Why does music that’s described as experimental always sound at least twenty years old?
Hobby Horse
Subjects about which I pontificate
Experimental Music
I was watching a video about the Ztar midi guitar and the dreaded word ‘experimental’ came up which now appears to have three meanings:
- I couldn’t be bothered to finish it.
- If I widdle these knobs enough there’s a chance this might become in some way interesting.
- If I call it experimental then people won’t notice my masturbatory noodling on par with the worst of jazz fusion.
I’ve been guilty of all 3 but don’t pretend that using techniques pretty much fully realised by the early 70s is a feat of exploration.
"My experimenting is done before I make the music". – Edgar Varese
More… Hobby Horse
I do feel a lot of experimental musicians aren’t conducting their research with sufficient intellectual and indeed procedural vigour.
And so many of them seem intent on repeating research done in the 1960s, 70s & 80s.
Same As It Ever Was
UK language skills haven’t come on much since Shakespeare took the piss in Merchant Venice, when Portia commented on her English suitor thus,
I say nothing to him for he understands not me nor I him: he hath neither Latin, French, nor Italian. He is a proper man’s picture, but, alas, who can converse with a dumb-show?
That and Mercutio’s death scene, ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man are pretty much my complete range of Shagspeare references which you may have noticed I drag out quite regularly. At the slightest excuse. Without provocation. However tenuous the link.
Piracy Isn’t The Main Problem
The biggest hurdles to making a living from music, writing or wot not these days are the consolidation of companies into large conglomerates who increase their share of the take; having to compete with hundreds of years worth of readily available works of proven quality; and the fact it’s now considerably harder these days to find a decent plumber than a good writer or musician.
Signifier
No one should have ‘Creative’ in their social media biograph or profile – if you are you should be able to come up with something better and if you can’t you’re not.
An Amateur Pontificates On… Contemporary Dance
Should you be so inclined Virgin Babylon Records have a sale on the go. They are home to world’s end girlfriend…
…still the best tune this century.
And modern dance is so much better with a tune. Due to Grants we used to do a lot of it in the olden days at the theatre where I worked. You’d spend two days rigging and forty people would turn up 1. They used lot of clever music but not much that tugged at the heart strings.
It didn’t help that too often the dancers would fall back on what I called elephant shapes, particularly when improvising. Coincidentally enough the exception was a Japanese chap with a patch over one eye who started his show Spinal Tap style in a cocoon, but rather more successfully.
I am of course twenty years out of date.
- My theory was that this was partly due to ‘Orsham being half way between London and Brighton with a side order of Chichester so folks keen on dancing (you asking?) were used to going to the posher venues there. ↩
Internet Rules Update
Before you label your website, videos and social media accounts ‘Official’ there should be evidence of at least one of the aforementioned that’s unofficial.
Hobby Horse Sated
From the Twitters
The European Copyright Directive has reared its unsightly head again and what I find notable about these regular Rights battles is that the one group of people who are ignored are those of us who actually pay for what we consume. It’s always so called ‘creators’ versus pirates and the rest of us are supposed to just lump it.
It’s definitely made me buy more stuff second hand and concentrate my purchasing on independent artists. Why should I support those who want to make it easy for the Government to clamp down on dissent by enabling a censorship system that won’t work to stop piracy.
Like the ‘Home Taping Is Killing Music’1 campaign the concentration on the debatable effects of piracy just diverts from the money grab by the big media companies and the business practices of Amazon and the like which is where artists money is actually going.
And we live in a backward looking era where there’s hundreds of years of proven high quality books, art, and media for new work to compete with and a vast over supply of artists. There’s a lot of good writers, musicians, etc. about but very few decent plumbers. Supply and demand.
P.S. And in a desperate attempt to save the word from its current decline to just a marketing phrase – this is what creative means.
‘In 1965 Seiichi Miyake spent his own money to invent tactile blocks (or Tenji blocks as they were originally known) to help a friend whose vision was becoming impaired.’
- It didn’t. ↩
Home Taping Still Not Killed Music
And when you look at book publishers increasing profits not being passed on to authors you have to wonder if the emphasis on piracy when talking about artists earnings is intentional misdirection.