X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Newsgroups: bit.listserv.emusic-l
Date:         Sun, 20 Dec 1992 11:08:52 PST
From:         metlay <metlay@NETCOM.COM>
Subject:      Composing philosophies from a "gearhead"
Comments: To: EMUSIC-L@american.edu
              at Dec 18, 92 4:12 pm

>
>          I'd  be interested in  hearing  about  other people's composition
>          philosophies and techniques, especially as these do or don't rest
>          on  different premises  in  the  electronic domain  than  in  the
>          acoustic  domain.

My compositional style and technique for song structure comes from the way
in which my studio was set up when I began composing for my first album.
Specifically, I cast about on a keyboard with a relatively "neutral" (i.e.
carrying few if any preconceived connotations to me) sound called up, in
my case usually a brass sound (why brass? who knows?), and try out different
ideas for melodic motifs. When I find one I like, I practice it a few times
to commit it to memory, then begin to work with incorporating it into a
chordal structure that makes sense to me. I then put together a brief
analog sequence loop encompassing the idea, which may only be a few seconds
or a couple of minutes long, and commit a quick sketch of the idea to tape.
Then, I assemble ideas that seem to have an affinity for one another into
a larger structure in the process of making a piece. I rarely try to assemble
music from some overwhelming massive start-to-finish concept; my efforts
in that regard generally come off sounding academic and contrived.

I HAVE in the past sat down with pen and paper, and composed entire pieces
that way. While some people regard this as being the best way for them to
work, it is most certainly NOT the best way for me to work. The art of
writing notation is too new and ill-used to me to yet be a fast and accurate
way for me to put ideas down in reproducible form, and I doubt it ever will
be. I regard traditional notation to be an incomplete and unsatisfactory
means for recording what I do in an indelible manner. Why? Because, among
other things....

>          Timbres play an
>          important part in creating contrasts within and between sections,
>          but  I wonder if  other e-composers place  more emphasis on  this
>          aspect,  as  opposed  to development of  melodic themes, harmony,
>          counterpoint, etc. With many people there seems  to  be  a  great
>          deal of concentration on the way a sound is produced rather than
>          on what is done with it.

This is very much how I work. I love timbre for its own sake, and my
works are generally very spare in terms of traditional melody and
harmony and counterpoint, focusing instead on the ability to let a
listener take in a timbre, savor it, and place it in the larger
context of a larger sonic environment. Over the years, various people,
demonstrating the maturity, wisdom and tact so common to traditional
musicians, have called my preferences lazy, immature, lacking in depth
and meaning, and simplistic.  They sometimes choose to ignore the fact
that my music pleases and moves many of those who listen to it, and
brings me satisfaction as well, and hold up my timbral explorations to
be ridiculed as "useless noodlings," "bleeps and bloips," and
"pointless sound effects." After many years of attempting to reason
with these people and explain my motivations, I eventually decided
that doing so was a waste of time, and have resorted (rather
childishly, I am afraid) to answering their criticisms with equally
subjective and wrong-minded criticisms of their so-called "REAL
music."  This brings me only a temporary and childish satisfaction and
accomplishes anothing, so usually I don't bother. I push at the borders
I choose to stretch, and take my music where I wish to take it. I push
myself hard and try to accomplish great things. People who choose to
ignore this aggravate the hell out of me, and trying to teach them
where I'm coming from is usually a damned waste of effort.

The last time I tried was in a short and unpleasant conversation with
Dr. Karl Haas, respected musicoligist and host of the public radio
show "Adventures in Good Music." Dr. Haas had spoken to a rapt
audience here in Pittsburgh, and had sprinkled his speech with
ill-mannered and unnecessary jokes at the expense of electronic music
and electronic musicians. When I spoke to him about it after the
speech, he was quite shocked to learn that there was someone in the
audience who considered "electronic music" NOT to be an oxymoron, and
carefully defined "electronic music" as separate from "REAL music
which was produced electronically," a clever dichotomy that allowed
him to instantly write off all of electronic music as worthless.
I was more aggravated than I can say, but he'd just come off the stage
after a long and tiring presentation and I felt it wouldn't be polite
to pursue it any further. But I left in a foul mood, and feeling quite
uncharitable to acoustic bigots of all sorts. I still am.

> I think that e-music shouldn't ape  a-music, as in trying to exclusively
> reproduce the latter's  timbres and dynamics; which may be the reason
> why there seems to  be a consensus in favor of analog synths in the
> messages on  emusic-l and synth-l.

I agree with your sentiment, because in my opinion the true worth of
synthesizers is in creating sounds not of this world. However, I think
that your assumption of why people like analog synths is at least
partially misplaced. It is true that analog synths do not naturally
lend themselves to imitating real sounds the way sample players do,
but there are other non-analog architectures that are equally alien to
the real world, like wavetable manipulation and FM synthesis. More
important is the fact that analog synthesizers are designed to be
quickly and intuitively manipulated in real time, and sample players
rarely are. The question of the analog sound being the "best," as some
people raise, is asinine; I was playing analog before there was any
alternative, and I find the recent renewal of interest in analog after
a long dry spell where I was an oft-ridiculed voice of analog support
among scads of digital idiots to be only passingly amusing. I could
play a well-crafted sound from a sample player for many of these
born-again analog morons, and tell them they were listening to my
Oberheim, and they could never tell the difference. Baf!

>       I'm not sure what the  electronic equivalent of musique concrete is).

Technically there isn't one. The specific goal of musique concrete,
although I doubt that many people who use samplers nowadays would know
this, was to create new music from REAL sounds, not electronic ones.
Pierre Schaeffer and Pierre Henry, the fathers of the field,
considered synthesizers to be too limiting in their architecture, and
avoided them studiously. (Interview with John Diliberto, reprinted in
ELECTRONIC MUSICIAN back when it was a magazine with articles of use
to the electronic music historian. Dec.  1986 issue, I believe)

> Anyway, maybe the virtue of  electronic
> music is the depth and ease (deceptive) of  manipulating many
> parameters at once (platitude?).  In other  words, not just the sound
> itself, but where and how much of it  there is, its sparseness or
> complexity in time, etc.

I believe this with all my heart, although I suspect others may have
different motivations, which is perfectly fine for them. Platitude?
Not for me.

> The danger  is infatuation with the medium
> (gearheads listen up!)  and  abandonment of artful (as in artifice,
> and artificial in the good  sense) and mainly intentional
> manipulation of the listener's  emotions and psyche.

Baf again! No one is qualified to tell me when I have stopped creating
beauty and blundered into infatuation with technology except ME. People
can express their opinions, and I am bound by rules of courtesy to grant
them their opinions without ill will, but if I choose to love these
machines for their own sake, that's no one's business but mine. People
may simply choose to not enjoy my music. Some don't; many others DO.
That's enough for me. I'm happy, some (but not all) others are happy.
What else matters?

--
mike metlay                | Hey-YEH!
atomic city                | Dancin' in the Valley of Damnation--
p. o. box 81175            | Hey-YEH!
pittsburgh pa 15217-0675   | Count up the Wages of Sin!
metlay@netcom.com          |                           ('vouf, after d.dax)