issue06

EMUSIC-L Digest                                      Volume 55, Issue 06

This issue's topics:
	
	Jeff Harrington on "Musical Incompetence" (9 messages)
	Making it up as we go along (2 messages)
	modus (14 messages)
	Multiculturalism
	Musical Expressiveness (5 messages)
	Neo-Stradivarius Wannabees (4 messages)
	Pat Metheny/Lyle Mays and Time Signatures (25 messages)
	The whole 22/8 thing. (2 messages)

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------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date:         Tue, 10 Aug 1993 16:27:39 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Incompetence

>
> Mark Harrington writes:

Yikes!  Here we go again... but puhleeeeze Mark Harrington?

> > One of the main problems with duping orchestral instruments is that you
 really
> > do have to know how to perform the music with that instrument.  No
 instrument
> > is going to perform itself - and playing a keyboard into a sequencer just
> > doesn't cut it.  Ultimately, this is why electronic music is so lame these
> > days - no one performs the piece - and if they do - maybe one or two tracks
> > are musical and the rest suck... (typical lame percussion track or
> > pathetically repetitious bass line).
>
> > I don't have
> > the time to learn how to perform each instrument - which is ultimately what
> > we're talking about - how is this attach approached from this note, etc.
 (not
> > real instruments - synthesized instruments) much less try and dupe the
> > infinitely large space of timbral possibilities.  Shit, I don't have the
 time
> > to to learn to perform my totally synthetic instruments.
>
> Maybe this should tell you something.  Maybe you don't have what it takes to
>  really
> make music.

Maybe not... (as tears roll down my cheeks...).

> I'm not trying to be "holier than thou".

No - Steve - errr.. Franz?  whatever - I can tell - sheeeeesh - you're just
being DENSE!!!

>  On the contrary, why
>  should
> you be able to do in 10 minutes what most musicians spend a lifetime learning
>  how
> to do?  As the joke goes, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice,
 practice,
> practice."
>

Hmmm... here we go again - I'm a good musician.  I did graduate studies in
piano and composition at Juilliard... didn't want to do that... yawn... not
that it really means anything... shit....

> Mark continues:  Sorry

Sorry Steve - it's Jeff!!! Mr. Jeff to you, you nincompoop ;-)

> > Real musicians _want_ to sound good.  What does a synthesizer want?  Until
 we
> > have intelligent instruments - really intelligent - which have been trained
> > in all kinds of traditions - it's hopeless...
>
> What you don't realize is that a musical instrument (synthesizer or otherwise)
>  does
> not inherently make music.  They are not intelligent, they have no wants
 (except
>  for
> some 110V AC), they are nothing but mechanical (or electro-mechanical) systems
> which remain silent until energy is put into the system (i.e. you play it).
>
> The only thing that can make music is a musician.  A synthesizer is but a
 means
>  to a
> musical end.  Until you realize that, you'll remain puzzled, bewildered and
> frustrated.
>
> By the way, if you spent less time ranting about how hard it is to make music,
>  you'd
> have more time to practice.

Hey, man, I'm at work!!! I'm just goofing off and I'm a real fast typist and
this post took about 3 minutes... this is getting real dulllllllll.... I
wasn't complaining or ranting - I thought we were talking about the
complexities of creating performance paradigms for synthetic (new)
instruments... shit!

>
> In closing, I just have to say:
>         M U S I C   I S   N O T   E A S Y .
>         NEVER WAS, NEVER WILL BE.
>         If you can't take the heat, get out of the pit.
>
> =Stephen David Beck=
>

Man - this is just what I've been hoping you guys would tell me... I quit...
I'll never write or play my synth or post to Emusic again...  It's been fun
guyz...

NOT!!!

Maestro Jeff Harrington (Mark?????)
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Tue, 10 Aug 1993 17:48:57 -0500
From:         Stephen David Beck 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Incompetence

Sorry about the diatribe.  I have to deal with undergraduates who bitch and
moan about how hard it is to work with synths, and I mistakenly read your
post with that vantage.

I think we are actually on the same side.  I have been trying to develop
an alternative approach to emusic performance, in particular, so-called
interactive performance.  My approach builds an entire synthesis process
from a sense of "acoustic viability."  That is, the synth instrument responds
to different performance articulations in a logical way.  Loud sounds aren't
just louder, but brighter.  Low sounds take longer to sound than high sounds,
etc.  These should be basic synthesis rules.  But synthesizer manufacturers
either are (a) ignorant to this concept, or (b) far more interested in re-
naming old technology and repackaging it, calling it the latest breakthrough
technology so that millions of suckers will buy it.

I think (b) is the right answer here ;-)

Bottom line is, Yes, I agree that a lot of e-music is bad because the
composers pay almost no attention to the details of synthesis.  It is
unfortunate, but true.  The remedy is to write good music yourself.  In the
words of Bucky Fuller, 95% of everything is junk. (I know, I said it before)

-Stephen David Beck

P.S. Sorry about getting your name wrong.  I hate when that happens.
Mea culpa.
"Fritz"

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 13:33:23 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Incompetence

Stephen Beck seems to have rolled me and Jeff Harrington up into one
person. I'm the guy who said I ought to enroll in an institution for
the synthetically challenged. I just want to let you know that I've
been playing the clarinet for 25 years, composing for even longer. I have
a doctorate in music from Cornell University. I KNOW music is difficult.
Believe me I know. So I've gotten good at the clarinet. I've gotten
good at composing. I know the classical music literature backwards and
forwards. Now I want to learn electronic music, and instead of help
I get told I must be no good. C'mon now!

                               Mark Simon
                               tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 14:06:26 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Incompetence

>
> Stephen Beck seems to have rolled me and Jeff Harrington up into one
> person. I'm the guy who said I ought to enroll in an institution for
> the synthetically challenged. I just want to let you know that I've
> been playing the clarinet for 25 years, composing for even longer. I have
> a doctorate in music from Cornell University. I KNOW music is difficult.
> Believe me I know. So I've gotten good at the clarinet. I've gotten
> good at composing. I know the classical music literature backwards and
> forwards. Now I want to learn electronic music, and instead of help
> I get told I must be no good. C'mon now!
>
>                                Mark Simon
>                                tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu
>

Well, Stephen told me later that he was so sick of having to explain to music
students that you have to perform electronic music the same as other kinds of
music that he kind of let his flames get out of hand.

It's funny because I thought we were talking about new performance paradigms
not duplicating the sounds of classical instruments... and the whole thing got
started when we were discussing "massive" MIDI setups as ways of creating
"lush" orchestral-type sounds (not classical instrument representations).

I've been playing the piano for about 22 years and composing that long - it
just goes to show you one of the limitations of "text" in representing ideas.
That's why I always pepper my posting with smilies - otherwise the tone gets
pretty heated sometimes...

I built a digital synthesizer when I was 17 which is about 20 years ago...
sheesh....

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 14:23:10 -0400
From:         Joe McMahon 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Incompetence

>So I've gotten good at the clarinet. I've gotten
>good at composing. I know the classical music literature backwards and
>forwards. Now I want to learn electronic music, and instead of help
>I get told I must be no good. C'mon now!

Hmmm. Learn, how? What I was hearing was that you were frustrated because
it was hard to make a synthesizer sound like an X. Well, it *is* hard to
do. There's really not much getting around that.

What I was trying to say is that transfering over to keyboard may be more
of the frustration than the instrument itself. (I don't know how much or
how well you play.) Have you considered a wind controller (especially since
you are a trained wind intrumentalist)? You might be better able to draw on
your training in playing expressively. Admittedly, an EWI isn't a clarinet.
It's not even a pennywhistle. But you might find it a better fit because
it's more like your preferred instrument.

This doesn't bypass the problem of having to think like a
bassist/drummer/organist. But it might make it a little easier. Any other
advice I would have woud essentially be "keep playing". An alternative is
to look at your limits, accept them, and decide what can be done with what
you can do. It would be silly to snub a flute because it can't play 12-note
chords.

 --- Joe M.

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 15:27:21 EDT
From:         Brian Good 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Incompetence

Mark (not Jeff) writes:

> >So I've gotten good at the clarinet. I've gotten
> >good at composing. I know the classical music literature backwards and
> >forwards. Now I want to learn electronic music, and instead of help
> >I get told I must be no good. C'mon now!

Joe answers:

> Hmmm. Learn, how? What I was hearing was that you were frustrated because
> it was hard to make a synthesizer sound like an X. Well, it *is* hard to
> do. There's really not much getting around that.

What *I* thought Mark was saying was that, whether or not you're trying to
do strictly imitative synthesis, getting the same degree of expressiveness
out of a synth that you can get out of, say, a clarinet is difficult.

> What I was trying to say is that transfering over to keyboard may be more
> of the frustration than the instrument itself. (I don't know how much or
> how well you play.) Have you considered a wind controller (especially since
> you are a trained wind intrumentalist)? You might be better able to draw on
> your training in playing expressively.

With a doctorate in music I suspect Mark has had enough functional piano to
at least muddle through.  I think the problem lies more in the way that
keyboard patches are generally done--controlled by velocity and envelopes,
with maybe some aftertouch thrown in.  This is ok for things like a real
piano, I guess, but it's a pretty lame way to try to control wind- or string-
like sounds (as I think Jeff mentioned earlier).  It seems to me that
controlling things like loudness, filter cutoff and resonance, cross-switching,
etc., with your breath *has* to be inherently more expressive than trying
to do the same thing using your big toe on a mod wheel.

>Admittedly, an EWI isn't a clarinet.  It's not even a pennywhistle.

No, it's a lot more expensive than that. :-)

>But you might find it a better fit because
> it's more like your preferred instrument.

...and it can do certain things that *any* non-percussion orchestral
instrument can do, not as well as acoustic intruments, but a lot
better than a keyboard.

OTOH, be aware that if you try to enter large orchestral scores into a
sequencer using unthinned continuous controller data on every part, you'll
clog things up but good.

brian good

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 15:42:13 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Incompetence

Joe continues ->
> >So I've gotten good at the clarinet. I've gotten
> >good at composing. I know the classical music literature backwards and
> >forwards. Now I want to learn electronic music, and instead of help
> >I get told I must be no good. C'mon now!
>
> Hmmm. Learn, how? What I was hearing was that you were frustrated because
> it was hard to make a synthesizer sound like an X. Well, it *is* hard to
> do. There's really not much getting around that.
>

Ahem... guyz... can we change the subject now - I mean - it was kind of a
little self-mockery which - ahem... has gotten to be a bit...

Just hit "h" at the "elm" prompt and type your own name - instead of mine -
it's fun!!!

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 17:40:26 -0500
From:         "David C. Bloom" 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Humility

>
> I've been playing the piano for about 22 years and composing that long - it
> just goes to show you one of the limitations of "text" in representing ideas.
> That's why I always pepper my posting with smilies - otherwise the tone gets
> pretty heated sometimes...
>
> I built a digital synthesizer when I was 17 which is about 20 years ago...
> sheesh....
>

showoff  :->

------------------------------
Date:         Thu, 12 Aug 1993 08:32:24 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Jeff Harrington's Musical Humility

>
> >
> > I've been playing the piano for about 22 years and composing that long - it
> > just goes to show you one of the limitations of "text" in representing
 ideas.
> > That's why I always pepper my posting with smilies - otherwise the tone gets
> > pretty heated sometimes...
> >
> > I built a digital synthesizer when I was 17 which is about 20 years ago...
> > sheesh....
> >
>
> showoff  :->
>

Yikes!  I thought that was just going to Mark Simon...  just to show how
absolutely stupid I was (back then?) the damn digital synth (basically a bunch
of chips splitting square waves) - 16 - additive square wave synth... I never
got the thing to work - then I entered it in my high school science fair - I
won 2nd place - luckily I never had to explain that the tape I was playing was
"Entropical Paradise" and that the sound they got out of the keyboard was
(ahem... shuffle... shuffle...) - line hum - :-) giggle... our high school was
going to send me to the Internatinal Science Fair thing but I jumped ship - it
was (ahem) unethical?  Everybody was pretty impressed - wonder if I could sell
the design to Yamaha?  Naaaah... I'm too busy...

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Tue, 17 Aug 1993 10:09:31 CDT
From:         Gregory Taylor 
Subject:      Making it up as we go along

Brian Good comments, I pontificate [as usual]....

>To me perhaps the biggest failing of contemporary "serious" music is
>that it hasn't developed an improvisational tradition.  Sure, there are
>occasional instances--I heard some excellent improvised emusic at an
>Oberlin concert a few years back--but it's not something most classically
>trained musicians do well (and I'm *not* talking about choosing the exact
>pitches to play in "Music for Prague" or whatever).

I think it might be safer to say that the tradition of western "High Art"
classical music pretty much discarded its own improvisational traditions
[with the possible exception of the cadenza, which came to be dominated
by "transcribed improvisation" later on] a good deal earlier on, and we
merely reap the numerous benefits of the rotting carcass of the Romantic
tradition - a halo of flies.

I'll be gracious and merely suggest that "serious" might be a regrettable
choice of terms; it's at least pretty ethnocentric [Pran Nath not
*serious*? Ah-Hadji Bai Konte not *serious*?] within the confines of
the rest of the world, and within the confines of our own musical
traditions [Cecil Taylor not *serious*? Marily Crispell not *serious?*].
But it should also suggest a partial reason why some composers have
turned to musical models whose roots are outside the realm of "serious"
music as you define it.

Gregory

------------------------------
Date:         Tue, 17 Aug 1993 12:36:56 EDT
From:         Brian Good 
Subject:      Re: Making it up as we go along

>
> Brian Good comments, I pontificate [as usual]....
>
> >To me perhaps the biggest failing of contemporary "serious" music is
> >that it hasn't developed an improvisational tradition.  Sure, there are
> >occasional instances--I heard some excellent improvised emusic at an
> >Oberlin concert a few years back--but it's not something most classically
> >trained musicians do well (and I'm *not* talking about choosing the exact
> >pitches to play in "Music for Prague" or whatever).

Gregory Taylor counters:

> I think it might be safer to say that the tradition of western "High Art"
> classical music pretty much discarded its own improvisational traditions
> [with the possible exception of the cadenza, which came to be dominated
> by "transcribed improvisation" later on] a good deal earlier on,

I'm well aware of it, having had my knuckles rapped by a high school clarinet
teacher for wanting to do my own candenza.

>and we
> merely reap the numerous benefits of the rotting carcass of the Romantic
> tradition - a halo of flies.
>
> I'll be gracious and merely suggest that "serious" might be a regrettable
> choice of terms; it's at least pretty ethnocentric [Pran Nath not
> *serious*? Ah-Hadji Bai Konte not *serious*?] within the confines of
> the rest of the world, and within the confines of our own musical
> traditions [Cecil Taylor not *serious*? Marily Crispell not *serious?*].
> But it should also suggest a partial reason why some composers have
> turned to musical models whose roots are outside the realm of "serious"
> music as you define it.
        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Not me, chukko;  please note the quotes around the word "serious."
*My* definition of serious music is far from limited to what you call
western "High Art" (your own use of quotes leads me to suspect
that you consider much of it neither High nor Art :-) );  my intent was
neither exclusionary nor ethnocentric.  However, most netpeople will
know what I meant by "serious", and it's shorter than a  two-paragraph
diatribe about music written by physically or creatively dead white
western males.  Maybe we need an abbreviation--would you be willing to
part with RCRT (Rotting Carcass of the Romantic Tradition)?

bgood

------------------------------
Date:         Tue, 17 Aug 1993 10:13:31 EDT
From:         ronin 
Subject:      modus

conversation regarding the merits of compositional technique have
damn near backed us into a corner from which i feel a sudden to
extricate myself. several of us, including some very experienced
synthesists, seem to have acknowledged the notion that instrument-
independent composition is 'good' composition. now, a simplistic
reading of this might lead one to say 'now wait... classical
composition techniques for anything that involves more than one
instrument necessarily involves choices based on voicing charateristics.
therefore the point is moot.' but i won't say that. rather, i will assume
that, rather than a doctrine, a tendency is being approached here to
place a higher value on those compositions which withstand translation among
instruments. conversely, there seems to be a tendency to dismiss, or
at least hold in lower regard, those compositions which absolutely require
a certain instrumentation, or more specifically, patch.
now, i am not a classically trained musician. in fact, i'm just not trained,
period. my attraction to synthesizers was (and for the most part still is)
the fact that i could create a 'music' that was/is to my ears rich, complex,
and interesting, but that required an entirely different set of skills than
those conventionally employed by musicians. and i believe that i am as good
at that as a well-trained musician is at their own work. i actually can
'play' a synthesizer. which is, of course, why i lament the loss of realtime
controls on popular synths. just as the 'envelope' of a violin is under the
direct control of its performer, i learned to directly manipulate the
parameters of a complex patch (with the help of appropriate voltage
control structures) in ways that are, to me, 'musical'. and this remains
my fundamental musical paradigm. for most of my work, the patch comes
first. to me, timbre is the central musical element, and it is the control
of timbre that is the basis of composition. i could go on, but i think you
probably understand what i'm trying to say. now, i have the utmost respect
for 'true' composition, and at times even find myself backing into that
corner where merit is judged purely on pitch and timing. but i'm not
comfortable there. frankly, i like drones, and am at least equally as
appreciative of texture as structure.

-----------< Cognitive Dissonance is a 20th Century Art Form >-----------
Eric Harnden (Ronin)
 or 
The American University Physics Dept.
4400 Mass. Ave. NW, Washington, DC, 20016-8058
(202) 885-2748  (with Voice Mail)
---------------------< Join the Cognitive Dissidents >-------------------

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 08:57:39 +0000
From:         Nick Rothwell 
Subject:      Re: modus

>several of us, including some very experienced
>synthesists, seem to have acknowledged the notion that instrument-
>independent composition is 'good' composition.

Erm, for the record, I'm not one of them.

                        Nick Rothwell   |   cassiel@cassiel.demon.co.uk
     CASSIEL Contemporary Music/Dance   |   cassiel@cix.compulink.co.uk

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 08:33:35 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Re: modus

Who says "instrument-independent" composition is good composition?
Not I! It may be that some day they'll invent a brain-music interface
and we'll be able to transmit music directly into the brain without
a sound having been made, but until then music has to be made by
instruments and it's part of what we do to tailor our music to suit
them. For anyone doing electronic music it's particularly important
to get a good variety of unusual sounds at your disposal since making
unusual sounds is the one really big thing that synthesizers have over other instruments. You've got to exploit it for all it's worth.

As a student I heard it expressed as common wisdom (from my professors
of course) that the way you tell if, say, an orchestral work is any good
is to reduce it for piano. If it sounds good without the orchestral
coloring it's got to be good. This strikes me as molto pedantico.

On the other hand I would argue with anyone who says you can make
music with only tone color, and I think I've heard arguments along
this line on the list before. I say tone color is just part of the
picture. Music should be a complex interaction between a variety of
elements: melody, harmony, rhythm, tone color, counterpoint, you know
the whole litany (this is beginning to sound like one of those
nutrition lectures "now kids, be sure to eat a balanced diet from all
the four food groups")

Let me go on record now as saying this shall be my only contribution
to this latest revival of the tone-color flame-war, should it turn
into such.

                       --Mark Simon
                         tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 08:54:07 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: modus

Maestro Rothwell responds ->
> >several of us, including some very experienced
> >synthesists, seem to have acknowledged the notion that instrument-
> >independent composition is 'good' composition.
>
> Erm, for the record, I'm not one of them.
>

As a rule, neither am I.  But of course - nothing is impossible - some things
are more improbable than others ;-).

A good instrument-independent composition - say Bach's the Art of Fugue - in
the hands of a "musical" interpreter on whatever instrument - electronic or a
bunch of tuned rocks - can still work...  But good instrument-independency
probably is more "multi-instrument-dependent" than "instrument-independent.
Bach's knowledge of the limitations of the instruments at his disposal allowed
him to think of multiple interpretive frameworks - keyboards, winds,
strings...whatever...

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 10:17:00 EDT
From:         John Rossi III 
Subject:      Re: modus

Again, a poor soul, helplessly conviced that there is something magical (and
great) about European originated musical concepts.  Your professor was
close to being correct.  What he should have said was "if the symphony
can be reduced to being played on one square wave oscillator with only
pitch and amplitude varying.... then it is a great work".

JOhn

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 09:07:47 PDT
From:         metlay 
Subject:      Re: modus

>>several of us, including some very experienced
>>synthesists, seem to have acknowledged the notion that instrument-
>>independent composition is 'good' composition.
>
>Erm, for the record, I'm not one of them.

Neither am I, if anyone cares. I've learned that anything I've written
of enduring value translates from instrument to instrument with reasonable
facility; the timbral characteristics of the synths involved lend specific
character to each mix, but the music doesn't rely on timbre completely.

I've probably walked into some trap or another by admitting this, but...


--
mike metlay * atomic city * box 81175 pgh pa 15217-0675 * metlay@netcom.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Wow, now my hand's all sticky! Yum."                       (metlay's wife)

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 14:02:55 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Re: modus

>Again, a poor soul, helplessly convinced that there is something magical (and
>great) about European originated musical concepts.

Why, why, why is it automatically assumed these days that Euorpean originated
ideas are of necessity evil, and must be eliminated? This is an issue that
goes way beyond music.

John Rossi, what do you know of Indian ragas , Yoruba drumming, Javanese
gamelan, what insights do you have about Gagaku or Yaqui ritual music?
Have you spent a lot of time perfecting your nose-flute technique recently?
How are your koto lessons coming? Is your album of vina solos coming out
soon?

Or do you spend most of your time playing and listening to that quintessential
product of western civilisation, rock and roll?

John Rossi, you are a from head to toe a product of western European-
originated ideas, and will be until the day you die, and there's not a
thing in the world you can do to change it.

And while we're denouncing European musical ideas, here's a few names
to add to the list:

   The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Yes, The Sex Pistols,
Sinead O'Connor, U2 ...

    Out with you demons of western imperialism!

                       --Mark Simon
                         tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 17:27:00 EDT
From:         John Rossi III 
Subject:      Re: modus

Wooooaaaah...

Apparently my reputation has not permeated every emusic nook.  Are you guessing
or do you know that I am a 100% authentic 2nd generation American Wop.  I
come from about as blueblood a guinea lineage as you're going to find.  So,
yes, my roots are very European.  I am by no means a anti-European idealist,
either.  As a matter of fact, I do like rock, and recently I have even
started to quite enjoy European-club Techno.  My posting was directed at
the necessity for a sonic experience to include rhythm, tempo and melody
components in order to be classified as 'worthwile' music.  Personally,
I believe that wonderful music can be created using only timbral and
amplitude changes.  SOmetimes, I am not even sure the amplitude changes
are necessary.

Finally, the tone of the post might suggest that I am one of those people
who like to bash things European for some politically correct reason.
Yea, right... And maybe someday I'll own an automobile produced in some
third world country.

John

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 21:21:05 -0700
From:         Michael O'Hara 
Subject:      Re: modus

I used to have a music player for an apple II.  Only one tone, not
even ampliture changes.  Yes "the classics" did on average, sound
very listenable. I couldn't say the same for all modern music.

Still, I do believe the requirement was a straight foward, catchy
melody.  Not the inherent "enjoyment" of the piece in its' orignial
form.  i.e. Steve roach wouldnt have worked... I still like some of
his work.

Dogma = blindness. :)

------------------------------
Date:         Thu, 19 Aug 1993 09:51:50 CDT
From:         Gregory Taylor 
Subject:      Long rave on rossi/simon [caveat lector. long]

Mr. Simon is honked off about what seems like a rather simple observation.
I'll bet he's actually arguing with a bunch of folks who aren't exactly
present, but *sound* like Mr. Rossi [who, as far as *I* know, *is*
of fine Yurrupean stock, after all]. So, I'll argue with a position
which may not be Mr. Simon's for the sake of symmetry....

>>Again, a poor soul, helplessly convinced that there is something magical (and
>>great) about European originated musical concepts.

>Why, why, why is it automatically assumed these days that Euorpean originated
>ideas are of necessity evil, and must be eliminated? This is an issue that
>goes way beyond music.

And, I think, beyond Rossi's comment. He seems to me to merely be
questioning the relative *status* of the concepts he's critical of,
or perhaps the status that the practitioners of the craft seem rather
regularly to claim for themselves. But perhaps I've known and read
John a trifle longer, and *I'm* "reading" him using my own set of
interlinears.

>John Rossi, what do you know of Indian ragas , Yoruba drumming, Javanese
>gamelan, what insights do you have about Gagaku or Yaqui ritual music?
>Have you spent a lot of time perfecting your nose-flute technique recently?
>How are your koto lessons coming? Is your album of vina solos coming out
>soon?
>
>Or do you spend most of your time playing and listening to that quintessential
>product of western civilisation, rock and roll?
>
>John Rossi, you are a from head to toe a product of western European-
>originated ideas, and will be until the day you die, and there's not a
>thing in the world you can do to change it.
>
>And while we're denouncing European musical ideas, here's a few names
>to add to the list:
>
>The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Yes, The Sex Pistols,
>Sinead O'Connor, U2 ...
>
    >Out with you demons of western imperialism!
>
                       >--Mark Simon
                         >tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

Mark, check your Prozac refill :) . One need not have spent their last
decade playing a non-western music or even listening to it as a require-
ment to question the extent to which some of its exceptions are granted
the status of cultural hegemony they would [Cage comes to mind here, I
suppose?] like claim for themselves.

I'd suggest further that your objections themselves are based on what
I'd consider an arguable assumption: that the popular culture of the
present age is tightly coupled to the traditions of western European
High Art as practiced by the legion of dead white guys. One might argue
that while it shares a current cultural link in its history, certain
currents have acted to separate them in some pretty radical ways, and
that the current state of affairs is such that Mozart doesn't matter
a rat's arse for Rossi's rap stuff. He might as well use the central
Javanese notions of padang and ulihan to describe cadential formulas
as ones from his secondhand copy of Piston.

And, lest you wonder, is this yet another disparagement of the works
of all of western culture? Nope. I'm just no longer as willing to claim
that [fill in your favorite western guy composer here - preferably
something post-Enlightenment and pre-serial, if our FM playlists are
to be believed] represents the highest pinnacle of human cultural
acheivement. And, yes, that *is* what I was taught. I think it was
wrong. Copland's great, but any system which chooses some arbitrary
means for privileging him over Joseph Spence or I Wayan Lotring or
O'Carolan is, I think, eminently worthy of Rossi's occasional ire.

As a practical matter, one might well view a fair amount of the discuss-
ion here as being precisely about the problem of this kind of historical
drift [wait. I just thought of a fine example: Balinese kebyar and
central Javanese court stuff share common ancestors, but have split
off and followed really different routes, with some interesting modern
crossbreeding going on even as we speak, now that the contact between
the now different traditions proceeds apace]: I don't think that any
of us would have the slightest problem acknowledging that the tools we
use [and some of the forms proscribed by the technology] do, indeed,
originate with a bunch of French dudes out for timbral difference and
German dudes flushed with the notion of "total control". Likewise,
it'd be crazy to deny that their informing notions of what music is
and should do is firmly anchored in whatever you want to call what
happened to the notions of art and art objects and artists and audiences
in the 19th century. Some folks still hold those views [I think that
the vernacular American aesthetic of the 20th century is nothing more
than an unreflective version of the worst excesses of 19th century
Romanticism mixed in with a little good ol' "Individualism" and a heady
dose of the seductive confusions of the marketing techniques of late
Capitalism, so I may be somewhat biased here....]. But the center of
the discourse has shifted bigtime: the technology is outside of the
hands of the concentrations of capital, resources, and hegemony that
once determined what electronic music was and who did it and who heard
it. There are synthesizers in the garages of the occasional Senegambian
Griot *and* Mr. Rossi *and* at my house *and* down underground at IRCAM
*and* in David Borden's magic kingdom at Cornell [as well as L*rd knows
what at Risley]. I think that each of those places moves the work away
from the central bunch of gentlemen who used to negotiate the agree-
ments about what "art" was, and makes things different than they were.

That whole tradition is now merely "one among many". It is where we
begin, and where we will, without great effort, remain. But one hardly
needs to renounce the whole ball of wax to be surprised again and again
when folks unreflectivly resort to the hold Hegemonist arguments. And
likewise, one need hardly be that radical to have suffered at the hands
of those in authority who claim to act as the guardians of "demonic
western culture" - if I recall your previous postings correctly, you've
done some suffering at their hands, too.

Oh yeah - I think that U2 has lots more to do with Beaudrillard than
can be explained by Schenker, and I'll hoot loudly in derision at any
dude who tries to get me to buy Mozart as "the Sex Pistols of a bygone
age."

D*mn, this got kind of long, and I'd better add some canonical synth
talk - David Borden's "Cayuga Night Music" *is* a marvelous recording.
The Orb remixes of YMO's "Tong Poo" only will make sense to you if
you're a serious Orb fan who likes to listen to minor ambient house
variations in the same way that Biblical scholars like to peruse several
codices of Patristic writings; try the Black Dog Productions sampler
on the newly reconstituted Wax Traxx instead.

To recap, then: It's not automatically assumed that European-originated
ideas are of necessity evil, merely more roundly subject to criticism
than might have previously been the case. I believe that they're best
critiqued from within the tradition. It's stupid to assume that such a
critique of necessity argues for their removal - this isn't an "all or
none" situation. I *would* favor arguing against *any* position which
would claim "the final word", as I believe that much of the eurocentric
view of western much *does* claim. I've got similar problems with any
system which pronounces the fatwah on vocal music and pitches singers
in jail in the name of Allah; the business of living in a bigger world
requires that we eliminate the exclusivist views which hinder discourse,
not the tradition that might be short-sighted enough to decide to
assert it's divinely [or aesthetically, since we're post Christian
europeans these days] ordained greatness.

Gregory

------------------------------
Date:         Thu, 19 Aug 1993 18:28:00 EDT
From:         John Rossi III 
Subject:      Re: Long rave on rossi/simon [caveat lector. long]

Thanks Greg... I couldn't have been that verbose, even if I wanted to.  For
the record, I never really liked the Beatles all that much.  The Kinks,
however, are another story entirely.

John

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 20 Aug 1993 12:04:50 BST
From:         "Steven D. Bramson" 
Subject:      Interesting Times

Reading recent postings regarding interesting time signatures, it struck me
that most music using them is 20th century.  Last Christmas one of the choirs
I sing with did an intersting Carol called The Truth From above.  This has
alternating bars of 3/2 (six crotchets) and 5/4 (4 crotchets).  It was very
natural and straight forward to sing and had the additional benifit of some
very good harmony.  The arrangement is by Vaughan Williams and the original
is credited to that well know composer Trad.

Did anyone else attend/watch/hear the Winton Marsalis concert at the Albert
Hall last night?   Superb stuff.  It included a section in 7/4 which the
audiance was invited to clap along!

Steven Bramson

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 20 Aug 1993 09:12:25 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Re: Long rave on rossi/simon [caveat lector. long]

Greg, I hope you're not trying to tell me that rock is no longer part of
Western culture. Just ask the people in India, Thailand or whatever, whos
kids are forsaking their native musical traditions for what my Indian
acquaintance Rade terms "that jumping up and down music". He knows where
that stuff is coming from.

Of course I can't help but be aware of the tremendous drift that's taken
place between our "popular" and "classical" or "serious" (or whatever other
misnomers you care to apply) traditions. This is what I really deplore.
You can blame it on any number of things. Commercialism, American anti-
intellectualism, the "who cares if you listen" attitudes of those d***
f*** academics. Unfortunately the rift is here and I'm probably overly
quixotic to think it's possible to mend it. But the alternative is to
sit back and say "well who's to say ..." and "we're all diverse cultures
separate but equal..."

Except that you want to add a clause that says "except we get to kick you
in the pants with impunity because you're on the top and we're on the bottom".
The rock camp traditionally views itself as the underdog. It's been
conditioned to think that way ever since the fifties and sixties when your
parents shouted at you to "turn that racket down". But guess what rockers:
times have changed. You're on top now. You are now the dominant element of
western musical culture. All those kids "jumping up and down" know it.
All the media here know it. The academics won't acknowledge it but they
can't but help notice the shrinking financial base for what they do.
Nor can the traditional symphony orchestras, opera companies, etc. Classical
music is an endangered species. Even jazz is an endangered species
since even it has to retreat more and more to the academy to survive.
So come on, you rockers, celebrate. You won the battle! You told
Beethoven to roll over and tell Tchaikovsky the news, and that's exactly
what happened.

I as a member of the new underdog class ought to be the one claiming
the right to kick the new hegemonists in the pants. But I don't, because
I, classical musician though I am, have enough rock in me to know that
I'd be kicking myself. If rock is to be the dominant language of our
times that's how I'll express myself, but I reserve the right to keep
my underlying "classical" mentality. Dammit I can't just sit here and let
these two camps drift apart! It seems I'm not fit for either camp any more.

That's why this creeping multi-culturalism really rankles me. If it was just
music I might be able to bear it stoically. But this applies to every aspect
of society. Folks, a shared culture is the thing that holds society together.
"E pluribus pluribum" just doesn't work. Just look at what's happening in
other multi-cultural societies, Yugoslavia, for example.

                        --Mark Simon
                          tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Sat, 21 Aug 1993 06:48:40 -0400
From:         hvs@PUCSD.ERNET.IN
Subject:      


> Date:         Thu, 5 Aug 1993 15:19:00 EDT
> From: John Rossi III 
> ...
> ...  Also, have you ever tried to dance to a raga.

A bit tricky, I admit, but the classical dancers of India do it all the time.

******************************
Hari Sahasrabuddhe
UGC Natioanl Fellow
Department of Computer Science
University of Poona
Ganeshkhind
PUNE 411007 INDIA
email: iucaa.ernet.in!pucsd!hvs

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 20 Aug 1993 14:42:04 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Multiculturalism

OK, Greg, I hope you're not trying to tell me that rock is not loger part of
Western culture. Just ask the people in India, Thailand or whater, whose
kids are forsaking their native musical traditions for what my Inidan
acquaintance Rade terms "that jumping up and down music". He knows where that
stuff is coming from.

Of course I can't help but be aware of the tremendous drift that's taken
place between our "popular" and "classical" or "serious" (or whatever other
misnomers you care to apply) traditions. This is what I really deplore.
You can blame it on any number of things. Commercialism, American anti-
intellectualism, the "who cares if you listen" attitudes of those d***
f**** academics. Unfortunately the rift is here and I'm probably overly
quixotic to think it's possible to mend it. But the alternative is to sit
back and take this attitude of "Well, who's to say ...." and "we're all
diverse cultures, separate but equal ..."

Equal, except you want to add a clause that says "but we get to kick you
in the pants with impunity because you're on the top and we're on the
bottom". The rock camp traditionally views itself as the underdog. It's been
conditioned to think that way ever since the fifties and sixties when
their parents yelled at them to "turn that racket down". But guess what,
rockers: times have changed. You're on top now. You are now the dominant
element of western musical culture. All those kids "jumping up and down"
in India know it. All the media here know it. The academics won't acknowledge
it but they can't help but notice the shrinking financial base for what they
do. Nor can the traditional symphony orchestras, opera companies etc.
"Classical" music (including its contemporary offshoots) is an endangered
species. Even jazz is an endangered species. So come on you rockers,
celebrate. You won the battle! You told Beethoven to roll over and tell
Tchaikovsky the news, and that's exactly what happened.

I, as a member of the new underdog class ought to be the one claiming
the special privilege to kick the new hegemonists in the pants. But
I don't believe in that privilege, and even if I did, I wouldn't
take advantage of it because I, classical musician though I am, have
enough rock in me to know that I'd be kicking part of myself.
(no, on second thought maybe I'll reserve the right to kick rock
around. I wouldn't want the list to get too boring). Anyway, if
rock is to be the dominant musical language of our times, that's how
I'll express myself, but I reserve the right to keep me underlying
"classical" mentality. I need both, though it seems I'm actually
not fit for either camp any more.

But dammit I can't just sit here and let the two camps drift
apart! That's why this creeping multi-culturalism really rankles me.
If it was just music, I might be able to bear it stoically. But
multi-culturalism applies to every aspect of society. Folks, a shared
culture is the thing that holds society together. This "E pluribus
pluribum" business just doesn't work. Just look at what's happening in
other very multi-cultural places, Yugoslavia, for example.

Enough ranting for now.

            --Mark Simon
              tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 16:05:04 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Musical Expressiveness

O.K. let's get a few things straight. ;-)

First, classical musicians like Mark and I and a few others use a performance
paradigm which is a little more subtle than that employed by the people I see
posted on your recent faves list.  First, check out the wide variety of
timbral shapes in a classical performance in the dynamics.  People work for
years to get just the right pianissimo tone for a certain passage in a piece.
THis is not part of the practice in most emusic.  *****This is not a
critique*****!!!!  Additionally, timbres themselves change continually with
respect to the necessary articulative processes in a piece. (whoooo...).

This is not to say that so-and-so's chops suck, etc., just that the classical
musical model of expressiveness requires fuckin' extreme amounts of dedication
and persistence and it is not uncommon to have composers who are not even good
classical pianists or even conductors - and these are great composers!!!

I'm not trying to critique anybody's music.  My _only_ point here is to say
that the fact that both Mark and I have come to a point where the development
of electronically expressive performance models of _great_ subtlety - (not
reasonable or adequate subtlety) is problematic.

Neither Mark nor I need help in our appreciation of what is an _adequate_
performance practice.

'nuff said - now what's your fave Nine Inch Nails cut?

fluff... fluff... fluffffffffy

What I really want to know is was Jordy wearing those cool eye shades when he
was interviewing the girl from Arizona?

Maestro of All Time and Space - His Majesty - Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 17:33:36 -0400
From:         Joe McMahon 
Subject:      Re: Musical Expressiveness

>First, classical musicians like Mark and I and a few others use a performance
>paradigm which is a little more subtle than that employed by the people I see
>posted on your recent faves list...

Uh-huh. I might quibble with that opinion, but it would be pointless - de
gustibus non est disputandum. I do understand what you're talking about,
having been a trumpet player for a number of years (I have no degree, I was
never that good). Let's just say that I have indeed had the experience of
struggling to achieve subtleties of nuance on a non-electronic instrument
as well as on an electronic one, so I'm not totally a grubby peon. :-)

>This is not to say that so-and-so's chops suck, etc., just that the classical
>musical model of expressiveness requires fuckin' extreme amounts of dedication
>and persistence and it is not uncommon to have composers who are not even good
>classical pianists or even conductors - and these are great composers!!!

So what do we do? Wait until the tools become available, or work with the
ones we have now? I think you'd rather wait and compose, I'd rather compose
and play. It's a personal decision, and I certainly can't justify it on any
basis other than I hate to write music and never have it performed.

 --- Joe M.

------------------------------
Date:         Thu, 12 Aug 1993 08:39:31 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Musical Expressiveness

>
> >First, classical musicians like Mark and I and a few others use a performance
> >paradigm which is a little more subtle than that employed by the people I see
> >posted on your recent faves list...
>
> Uh-huh. I might quibble with that opinion, but it would be pointless - de
> gustibus non est disputandum. I do understand what you're talking about,
> having been a trumpet player for a number of years (I have no degree, I was
> never that good). Let's just say that I have indeed had the experience of
> struggling to achieve subtleties of nuance on a non-electronic instrument
> as well as on an electronic one, so I'm not totally a grubby peon. :-)
>

Joe grubby?  Who would thinkest?


> >This is not to say that so-and-so's chops suck, etc., just that the classical
> >musical model of expressiveness requires fuckin' extreme amounts of
 dedication
> >and persistence and it is not uncommon to have composers who are not even
 good
> >classical pianists or even conductors - and these are great composers!!!
>
> So what do we do? Wait until the tools become available, or work with the
> ones we have now? I think you'd rather wait and compose, I'd rather compose
> and play. It's a personal decision, and I certainly can't justify it on any
> basis other than I hate to write music and never have it performed.
>
>  --- Joe M.
>

Yeah, really... I've been getting a few performances, though, off of my
InterNet connections... just had a premiere in the Soviet Union for heaven's
sakes...

No way am I going to abandon emusic... venting frustrations about my temporal
problems...

I had an idea last night - about developing a personal "map" of a certain
patch and then attempting to "remap" the thing onto other patches - by ear of
course...  Could this produce faster performance models for patches...  It
could be a velocity map, say, and I would write a little program to remap
these velocities for the other patches... I think I'll give it a shot... It
would end up being some type of non-linear function probably...

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 09:58:58 PDT
From:         metlay 
Subject:      Re: Musical Expressiveness

>'nuff said - now what's your fave Nine Inch Nails cut?

"Suck." One of the two phantom tracks on BROKEN, which also exists on a
live bootleg CD I have where it's played by Trent's band, Pigface, in
concert. Severe stuff. I also like "Down In It," because it describes
my life from 1987 to 1991.

>What I really want to know is was Jordy wearing those cool eye shades when he
>was interviewing the girl from Arizona?

No. They're copyrighted. alas.

>Maestro of All Time and Space - His Majesty - Jeff Harrington
>idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

"He calls himself 'idealord'? Oh, please." --Mrs. Metlay, looking over my
shoulder the other night. ;->

Hey, I have a hard enough time explaining to people what a "metlay" is....

--
mike metlay * atomic city * box 81175 pgh pa 15217-0675 * metlay@netcom.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Wow, now my hand's all sticky! Yum."                       (metlay's wife)

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 12:02:08 -0500
From:         Arne Claassen ISE 
Subject:      Re: Musical Expressiveness

>
> >'nuff said - now what's your fave Nine Inch Nails cut?
>
> "Suck." One of the two phantom tracks on BROKEN, which also exists on a
> live bootleg CD I have where it's played by Trent's band, Pigface, in
> concert. Severe stuff. I also like "Down In It," because it describes
> my life from 1987 to 1991.

Suck is also on Gub, the first Pigface release. That version is very
minimalistic. Whispered lyrics and drums. A little synth in the background.
And finally, there's a version of suck on the Halo 0 "Suck" bootleg, which
also features a cover of "Supernaut".


--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
|Arne F. Claassen                            |
|                                                     |
| "It is by my will alone I set my mind in motion"                       |
|                                             finger for PGP public key  |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
.

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 13:58:16 -0500
From:         Stephen David Beck 
Subject:      Neo-Stradivarius Wannabees

RE: my confusion with Mark/Jeff Simon/Harrington, I suffer from a rare
mental disorder called dyslexic nomenclature.  I also stay up all night
wondering if there really is a dog ;-)

The problem which seems to be afore is two-fold:  first, we're trying
to create new instruments using synthesis rather than wood or metal.  The
violin has had 400 years of development, the piano 200 years.  Why should
we be so arrogant to think we can build an instrument as expressive and
vibrant as a violin in a few hours, let alone, a few days.  I have a TX802
patch for wind controller which I call the Uber-bassoon.  The high
register is thin and reedy, the low register is fat, and rackety, and
very difficult to sound quickly.  This instrument took 3 months of continuous
work (my partner and I practically lived in the studio).  But it sounds
great, and I've used it three different pieces now.

By the time one feels comfortable with a synth, they discontinue the model
and make something totally incompatible (the theory of continuous marketing
to a limited market).  And this is the second fold of the problem.  Unless
one is doing software synthesis, you're limited to the particular synthesis
method (or sampling) of that manufacturer.  Sometimes you get a well thought
out machine, like the TX802.  Sometimes you don't.

Until real-time software synthesis becomes affordable (actually, its on its way)
we're all stuck with the whims and bottom lines of MIDI manufacturers.

A really good text on SYNTHESIS is Charles Dodge's Computer Music.  It has
a solid intro on acoustics, psychoacoustics, and basic synth theory.  It does
assume some knowledge of computers, but it's straight forward.  It does not
address specific MIDI synthesizers or samplers.  But all these synths use
synthesis techniques described in the book.

-Stephen David Beck

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 11 Aug 1993 17:40:25 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Re: Neo-Stradivarius Wannabees

Steve Beck, I salute you for spending 3 months in a studio to come up
with one patch. Your Uber-bassoon sounds like a fine thing.
The conclusion I'm coming to is that electronic music ought to be
a collaborative endeavor between composer and sound engineer. One would
sit at his desk for 3 months and write the score, the other would sit
in the studio and come up with the patches to play it on. Every few days
they would get together and compare notes. "Hey can you give me a patch
that sounds like piccolo swallowed by a goose" "Listen to this sound I've
just come up with. It would be great for big climax, don't you think?"

                     --Mark Simon
                       tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Thu, 12 Aug 1993 13:02:39 -0500
From:         Stephen David Beck 
Subject:      Re: Neo-Stradivarius Wannabees

Mark Simon says...
Steve Beck, I salute you for spending 3 months in a studio to come up
with one patch. Your Uber-bassoon sounds like a fine thing.
The conclusion I'm coming to is that electronic music ought to be
a collaborative endeavor between composer and sound engineer. One would
sit at his desk for 3 months and write the score, the other would sit
in the studio and come up with the patches to play it on. Every few days
they would get together and compare notes. "Hey can you give me a patch
that sounds like piccolo swallowed by a goose" "Listen to this sound I've
just come up with. It would be great for big climax, don't you think?"

                     --Mark Simon
                       tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu




All sarcasm aside,  that's not a bad idea.  When I was at IRCAM,
composers were often paired with programmers, who assisted with the
synthesis and algorithm development.  I don't suppose you go out
and build a new clarinet every time you want to write for it?

I know I would hire someone to make a clarinet or buy one from a
manufacturer.  And I wouldn't keep buying new clarinets until my
old one was unusable.  I do my own programming because (a) I have
to, and (b) I can.  I learned mainly because I have always had to
(as they say, nothin' beats learnin' like doin').  I'm lucky if I
can get a grad assistant to do back ups.

In all seriousness, Mark brings to fore a real dilemma.  Does one
make instruments (synthetic or otherwise) or does one write for
instruments (sythetic or otherwise)?  You can do both.  But it
takes time.

Ain't that a hoot!

-Stephen David Beck

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 10:01:19 PDT
From:         metlay 
Subject:      File: "EMUSIC-L LOG9308B"

>Steve Beck, I salute you for spending 3 months in a studio to come up
>with one patch. Your Uber-bassoon sounds like a fine thing.
>The conclusion I'm coming to is that electronic music ought to be
>a collaborative endeavor between composer and sound engineer. One would
>sit at his desk for 3 months and write the score, the other would sit
>in the studio and come up with the patches to play it on. Every few days
>they would get together and compare notes. "Hey can you give me a patch
>that sounds like piccolo swallowed by a goose" "Listen to this sound I've
>just come up with. It would be great for big climax, don't you think?"

This is precisely how my current project is being done! David Turner,
a good friend in the Pgh area, composes at home with a simple palette
of sounds on a keyboard synth and a rackmount sample player, then he
brings the scores to me and I provide the timbres and arrangements.
I'm hoping that my impending move doesn't kill the project, only delay
it a bit, as some of the music is really wonderful (esp the stuff I
didn't compose |-> ).

--
mike metlay * atomic city * box 81175 pgh pa 15217-0675 * metlay@netcom.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Wow, now my hand's all sticky! Yum."                       (metlay's wife)

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 07:25:16 EST
From:         Steven Cantor 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

joe,
  the time signature for the song first circle is 22/8.  if need be, i can
provide you with the subdivisions.  also i can tell you from personal
experience that lyle mays is more than 'damn good'.  his musical gifts are
quite extraordinary.
  s.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven Cantor                     SLC@HARVARDA.HARVARD.EDU

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 10:15:27 -0400
From:         Patrick Robinson 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

Steven Cantor writes:
> joe,
>   the time signature for the song first circle is 22/8.  if need be, i can
> provide you with the subdivisions.

The whole tune?  I get kinda lost right after the 22/8 hand clapping stops.
But then, it seems that most of the tune is in 12/8, with some 8/8 sections.
Toward the end, there seem to be measures that alternate between 12/8 and
10/8, rather than being 22/8.  Is that close?

I'd love to see the 'official breakdown'!

> also i can tell you from personal
> experience that lyle mays is more than 'damn good'.  his musical gifts are
> quite extraordinary.

This is interesting... I'm sitting here listening to Mays' latest,
_Fictionary_ (which, by the way, has nothing to do with e-music), and logged
on to check out my mail, and here we are talking about him, again.
Suits me.  :-)

Mays, Metheny, et. al. are by far on the top of *my* listening list ...
since I guess the early 80's, when I first "found" them.  These guys have
the ability to reach down inside me and grab hold of my soul, like no one
else... whether they're doing piano trio (e.g. _Fictionary_, with Mays,
Jack DeJohnette, and Marc Johnson), _As Falls Wichita..._ (one of my
favorites, recorded back when they were still young-uns :-) ).

Just in case anyone else is interested (yeah, I *know* you are, Joe  ;-) ),
I recently found the new (and only, as far as I know) Pat Metheny Group
video, "More Travels", which is absolutely *scary*, it's so good.  There are
a couple of snatches of dialogue on the tape, one of which is Metheny and
Rodby talking about how they wish they could keep it "this fresh" every
night.  Well, let me tell you.... if this performance isn't straight from
the soul, they sure fooled me.  It rips me up, and watching them play just
heightens the whole experience.

Having difficulty writing complete sentences while listening to Lyle,

-Patrick
 pgr@ramandu.ext.vt.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 10:39:09 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

>
> Steven Cantor writes:
> > joe,
> >   the time signature for the song first circle is 22/8.  if need be, i can
> > provide you with the subdivisions.
>

Sorry - but I just have never got what the fascination with complex time
signatures and high energy jazz (whatever you want to call it).  Is this kind
of like Bruckner counting the stars at night?

I've heard from friends of fans of his and other people - "Wow that piece is
ing 11/8 or whatever...

What's all the excitement about?  Counting?

This is not to incite flamage - just curious - cuz - lots of world music and
modern music has much more complicated time signatures (rhythmic regularities)
than that...

Is it that Lyle's can count to 22?  :-}

Whoops...

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 11:02:44 -0400
From:         Patrick Robinson 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

Jeff SEZ:
> Sorry - but I just have never got what the fascination with complex time
> signatures and high energy jazz (whatever you want to call it).  Is this kind
> of like Bruckner counting the stars at night?
>
> I've heard from friends of fans of his and other people - "Wow that piece is
> ing 11/8 or whatever...
>
> What's all the excitement about?  Counting?

You seem to have missed the point.  The "fascination" is not with the fact
that the tune may have complex time sigs.  Sure, an analysis of what's going
on (time sigs and whatnot) is *interesting*, but ... at least with Metheny's
and Mays' music, this is certainly not the point.  Again ... if it is, then
I've been fooled.  Time sig is no more "fascinating" than whether the piece
is ABA or ABABCA.  Well.... maybe a little more fascinating.  :-)

> This is not to incite flamage - just curious - cuz - lots of world music and
> modern music has much more complicated time signatures (rhythmic regularities)
> than that...

So, are you suggesting that you think "world music" is somehow better,
because it has more complicated time signatures?  What is it that you are
trying to understand about my love of this music?

-Patrick
 pgr@ramandu.ext.vt.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 11:19:05 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

>
> Jeff SEZ:

Pat continues;>>>>>>>
> You seem to have missed the point.  The "fascination" is not with the fact
> that the tune may have complex time sigs.  Sure, an analysis of what's going
> on (time sigs and whatnot) is *interesting*, but ... at least with Metheny's
> and Mays' music, this is certainly not the point.  Again ... if it is, then
> I've been fooled.  Time sig is no more "fascinating" than whether the piece
> is ABA or ABABCA.  Well.... maybe a little more fascinating.  :-)
>
> > This is not to incite flamage - just curious - cuz - lots of world music and
> > modern music has much more complicated time signatures (rhythmic
 regularities)
> > than that...
>
> So, are you suggesting that you think "world music" is somehow better,
> because it has more complicated time signatures?  What is it that you are
> trying to understand about my love of this music?
>
> -Patrick
>  pgr@ramandu.ext.vt.edu
>

It's just that ever since I can remember people have been telling me I ought
to listen to Pat or Lyle (which I have and continue to do) because they've got
these wicked time signatures -

My point is that it appears to be a "naive" fascination with the complexities
of counting accurately - something any musician should be able to do - and I
find it funny ;-) that I find it here too... whatever...

I like their music - so don't flame me on that - just curious...

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 14:03:47 -0400
From:         Joe McMahon 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

>What's all the excitement about?  Counting?
>
>This is not to incite flamage - just curious - cuz - lots of world music and
>modern music has much more complicated time signatures (rhythmic regularities)
>than that...
More that it works: it's a great, flowing rhythm; It make you want to nod
your head or tap your feet to it, but it's not as "settled" as a 3/4 or 4/4
time signature. Just a different musical experience that I happen to like.

It works best when the music doesn't say, "HEY! I"M IN 5/4!" or whatever.
Metheny does it well, playing stuff that works well but never seems to
quite settle into a fixed rhythm. There are several pieces by Don Ellis (a
late, great bandleader from the '60's and '70's) which use meters such as
13 divided as 3-3-2-2-3 and 9 divided as 3-2-2-2-3. Killer stuff. Brubeck's
"Blue Rondo a la Turk" divides 9 into 2-2-2-3 alternating with a swinging
4/4 with eight-note = eighth-note. Intensely rhythmical experiences. A nice
alternative to your four-on-the-floor bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp.

Listening suggestions:
  - Brubeck, esp. "Time Out" ("Unsquare Dance" in 2-2-3 7/4, "Take Five" in 2-3
    5/4), "Brother, The Great Spirit Made Us All" ("Forty Days" (5/4) and "Blue
    Rondo" as mentioned before).
  - Don Ellis, "Theme from 'The French Connection'", among many, many others.
  - Stan Kenton's big band, surprisingly. During the '70's, Kenton's band
    got hold of a number of pieces by a single composer whose name has slipped
    my mind but whose music never will. (Same guy did a number of things for
    Ellis as well.)

It's an interesting and useful musical effect. Try it yourself sometime.

 --- Joe M.

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 14:17:45 -0400
From:         Patrick Robinson 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

> It's just that ever since I can remember people have been telling me I ought
> to listen to Pat or Lyle (which I have and continue to do) because they've
> got these wicked time signatures -

Music doesn't "act" like, e.g. Lyle Mays' music ... that is, it doesn't have
the *effect* it has due solely to something as simple as time signature.  Time
signature and rhythm and tempo and melody are components.  Components aren't
music.  They just contribute.

> My point is that it appears to be a "naive" fascination with the complexities
> of counting accurately - something any musician should be able to do - and I
> find it funny ;-) that I find it here too... whatever...

Do you suppose your assessment of this music might be naive, in that you seem
to base it on the fact that the music contains complex time signatures?  Or
maybe you're just saying you think these "people" naive, who recommend Metheny
along with a statement about outrageous time signatures?

> I like their music - so don't flame me on that - just curious...

Oh, good.  So, if I were to ask you why you like it, what might you say?

-Patrick
 pgr@ramandu.ext.vt.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 14:13:08 CDT
From:         Bob Crispen 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

Joe McMahon  sez:

>  - Stan Kenton's big band, surprisingly. During the '70's, Kenton's band
>    got hold of a number of pieces by a single composer whose name has slipped
>    my mind but whose music never will. (Same guy did a number of things for
>    Ellis as well.)

Hank Levy.  He got several commissions from Stan in the 70s.  Johnny
Richards also did a set of charts for Stan in the '60s that were recorded
as _Adventures in Time_, but the Levy charts (it might be Levey) were a
whole lot less ponderous.
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+
| Rev. Bob "Bob" Crispen        | Music should not be held responsible |
| crispen@foxy.boeing.com       |   for the people who listen to it.   |
+-------------------------------+--------------------------------------+

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 15:26:27 EDT
From:         Brian Good 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

>
> >What's all the excitement about?  Counting?
> >
> >This is not to incite flamage - just curious - cuz - lots of world music and
> >modern music has much more complicated time signatures (rhythmic
 regularities)
> >than that...
> More that it works: it's a great, flowing rhythm; It make you want to nod
> your head or tap your feet to it, but it's not as "settled" as a 3/4 or 4/4
> time signature. Just a different musical experience that I happen to like.
>
> It works best when the music doesn't say, "HEY! I"M IN 5/4!" or whatever.

Absolutely.

> Metheny does it well, playing stuff that works well but never seems to
> quite settle into a fixed rhythm.

Yeah.  He gets a good sense of continuity by writing long flowing lines
above whatever odd meters he's using rhythmically.  It's less blatant
than...

>There are several pieces by Don Ellis (a
> late, great bandleader from the '60's and '70's) which use meters such as
> 13 divided as 3-3-2-2-3 and 9 divided as 3-2-2-2-3. Killer stuff. Brubeck's
> "Blue Rondo a la Turk" divides 9 into 2-2-2-3 alternating with a swinging
> 4/4 with eight-note = eighth-note. Intensely rhythmical experiences. A nice
> alternative to your four-on-the-floor bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp.

I've always found Ellis and Brubeck of that era to be *very* much in the
"HEY! I'm in 5/4" camp--endless repetition of 5/4 x. x. x x  can be almost
as boring as bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp.  To be fair, not very many musicians were
comfortable playing and improvising in odd meters back then, though I think
Sonny Rollins had done jazz waltzes even earlier;  playing time *very*
explicitly was probably more mecessary than it is now.  And Brubeck later
recorded a live "Forty Days" that flowed a lot better than his first recording
of it. And Ellis? "HEY! I'm in 5/4 AND I'm playing my fabulous quarter-tone
trumpet!!!"  Things like "Indian Lady" always seemed to me to be inherently
4/4 but with extra half-beats forcibly inserted interstitially.

(Now where's my nomex underwear?)

> Listening suggestions:
>   - Brubeck, esp. "Time Out" ("Unsquare Dance" in 2-2-3 7/4, "Take Five" in
 2-3
>     5/4), "Brother, The Great Spirit Made Us All" ("Forty Days" (5/4) and
 "Blue
>     Rondo" as mentioned before).
>   - Don Ellis, "Theme from 'The French Connection'", among many, many others.
>   - Stan Kenton's big band, surprisingly. During the '70's, Kenton's band
>     got hold of a number of pieces by a single composer whose name has slipped
>     my mind but whose music never will. (Same guy did a number of things for
>     Ellis as well.)

Hank Levy, maybe?  We used to run into his Towson State band at college jazz
festivals;  Levy used to try out his charts on his own band before shipping
them off to Kenton, I think.

brian good

------------------------------
Date:         Fri, 13 Aug 1993 16:12:29 -0400
From:         idealord 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

>
> > It's just that ever since I can remember people have been telling me I ought
> > to listen to Pat or Lyle (which I have and continue to do) because they've
> > got these wicked time signatures -
>
> Music doesn't "act" like, e.g. Lyle Mays' music ... that is, it doesn't have
> the *effect* it has due solely to something as simple as time signature.  Time
> signature and rhythm and tempo and melody are components.  Components aren't
> music.  They just contribute.
>
> > My point is that it appears to be a "naive" fascination with the
 complexities
> > of counting accurately - something any musician should be able to do - and I
> > find it funny ;-) that I find it here too... whatever...
>
> Do you suppose your assessment of this music might be naive, in that you seem
> to base it on the fact that the music contains complex time signatures?  Or
> maybe you're just saying you think these "people" naive, who recommend Metheny
> along with a statement about outrageous time signatures?
>

The latter, of course, it's just funny 'cuz every time I talk to someone about
Lyle's or Pat's music it always comes up...  I agree with Joe's point that if
you start countin' something's missing - the old "look at me - I'm in 5/4"

I've written plenty of stuff in complex times signatures - sheeesh - I studied
with Elliott Carter - he's the guy that bases his pieces on 125/127 kinds of
large scale rhythms...

No, really - my only point was that every time people talk about them...

> > I like their music - so don't flame me on that - just curious...
>
> Oh, good.  So, if I were to ask you why you like it, what might you say?
>

It's a hot album - there's a really cool song in 22/8 in it - whoops '-)
 - what else need you say?  But, really - if you can't count - you're just
fooling around ;-).

> -Patrick
>  pgr@ramandu.ext.vt.edu
>

------------------------------
Date:         Sat, 14 Aug 1993 11:58:39 +0000
From:         Nick Rothwell 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

>It's an interesting and useful musical effect. Try it yourself sometime.

For a recent dance project I wrote an opening piece which was slow and
Hoenig-like: various overlapping loops shifting and fading in and out. All
at around 62bpm, with stuff layered in 5/4 and 7/4 (and a final motif in
11/4).

I didn't pay much attention the the differing key signatures when I wrote
it, but I had to port it from Performer to Vision last week, and since
Vision only support whole-bar loops the best way was to create subsequences
of differing time signature. It's quite tidy once you get the hang of it.
Whenever I've played this piece live I've done it all with iterators in
MAX, doing something approximating monophonic loop-record; not a sequencer
in sight, which felt really good.

                        Nick Rothwell   |   cassiel@cassiel.demon.co.uk
     CASSIEL Contemporary Music/Dance   |   cassiel@cix.compulink.co.uk

------------------------------
Date:         Sat, 14 Aug 1993 23:35:43 +0000
From:         Nick Rothwell 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

>and since Vision only support whole-bar loops

Odd's fish, I've just discovered just this moment that it does indeed
support loops which aren't an integral number of bars long. Isn't online
help wonderful?

                        Nick Rothwell   |   cassiel@cassiel.demon.co.uk
     CASSIEL Contemporary Music/Dance   |   cassiel@cix.compulink.co.uk

Date:         Thu, 14 Oct 1993 09:48:43 -0400
From: BITNET list server at AUVM (1.7f) 
Subject:      File: "EMUSIC-L LOG9308C"
To: Joe McMahon 


------------------------------
Date:         Sun, 15 Aug 1993 22:33:35 CDT
From:         John Eichenseer 
Subject:      Re: EMUSIC-L Digest - 12 Aug 1993 to 13 Aug 1993

replies to various post:

>also i can tell you from personal
>experience that lyle mays is more than 'damn good'.  his musical gifts are
>quite extraordinary.

Agreed. All keyboard players should check him out, thoroughly (his stuff is
pretty varied).

>The whole tune?  I get kinda lost right after the 22/8 hand clapping stops.
>But then, it seems that most of the tune is in 12/8, with some 8/8 sections.
>Toward the end, there seem to be measures that alternate between 12/8 and
>10/8, rather than being 22/8.  Is that close?

Yes, that is close. In fact, the coolest way to analyse this piece is to
get a hold of the big band arrangement (which I have played). It charts out
the chord changes and everything. Nice. I forget who did it, and where it
is available, tho. Steve? I was lucky; UT Austin bought a copy for their
big bands.

>This is interesting... I'm sitting here listening to Mays' latest,
>_Fictionary_ (which, by the way, has nothing to do with e-music)

Damn fine playing; some of my favorite DeJohnette, very subtle.

>I recently found the new (and only, as far as I know) Pat Metheny Group
>video, "More Travels", which is absolutely *scary*, it's so good.

Hey! I heard about this; where can you get it? I want, of course.

>My point is that it appears to be a "naive" fascination with the complexities
>of counting accurately - something any musician should be able to do - and I
>find it funny ;-) that I find it here too... whatever...

Well, I agree that complex time sigs, tonality, etc. carry too much of a
Gosh!Wow! factor for lots of people, but the reason it comes up so often
with Metheny/Mays is that their music is complex and simple at the same
time; accessible but still extremely deep; technically extraordinary but
not pretentious...

For all you classical-heads out there, this is coming from someone with a
music degree, lots of piano and composition training, and a great fondness
for Lutoslawski, Schwantner, Xenakis, etc... I don't consider heavy
contemporary music to be any "better" or "more advanced" or even more
complex than jazz or other genres. I think that genre snobs of all types
are pretty laughable; its all aesthetics in the end.

As far as playing in complex time sigs goes, it really is a completely
different discipline to *improvise* in them than it is to play classical
music in them. I don't think people usually appreciate this difference
enough. To improvise musically in 22/8, you have to really get inside the
groove and feel the push and pull of the rhythms. People spend their whole
lives doing this with 4/4 blues; it is a limitless pursuit.

I actually figured out the First Circle Rhythm back in high school, so that
one is pretty heavily ingrained in my imagination. Of course, I don't think
I quite approach the fluidity and beauty of Lyle's solo on it, which is
just amazing.

Hmm? Emusic? Oh... sorry... I am currently collecting used stereos in hopes
of creating a large-scale sound installation. I want to wire up a whole
building (house, gallery, whatever) with loudspeakers and write
compositions specifically for a particular installation. I figure I can get
about 24 independent channels of audio from my MIDI rig and a couple of
8-track open reels. Total control. Used stereos of reasonable quality can
be had consistently for under $100; that makes the total cost for the amps
and loudspeakers somewhere around $1000-$1500. Not pro quality, but I don't
feel like writing grant applications.

hi-ho,

jhno
....... . . ..   .  .    .       .           .   .            .            .
Joh n   E  i   c    h     e      n      s       e         e               r
D      e        l        i       c      a    t   e     E  a r (512) 458-6474
eichen@trilogy.com     .        .        .      .     .     .   .  .. . ....

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 08:51:18 EDT
From:         Brian Good 
Subject:      Re: EMUSIC-L Digest - 12 Aug 1993 to 13 Aug 1993

>
> >My point is that it appears to be a "naive" fascination with the complexities
> >of counting accurately - something any musician should be able to do - and I
> >find it funny ;-) that I find it here too... whatever...
>
> Well, I agree that complex time sigs, tonality, etc. carry too much of a
> Gosh!Wow! factor for lots of people, but the reason it comes up so often
> with Metheny/Mays is that their music is complex and simple at the same
> time; accessible but still extremely deep; technically extraordinary but
> not pretentious...
>
> For all you classical-heads out there, this is coming from someone with a
> music degree, lots of piano and composition training, and a great fondness
> for Lutoslawski, Schwantner, Xenakis, etc... I don't consider heavy
> contemporary music to be any "better" or "more advanced" or even more
> complex than jazz or other genres. I think that genre snobs of all types
> are pretty laughable; its all aesthetics in the end.

To me perhaps the biggest failing of contemporary "serious" music is
that it hasn't developed an improvisational tradition.  Sure, there are
occasional instances--I heard some excellent improvised emusic at an
Oberlin concert a few years back--but it's not something most classically
trained musicians do well (and I'm *not* talking about choosing the exact
pitches to play in "Music for Prague" or whatever).

> As far as playing in complex time sigs goes, it really is a completely
> different discipline to *improvise* in them than it is to play classical
> music in them. I don't think people usually appreciate this difference
> enough. To improvise musically in 22/8, you have to really get inside the
> groove and feel the push and pull of the rhythms.

Right!  While counting odd meters is something "any musician should be
able to do," it's also essentially irrelevant in an improvisational
context.  You need the rhythmic pulse, if there is one, running in your
mind in the background.  If you have to explicitly *count*, or pay much
attention to the meter, you're dead in the water.

brian good

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 08:56:19 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

My feeling is that time signatures like 22/8 are pretty much useless,
because no one can perceive that many beats as a single rhythmic grouping, and
Steve Cantor's offer to provide us with the subdivisions only proves the
point. Nobody hears in groups of 22. They hear 7 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 2 or
whatever. The musician who wants to express his ideas as clearly as possible
will write each of these subdivisions as separate measures. 22/8 just
places an unnecessary barrior between musician and the music. This
doesn't mean that the music in question is necessarily bad, just
awkwardly notated.

                     --Mark Simon
                       tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 09:05:51 -0400
From:         Patrick Robinson 
Subject:      Re: EMUSIC-L Digest - 12 Aug 1993 to 13 Aug 1993

I said:
> >The whole tune?  I get kinda lost right after the 22/8 hand clapping stops.
> >But then, it seems that most of the tune is in 12/8, with some 8/8 sections.
> >Toward the end, there seem to be measures that alternate between 12/8 and
> >10/8, rather than being 22/8.  Is that close?

John Eichenseer said:
> Yes, that is close. In fact, the coolest way to analyse this piece is to
> get a hold of the big band arrangement (which I have played). It charts out
> the chord changes and everything. Nice. I forget who did it, and where it
> is available, tho. Steve? I was lucky; UT Austin bought a copy for their
> big bands.

Gosh!Wow!*  Any idea how much it cost?  Order of magnitude, that is...?

> >I recently found the new (and only, as far as I know) Pat Metheny Group
> >video, "More Travels", which is absolutely *scary*, it's so good.
>
> Hey! I heard about this; where can you get it? I want, of course.

I bought it at a local videos-for-sale store.  I can get you the info off
the box, if you'd like...

> As far as playing in complex time sigs goes, it really is a completely
> different discipline to *improvise* in them than it is to play classical
> music in them. I don't think people usually appreciate this difference
> enough. To improvise musically in 22/8, you have to really get inside the
> groove and feel the push and pull of the rhythms. ...

I agree 100%.  I wrote a (rather simple) piece a couple of years ago in
15/8.  BTW, I didn't sit down and say, "Gosh!Wow!*  I b'lieve I'll write me
a kickin' piece in 15/8!  Whooo-eeee!" ... it just ended up being 15/8.  I
couldn't help it.  Anyway, I had written this little motif, and put some
chords on it, and when I decided to sequence it, it took me a while (not a
_long_ while, but a while...) to figure out it was in 15/8.  I think the
reason it took a while is that I hadn't been counting.... just grooving, and
it took a minute to get out of that (I guess) right-brained mindset, and into
a more analytical mode of figuring out what the time signature was.

> I actually figured out the First Circle Rhythm back in high school, so that
> one is pretty heavily ingrained in my imagination. Of course, I don't think
> I quite approach the fluidity and beauty of Lyle's solo on it, which is
> just amazing.

Ah, yes.... this is what I mean.  Right after the hand-clapping stops, and
Lyle's piano work becomes the focus.  Does it continue in 22/8 here?  I have
a hard time "counting" during this.  My brain immediately switches to "groove
and flow" mode.... the "push and pull of the rhythms", as you said, above.
Now, if I could only *write* (compose) like that...

* "Gosh!Wow!" used without permission.

-Patrick
 pgr@ramandu.ext.vt.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 09:25:11 -0400
From:         Patrick Robinson 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

> My feeling is that time signatures like 22/8 are pretty much useless,
> because no one can perceive that many beats as a single rhythmic grouping,
and
> Steve Cantor's offer to provide us with the subdivisions only proves the
> point. Nobody hears in groups of 22. They hear 7 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 2 or
> whatever. The musician who wants to express his ideas as clearly as possible
> will write each of these subdivisions as separate measures. 22/8 just
> places an unnecessary barrior between musician and the music.

Oh, I disagree vigorously and wholeheartedly.  :-)

The expressed time signature is not there simply to tell the reader to "put
these notes in a group".  It's also an indication of the rhythmic "feel" of
the piece.  Otherwise, what's the difference between writing in 3/4 vs. 6/8?
You may not listen to it and say, "ah ha .... that's 22/8".  But, you *can*
feel the flow and the phrasing.  And if you count that out, you find that
it just happens to be in 22.

If I'm not mistaken, Steven's offer was to provide time subdivisions for the
tune, not for a single bar of 22.  Right?

-Patrick
 pgr@ramandu.ext.vt.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 10:14:09 -0400
From:         Joe McMahon 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

>I've always found Ellis and Brubeck of that era to be *very* much in the
>"HEY! I'm in 5/4" camp--endless repetition of 5/4 x. x. x x  can be almost
>as boring as bomp-bomp-bomp-bomp.  To be fair, not very many musicians were
>comfortable playing and improvising in odd meters back then, though I think
>Sonny Rollins had done jazz waltzes even earlier;  playing time *very*
>explicitly was probably more mecessary than it is now.  And Brubeck later
>recorded a live "Forty Days" that flowed a lot better than his first recording
>of it. And Ellis? "HEY! I'm in 5/4 AND I'm playing my fabulous quarter-tone
>trumpet!!!"  Things like "Indian Lady" always seemed to me to be inherently
>4/4 but with extra half-beats forcibly inserted interstitially.
I can definitely agree with your points. The stuff that I remember and like
the best from Ellis's band was the Hank Levy (thanks for reminding me,
everyone) compositions. Levy has a very good handle on writing odd-meter
stuff that swings. Ellis had a flair for silly stuff that was fun (How many
trumpeters do you know who play mouthpiece solos? :-) ) He also did some
nice e-music-like things as well - a very talented man with Echoplexed
trumpet solos; he also used things like octave doublers and a ring
modulator. Some seriously weird stuff.

I've never heard the original "Forty Days"; I've heard the one on "Quiet as
the Moon", which is OK, but not great, and the one on "Two Generations of
Brubeck", which is *hot*. It's a piano duet arrangement. The conbination is
seamless, just wonderful. I didn't *notice* it was in 5/4 for a long while
(which is a good test of whether the song flows properly or not).

 --- Joe M.

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 10:14:13 -0400
From:         Joe McMahon 
Subject:      Re: EMUSIC-L Digest - 12 Aug 1993 to 13 Aug 1993

>To me perhaps the biggest failing of contemporary "serious" music is
>that it hasn't developed an improvisational tradition.  Sure, there are
>occasional instances--I heard some excellent improvised emusic at an
>Oberlin concert a few years back--but it's not something most classically
>trained musicians do well (and I'm *not* talking about choosing the exact
>pitches to play in "Music for Prague" or whatever).
Yes, I agree. I knew a number of technically excellent musicians in both
high school and college who could play Arban (trumpet etudes, for
non-trumpeters) with their eyes closed but who were totally lost if asked
to play a 12-bar blues by ear.

I'm not sure why this is the case, and I refrain from speculating because I
have no data.

>Right!  While counting odd meters is something "any musician should be
>able to do," it's also essentially irrelevant in an improvisational
>context.  You need the rhythmic pulse, if there is one, running in your
>mind in the background.  If you have to explicitly *count*, or pay much
>attention to the meter, you're dead in the water.
Yep. I think it's a left-brain/right-brain thing. Perhaps this is a
possible cause of the situation mentioned above - a highly-trained
off-the-page technical musician is used to using primarily verbally-related
skills (essentially reading and recitation) to perform, whereas the
improvisor is using right-brain skills (listening to the accompaniment as a
whole and intuiting the rhythm and chord changes). Thoughts? (Especially
from people who *don't* agree with me!)

 --- Joe M.

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 10:14:17 -0400
From:         Joe McMahon 
Subject:      Re: EMUSIC-L Digest - 12 Aug 1993 to 13 Aug 1993

> ... I had written this little motif, and put some
>chords on it, and when I decided to sequence it, it took me a while (not a
>_long_ while, but a while...) to figure out it was in 15/8.  I think the
>reason it took a while is that I hadn't been counting.... just grooving, and
>it took a minute to get out of that (I guess) right-brained mindset, and into
>a more analytical mode of figuring out what the time signature was.
I've had a similar experience. I wrote a piece that I would have *sworn*
was in 3/4, but the bars didn't line up right in the sequencer. I ended up
having to play through it slowly to locate the downbeat.

>I have
>a hard time "counting" during this.  My brain immediately switches to "groove
>and flow" mode.... the "push and pull of the rhythms", as you said, above.
>Now, if I could only *write* (compose) like that...
Uh-huh. That starts happening to me by about the third or fourth note of
the first bar. My non-verbal perception of the piece just shoves the
counting-oriented part of my brain out of the way and tells it to shut up
and enjoy the music. :-)

 --- Joe M.

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 11:18:34 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

I made an abortive attempt before to answer Patrick's posting in defense
of 22/8. It may or may not have gotten on the list. Here's the jist of
it again.

    What do you do when you're confronted with a measure of 22/8? Do you
really sit there and count  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
19 20 21 22? Naw! You go 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 etc. So why not
write it that way? It seems to me that would make the rhythmic feel
of the music a lot clearer.

    And now I'm going to attempt to counter the above statement myself.
Suppose you're improvising jazz in a complex metrical pattern and you're
using the chart more to keep your place in the music more than to get
specific instructions about which note to play where. Maybe you'd rather
see a bar line only at the beginning of every large rhythmic cycle.
Maybe some of you jazzers can testify about whether this is what goes
through the mind of the jazz musician. If so I will feel satisfied
that the use of 22/8 is justified. For my purposes, 7/8 5/8 4/8 5/8
will communicate the idea better.

    Yeah, it's too bad improv has dropped by the wayside in classical
music. Mozart and Beethoven were reputed to be amazing improvisors.
I believe organists in French conservatories are still being trained
to improvise fugues and chorale preludes over traditional hymns or
Gregorian chants. You never know how long it's going to take the
priest to do communion or whatever. I've heard Richard Stoltzman
improvise a cadenza during his performance of his transcription of
Mozart's Bassoon Concerto. It was ... um ... "interesting".

                 --Mark Simon
                   tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 11:50:56 -0400
From:         Patrick Robinson 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

Mark writes:
>     What do you do when you're confronted with a measure of 22/8? Do you
> really sit there and count  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
> 19 20 21 22? Naw! You go 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 etc. So why not
> write it that way? It seems to me that would make the rhythmic feel
> of the music a lot clearer.

I think what we may have here is a case of the cart pulling the horse.
I'd be very interested to know whether Pat Metheny Group actually wrote
down the score (charts, whatever) at all for "First Circle" (from reading
interviews with Pat and Lyle, I think somebody probably wrote *something*
down), and whether it took place before, during, or after the tune was
created.  Or all of the above.  Maybe Steven has some insight?

I *don't* imagine the tune was written out primarily for the benefit of
other musicians who might happen across it.  I would guess they would write
down whatever-they-write for their *own* benefit, and 22/8 might well convey
all that was necessary.  They know the tune, so there's no real need to
break down the measures into [whatever subdivisions].  Or maybe they did...
who knows?

If I were trying to notate this tune for my own benefit, I'd probably draw
bar lines at smaller intervals, just for the purpose of learning the tune
via. sightreading, but I'd still probably write "22/8" as the time sig.

I dunno.  Just speculating...

-Patrick
 pgr@ramandu.ext.vt.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Mon, 16 Aug 1993 13:03:06 -0400
From:         Thom Cox 
Subject:      Re: Joe M.'s recent listening

Well, as a fellow jazzer, let me offer this:

a bar of or bars of 22/8 would be much friendlier to the improviser
than a string of odd meters as frequently changing meters may impose
subliminal rhythmic and motivic constraint upon him/her.  One of the
greatest joys in jazz is to play with listener's expectation of where
the beat is - thus creating a tension that ache's to be resolved - this
is better achieved with one bar of 22/8 acting as a time field than a
string of smaller meters.

                             Thom Cox
                             nec_twc@flo.org

------------------------------
Date:         Tue, 17 Aug 1993 01:55:12 CDT
From:         John Eichenseer 
Subject:      Re: EMUSIC-L Digest - 15 Aug 1993 to 16 Aug 1993

>> Yes, that is close. In fact, the coolest way to analyse this piece is to
>> get a hold of the big band arrangement (which I have played).
>
>Gosh!Wow!*  Any idea how much it cost?  Order of magnitude, that is...?

Pretty pricey, I remember seeing it for sale at a jazz convention once. I
*think* that you could maybe buy just the score for about $50, but don't
quote me on that.

>> >I recently found the new (and only, as far as I know) Pat Metheny Group
>> >video, "More Travels", which is absolutely *scary*, it's so good.

I will still look for the video, but I just bought the CD.

Hmmm... only listened to about half; not sure yet. I definitely like the
studio version of First Circle much better, although it is nice to hear
differences.

>Ah, yes.... this is what I mean.  Right after the hand-clapping stops, and
>Lyle's piano work becomes the focus.  Does it continue in 22/8 here?

Yeah, although I think it changes around a little. Incidentally, it is much
easier to count and feel the spaces between the claps... you know, where
the first guitar notes come in in the beginning. That is what the vocal
sings, and that is where you can hear the real ebb and flow of the beat...

>My feeling is that time signatures like 22/8 are pretty much useless,
>because no one can perceive that many beats as a single rhythmic grouping,

I think the big band chart specified 22/8 at the beginning of the tune, but
noted the subdivisions (3,2,3,2,2,3,3,2,2), which was also grouped nicely
by the comping hash marks, as I recall. It was nicely notated. As a jazz
musician I hear this sort of thing as a series of beat groups in a 22
cycle. If I was counting, I would count the subdivisions, but it is more
important to feel the way that the two 2's lead to the next three, etc. It
doesn't make sense to count to 22, but you do know when each cycle begins
and ends, and that is important. The notation in 22/8 is indeed necessary
to delineate the larger cycles and phrasing, I think.

>Yep. I think it's a left-brain/right-brain thing. Perhaps this is a
>possible cause of the situation mentioned above - a highly-trained
>off-the-page technical musician is used to using primarily verbally-related
>skills (essentially reading and recitation) to perform, whereas the
>improvisor is using right-brain skills (listening to the accompaniment as a
>whole and intuiting the rhythm and chord changes). Thoughts? (Especially
>from people who *don't* agree with me!)

Well, I don't think that there is a clean division between left and
right-brain activity here, but they are definitely different skills. I
think they overlap, but I know people who are pretty extremely limited to
one or the other. I think my strength is in the improvising mode, to be
sure, but I find it very fruitful to combine the two and do different
things...

>My non-verbal perception of the piece just shoves the
>counting-oriented part of my brain out of the way and tells it to shut up
>and enjoy the music. :-)

Hell yes. It is nice, though, when all of the work you put toward analysing
and learning yields a greater intuitive understanding and feel...

-jhno
....... . . ..   .  .    .       .           .   .            .            .
Joh n   E  i   c    h     e      n      s       e         e               r
D      e        l        i       c      a    t   e     E  a r (512) 458-6474
eichen@trilogy.com     .        .        .      .     .     .   .  .. . ....

------------------------------
Date:         Wed, 18 Aug 1993 14:28:13 CDT
From:         Gregory Taylor 
Subject:      Hey, ho. It's off a-improvising we go....

Actually, I'm delighted that folks are willing to extend their working
definitions of what constitutes musical behaviour. All too often, I
tend to hear a kind of view - even from electronic music people whose
work I've got quite a lot of respect for - that does a nasty job of
staking out their chosen turf at the expense of someone else's. The
clumsy stereotype is the academically trained composer sniffing at
the rabble, but I've heard plenty of the same sort of whining that's
merely a simple act of rotation [switch the genre, conjure the stereo-
type as straw man, and fire away].

But an additional problem that you may find as you investigate the
trajectories of improvisation has a lot to do with what's available
to you as a listener/concert-goer, as well as the notion that a given
improvisational tradition isn't something one can simply sit through
with the assumption that it doesn't impose its own set of rules in
practice. Albert Ayler is *not* "just like regular jazz except that
it's all solos all the way through." Many improvisers who work with
computers specifically *don't* locate themselves within the simpler
rule-bounded type of things that we associated with "machine composition"
as such [and I'm thinking of people like George Lewis] - one might
choose to focus on some aspect of the momentary interaction rather than
appealing to a "longer term" set of rules. I know some otherwise
completely reasonable people who are as quick to pronounce free jazz
"not music" as some of us here are willing to pronounce academic
electronic music "uniformly devoid of soul and feeling", so the mileage
may vary. If you're convinced that George Lewis is making the sounds
he does because he's not talented enough to play "real improvised music"
then I don't guess that his computer music will make much sense, either.

An unfortunate side problem is that there's not a lot of "improvisational"
computer music out there on the market; Tangerine Dream clones and, yes,
even the dreaded "academic computer music" recordings are in consider-
ably greater supply. Since "live interactive electroacoustic music" seems
to currently be shit-hot in the ICMC circles, perhaps this'll change.
I commend the old George Lewis Lovely LP "Chicago Slow Dance" to your
ears, the recent Music and Arts disc from Room "Hall of Mirrors", and
I think that George Lewis has a new disc due out soon on the Japanese
Avant label which is rumoured to include some of his improvisational
work. For the not-so-faint-of-heart, one might try almost any of the
work on Artifact Records out of Berkeley - Brian Rehnbolt, The Hub,
Perkis/Bischoff, and Chris Browne all tear it up nicely. David Rosenboom
has a positively marvelous solo disc out as a part of the Consortioum
to Distribute Computer Music series. These are all nice starts, but
for me, the real work in terms of thinking about all this came about
at the point I started trying to *do* the stuff. I commend the path of
the prosumer, as always.

Hmm. I think I'll go and throw on that edgy Keith Rowe disc for
guitars/tools/radios "A Dimension of Perfectly Ordinary Reality" in
honor of this thread, and pitch in Ira Mowitz' neo-romantic opus on
New Albion "A la Memoire d'un Ami" as the post-meal cognac and coffee....

_
Cutting the losses, taking myself back/through the triumphal arch, everything
/waving backwards as though it were under water/I really do arrive, and it
does feel like being under water./Shocks of green, little gardens in the shape
of pennants./Gregory Taylor/Heurikon Corporation/Madison, WI/608-828-3385

------------------------------
Date:         Tue, 17 Aug 1993 08:54:42 -0400
From:         "James M. Macknik" 
Subject:      The whole 22/8 thing.

        I must say that the disussions about this issue have been
interesting to read.  I have a little something to say regarding those who
believe that the notattion of 22/8 is a needless over-analyzation of the
"rhythmic groove" of a piece.
        I must admit that I don't remember ever hearing the piece that has
been mentioned.  But in support of some of those people that have defended
the use of such notation I have to say this.
        I remember a comment about how splitting up the phrase can cause
undesired, and possibly confusing, results from the performer.  This is
absolutely true.  A musician gives a very particular and trained response
to the sight of a barline, whether s/he knows it or not.  That response
can cause accents of beats that begin the measure that the composer does
not intend to be in the music.  Thus, if the composer separates comlicated
rhythms into grouped bars, the result could be drastically different from
what was originally intended.  The use of 22/8 or other such notation is
to provide a grouping of the phrase.  Granted, the brain will,  most
certainly, separate these rhythms into sub-groupings (7/8, 5/8, 4/8, 6/8
for example).  The composer can help the musician understand her/his
original intention by grouping the stems of 22/8 into smaller groups.
This provides a guide for the musician to how the phrase should "swing."
This grouping also does not affect the musician's playing of the phrase by
imposing strong accents within it.  Ask any composer who's had a musician
not understand his intentions, and they'll tell you why they write pieces
with notation like 22/8.

                        Respectfully,
                                Jim Macknik

James M. Macknik                    Assistant to MicroComputer Specialists
Senior - Connecticut College        Department of Academic Computing
New London, Connecticut             Connecticut College
Home (203)-439-4748                 Work (203)-439-2094

BITNet:  jmmac@conncoll.bitnet      InterNet: jmmac@mvax.cc.conncoll.edu

------------------------------
Date:         Tue, 17 Aug 1993 16:01:51 EDT
From:         Mark Simon 
Subject:      Re: The whole 22/8 thing.

Once upon a time I wrote a piece that was full of 17/8, 19/8, etc.
For my efforts I was rewarded with blank stares from the the musicians
and comments such as "how the heck am I supposed to count this?" Ask
a composer who's been through this and you'll see why he prefers to
divide his music into bite size measures. When I got the parts back I
found they had chopped all my measures up into smaller ones anyway.
Now indicating subdivisions of huge measures through beaming will work
if the music moves primarily in eighth notes and everyone sticks
rigidly to the subdivision pattern. But, as you know, the essence of
"swing" in music comes from playing *against* the prevailing rhythm.
Then, what do you do? You get a lot of that happening and you have a
bloody mess on your hands. As I stated yesterday, the jazz musicians
who play in these meters aren't relying very heavily on the printed page
to give them their notes. All they care is is they hear the rhythmic
cycle starting up again, they must be in the next measure. The more
you have to read your part, the more you're going to prefer smaller
measures. I recommend that anyone who insists on using meters like
22/8 should indicate subdivisions with dotted bar lines.
    One of my teachers at Cornell, Robert Palmer, approached this
problem from the other direction. He was a great believer in
"contrametric rhythms". He would stick to a simple 3/4 or 4/4 meter
and draw beams across the barline to show the musicians how to
properly phrase the rhythms. One almost had to disregard the bar
line to play this, except that since often every musician was playing
different rhythmic groupings, the bar line was the only thing keeping
things together. Often performances of his music fall apart because
of his insistance on fussing up the notation of the music with these
contrametric beamings. Sometimes it's better to write your ideas as
simply as possible and then make sure you get musicians who are
smart enough to play phrases rather than bar-lines.

                    --Mark Simon
                      tip@cornellc.cit.cornell.edu

------------------------------
End of the EMUSIC-L Digest
******************************