#21

“The fool who persists in his folly will become wise” about sums up my interpretation of, and personal approach to art and music as a whole. Similarly, I think the only difference between an inscrutable instrument and a mastered instrument is the time you’ve personally spent with it, no matter how well documented it happens to be. Give a Mannequins system and a guitar to a child who has no knowledge of either and they’ll be confused by both, but give them some time to play with them and they’ll soon be making something that sounds good with both as well.

Creating art of any kind is at its heart an intuitive and emotional process, and I think it’s something that humans just get after spending the time doing it. It’s easy to forget that all of our established musical and artistic forms began as a bunch of naked people fucking around with things that they thought were magic.

Edit: That said, I have nothing against people who take a more studied approach and stick to established techniques, and I love music from people that use both methods. I just think the most important thing about any art is how it makes you feel, and the importance of traditional technique to that end tends to be overestimated.

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#22

The key is about learnability. If a system is to be scrutable it needs to allow for learning. IMO, inscrutable tools don’t provide feedback or opportunities to learn through use. I haven’t seen any musical instrument, even the most esoteric, that fits this description. Anything I’ve encountered can be, at least to some degree, learned through exploration until you feel like you understand how to use it — which is different than understanding what it actually does. Those don’t have to be the same thing.

IMO, if you don’t like the esoteric/poetic/obscure nature of the instruments mentioned in this thread (i.e. Ciat Lonbarde / Mannequins / Monome) then that’s ok, they don’t fit your style of play or of the music you want to make. But that doesn’t make them unlearnable.

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#23

I kinda wanna offer another framing, kind of along the lines of what @taylor mentioned. I don’t think Monome, Mannequins or even Peter Blasser (this last from a distance) make inscrutable instruments. I think they have strong opinions about poetics (or aesthetics, if you’d rather).

In my opinion, Monome devices are as free from descriptive text on the machine—as well as terse in what comes in the box—not to be confusing or inscrutable, but because freedom to redefine is such a key part of the ethos of their devices. More description (“let’s shade the first row of the grid buttons differently so people know that those are for menus and things”) risks @Rodrigo’s conceptual quantization.

Mannequins and Peter Blasser (at least in my small amount of browsing)—this is my strong claim I guess :grimacing:—actually describe their devices very well and usefully in their manuals. Of course the style is a bit of a hurdle at times. But take this example:

Conversely, rotating QUALITY counter-clockwise takes on a new character: blending an inversely-processed sound into the output. The effect is of the broadband sound rising from silence. A phase cancellation will occur at the cutoff frequency as QUALITY nears minimum. Thus !Q can be used as a dry/wet mix, to create subtle notch responces or shelving eq type filters.

Of course the first two sentences are a bit poetic, but what is it saying? as we turn QUALITY counter-clockwise, we get some of the dry signal mixed back in. Actually, “inversely-processed” probably means, say, the hidden highpass filter attached to low mixed in with low, the hidden low with high etc.—but regardless in what follows the effect is described for us in terms of how we would hear and use it. And then three uses are suggested.

Anyway, I guess my purpose in offering a different framing is to say that I’m drawn to instruments for their poetics more than their power. Not because I love a challenge in deciphering what is going on with an instrument—although sometimes I do. But rather because knowing that all roads lead to Rome (that is, if I’d rather I could get totally similar results another way) I’m following the ones whose vision for music-making excites me. (This feels a little cheesy, sorry :sweat_smile:)

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#24

This totally made my day!

In some sense, the real question is how to get back to that state while staying sufficiently sane to not get hauled off to Bedlam…

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#26

Much of the contention comes from the expectation of musical tools used for playing vs used for curation. If you expect the musical tool to be playable in the traditional sense then it’s bad to be inscrutable. If you approach music making from the curation standpoint then the serendipity of working with an inscrutable tool is great because it allows you a greater exploration space for curation. Curation and playing are two ends of a spectrum so it’s not an either or thing, but I think people who lean toward one approach or the other tend to have a cutoff point.

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#27

You understand… It’s a representation. A language.

Interesting to note: Musical notation started as a means to allow groups of people to perform together. Back when the Orthodox Churches were dictating which intervals could and could not be heard. Extended to when music grew more complex and was written for more and more diverse collections of instruments.

Music notation was/is a means of communicating an idea of the piece to the musicians. Not unlike other forms of written communication.

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#29

I love puzzle games on my phone. I play them. I solve them. I move on. I expect to spend time to learn and master my instruments - but I don’t want to have to solve them.

Modular modules with non-sensical graphics, instruments with manuals that seem to delight in being stingy with explanation or even basic information, and devices with controls that give up any way to reliably control the sound that I don’t have time for. These all feel to me that the instrument maker’s thought was How can I be a good dungeon master?

I see a big distinction between that kind of intentional obtuse design - and instruments that have to be learned, that aren’t obvious from the markings, or that don’t have a single “how you play it” pathway. These are all fine by me.

Serge, clarinet, sax, guitar, Elektron boxes, all fall into this category. These instruments’ interfaces are a synthesis of the considerations of how they will be played and the underlying technology. I’m fine with these as the instrument maker’s first concern is How will this be played by a musician who is willing to master it?

In short: I’m not interested in playing cat-and-mouse with the luthier.

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#30

I have a love/hate relationship with music theory. I know I came out earlier on the side of knowledge, but about music theory itself I have mixed feelings.

I don’t want to go on about music theory, because I think it’s a different subject. Personally I prefer improvisation over planning – I know improvisation is partially grounded in theory, but I’m not thinking about modes or chord progressions with Roman numerals or whatever. But I’m more informed by things like harmonic relationships, studies of rhythm etc.

…anyway, when it comes to the tools, I don’t see much advantage in obscuring the function of controls, or especially instructions. I don’t think making the initial learning phase harder makes for a more intuitive, flowing experience with the instrument as one starts to master it.

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#31

that last one obviously makes learning nearly impossible, but repeatable sound paired with the most esoteric of hieroglyphs doesn’t feel so offensive to me. in fact, I struggle to find the distinction between that and…

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#32

Really enjoying this conversation and everyone’s thoughts, thanks for getting it going @karst.

I tend to go through phases of my art, where I’m creating and exploring something new and it doesn’t exactly feel “right”, then something clicks and I can contextualize in a way that does make sense…then I get bored of that set of particular sounds/processes after a while. Having either a new instrument to explore or an idea of how to use something in a way I hadn’t thought of before, will get that novice, excited to learn and explore energy back which helps me start creating again.

I also think that there’s immense value in being a novice to an instrument personally, because I feel like the more I learn about an instrument and its “sweet spots” (or my preferred way of interacting with it), the less likely I am to explore its edges and unintended uses. It’s a challenge though, because I think I can also tend to use new instruments in their most accessible/prescribed way. Actively setting limitations can help.

It’s interesting to think about the goals of an instrument. Some instruments are built for professionals who need to create compelling sounding music easily and efficiently (or to score other mediums, for example). Others are built for people to be able to turn on and quickly learn songs they enjoy (even without any musical background or training). Others are made to be experimented with. It’s cool there’s nothing stopping you from using these things together, or for their non-intended purposes. They are all “compatible” and can be a part of ones personal, creative process.

(as I side note, I think music that is a combination of these things–professional and well put together, accessible, and weird is the most captivating to me).

Agreed. I feel like it would be a really interesting challenge to attempt to make an instrument with the specific goal of being unlearnable or inscrutable.

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#33

I’m reminded of the “bodily acoustic Antagonistic Undecagonstring” from Iain Banks’ novel The Hydrogen Sonata.

(Almost everyone hated the piece of music and the physically and mentally difficult instrument that was invented to perform it, but some few took up the challenge of learning it anyway.)

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#34

shot:

Shoshin (初心) is a word from Zen Buddhism meaning beginner’s mind. It refers to having an attitude of openness, eagerness, and lack of preconceptions when studying a subject, even when studying at an advanced level, just as a beginner would.

chaser:

1*PtlkhHcy3gAAIJ189Xb8Xg

Inscrutability is an illusion in the mind of the observer.

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#35

an alternate perspective

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#36

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment.

Sometimes the cleverness feels like a crutch. Failing at clarity, some reach for obscurity. I don’t think it starts as a cat and mouse game, but it can easily arrive there.

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#37

I feel positive about the ‘inscrutable / transparent’ dyad. Like many have mentioned, almost all instruments appear inscrutable to a novice. The process whereby a novice becomes a master unfolds along familiar paths. Lifted veils. Illuminations. Epiphanies.

When an instrument designer places roadblocks on the path to mastery, mastery itself comes into question. Can you master a Plumbutter?

No one really knows how it works or what it should do. The instrument itself is psychedelia and hallucinates its own sounds. Even if you are an electric engineer and understand which diodes do what you cannot become a Plumbutter virtuoso because the instrument refuses to acknowledge virtuosity as a possibility. A Plumbutter is unlike a cello in this regard.

Of course, there’s no reason to think that a cello player needs the concept of mastery in order to create valid, moving, expressive music.

Anyway, instrument designers who explicitly create “inscrutable” instruments signal a challenge to the Western academic notion of mastery and virtuosity. Additionally, this is an attempt to flatten (or socialize though not democratize) barriers standing in the way of music creation. This is an academic phenomenon. Peter Blasser himself is an academic even if he appears as some kind of anti-academic through his productions. In fact, the academy is full of anti-academics. That’s off topic.

To conclude, the motion from novitiate to master is frustrated by inscrutable instrument designs. Mastery is an academic concept. Designers of inscrutable instruments are academics. Academics are socialists. Therefore, inscrutable instruments are Bernie Sanders.

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#38

LOL, Jordan Peterson is also an academic so all inscrutable instruments are Jordan Peterson. Going to clean my room now.

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#39

I don’t see these camps as being at odds with each other. I studied western music theory in college (which would be better called music convention or better still just music history – there’s no theoretical framework, as a whole it’s just an opinionated distillation of shit people have done a lot in certain western cultures. check out James Tenney’s Meta-Hodos and Meta Meta-Hodos for a much more reasonable attempt at an actual music theory) but I don’t rely on it as a ruleset by any means. I don’t even bother to analyze most of what I write in terms of it unless I think it would end up being useful somehow. (There are plenty of tricks in Ye Old Western Music Trickbox that can help punt you out of writers block for example.) The most use I get out of it (and really this is the only time I use it at all) is when communicating with other musicians who have a background. It’s a shared language you can use to do things like “uhhh I guess this is a D augmented chord with a de-emphasized third and added 9th” to communicate to your friend who is writing their own thing around what you’re doing. That’s useful, but any shared framework is useful and for some people it’s easier to just shut up and listen.

Studying a subject in some way doesn’t erase the beauty or poetics of it – it only adds new dimensions of beauty. I can’t help but think of this bit of a Richard Feynman interview where he talks about this in the context of a painter friend saying that to have a scientific understanding of a flower means you lose the capacity to experience its beauty:

I’ve never found that learning more about something diminishes my wonder at it. It usually increases it, deepens the mystery…

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#40

I agree that study cannot help but enrich.

My concern lies in those materials which resist systematic study.

#41

Do you have mixed feelings about harmonics? Music Theory is really just a practical application of the study of harmonics. I wish the study would embrace more than the 12 tones produced in the harmonic, but that’s for another thread perhaps.

#42

i think too many of us are projecting our own motivation and purpose for making music (and ways of approaching an instrument) on everyone else…

there is a spectrum of depth that stretches between so-called ignorance and mastery, studying theory and learning by ear or experience

i don’t really identify with either group completely because i am interested in learning but choose to focus on what i want or need to learn on a daily basis

nor am i in a rush
i have gradually learned which methods and interfaces are most enjoyable, most suited to a task, or most rewarding to spend time learning (though initially unfamiliar/uncomfortable)

for example i bought a rollz5 years ago mainly because it produces textures (noise/tone/resonance) that i wanted to explore…the control interface was familiar and one i preferred at the time (banana cables) but the instrument required a new mental approach to rhythm from me

certain parameters operated well within limits of predictability/repeatability but i could not sit down with the machine, as one can with a drumset, roland xox drum machine or some other traditional step sequencers, and lay out the structure of a beat “perfectly”

that is a deliberate feature which inspires some folks who “agree” with the instrument builder while driving others (who merely think differently about rhythm) completely mad

the heads behind synthmall, monome, mannequins all have my respect because they primarily make instruments which operate the way they (as musicians and theorists) want

they have created their tools to fit their own thinking, musical priorities and performance gestures NOT as a means to frustrate or befuddle potential users

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