The Logic Off Topic list

Thoughts from the mind of Tobias Seyb, 08-07-2002:

>  >Next question: if Bach was born today, would he ever get airplay, or
>>would he be drowned out by all the dance-trance-whatever?
>>Or (here's a horrid thought :) would he be one of the major
>>trance-composers???
>>
>  >And no, I don't expect a serious answer... :-)
>
>Why not?   ;-)

Because I don't want to stir up yet another pointless thread :-).

>Building "musical" tracks on slight variations of synthetic sounds only
>(not to forget the underlying 1/1 quarter beat) and almost refusing melody,
>harmonic progressions, rhthym etc.  is just like smearing ink over a paper
>with printed squares (that one which is used for maths in school)
>This may look pretty, but - to go back to our question above, Bach was a
>composer, he didn´t smear ink on paper (in fact his handwritten music
>sheets look amazing!)

[ Intro: This has gotten longish, but I thought that for once I 
should allow myself to speak my mind on this subject.  Maybe there 
are some out there who might find it interesting -- or maybe not.  I 
don't plan to get into a long-winded discussion on how I am wrong and 
you are right or the other way around.  I'm too busy for that, and I 
don't see the point of discussing everything to death anyway.  This 
is just my feeling or whatever.  You're free to disagree.  I'm free 
to ignore your disagreeing :-) ]

Even though I don't like most trance-ish music, I still can't fully 
agree with you here.  True, melody and harmonic progression have been 
sacrificed for soundscaping and rhythm, but somehow that _too_ is 
composing, I think -- just with other means and a different focus 
than we're used to.  Abstract painting is just as valid as landscape 
painting -- it's just focusing on something different.

Ditto in music, imo.  "Rock" (to use the broadest possible term) is 
one approach, trance is another, and "modern classical" is yet 
another.  Somehow Xenakis (to name a random example) is an accepted 
composer -- he studied music with the Masters, is firmly rooted in 
some sort of long-standing tradition, adheres to certain rules, etc, 
etc.  So, in short: a "serious guy".  Yet I find his music ultimately 
boring, ugly and impossible to listen to.  Lots of intellectual 
blabla, computer aided composition, etc, but all *I* hear is "plonk, 
skreek, piii pooo".  And yes, that may be my lack of education, but 
I've tried for decades (ever since I was 15, now being 39) to get to 
appreciate this sort of "modernism"...  And I've been exposed to 
quite some music, of all kinds, and tend not to be too prejudiced. 
Moreover, there _are_ modern composers, like Luciano Berio, whom I 
_do_ like.  So, as far as I'm concerned, Xenakis sucks bigtime.  As 
does most of Stockhausen (one of the most overrated composers of the 
20th century imo, although I fully appreciate the impact his music 
has had, esp. in the early days).  Etc.

Uhm... what's the point of all this?  The point is that it's too easy 
to think like "Beatles and Bach are okay since they make melodies, 
trance sucks since it doesn't, and Xenakis is okay since everybody 
says he is" (or: since he stands in the same tradition that 
ultimately Bach came from -- or whatever other excuse there is).  I'd 
rather play whichever trance record than whichever Xenakis record. 
So somehow trance at least is better in conveying some sort of 
meaningful message to _me_.  And so ultimately is more musical -- 
since, again to me, music is all about conveying some sort of message.
And: are many modern composers really all that different from trance? 
Quite often not a lot of melodic or harmonic progression (at least, 
not in the traditional sense), and much of it seems to be centered 
around "sound scaping".  Take Stockhausen's electronic works from the 
... 50-ies (? I think... or was it 60-ies?)

Heck, it's hip and trendy to buy records with two Africans beating a 
drum in steady 4/4 for minutes on end -- that's called "world music" 
-- and if you ever claim that this is not music, you will be toasted 
on the grill of political correctness :).  Trance doesn't seem all 
that different to me then...

However...  I still don't like trance all that much, and that has 
little to do with being exposed (or not) to whichever obscure bunch 
of "the really interesting" knob-tweakers.  My objection has to do 
with the purpose of it all, which, as Hector has explained so clearly 
multiple times, is to induce a trance in people.  In my view, the 
world already has plenty of "sleepers" and far too little people who 
are awake and sensitive and open...  And now entire generations 
(hardly limited to age btw) find it fashionable and pleasant to 
expose themselves to trance-inducing music week after week, year 
after year.  And that, to me, is Not A Good Thing.  I can't help but 
think that this society has some kind of serious problem if thousand 
and thousands of people find it necessary to "switch off" and "escape 
reality" for at least a couple of hours every week.

Besides, getting in a trance is somehow the ultimate "lack of 
emotion".  And to me music is not only about conveying some sort of 
message, but it's about conveying an _emotional_ message.  Now I'm 
very well aware that this is just a personal preference or choice, so 
everyone's free to disagree.  An African shaman would probably 
strongly disagree -- but then I'm not one who is afraid to be accused 
of political incorrectness :).  Don't get me wrong: there's nothing 
wrong with shamanistic (?) music: it serves a very specific purpose 
and does so quite well.  Just don't ask me to admire it's 
compositional structure, emotional contents, or progressive qualities.

To me the same holds not only for music, but for every sort of art. 
I've always hated and always will hate so-called "conceptual art".  A 
blob on paper, and a 10-page story to explain why this is a deep 
thought.  "F*ck you!" is all the emotion *I* feel then.  The blob on 
paper isn't what is wrong -- the right blob could send shivers down 
my spine.  It's the complete lack of emotion, the quasi intellectual 
justification of complete sh*t, that gets to me.

And, finally, what I truly resent about almost any kind of dance 
music, is that it isn't truly helping this (musical) culture progress 
anymore.  Sure, it did for some time.  It liberated us of the 
necessity to use complex melodies and harmonies, and put the focus on 
rhythm again.  It showed how you can recycle someone else's material 
and still come up with something brilliantly original.  Etcetera. 
All very worthwhile -- just as "Musique Concrete"  and Stockhausen's 
electronic experiments have paved the way for "something else than 
your plain-vanilla classical orchestra".  Extremly important and not 
be underrated.
Still you'll find that most of these electronic experiments aren't 
really worth listening to anymore (imo of course).  They've served 
their (important) purpose, and now we're done with it.  Ditto with 
action painting: usually not the sort of stuff you would want to hang 
on your wall, and not something you would still do today, but 
certainly something that liberated arists in an important way.  And 
again ditto for Schonberg's strict serialism: probably one of the 
most important events in music in the last century.  Some of it is 
even worth listening to :).  But the importance is not in the "nice 
or ugly music" -- it's in the freedom it has given composers, so that 
now we're free to write multi-modal music, change key abruptly 
without classical cadenzas, use whatever means we think is necessary 
to express that which we wish to express, without looking in the 
harmony textbooks all that much (if at all).  But... you don't 
seriously write strict dodecaphonic pieces anymore, do you? That 
would be rather silly, outdated and limiting

Trance-dance-whatever: ditto.  Important in a liberating kind of way. 
But hey, we got the message, we now all know that you can sample, 
scratch, tweak knobs and pump up the beat -- and now it's time to 
move on.  Incorporate that which trance has brought us, and go back 
(!) to making music.  And, seriously, upping the tempo from 120 bpm 
to 135 bpm is *not* innovation...

Sticking to the "strict formulae" of trance, to me is like: hey we 
got this new tool, and it's called a "saw".  And then for some time 
you skip the hammer and the screwdriver, and have loads of fun with 
just the saw.  Fine, no problem.  But if after 10 years you're still 
having fun with the saw: good for you, but a little limited in my 
view.  Why not *add* the saw to your toolbox, and start using the 
hammer and screwdriver again, whenever appropriate?  Using a saw, you 
can do things you couldn't do before, but not using a hammer and 
screwdriver you can _not_ do things you _could_ do before.  Why limit 
yourself in such a narrow-minded way?  The saw is not the ultimate 
tool.  It's one of the many.

And the tools are not the ultimate goal. The goal is music.

-- 
Hendrik Jan Veenstra  <h@...>
Omega Art: http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html