Wiardgroup

Doc: what your friend in the orchestra was echoing was something that
Miles Davis actually said at one time, and others as well. Particularly that
most music nowadays is electronic in some form (involving a mic, speakers,
recording equipment, reproducing equipment, whatever).

Anyway, I've always used the working definition of music to be:

          Organized Sound

Now this could be very chaotic indeed in some cases. It can be organized
in a very "deep" manner, like the setting of knobs and the attachment of
wires, or in a more "thin" or "traditional" manner using elements of harmony,
melody, etc. Perhaps even organizational elements in both categories.
Birds produce organized sound (hence music) and so to crickets and the
wind in the trees. I would say even road construction can be construed as
producing organized sound. In this sense, what distinguishes the categories
is the type of organization. Whether we perceive the organized sound to be
pleasant is a matter of culture and training for the most part. I know that
when I started listening to and playing traditional Japanese music I really
hated any of the singing that went with it. After listening to and playing this
stuff for years I've really grown to love the singing parts. The same was true
for various "categories" of music (organized sound). Music is organized
sound, whether we like it or not (as individuals) is mostly learned (cultural).
Calling what Morton Subotnick creates, electronic music is not at all unfair
to Music, it is Music (organized sound).


--- In wiardgroup@yahoogroups.com, "drmabuce" <drmabuce@...> wrote:
>
> Hi Grant (et al)
> 
> 'electronic music' hmmmmm
> 
> Every musician knows that categories are bullshit and ...
> ...every entity that sells music as 'product' knows that they are
> essential for business. So i guess the sides and terms of that
> dichotomy are pretty clearly drawn.
> 
> As for the semantics:
> i like 'synthesist', but in the strict sense, all art is a synthesis*,
> and the artists know it, unless the artist is almost pathologically
> egomaniacal (and that number is small.... certainly well under 48%!)
> 
> i attended a post-concert discussion after a major american symphony
> performance and one of the members of the orchestra rebutted another
> member's disparagement of 'electronic music' as artificial and
> compromised, with the assertion that if there's a speaker on anywhere
> within earshot then what the audience hears is at least partially
> 'electronic music' and that the chances of a purely acoustic listening
> experience are dwindling to nill given the economics of scale inherent
> in performance venues...and that he saw this as a good thing! 
>    He cited that fact almost all of the rabid bluegrass purists who
> loudly eschew the 'impurity' of electric instruments had never heard
> the music on a porch ...instead, it was on a CD (speaker), or at a
> festival (speaker) or on the radio (speaker)...
> and the same went for most classical purists! "It's ALL electronic,
> Now!" he asserted!
> 
> Man! the audience and the orchestra were ready to tar & feather him
> right there and then!
> 
> -doc
> 
> * that is: all art is a reworking of previously established elements
> and thus it has a context. (Cage & DuChamp's 'frame')
>