WARNING : LONG OT POST


kconder@interaccess.com writes:
><that held a beat.
>
>sounds like a good selling point to me. The hell with 'beats'. This term is
>generally used to mean simple, metric, repetitive rhythm, the kind of
>tiresome 4/4 that's already been 'beat' -en to death and then some. Csound
is
>just a tool, of course, which could be used to make any manner of
>composition, rhythmic or otherwise; the fact that few CSound compositions
>seem to exhibit conventional western music rhythms to me accurately
reflects
>the small portion of the overall possibilities of sound that those (already
>well-explored) ideas represent.
>

completely correct.  I agree with you totally.

>
> and somebody else wrote: <if you want more than a few people to appreciate your music, it must have
>some kind of structure ( even if a very loose one ) - a beat is not needed
if
>and only if you can produce a rhythmic structure without one - this can be
>done.

yes, this was me, and you haven't understood what I said at all.  I think
this is my fault, not yours.  I seem to not be expressing myself clearly.

>
>I have a lot of problems with this statement.  First of all, it is a misuse
>of the term 'structure'. When you say 'structure' what you mean is a
simple,
>repetitive pattern similar to  conventional western pop music.

no, that is not what I meant, and I made it quite clear.

> I don't
>believe it is possible to make a piece of music or sound without structure,
>because music exists in time, which is linear; therefore, when it is over,
>you can look back at whatever happened in a linear way, and there's your
>structure. It may be an abstract, amorphous, jagged, complex, nonrepetitive
>structure, but it's still structure, in fact it is closer to what I
>understand the term structure to mean than an endless stream of 4/4 beats
>coming from a dance club.

thank you for putting this so clearly.  this is what I was trying to say
when I said that for it to be music it must have some structure - I was VERY
clear on the fact that a beat is not necessary to create this structure.  I
think my mistake was to call it a rhythmic structure instead of just saying
structure.  Obviously the word rhythm is being interpreted to mean beats,
but this is not what I wanted to say.

>Furthermore, I take great exception to your opinion that the generalized
>music audience is incapable of appreciating anything without a rhythmic
>structure or beat. Who are you to proclaim this ? How could we know what
>others would appreciate tomorrow - or even today ? Humans are not
hard-coded
>machines that can only perceive sound driven by beats. I've seen all kinds
of
>people captivated by the experience of intense, abstract sounds and images
in
>all manner of situations, from the movie theater to the art gallery,
concert
>halls, small clubs and coffehouses, and living rooms. And then there's the
>theater, video arcade, amusement park, the great outdoors.

all of this stuff has an underlying structure.  without structure you have
pure chaos, and pure chaos does not appeal to the majority of the human
race, never has, and probably IMHO never will.  I personally am fascinated
by it.

>Have a little imagination.

I have a lot of imagination, enough to believe that even the standard
rhythmic structures haven't exhausted their possibilities, they're just
being used by unimaginative people.  And then add in all the structure
variations you are talking about, plus others that we haven't even thought
of yet.

>Mark Milano

Pete Moss wrote :

>i am not a big fan of techno.  in fact i think most of it is the
>unimaginative crap that several of you have spoken of.  but you really
>should listen to aphex twin.  this guy is a _genius_!  i have even heard
>that he uses csound now.

>:P

Don't know about his use of csound, but I have to agree, the man is twisted,
but brilliant.  If you like him, also check out Autechre (warp records).
and possibly Locust.

An example of a band that uses structure in the way mentioned above (IMHO),
particularly in their live performances, is the Orb.  Older stuff is better,
such as "...adventures beyond the ultraworld" and especially "live '93".
The music flows and shifts and changes, but there is always a structure,
even when they are doing live experimentation.  Compare "ultraworld" to the
same tracks on "live" and see how different they are.

Reference: Tobiah's post on the effect of computers in recent times on
music.  I don't want to repeat it here, but I agree with everything he says.
same for Job van Zuijlen's post on a similar idea - and with reference to
that, I didn't start this discussion to talk about whether techno was good
or not.  I was using this as a way to start a discussion about different
forms of music, and to make it clear that steering clear of techno ( or rock
or whatever ) simply because you think it's a waste of time shows as much
narrowmindedness as avoiding experimental forms of music.
When I begin a piece of music, I don't say "this is going to be
techno,jazz,whatever", I say "this will be a piece of music, and I want to
start with this sound."  If the piece is ever finished, I will look at it
and say "okay, so that's what kind of music this is."

Thanks for reading this far, and I hope everyone continues to push the
boundaries of all forms of music.

Paul Barrett