LOT of air time to fill. 
    
    Makes me wonder about the depth/accuracy/integrity of the OTHER
    stories they broadcast.

    
    	...and, in my opinion, many of those early works outshine anything
    that's come since.  Stockhausen's 'Gesang der Junglinge' (1955/56!)
    still sounds fresh.  Berio's 'Omaggio a Joyce' is a tour de force
    of vocal manipulation. Given that these pieces (and many other good
    ones) were primarilly made by hand-splicing together tiny pieces
    of tape, they are all the more amazing.
    
    	I didn't hear the radio broadcast and can't comment on the pieces
    played, but as far as 'burp and freep' electronic music is concerned,
    people who don't like it probably wouldn't like the instrumental
    music written by the same composers.  I assure you it was written
    that way because they wanted it to sound that way.
    
    	Many people find Bach cold and mechanical.  It's possible to
    find a great deal of expression in the early electronic music.
    
    						- Karl(1)
    
    p.s. My arms ache from carrying in the kx88.  It *is* heavy.

    I've got a lot of that burp and feep stuff in my record library,
    but I haven't listened to it in a long time.  I went through an
    extended "tete-a-tete" with experimental/electronic music back in
    the '70s, eventually falling back into the mainstream, because while
    this music was often interesting and occasionally fascinating, it
    didn't "speak" to me as directly as Central European Classicism/Romanticism
    and American/English Pop.  While I was intellectually predisposed to like
    it, it proved ultimately to be a taste I was only partially able
    to cultivate.  My musical tastes seem to wander with a very long
    periodicity (about 10 years), so maybe it's time to go back and
    reconsider some of this stuff.
    
    I too am amazed (more like "put in my place") by the sheer physical
    effort that must have gone into the production of these pieces.
    
    Be that as it may, the observation about the media exploiting
    stereotypes is right on the mark.  It has been my experience with
    local newspaper reporters that they just barely get the facts right, and
    any subtlety is ignored or suppressed.  It is scary to extrapolate
    from this to major news publishers.  When one compares TV reporting
    to newspaper and newsmagazine reporting, another level of
    simplification intrudes.  Even scarier. 
    
    There's a nice discussion about some related issues in a guest
    editorial in the latest Keyboard.
    
    My impression is that, contrary to Tom's assertion that we owe modern
    synthesizer technology to the pioneers of electronic music, the
    developers of most modern synthesizers are largely ignorant of this
    heritage, and further that contemporary electronic and experimental
    composers are largely ignorant of synthesizer technology (i.e.,
    they're still doing things the "old" (and perhaps "better" - i.e.,
    hand configured modular analog synthesis) way).  Now this is just
    an impression, so don't flame all over me.  Anybody have any facts?

    len.
    

    Well, I didn't say their music was boring (opposite of "startling"?)
    or ugly (opposite of "beautiful"?), and I did say it was an impression,
    and I openly admit my ignorance.  But you didn't say they're using
    DX-7s or TX816s or Matrix 12s, you said "expensive array machines
    etc.", and that's just a faster computer.  PAIA isn't the only source
    of modular synthesis technology, incidentally.  I subscribed to
    CMJ for a few years some time ago and dropped my subscription because
    there was very little of real interest or use to me in it.
    
    What is it I'm supposed to get with?  I wouldn't want to be "out
    of it", god forbid.
    
    len.
    

Hey Tom, don't get me wrong, I LIKE burp and feep music. In school I took
History of Music: 20'th Century and LOVED it. I've even made some small
attempt at it myself with an old Electrovoice 101 analog synth, a TEAC 3340
and no mixer.

To get the discussion back on the track I intended it: I'm working on the
idea here that in the modern world we've had to come to terms with
technology in a new way, and modern art (including music as a specific art)
has had to develop new ways to deal with it. It's an experience that all
modern humans share: you go to sleep one night, and the next morning you
wake up to a new world. What you knew yesterday is obsolete, you have to
learn something new to get through the day. The world is changing so fast
that you have to learn look at it in a new way.

What used to be scribbling is now art, what used to be noise is now music.
The function of the artist is to perceive the world in a new way, and show
the world. What we learn from this is not only one new way of looking at the
world, but that there can be a new way, maybe even lots of alternative ways,
and we can switch around among the modes we know and can invent new modes
when it becomes necessary.

Thesis: Burp and feep music is necessary to our modern existence, because it
helps us explore how we feel about technology.

    
    	Tom's right, but there's an interesting wrinkle here - IRCAM,
    for example, has lots of Yamaha products.  A number of moderm composers
    are using the commercial synths as convenient portable sound sources
    for live performances.  They rarely play the keyboards, though.
    
    							- Karl