AETHERPHON, global theremin family

I suppose you have not frequented levnet, a hotbed of anti avant-garde 
sentiments best summed in in two "arguments" as follows, "I am reminded of the 
delusional opera singer, Florence Foster Jenkins . . . " and the firmly held 
belief that the only people who say they like or appreciate avant-garde music 
are those who are simply pretending to do so lest they be accused of being 
Philistines or uncultured. I do not advise discussing the matter with them.

To be fair, we are speaking of perhaps a dozen or so individuals.

As for baroque, you sir, are correct (just a wee bit), but most frequently in 
slow standards, show tunes or pop songs that do not tax the artist so much.

The point of this study is the isolation of a simple pattern and its repetition 
as a means of having a mind comprehend it as music and with much of avant-garde 
music, a repeated pattern is absent or too long to be noticed by the casual and 
untrained ear. sometimes you actually have to look a the music to see the 
pattern. Now sometimes it is only apparent in the waveforms you see in your 
editing program.

Since a lot of music is simply pattern recognition and pattern variation 
recognition, incorporating shorter repeated motifs and themes makes avant-garde 
music more palatable and graspable as music.

But the simplest patterns work for the majority of people, so the simplest tunes 
will always be the most popular.
The study shows that this musical pattern recognition and the ability to play it 
back accurately once learned is innate. WE already knew that, but this 
demonstrates it

Everything sounds better with reverb until you gain confidence.
Everything on the theremin sounds better with vibrato until one gains 
confidence.

Therein lies . . . 

Good to see someone who knows more about music than I do - my education left off 
with 12 tone and Cage and when I was a teenager my favorites were Berio, Nono, 
Stockhausen, Ligeti, Riley, Carlos and Sibelius.   I also was into medieval 
music since it also was pretty avant-garde.

I do agree with you about most avant-garde, but 90 percent of everything in a 
genre is generally crap and the artist is in no position to judge unless someone 
is throwing money at them. Plus one man's trash is another man's treasure.I find 
behavior far more easy to find fault with rather than music.

Then again, I like The Shags.

I do use the old school avant-garde often in my videos at youtube. It is hard to 
come up with something new,so stringing it together in different ways is about 
as avant-garde as it gets.

rupert



From: carvin knowles <carvinknowles@...>
To: aetherphon@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sat, September 11, 2010 8:12:36 PM
Subject: Re: [Aetherphon] OT The Speech-to-Song Illusion

  
I'm not entirely certain what you mean about the "Debate" or "Avant-Garde Music" 
and what this study has to do with them.
 
Musicians and music-theorists have known about this relationship of music and 
speech since before Pythagoras. It is the basis for religious cantillation 
dating back to the time of King David.
 
And "Avant-garde" music hasn't really changed since Ligadi's works in the 1960s. 
So-called "avant-garde" techniques are regularly used in film scores and on 
music for TV series. Does anyone--especially theremin players--argue against the 
validity of the so-called "Avant-garde?"
 
The real debate over "Avant-garde" music should be whether it deserves to 
maintain its moniker. It is no longer the cutting-edge of anything. Hasn't been 
for the majority of our lifetimes. It is, rather, just another technique in our 
expanding vocabulary of sounds. The REAL "Avant-garde," the real cutting-edge 
has been in electronic music for the past decade and more. And as such, Lev 
Termin is the progenitor of the blade that cuts. 

 
If someone is so musically lazy that they reject so-called "modernist" 
techniques in music, i.e. Dodecaphony, Set Theory, Dissonance Indexing, Quartal 
and Quintal Harmonies, Octatonic Scales (or other synthetic scales), 
Polytonalities, Polyrhythms, etc. then perhaps they should try playing their 
theremin in a Baroque ensemble or a Country-music band and see how far it gets 
them.
 
But, just to be balanced, I should also note that there are many experimentors 
who think that any crap that they create is a valid work of art, and who hide 
behind the words "Avant-garde" to validate their excremental issue. Art 
resonates with an audience. It speaks to someone (other than just the artist). 
Failed art cannot be redeemed by simply claiming that it is "Avant-garde."
 
As for this study....sure it's fun, but did they get funding to do a study like 
this? And really, did they need to add tons of reverb to the combined results? 
They were soaked in it! I should like to hear it completely dry.
 
So enough of my ranting! Please bring us up to date on what this debate is and 
why the lame study is in any way valuable to the debate.
 
Thanks
 
Carvin
 
 
 
  

--- On Sat, 9/11/10, rupert chappelle <rupert1manband@...> wrote:

From: rupert chappelle <rupert1manband@...>
Subject: [Aetherphon] OT The Speech-to-Song Illusion
To: "aetherphon" aetherphon@yahoogroups.com
Date: Saturday, September 11, 2010, 8:57 AM

There has been great "debate" over avant-garde music and it's validity in the 
theremin "community", albeit one sided as of late as other sides simply cannot 
be tolerated in some matters by some folks  and I think that this study and 
experiment explains why patterns are not perceived as patterns until the brain 
has been taught to do so.

http://www.acoustics.org/press/156th/deutsch.html

Musicality, has to be taught, or closely repeated, for it to be registered as a 
music.

I think it is interesting that the tune was repeated precisely by different 
listeners so much so that they could be multitracked as if they were working 
together. The music is meta or above the individual particpants. Multitracking 
with the theremin produces the same effect as the piece exists outside of the 
individual tracks and is simply put together like a puzzle. I have also noticed 
that differnt pieces can be played together at the same time and act as a whole, 

just as parts are played together to produce a piece.

The form exists outside of the artist and participant.
----------------------------------------------------------

Often, when confronted with new forms of music, it is dismissed as noise or that 

it all sounds alike until the patterns and forms have been learned. I have found 

that the more you pay attention, the more you hear music everywhere.

      

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