Re: [_arc.hive_] NEW [N]+Semble MP3 Album

Tue, 20 Dec 2005 11:16:04 -0800

The band was a bit before my time, but everytime anyone mentions the Theremin, they pop up, so they must have been really interesting. 

On 20/12/2005, at 19:59, David-Baptiste Chirot wrote:
oh yes--i had a friend who had a Theremin and have tried it--many times, 
years ago--
 does anyone remember the band Lothar and the Hand People?
they used a Theremin-
there is a video of a documentary on Theremin--it was on PBS Tv in the middlle 1990s--you may easily find--(they had it at Blockbuster last time i 
was in there--)



From: Kamen Nedev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: "WRYTING-L : Writing and Theory across Disciplines"
<[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [_arc.hive_] NEW [N]+Semble MP3 Album
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:10:08 +0100

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
For URLs, DVDs, CDs, books/etc. see http://www.asondheim.org/ advert.txt . Contact: Alan Sondheim, [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] General 
directory of work: http://www.asondheim.org .


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