#37

It is failure that guides evolution; perfection offers no incentive for improvement.

Colson Whitehead (1999) The Intuitionist

While technological failure is often controlled and suppressed—its effects buried beneath the threshold of perception—most audio tools can zoom in on the errors, allowing composers to make them the focus of their work. Indeed, “failure” has become a prominent aesthetic in many of the arts in the late 20th century, reminding us that our control of technology is an illusion, and revealing digital tools to be only as perfect, precise, and effi- cient as the humans who build them. New tech- niques are often discovered by accident or by the failure of an intended technique or experiment.

Kim Cascone (2002) The Aesthetics of Failure

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#38

My approach to composition usually begins with the creation of raw source material–an exploratory and improvisatory process. Creating the source material is the most playful part of composition– a direct, uninhibited sensual experience of interaction with sound waves. At this stage there are no constraints. It is like playing an instrument, but both “playing” and “instrument” have expanded meanings in electronic music. For example, Volt air began as a collection of sound clouds generated by the Cloud Generator program. Pictor alpha (2003) started with pulsar trains generated by PulsarGenerator. To make the source material for Thither (work in progress), I played an Ondioline (an old electronic keyboard instrument) and recorded it on analog tape. My most recent piece, Now (2003) is the result of a second-order process, since it is based on a granulation of Volt air, part III. One could also consider a composition algorithm as a generator of source material (as did Xenakis). Indeed, I think of PulsarGenerator as sonic algorithmic composition system with an interactive graphical interface. Sometimes an extramusical idea or emotion drives the work. For example, in Nuage gris (work-in-progress) the music is a direct reflection of a deeply-felt mood. Tenth vortex (2000) and Eleventh vortex (2001) are also the product of intense emotions. In Clang-tint (1994), each movement’s sound and organization reflect a specific thematic subject.
The second phase of composition is the important phase of classifying and editing the source material. I divide the various sounds into types. Within each type I then organize the sounds by time scale (micro, sound object, meso). I am usually pruning the material at the same time, discarding some, and editing and transforming the rest. Through this rather intense labor, I become intimately familiar with the material. I am imagining how it might organize itself into larger scale forms, and I start to plan the macroform. This is where the game becomes complicated. Before this point, I tend to work intuitively. To plan a macroform is to set a goal, so one has to shift to a rational problem-solving mode of thinking. In effect, the piece becomes a complicated jigsaw puzzle. It is as if each piece in the puzzle is a sound object with a potentially unique morphology. As I assemble the puzzle, certain objects appear to be natural matches: they fit in sequence or in parallel. Other objects seem out of place. How they will ultimately fit together is not evident at the beginning.
The difference between a conventional jigsaw puzzle and a composition is that one can construct new sound objects to fill in gaps, or transform existing objects so that they fit better. The more objects one constructs, however, the more combinatorial possibilities accumulate. The game of composition may slow down, as each object inserted carries additional implications, some of which can only be resolved by further editing. As the puzzle takes shape on higher time scale of meso structure, the trial-and-error process of montage, of rearrangement and refinement, should lead to the illusion that the puzzle could be solved in only one way. Of course, there is no perfect solution. One is not obliged to fit all the original source material into the puzzle. The puzzle is solved when I say it is, and the solution is not necessarily final. A composition is never perfectly formed, and it can always be remixed or regranulated. Even great works have stray threads or they could have been solved slightly differently. They are human products. It makes no sense to talk of a perfect solution to a compositional puzzle: perfect according to what criteria?

Curtis Roads (2005) in Brigitte Robindoré: Forays into Uncharted Territories, an Interview with Curtis Roads

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#39
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#40

So, once we have accepted the acoustic ecology arena as the basis from which soundscape composition emerges one could perhaps say that its essence is the artistic, sonic transmission of meanings about place, time, environment and listening perception. In my experience the term eludes any further definition. And my sense is that as soon as we try to define it further, we rob it of its essence, indeed of its freedom within that vast and interdisciplinary arena. Why? Because each soundscape composition emerges out of its own context in place and time, culturally, politically, socially, environmentally and is presented in a new and often entirely different context. It has its very own life wherever and whenever it is created and reproduced…

Each new recording will create a totally new piece as it is nothing more than a specific moment in time, an excerpt and detail of a place with its very own sound characteristics. It can only speak specifically of that moment and that place, not in general terms. But paradoxically, that specific moment and place can contain all the ingredients, out of which a meaningful language can emerge for a work that addresses soundscape and listening issues. And it is that material, and not some pre-determined musical structure or context, that will contribute significantly to a work’s unique character.

Hildegard Westerkamp (2002) Linking Soundscape Composition and Acoustic Ecology

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#41

Hazrat Inayat Khan (prologue to the Mysticism of Music, Sound, and Word)

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#42

Not quite a quote on music, but I just ran across this on my feed:

image

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#43

I saw this topic and immediately thought of this quote, then remembered I’d already posted it somewhere on here. I love these thoughts on “structure”.

In the same interview on Ubu that’s from, he talks about getting away from drama in music, which I relate to as well - and could’ve snuck into that topic on theory of ambient music, almost…

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#44

Karl Popper speaking in 1979:

By far the most influential, and the most widely accepted theory of art, of music, and of poetry is the theory that all art is, essentially, self-expression : the expression or the revelation of the artist, and especially the expression of his emotions. I regard this theory as completely mistaken. It is trivially true that we express our inner state in everything we do, including of course in art. But we express our inner state also in the way we walk, cough, or blow our nose. Self-expression cannot, therefore, be used to characterize art.
But I do not merely regard the expressionist theory of art as mistaken. I regard it as having a pernicious and a destructive influence upon art. In great art, the artist considers his work as important, rather than himself. This healthy attitude is undermined by the theory that art is self-expression.

It’s not just about music, and I’m not even sure how much of it I agree with just yet, but I like it.

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#45

1: one time in a video of some sort, I heard victor wooten say something to the effect of “if you make a mistake in a performance, just repeat it one more time. then it’s on purpose” i really liked that.

2: one time, before a show, I was nervous and telling this older gentleman that I always got anxiety before shows. He said to me “if you don’t get the jits, you ain’t shit!” That changed my life.

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#46

I like that. It reminded me of John Cage, and some of his anti-expression (I believe it’s Cage, but I’m not certain) sentiments / practices. It reminded me of this quote (by Morton Feldman):

“patterns are ‘complete’ in themselves and in no need of development – only of extension. My concern is: what is its scale when prolonged, and what is the best method to arrive at it? My past experience was not to ‘meddle’ with the material, but use my concentration as a guide to what might transpire. I mentioned this to Stockhausen once when he had asked me what my secret was. ‘I don’t push the sounds around.’ Stockhausen mulled this over and asked: ‘Not even a little bit?’”

for some reason I thought this was from a conversation between Feldman and Cage, but I was mistaken.

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#47

Somewhere I overheard a student tell a teacher they were nervous, and the teacher said “If you’re nervous that’s because you care.”

I use that with all my students now, it seems to help a lot. I guess we’re moving the jumble of thoughts from “what if I mess up” to “I am prepared to do well”…

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#48

from Ana-Maria Avram, The Metamorphosis of the Musical Score

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#49

Great quote! I’ve been thinking of this in relation to the “Words in music” thread and some other things.

Fundamentally, I think Avram is pointing out a more general problem with the signifier/signified relation. Seeing everything through this relation tends to suppress the performative function of language which is always more primordial. The insight is to see that what she’s saying about music notation holds for all forms of language or exteriorization in general (writing, technology, etc.).

Avram’s key insight is that notes don’t “stand for” music, they “stand in for” it. Notes don’t re-present; they complement. The music (what presences) is the tip of the iceberg; the notes; the countless hours of practice; the musicians’ bodily skills; their dreams and aspirations are the unseen foundation. Each moment thus “contains”, or is founded upon, an entire past, and an entire future.

Skills (and the support given them by notation) are what removes the need for the musician to focus on these things (and hence themselves) in performance so they can fully open themselves to the moment (i.e. the music; what is not themselves). These elements are no less “real” than the music. But they are virtual, not actual. The act of opening oneself comes forth in the dramatic pause before the first gesture – a pause which includes the audience, which invites the audience also to open themselves. This pause manifests the buildup or intensification of a potential field across which the music flows, appropriating performers and audience alike to make itself present.

But Avram’s comments hold for language as well. If language simply duplicates what is already present, there would be no need for language. There is a presentation in language but it is in no sense a “re”-presentation. What language presents is precisely what did not presence. The speaker points out what is not there, and makes something yet different come forth. The writer writes because she is absent, she writes for posterity so she can continue to affect things after she is gone. The meaning of language is already the other meaning: the meaning brought forth in the response to language, and in what this response retrospectively projects back upon language in terms of how we make sense of it.

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#50

Works of art make rules; rules do not make works of art.

Claude Debussy

When I used programs to produce music like ST/4, ST/10, or ST/48, the output sometimes lacked interest. So I had to change [it]. I reserved that freedom for myself. Other composers, like Barbaud, have acted differently. He did some programs using serial principles and declared: “The machine gave me that soI have to respect it.” This is totally wrong, because it was he who gave the machine the rule!

Iannis Xenakis in Varga, B (1996) Conversations with Xenakis

“Formalized music” does not sound free, but it is. I wanted to achieve a general musical landscape with many elements, not all of which were formally derived from one another.

Iannis Xenakis (1996) Eshate Ereuna

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#51

Peyet: But then, how do you compose?
Dumitrescu: I try to surround myself with a new reality. I see the things in their primordial nature, I continue… what precedes the formed. The uncertain preoccupies me. Therefore impulses… beginnings. These things have, in them, something paradisic, a purity, an initial halo. The world needs more and more the ingenuity of expression, searching for it, without knowing where to find it.
I had the chance to return to the sources. I returned to Orphic mythology. We have the sound and the cultural thought, symphonic, and another thing: the natural sound. Between the natural and the cultural there are significant differences. The natural sound is a complex of pure and impure things: noise, inconstant doublings, adjacent effects, beats, spectral rubbings. The natural can enrich the cultural. It is what I do.
All that re-enters in the idea of a pre-language. Is one allowed to say that? An “Ursprach” without connotation, denotation. If something could characterize my work in entirety, it would be a “miraculous” state, of the beginning of the world.
The sound appears like something not generated, not created. What follows, it is a sort of fascination with ontology. An ontology truly lived.
Almost always, my music liberates latent forces, allows them to develop in themselves. Only after I start to organize a conflict, I produce a more or less spectacular jump towards other materials and, towards the end, the arc collapses. Energies gradually die out. At the interior, is I have an insane distilling of timbres, situations… is it a good resume?

Peyet: The music is a dialogue with nothingness…
Dumitrescu: Yes, an ontological adventure counters nothingness…

Iancu Dumitrescu (1995) Acousmatic Provoker, interview with G.Peyret and S.Leroy

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#52

music is an ordered arrangement of sounds and silences whose meaning is presentative rather than denotative

music is the actualization of the possibility of any sound whatever to present to some human being a meaning which he experiences with his body—that is to say, with his mind, his feelings, his senses, his will, and his metabolism

Music is not a fact or a thing in the world, but a meaning constituted by human beings… To talk about such experience in a meaningful way demands several things. First, we have to be willing to let the composition speak to us, to let it reveal its own order and significance… Second, we have to be willing to question our assumptions about the nature and role of musical materials… Last, and perhaps most important, we have to be ready to admit that describing a meaningful experience is itself meaningful

Thomas Clifton (1983) Music as Heard: A Study in Applied Phenomenology

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#53

Music is everything that one listens to with the intention of listening to music

Luciano Berio (1985) in Varga, Two Interviews

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#54

I think it’s important if you’re a creative person, or aspire to be, that you don’t spend too much time aspiring or asking advice. Just get going and address what’s roaring inside you.

You just make up your mind, like, “I’m gonna write this book.” How many people are gonna read it? I don’t care. How can I control that? I just want to do the damn thing. That allows me to go unrestrained.

Henry Rollins

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#55

“Although existing in all music, the noise-element has been to music as sex to humanity, essential to its existence, but impolite to mention, something to be cloaked by ignorance and silence.”

Henry Cowell “The Joys of Noise” (1929)

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#56

So, in short, the male mosquito is actually hearing a third, distorted ghost tone between its own flight tone and the female flight tone, and it is this he tunes into.

It’s only natural: we pick out tonal signals and discard the noise. The mosquito tunes into the noise and discards the signal. If we try to further analyse this way of hearing, several important aspects stand out. It is a listening that operates via tuning and making sound oneself simultaneously. And it is a listening-performing in a duet with another being, there is no solitary listening activity of a neutral receptacle.

How can the composer become a mosquito, participating in this dual mode of listening-performing? By imitation, or some animistic ritual? The challenge is that a mimesis in many ways replicates all of the problems of translation. It immediately becomes a question of the quality of the reproduction and appropriation to our mode of sensing, and the otherness of the animal sensorial system and its life-world is lost in the process.

This is not to say that there are no interesting strategies to be learnt from older traditions. In his studies of hunters in Siberia, anthropologist Rane Willerslev has described their special form of animism. The hunters dress up and disguise themselves as the animal they are hunting for. But it is important that the disguise is not too perfect. Then they would lose themselves and become the animal completely. So they enter an in-between state, between the animal and the human. As Willerslev points out, “Yukhagirs attempt to assume an animal’s point of view by intentionally acting as an imperfect copy.”

I imagine an instrument being built according to this Yukhagir animism. Such an instrument should ideally not translate or transduce between worlds, but rather transform them topologically, working as part of the system itself, modulating its speed, the movement, the folding, the reversing, the constant change. It needs to be an open-ended instrument, an imperfect mutant, a hybrid between the scientific and the musical. Part animal, part digital. Flawed and badly patched together out of scrap collected on my travels, people would point at it and laugh when it is brought out of its case. When sounded, it should produce a chord that poses a question to a place — simultaneously about its physical, biological, and historical character. And after resonating and reverberating through the material, it should return to us.

Espen Sommer Eide, “Exercises in Non-Human Listening” (2019)

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