Inscrutability in Musical Tools

[mrsoundboyking]

lijnenspel has mastered the Plumbutter but I don’t know if they are an academic.

When I wrote “mastery is an academic concept," I meant obtaining total objective knowledge of a thing (idea, practice, instrument, whatever) exists only as a theory.

I agree the sense of striving and growth toward mastery belongs to everyone.

[tehn]

universities wouldn’t exist without master plumbers

[nosollution]

Four (what appear to be) thoughts:

A. Sometimes I want to happen to music; sometimes I want it to happen to me. Obvious and non-obvious tools are both appreciated.

B. Non-obviousness can be achieved by either the maker’s or the user’s action. Sometimes I read the manual, sometimes I don’t.

C. It seems rigid to consider a tool from only the perspective of purpose optimization. Optimization feels like a development / creation Cardinal direction, but it’s not the only one.

D. Reading this thread keeps bringing the conflation of ‘the music business’ with ‘music’ to mind, but I’m not able to verbalize the parallel I’m sensing.

[eblomquist]

As a part time academic and full time lawyer, I really appreciate the idea that the more you study a topic or try to attain mastery, the more you understand the immense and impossibly interconnected nature of everything, rendering all attempts at comprehensive knowledge into a folly…

Still worth having as a goal, of course, all while keeping a good sense of humor…

[lloydcole]

As a part time academic and full time lawyer, I really appreciate the idea that the more you study a topic or try to attain mastery, the more you understand the immense and impossibly interconnected nature of everything, rendering all attempts at comprehensive knowledge into a folly…

Certainty is for the young and the radical.

[eblomquist]

As a professor of music business, I sincerely hope that no one ever confuses it with “music”!

They are almost completely unrelated in many respects.

Edit- Radio Friendly Unit Shifter

[petesasqwax]

Sometimes I want to happen to music; sometimes I want it to happen to me.

I love that - and agree completely

[dan_derks]

this thread is such a thought-provoking morning read, dang.

all things are “capable of being understood by careful study or investigation,” but whether or not they seem that way is a meatier topic. so, I’m curious how much of a particular instrument’s appearance of scrutability requires observable/obvious cause + effect. especially when it relies on widespread (cultural? social? academic?) understanding of the instrument.

building off the points made about cello:
let’s say you have never seen a cello before. you’re alone with it and a bow in a room. someone else walks in who has extensive practice with a cello. they pick up the bow, run it across the strings at a certain location while placing their fingers on the cello’s neck and applying pressure. the sound is pleasing to you.

q: how many observations of this combination of gestures does it take in order for you to feel like you’ve “got it” – more than two or three times? probably not. the gestures have clear cause and effect, which emboldens your confidence.

so, you give it a whirl and you do perform your approximations of the gestures – does it sound as “pleasing” as when the other person does it? if no, then perhaps this is the beginning of understanding “virtuosity” on the instrument. either way, you walk away with a sense of what needs practiced (even if it’s not entirely correct. but also, isn’t this experience a conceptual quantization?? idk, but it’s my new favorite phrase).

does the number of observations necessary to understand gestural cause and effect change when the instrument is a synthesizer? what about a synthesizer without a keyboard interface?

is understanding that patch cables plug into patch points equivalent to understanding that a bow and finger placement are essential to the pleasing sound you heard from the cello? is there perhaps a specific ratio of observations:understanding cause and effect which pushes an instrument past one’s personal definition of scrutability?

is there simply a greater amount of personal, hands-on exploration (and internal decision-making gestures?) necessary for instruments that do not have such a straightforward operability/cause-and-effect before an individual is able to say “oh yeah, I get how it works”? if so, how much does that color their non-hands-on experience? do they tune out, feel left out?

tl;dr: community helps close the gap between an instrument appearing scrutable or not. when we share our explorations and notes, we help each other understand the relationship between cause and effect for a particular tool. this eventually helps others understand the reasons why one would decide to use that tool in that way. this informs and emboldens exploration. lines does this particularly well. I am thankful for y’all.

[rknLA]

But aren’t you boxing your users by not trusting them to be creative enough without some mambo jumbo or without explaining how things work?

To paraphrase Les Savy Fav,

Knowing how the [instrument] works
is not knowing how to work the [instrument]

[ParanormalPatroler]

To paraphrase Les Savy Fav,

Knowing how the [instrument] works
is not knowing how to work the [instrument]

Which serves my point. No reason not to explain how the instrument works and let the musician know how they want to work it.

[Starthief]

I’ve been thinking about this thread again today, for a couple of reasons:

In the Dark Places of Wisdom

I’m about halfway through this book. Overall, it’s an unconventional but relatively convincing view of the philosopher/mystic Parmeneides, who was Zeno’s teacher and Plato’s precursor. At least one of the book’s premises though seems to be that Western civilization (especially philosophy) has lost something in the pursuit of reason and clarity, or at least has lost sight of its own mystic roots. (The style of prose is a bit strange and sometimes frustrating, but I think intentional: the book itself, like Parmeneides’ poem, seems like a sort of initiatory journey.)

by design shadowy and vague and open to interpretation

This thread is generally about fiction, but it struck me similarly: fans who pursue of all the little world-building details and every character’s motive, who treat ambiguity as incompleteness.

It’s making me rethink my approach to musical tools a bit. I appreciate analyzing how they react to different inputs and having some understanding of how they work, but when it comes down to it, the music I make with them and the process of making that music are still very much intuitive and shadowy things.

[howthenightcame]

Hello @Starthief, I just wanted to say thank you for a really interesting post with somewhat beautiful timing!! I was listening to an audio book of extracts from the works of John Keats this week when this (somewhat famous) passage came up:

I had not a dispute but a disquisition with Dilke, upon various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously—I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…

(John Keats, letter to brothers, 22 December 1817)

There are moments in Shakespeare - especially in the later works - when I get the sense of some presence which never presents itself, a kind of silently buzzing halo around the page (or stage). I find it very soothing and try to not analyze it away. As I get older, I’m getting similar feelings from Homer.

I’m reading Dante’s Divine Comedy at the moment and your phrase ‘initiatory journey’ really struck home. You got me thinking about the tempo of the poem-journey, and how Dante may be using the fact that reading / listening takes time to help express his philosophy (e.g. as Dante approaches the center of inferno, the physical space is contracting but the descriptions become longer and feel slower. Also, it takes Dante one third of Purgatory just to get to the gates. After an hour and a half of reading, we are still not in Purgatory… There is something in this, Dante using time itself as a representational medium. Definitely not ‘mystical’ but certainly not a put-together-the-pieces logic puzzle either.)

I haven’t read the book on philosophy, but it sounds interesting. I’m hoping that super dry contemporary analytic philosophy is the target because I get a deep sense of something inexpressible when I read philosophers like Spinoza, Hume, Kant (for all his tables of contents), Wittgenstein. I suspect Hegel and Heidegger belong on that list, but they are too difficult for me to understand.

Back to music. You also got me thinking about track titles. By naming a song, can artists decrease or increase the listeners interpretive possibilities, their chances of encountering something inscrutable in the music? (Just a draft question)

[Starthief]

On another topic

I’m hoping that super dry contemporary analytic philosophy is the target because I get a deep sense of something inexpressible when I read philosophers like Spinoza, Hume, Kant (for all his tables of contents), Wittgenstein. I suspect Hegel and Heidegger belong on that list, but they are too difficult for me to understand.

So far only a couple of Greeks have been mentioned, and modern scholars who have interpreted Parmeneides’ poem On Nature in a way that ignored the inconveniently mystic aspects of it. But then, some other scholars say that Kingsley’s assertions are difficult to prove. I’m taking it with a grain of salt, but as a possible source of inspiration

I haven’t personally read very much philosophy. The occasional relatively lightweight article but few books by philosophers. Maybe Douglas Hofstadter’s I Am a Strange Loop counts.

On another topic

You’ve also got me thinking about track titles. By naming a song, can artists decrease or increase the listeners interpretive possibilities, their chances of encountering something inscrutable?

I’ve often thought about that. Sometimes I’ve worried about revealing too much with a title, or leading the listener’s interpretation too much, so I obfuscate a little more. Other times I feel like they might be the only clue, because it’s abstract instrumental music I’m making. Sometimes individual titles don’t matter to me that much but help maintain the continuity of the album. Often I’ll name a track after the process is done and I’ve listened to it a few times with fresh ears and reinterpreted it myself.

[laborcamp]

universities wouldn’t exist without master plumbers

manure and poetry

also:

fear of handling shit is a luxury a sewer man can not afford.

[ParanormalPatroler]

Universities existed way before plumbing was even conceived of, let alone invented. Just sayin’.

[tehn]

'twas a metaphor, a master play on words perhaps

[mzero]

Earliest university: probably University of Al Quaraouiyine, Morocco, 859 AD.
Earliest plumbing: Indus Valley, 2700 BC… though if you only want to count plumbing with actual lead, then Roman empire, still BC.

[mystasea]

I appreciate analyzing how they react to different inputs and having some understanding of how they work, but when it comes down to it, the music I make with them and the process of making that music are still very much intuitive and shadowy things.

Well put…I find it puzzling somewhat, that when confronted with some new musical interface how often enough I intuitively guide it to a sound that is distinctly in line with my personal aesthetic patterns.

Its often a personal dialemma when i reach a fresh vista of aesthetic expression that i am hit with a feeling that I have no idea how I got here and even if i did attempt a recreation, it would be a somewhat vain understanding of what got me to this much appreciated new perspective in the first place.

I find the less definitions an artist adheres to gives way to fluid and flexible manifestations where elements are allowed to take on and move through roles not typically expected to them

Its more interesting when humans channel their inane inscrutability into their art practice in way that is observable to the third party. For sure one of the fruits from labouring in and being an appreciator of the arts.

[ParanormalPatroler]

Plato’s academy was established in Athens, Greece, 387 BC. Roman Empire came afterwards. University of Karueein seems to be the “oldest existing, and continually operating educational institution in the world”.

[coreyr]

I’m taking it with a grain of salt, but as a possible source of inspiration

This! Certainly a useful way to read much philosophical writing. Sometimes even the “wrong” interpretation can start the creative marbles rolling.