Thanks for the reference to the Chion article in the new Wire.

I read every issue of Wire, and I am mighty impressed by Chion as a composer.

However, possibly because I myself am getting older (born in 1950), I am finding it more and more frustrating to find new music that I like, and to find out what is happening in new music. I personally have a bit of a feeling that Wire also is getting older and more out of touch. Also, they seem to have less and less coverage of what might loosely be called "classical" music.

To some extent the difficulty comes from bad news in the economics of the music business, and to huge changes in the creation, distribution, and use of new music, largely but not totally affected by the Internet.



-----Original Message-----
>From: shreeswifty 
>Sent: Aug 5, 2008 11:37 AM
>To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
>Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: Paul Lansky throws in the towel
>
>I read the article a short week after i read Michel Chion's 
>interview in the new WIRE regarding the same exact thing regarding 
>tape music, acousmatics and real-time manipulation, wherein he 
>recommends a guitar over RT manipulation.
>
>
>On Tue Aug 05 09:25:32 EDT 2008, Michael Gogins 
> wrote:
>
>> Yes, there was also an article/interview with Paul Lansky in the 
>> New York Times -- I think it was yesterday, or anyway quite 
>> recently -- about this.
>> 
>> Needless to say, I have no argument whatsoever with Paul Lansky's 
>> decisions as a composer. I'm a big fan of his music, and I've 
>> bought recordings of most of it.
>> 
>> But what Lansky is saying requires discussion. I think for many 
>> of us, the major interest lies in Lansky's contention that 
>> musical performers add something quite valuable to music as such. 
>> It's not actually quite clear that Lansky's contention goes as 
>> far as "music as such," but I'm sure many people will read it 
>> that way.
>> 
>> I do agree that performers add something quite valuable to music 
>> as it has been made to date, or to certain specific styles of 
>> music, but I do NOT agree that performers can always add 
>> something to music "as such". In fact, I think this idea has 
>> positively harmed computer music and experimental music by 
>> diverting composers to do interactive computer music. Although I 
>> have heard some interactive computer music that I thought was 
>> very good, and although I think this style should certainly be 
>> pursued, I think that our field is definitely losing out by not 
>> focusing more on what we used to call "tape music" where the 
>> composer writes a program, or fiddles around on the computer, and 
>> produces a soundfile that is the definitive rendering of a piece 
>> of music.
>> 
>> Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, this is where the power is in 
>> music. Not just in computer music -- in music, period. This is 
>> where the authorship is, where the composing is. You can compose 
>> the performance as well as the sound, and this is what is not 
>> acknowledged by Lansky.
>> 
>> Lansky also oversimplifies the situation by not mentioning or 
>> discussing what is actually the most common, indeed the dominant, 
>> methodology of making music today, which is tracking. This is a 
>> hybrid of performance and composition, where once musicians have 
>> performed -- at home, in the recording studio, or even on stage 
>> -- recordings are cut up into little pieces, processed and 
>> transformed, and re-assembled (that is, re-composed) into a 
>> simulated performance. A collage. This is not the way classical 
>> music is made -- or at least, it is not the way classical music 
>> is made on stage (although it increasingly is the way even 
>> classical music is made into recordings). But it is the way most 
>> popular music is made, and the way all film music is made. I 
>> expect that, as time goes on, the amount of skilled performance 
>> in the studio will continue to decline, leaving more and more of 
>> the musical decisions up to the composer(s). And I also expect 
>> that more and more of these decisions will be implemented 
>> algorithmically. I don't expect the amount of skilled performance 
>> to go to zero, or anything like zero, because it DOES add 
>> something vital to many styles of music. And think there will 
>> even be a revival of live performance, and not just for economic 
>> reasons.
>> 
>> But I also expect that the artistic importance, and popularity, 
>> of purely algorithmic music -- algorithmically synthesized, or 
>> algorithmically composed, or both -- will gradually increase. 
>> Partly for the same reasons that the artistic importance of 
>> abstraction in the visual arts has gradually increased. But even 
>> more, because the increasing power of the computer and of 
>> software will continue to vastly, vastly increase the musical 
>> resources available to the composer. I don't think it will ever 
>> take over, but I do think it will become more and more important, 
>> into the indefinite future. There is just no arguing with the 
>> musical power of the complete, utter, and mind-expanding 
>> abstraction that lies in the computer.
>> 
>> Regards,
>> Mike
>> 
>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: DavidW 
>>> Sent: Aug 5, 2008 1:58 AM
>>> To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
>>> Subject: [Csnd] Paul Lansky throws in the towel
>>> 
>>> Some of y'all might be interested in this thread about Paul 
>>> Lansky's  move drop making CM which is occurring on the 
>>> supercollider list:
>>> http://www.nabble.com/Paul-Lansky-pulls-the-plug-to18817595.html#a18823931
>>> 
>>> it is referencing this article:
>>> http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/08/06/arts/emusic.php
>>> (it took ages to load but that might be because the bits are 
>>> slower in  winter)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> ciao4now
>>> 
>>> David
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Send bugs reports to this list.
>>> To unsubscribe, send email sympa@lists.bath.ac.uk with body 
>>> "unsubscribe csound"
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Send bugs reports to this list.
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>> 
>
>
>
>Patrick Pagano,M.F.A
>Sound and Light Technologist
>Nadine McGuire Theatre & Dance Pavilion
>GAINESVILLE  FL  US  32611-5900
>University Of Florida
>(352) 273-1483
>
>
>
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