[NewMusic] slusser's article

[Jacob Lindsay]

--- David Slusser <slusser at pixar.com> wrote:
> Reading the book, you're compelled to reference your
> own experience.  Experience is also what the book
> reveals to be fundamental to what each of us defines
> as music, perhaps the "chilling" element Weasel
> refers
> to.  Non-idiomatic improvisation will never be music
> to
> the masses.  According to the research, you're only
> going to get that shot of dopamine when a musician
> tickles something you're already familiar with. 
> That
> pretty much narrows it down to musical explorers and
> "tone scientists" (to borrow from Sun Ra).  As I
> concluded
> in my review, we may be the only audience for our
> music.

Great!  I'll definitely give it read.  I've been
giving this a lot of though recently anyway, the "what
is music?" bit, which you posed in your article. 
Obviously subjective, but still worth exploring,
especially in our genre, in which there is an emphasis
on pushing the boundaries of what is music.  You push
and push, but it IS able to break, fall off the cliff,
so to speak.  It is what makes this music great, but
is also it's pitfall.  No boundaries means you're free
to fall off that cliff at any time (or even worse,
just dissolve into a quivering mass of goo).

I've been trying lately to just listen to music and
just listen and enjoy it, without studying it, which
is hard as a musician to do.  I often find myself
listening to something really gnarly or difficult or
so-called "boundary-breaking", studying it intensely,
and then at a certain point think, "Gee, I'm really
not enjoying listening to this."  DOH!  So then what
do you do?


Jacob Lindsay
http://www.bayimproviser.com/artistdetail.asp?artist_id=44


       
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