[NewMusic] (no subject)

[Matt Davignon]

Well, the people who dislike experimental music are right. The bulk of
the work that gets heard by non-new-music-specialists could fall under
the umbrella of overly-intellectual/dissonant/heartless sort of stuff.

A lot of experimental and 'new' music -is- too intellectual for
non-music-majors to understand. And lots and lots of stuff has no
emotional value. Some examples:
--Process music (seeing what happens when an arbitrary process is used
to compose the music)
--Plunderphonics/mashups require you to understand the source material.
--People who get so hung up on new technology that they're showing off
what their equipment can do, rather than trying to make it musical.
--Acoustic musicians who get equally distracted by "extended
technique"/microtonalism/preparedness
--microphone in a blender music / the subset of harsh noise musicians
who haven't yet figured out that there's more to harsh noise than a
loudness pissing contest.
--likewise, the subset of skronk/improv musicians who can't express an
emotion beyond "I'm 2 years old and have eaten too much sugar".
--or there are a lot of exp musicians who do like exploring emotive
stuff, but the emotions are not something I enjoy listening to.

I remember going to a very successful, widely publicized and well
attended concert of contemporary composition several years ago, and
finding the music so over-the-top intellectual/difficult that I
imagined the composers in the creative process: "Oops - scratch that
out. It felt almost like a rhythm. Uh-oh, those four notes kind of
make sense together  - better fix that."

Don't get me wrong - I think it's important that this stuff exists.
I'm glad boundaries have been pushed. One of my favorite aspects of
this music scene is that there are so many people who have done the
above and have since grown beyond it.

So what I tell folks say it's too intellectual and not emotional is...
Yeah, a lot of it is. But once the standard rules of pop music have
been broken, a lot of musicians have found really great ways to make
emotive music that's about feelings other than "hey let's dance" or
"girl I'm into you". Instead you can hear a lot of music that instills
mystery, wonderment and discovery. Or some noise music can be like an
aural cleanser.

Jonathan Segel told me a great argument a couple years ago. People are
apeshit about the Grateful Dead & Pink Floyd, and it's not because
those bands have overly technical musicians. The fans of those groups
like that they sound very different from other bands that are that
famous, and are exploring unusual and disorienting sounds. This is
like that, except it's to a further point, and not always coming from
a starting point of rock and roll.

Matt
> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Ava Mendoza <ava.mendoza at gmail.com>
> To: Bay Area New Music Discussion Group <newmusic at music.mills.edu>
> Sent: Friday, October 12, 2007 4:54:20 PM
> Subject: Re: [NewMusic] (no subject)
>
> most of the people i encounter who dislike
> experimental/improvised/new/weird music give something along the lines
> of "it's too intellectual" or "it doesn't have any heart" as their
> argument against it. which mystifies me. i think people do like to
> think of themselves as emotional or intuitive, but they mainly like a
> sort of very concrete or identifiable emotion--Happy, Sad etc--whereas
> more abstract or nebulous emotion is the thing that's frightening.
>
>