OT: electroacoustic composition: more thoughts...

Lazos · Post by **Lazos** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 7:56 pm

I first heard the term Electroacoustic when in college of course, but I'm not hearing any realization of the suffix "acoustic." Sounds ALL electronic to me. Especially stuff like the Ryoji Ikeda youtube vid. Musique concrète and similar terms seem much more apt, but hey, it's all just labels. Even so, it's really interesting that entire genres are formed around extremely general terms like Electroacoustic, Trance (as if this is the only type of music that can induce trance!! I mean fuck!), Downtempo, etc . . .

Edit: Of course, I realize that musique concrète is NOT the same as what people are obviously calling EAM.

evernaut · Post by **evernaut** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:47 pm

noisetonepause wrote:
Michael-SW wrote:Much in the same way you could randomly dab some paint on a canvas and call it modern art. But in neither case would the result be very interesting.
I disagree.

I was writing an essay a few weeks ago, which involved a lot of late nights. I couldn't focus with 'music' with structure, much less vocals, on but I didn't like the silence either, so I took this ace little Max patch, a four voice FM synth/sequencer, which has a random setting which basically randomises the tone and the sequence every bar, set it to 30 BPM and hit play... I listened to that for hours and hours for several days. It would move between klangs and blonks, to minimal DX7-piano-ish melodies, to weird percussive patterns and noise... It made a very nice backdrop, and I don't really know what to call it, but it was definitely musical in some sense, and often very interesting noises and tunes, too... even though it was completely random, computer generated and without form.

...

Paws

I'd say that by the time you reached for the randomiser patch you'd already been through a couple of careful stages of consideration though: first you thought about what music would best soundtrack your work and then decided on a Max patch with a four voice FM synth/sequencer and set the required tempo....

It's not like you just mashed random notes on a keyboard with your palms is it?

Anyway, I see the poll has marginally swung towards beardy geeks....

Good job I'm fairly clean shaven and pretty hopeless with C++ eh?

evernaut · Post by **evernaut** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:52 pm

Lazos wrote:I first heard the term Electroacoustic when in college of course, but I'm not hearing any realization of the suffix "acoustic." Sounds ALL electronic to me. Especially stuff like the Ryoji Ikeda youtube vid. Musique concrète and similar terms seem much more apt, but hey, it's all just labels. Even so, it's really interesting that entire genres are formed around extremely general terms like Electroacoustic, Trance (as if this is the only type of music that can induce trance!! I mean fuck!), Downtempo, etc . . .

Edit: Of course, I realize that musique concrète is NOT the same as what people are obviously calling EAM.

Yeah electroacoustic is rubbish as a term. It's just too broad and misleading.

I'm happier with avant garde or just experimental...still massively, cathedrally-sized broad churches...but labels take on a life beyond their original intention and become worthless.

Indie anybody?

evernaut · Post by **evernaut** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:07 pm

I think with Ikeda, the Microsound genre might fit better...or even Acousmatic (in the Pythagorean sense)

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 8:55 pm

evernaut wrote:[
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S_2r0J7bHo

.

oh I get it.... people got tired of using the terms idm and glitch so they came up with eam. ok then....

evernaut · Post by **evernaut** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:22 pm

Johnisfaster wrote:
evernaut wrote:[
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S_2r0J7bHo

.
oh I get it.... people got tired of using the terms idm and glitch so they came up with eam. ok then....

No - EAM predated those terms. Go read Kim Cascone's landmark paper on post-digital music - "The Aesthetics Of Failure".

Go to http://subsol.c3.hu/subsol_2/contributo ... etext.html - it's five years old now, but refreshing and concise.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:26 pm

call it what you like, the track I heard in that youtube video was glitch if you ask me. sounds like the dude made a glitch track but didn't want to call it glitch cause thats too "played out." personally I could care less what you call it I'm just being synical about it

evernaut · Post by **evernaut** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:33 pm

If you prefer glitch, glitch it is...makes little difference. Same ideas.

It's like saying U2 are a rock band, but then so are Bon Jovi..and so are Wilco and so are Coldplay & Motorhead.

Johnisfaster · Post by **Johnisfaster** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:45 pm

evernaut wrote:If you prefer glitch, glitch it is...makes little difference. Same ideas.

It's like saying U2 are a rock band, but then so are Bon Jovi..and so are Wilco and so are Coldplay & Motorhead.

the great jimi hendrix "only 2 kinds of music, good and bad"

personally I think the global community concept as played terrible havock with our sense of individualism and self recognition. I'd be quite curious what kind of music most people would make if they didn't have youtube to watch bands 30 years ago playing live in a different country. not to single out internet, I think tv and radio have an equal hand in that. most people tend to make genre music and not just music is my point and I think our lack of isolated comminities is the cause of that.

noisetonepause · Post by **noisetonepause** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 10:18 pm

evernaut wrote:It's not like you just mashed random notes on a keyboard with your palms is it?

Anyway, I see the poll has marginally swung towards beardy geeks....

Good job I'm fairly clean shaven and pretty hopeless with C++ eh?

Eh, mate, I couldn't grow a beard even if I wanted to...

nathannn · Post by **nathannn** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 10:44 pm

this music is total boring crap

evernaut · Post by **evernaut** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:50 pm

nathannn wrote:this music is total boring crap

Was that a comment on experimental music as a whole, or did you just happen to overhear something and accidentally think out loud on the keyboard?

conny · Post by **conny** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:00 am

noisetonepause wrote:computer generated and without form.
Paws

But feel and form was created in your perception. And your will to make it into "something". Which makes it into a composition.
IMHO

// C

conny · Post by **conny** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:07 am

nathannn wrote:this music is total boring crap

Could be.
And so could be said about most mainstream pop/rock/rap...

// C

steff3 · Post by **steff3** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 7:38 am

[quote="evernaut"]
Well, that's possibly why you think it's music for dead people...all the artists you cite have paved the way, sure...but things have moved on.

Here's a clip of one of my absolute faves, Ryoji Ikeda - a good example of his style & use of digital errors and hardware failure noises. Cool home-made vid too.

[url]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2S_2r0J7bHo[/url]

I'll try & stick up some more free examples of truly great EAM material soon.[/quote]

that is glitch and cuts and stuff - that is even worse, that is for people that were aborted right away ....

for me this is electronica and not electro-acoustic music ......

To me the idea behind this is just crap - against commercialism and then being commercial all the way. Phil Thomson wrote an nice article about that. I mean the whole idea of showing that technology is not perfect is pointless. And the funniest thing is that they did not even point out (and check out) the real problem about digital technology (which to me is that things will be lost as the storage media are just crap)

best

OT: electroacoustic composition: more thoughts...

Is electroacoustic music the last frontier?