[NewMusic] coasting?

[Jon Raskin]

Great list, and it makes sense to me.  Steve Lacy describe to me listening
to Monk and the music lifting the bandstand.  He strived for that and it
makes sense to me.  He wasn't talking about becoming Monk but aspiring to
ability to make music that good. Another thought on the "new", Ali Akbar
Khan released a recording on the Metalanguage label and one of the raga's he
selected was just a major triad.  Nothing new there, but what a great piece.


-----Original Message-----
From: newmusic-bounces at music.mills.edu
[mailto:newmusic-bounces at music.mills.edu] On Behalf Of Matt Davignon
Sent: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 5:57 PM
To: Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
Subject: Re: [NewMusic] coasting?

Well, I guess I should reflect some of my thoughts as a "young'un".

For the first several years I was making music, there was this well spoken
law in music that said something along the lines of "Nothing you ever do in
music will have any significance, when compared to things that have already
been done."

As a 16 year old, I heard this from a guitar teacher, and my unspoken
response was "Fuck you. I'm not taking lessons from you anymore."

As a 19 year old, I found myself trying as hard as I could to make music
that couldn't have been made before (using found objects, samples, lots of
effects, etc). Obviously it was harder to make 'original' music these days
because of the amount of 'orginal' music that's already been made. Also, as
the population of the earth grows, so grows the population of musicians. The
field is more crowded now. You simply have to go more "out" to be more
original.

As a 22 year old, I started listening to music that obviously couldn't have
been made in previous generations, since the computers didn't exist back
then. I started wondering if the whole "superiority of older music"
sentiment was simply set forth by older musicians to establish an air of
betterness, since the most popular, market-dominating music seems to always
remain in the realm of 20 to 35 year olds. I saw a recent interview with
members of Guns 'n' Roses in which they expressed that kids these days would
never make music as good as that of GnR's heyday.

As a 27 year old, I realized that a huge chunk of what is called
"experimental music" is simply trying way to hard to not sound like older
music. In many cases the music becomes so unintelligable that it's hard to
tell one artist from the other. Also realized that olds might be right to an
extent. Much of the 'pop' music of my generation is derivative of older
music, but missing crucial elements (like dynamics).

As a 29 year old, I decided that I was not going to let worries about
historical obscurity or difference from other musicians affect what I do
musically. Also had the revelation that any tuning on my out-of-tune
acoustic guitar that sounds good to me has not only been played before, but
the scale probably has a name. I'm simply going to make music the most "me"
that I can, and simply count myself lucky if anyone happens to like it. To
that goal, my thoughts about studying up on "older, better" music remain the
same:

1) There are enough people doing that, and that's a good thing.
2) While reading other people's scores might make me a more educated,
"better" musician, I simply have no interest in becoming 'better' in that
sense.
3) Many "groundbreaking" pieces of work have already been in the musical
lexicon since they came out. Sometimes it's a little underwhelming to hear
the original, genius work after hearing all the music that's been built on
those ideas. A good example of this is hearing Terry Riley's "Poppy Nogood
and the Phantom Band" after hearing the 38 years of music that used
real-time sampling since then.
4) When I think of audiences that I hope would listen to my music, I don't
usually think of people who spend large amounts of time studying scores and
reading books on theory.
5) Most of the 'classic' works of music seem to either function on tone or
concept. As someone who grew up listening to over-produced music of the
80's, production values became as much of a part of my understanding of
music as any of the traditional elements. I like structures created from
sound textures, and specific kinds of them.
6) I personally like it when people I meet come from different musical
backgrounds, so I would never want to describe a particular piece of music
of musical text as "essential". Let people work out their commonalities for
themselves and interpersonally.
_______________________________________________
Bay Area New Music Discussion Group
NewMusic at music.mills.edu
http://music.mills.edu/mailman/listinfo/newmusic