Hmmm, has anybody here ever tried a Theremin? Moog used to make a
MIDI-compatible one, two. Sound...
Best,
Kamen
On 19/12/2005, at 6:58, Alan Sondheim wrote:
Re the first paragraph, my apologies as well; we're going to Utah
tomorrow and I'm a bit tense, also feeling physically ill. -
Needless to say I agree with you. I also think there are things
like the old Casio midi sax - you blew into it, and so there's all
sorts of possibilties for interfacing. Most Midi people though use
keyboards; they can be taylored (misspelling but it's a great
pun!), but the tendency is of course towards either cleanliness or
controlled/chaotic noise...
Then there's granular synthesis which seems something else utterly
different and exciting - Alan
On Sun, 18 Dec 2005, mwp wrote:
(Thanks for the clarification, AS. I sometimes tend to read an
implied hostility into people’s writings where it is not intended,
as I am sure they sometimes unintendedly read it into mine. I’m
very tense tonight for some reason. Sorry if I overreacted.)
My short, silly list was meant to apply to written compositional
variables, or to switches on a foot pedal for live performance.
For instance, you want a particular passage you are playing on a
MIDI instrument to sound breathy, you press the ctrl-B button on
the pedal. Crude, simple stuff, like a guitarist has with
fuzzboxes, wahs, etc. only more localized and nuanced in the effect.
I don’t think that an Ayler of today would feel too deprived of
his “black spirituality” if he was playing a MIDI instrument of
sampled sounds. He simply would find workarounds to create the
effects he wanted, and while he wouldn't be the Ayler we know and
love, he still would sound marvelously human. Look at somebody
like Sun Ra, who was playing a clunky old DX7 when I saw him a few
times. I don’t think that the rise of session players using
digital instruments has much to do with the coldness of today’s
music, as there were plenty of cold, boring session players
working in places like Hollywood and Tin Pan Alley many decades
before there were commercial digital music programs and
instruments. I see today’s “coldness” has as much to do with a
basic shift in attitude towards performance, -- from an
existential “being-in-the-world” attitude, such as you described
so well, to a more aloof, canned one that you get in rap, raves,
etc. I don’t see the latter necessarily as a musical regression of
any kind, or as a diminishment in music’s spirituality. If that
causes Ayler to spin in his grave, well, every new generation has
that effect on its elders!
I haven't addressed your point about live vs computer at all, even
though it was fundamental to what you were saying, because I
basically agree with you and see nothing to add.
m
being preposterously verbose, as always, and now I will shut up
and go into a long self-imposed glottal hibernation...
On Dec 18, 2005, at 8:46 PM, Alan Sondheim wrote:
On Sun, 18 Dec 2005, mwp wrote:
[Arggh, I feel the hostility meter starting to flutter into the
red… If that’s the case, I’m outta here.]
No hostility intended.
Don’t know why such a list of commands wouldn’t cut it to bring
some sense of life to a piece. Composers use such notations all
the time to indicate precisely what they need from performers,
and Talan M’s work is a composition, not a performance, however
much he may intend it to sound “performed.” And there’s no
reason these controls couldn’t be implemented live in real time
with foot pedals or something, so there’s plenty of room for
overlap between composition and performance.
It may well bring life into a piece. That's not what I was on
about; of course I agree with you here.
I don’t believe improvisation can ever be totally in the
“moment.” Improvisors are always recycling and borrowing from
buried experience and spinning motifs, etc. The idea of the mind
as blank slate creating order out of nothingness just doesn’t
“cut it” for me.
No one ever said improvisation came out of a blank slate; of
course it doesn't. But it is in real time, and all that recycling
etc. - more important where you are in the piece - can't be a
second-take; what you do then is what you get. And there's no
'nothingness' - there are chops and what you're doing.
There's a whole politics behind this, which Ayler and New Thing
music in general came out of. It came out of the black revolution
of the 60s as well, and the rhetoric around it was part of it;
with people like Baraka it entered linguistically into the pieces
as well. And this politics was connected with notions of black
soul, black body, black spirituality, even the black church. At
least for myself, I can't put this aside. In other words
improvisation - being-live-in-performances was _inherently_ part
of the music of these musicians.
And by ctl doesn't cut it, what I meant was, take your commands -
SAXOPHONE:
Flatten the pitch in the upper registers YES
Squeak SELECT PHRASE + ctrl-S
Pad SELECT PHRASE + ctrl-P
Breath SELECT PHRASE + ctrl-B
Force virtual fingering SELECT PHRASE + ctrl-V
Etc.
- Take the first. How much flattening? In relation to what? In
what phrase? What do you do about the control and dimunition with
the upper overtones that occurs when you slack the reed a bit?
Etc. etc.
This doesn't mean you can't 'set' an Ayler-type solo, note-by-
note modification; you could always build something out of sine-
waves note by note. It's not magic. But it is missing the point -
when 'squeaks' are used, they mean something about the soul and
positioning of the musician at that point; they're not devices.
It's also very hard to program a squeal (if that's what you mean,
you generally don't get pad squeak, so I think you're referencing
the reed?), which has incredibly-fast changing overtones
resulting from teeth/lip/pressure/moisture-degree/breath/-
pressure - all changing dynamically at an equally incredibly-fast
speed.
I do agree with Talan's take, which seems a bit different than
yours. In any case I've heard a lot of electronics, as I'm sure
you have as well, and the types of sonority that Talan uses seem
fairly accessible; on the other hand, I've heard nothing
approaching, say, Bells, in that regard.
- Alan
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