"Is electronic music?"

Good or bad is another matter.

(having said that, i do think it's rather wanky and that said "music" does rather benefit from having a bit of sound in it)

x-post

[re: John Cage '4:33'] having said that, i do think it's rather wanky and that said "music" does rather benefit from having a bit of sound in it

1) art is defined as such by the intent of the creator for it to be recognized as such.

2) art is defined as such by any size of viewing/listening audience who appreciate/recognize it as such.

Generally, art and music fit both of the above , but when only one is true, there seems to be some controversey. Personally, I think it's fine to leave the borders somewhat blurred - thats part of what makes art interesting.

Probably Music is a subcategory of the larger category which is Sound.

''sound art'' could be a sub-category of what we call music but since many don't quite know what that is it doesn't matter if 'extreme' merzbow is called music.

1) art is defined as such by the intent of the creator for it to be recognized as such.

No. Unless you include audience as creator.

So, you're only going to end up in some endless backtracking with limp tautologies for brains.

No word, especially amorphous concepts such as 'art' and 'music', can have anything like a definite meaning.

Nor would I want them to.

Search: Nietzsche, Derrida, Mathers.

A fact which, despite reading out THREE E-MAILS saying so, breakfast TV presenters are unable to understand.

"I'd hate to be the one to cough and ruin the silence!"

MORONS:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/media/images/38436000/jpg/_38436941_natasha316.jpg

What I was getting at was the debate over whether there needs to be a consensus or an outside opinion to deem something as art. Is there ever a broader definition outside that of the individual.

painting => process which we have a choice if we want to actually carry out.

sound => around us whether we like it or not.

But are you saying that "sound" and "music" are synonymous?

''Just because 4'33 asks the question "is this music?" doesn't mean everyone has to answer 'yes'''

I think it was Cage saying: ''this is music, are you going to accept this fact?''

That "artist's intention" stuff is really dud imho.

Also, and more importantly, relying on what the 'artist' says is 'art' is normally so dull and restrictive. Of course, it can lead to lots of fun as well, hence Cage calling his 'silence' a piece of art...

He casually made a 15 minute field recording of nothing in particular in Hyde Park, then began listening to it repeatedly. And almost instantly, once subjected to repetition, the random events started to seem inherently interrelated: approaching footsteps sounded simultaneously to a passing car, another car's horn was suddenly 'responding' to quacking ducks, rustling leaves every 30-45 seconds created periodic structure... one time events became anchored in the duration, a shout at 3:30 began to signal the second movement, or at 13:30 a rising wind led into a distant crash that began to seem like a climactic moment of the piece, etc., the very process of repeated listening revealed the tape as being 'organized sound', it was entirely perceptual.

Mark wrote:
I don't consider Merzbow at his most extreme to be music. These are just words to make conversation easier -- since 99% of the world wouldn't consider "Plasma Birds" music let's call it something else.

This makes absolute sense, the sole reservation being: when you keep your terms too strictly defined, you run the risk of missing out on the occasional valuable aesthetic experience. Many people here have probably on occasion been emotionally broadsided by a chance combination of street noises that are somehow undeniably musical, and rewarding, but many more probably haven't because it just doesn't occur to them to be listening for music there.

So now to put on Luc Ferrari's 'Presque Rien No. 1'. Also, Julio, have no fear, DeLaurenti's second W30 disc is fantastic, compliments the first disc perfectly.

4'33" is not music because the only sounds that exist are environmental, and not purposeful

(Mind you, I don't think I pay money to see a performance!!!!)

Hope you didn't think I was saying we must. But they are much more connected than your other examples, sometimes to the point of confusion, and there are moments where I really enjoy that confusion, I'm just saying there's a creative advantage in leaving the question open.

I like your examples, but those are immediately identifiable technical mediums, painting and film; there's a huge leap from an event occuring in real life to capturing it on film as a narrative. music can be as simple as one voice singing, & the experience is much more subjective and direct, so it's trickier to draw a similiar line between 'environmental sounds' and 'music'.

What's your critical take on that Ferrari piece?

but seriously, we all know what a film is, we all know what a painting is, but it's been thousands of years and there's still no 100% consensus on what 'music' is, really, so the sane thing to do would seem to be to leave the question open.

Music is sound presented as art/entertainment, I suppose that works. Part of my motivation re these classifications comes from having to describe the more abstract stuff I like to people that have no background or interest in that area. I know they think of, say, Christophe Charles as something other than music, and I am comfortable with that. I'm okay if we use another word for what he does. It's sound, it's art, it doesn't have to be music.

By the mid-1950's music history had pretty much gained self-consciousness over the fact that 'all new music initially sounded like noise' (Wagner not music, Stravinsky not music, Schoenberg, Ives etc.), so Cage was bright enough to flip that, and added that new music could also sound like silence; all the sounds we normally tune out , and furthermore, all the sounds that are not necessarily the result of conscious intent. A sound does not have to have been _determined by someone's ego_ in order to be perceived and enjoyed as a musical experience. That's the real lesson of 4'33" and Cage's later work in chance procedures.

Most people still hate this idea from the (ever encroaching) viewpoint of the consumer who wants the Goods, only the best music, every time, for their money. But it's a breakthrough from the standpoint of someone with patience searching for new things to learn about that could be expressively useful. as a result there's a lot of widely distributed music that would have sounded more like silence 50 years ago.

I see where you're coming from with your pfm reviews, you're being careful not to alienate anyone from a record they could potentially enjoy, and the definitions help (though to me they're confining). Thanks for reminding me that something like 'Undirected 1986-1996' isn't even music for most people. I mean, that record is fucking covered with notes, one long consonant bath, even the noises are tuned, what more do people want, free fucking vicodin with every beer?

How about sound artists, who don't present what they do as music but do present it as art? Kate and HSA to thread, obv.

music != sound presented as art/entertainment strictly speaking because as Nick implies this would include non-manufactured sound and cacophononus, dissonant sound, which by definition are 'opponents' of music thus anti-music UNLESS working minor to tuned notes, chords, melodies or whatever's major...no?

I have bought a CD today that has nine version of 4'33''.

sound art is a combination of music (sound) and visuals, packaged and presented as art/entertainment.

pete- this is on a label called Korm plastics

I think cat no. KP 3005. I bought it from the sound 323 record shop in highgate. google for a webpage.

remixes by Front 242, Boogie Pimps and Gary Jules

x-post: tico tico would def welcome a gary jules version of 4'33''.

by the way, would you still like to hear an improv comp, I can do one on cassette (unfortunately don't know how to make CDR comps right now).

>> Pierre Schaeffer : There are many people working with sound. It's often boring, but not necessarily ugly. It contains dynamic and kinaesthetic impressions. But it's not music.

>> Tim Hodgkinson : But what is the exact moment at which something becomes music ?

>> Pierre Schaeffer : This is a difficult question. If you had the complete answer you'd be a prophet. The traditional testimony is that a musical schema lent itself to being expressed in sound in more than one way. An example is that Bach sometimes composed without specifying the instruments : he wasn't interested in the sound of his music. That's music, a schema capable of several realisations in sound. The moment at which music reveals its true nature is contained in the ancient exercise of the theme with variations. The complete mystery of music is explained right there. Thus a second. a third a fourth variation were possible, which all kept the single idea of the theme. This is the evidence that with one musical idea you can have different realisations.

he's gots himself some points worth thinking about there. though my gut feeling is, he's being too strict. this is from the classic 86 interview where he holds that he wasted his life with musique concrete, searching for an alternative to do-re-mi. I read it years ago but it's making much more sense now...

Or maybe I'm an idiot.

(and therefore music)

to me it's minimalism taken to the limit, just like those completely black or completely white canvases in the tate, and nobody complains at those. er...

andy

that's because it's evidently a lucky accident. from joseph zitt's post to the silence group in 1997:

> Cage says in the Q&A section of "I-VI" that the number came from the
> adding up of the results of chance operations, and that he may indeed
> have made a mistake adding the values up. This would show that the
> duration was the last thing known about the piece, rather than its
> starting point.

it's an interesting coincidence, but I remember being really fucking pissed at the Wire when they ran that article making a big poetic deal and claiming this 'zero' value as part of Cage's compositional 'intent'.

this clip, of four-tet constructing a song in 10 minutes, gave me a better idea of what, mechanically, goes into creating electronic music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUDsVxBtVIg

it's interesting. i guess electronic composers also weave live-instrumentation into the music, by capturing it on sound-files?

thats mighty impressive.
what s/w is it that he uses ?
its totally impossible to hear any thriller in that ..
would love to know if he did play that out.

that's Ableton Live.

that's just one way to do it (straight up sampling records and looping, chopping, re-pitching, warping the audio). most producers also use midi to control software synthesizers, and many also record live instruments/audio, use hardware synths (via midi or not), etc.