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Newsgroups: bit.listserv.emusic-l
Date:         Tue, 22 Dec 1992 11:34:08 EST
From:         Michael A Squillace <squillac@STUDENT.MSU.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Composing philosophies from a "gearhead"
Comments: To: EMUSIC-L@AMERICAN.EDU
              92 11:08 am

Hi, all:

I can definitely relate to Mike Metlay's frustrations.  I have an experience
of my undergrad days that speaks to this matter.

I was a piano student at Central Michigan University back in Fall of 1984.  It
was at this point that I purchased my first keyboard (a JUNO 106) and became
interested in the world of e-music.  However, the conservative music department
at CMU had different plans for me.  I was told, upon becoming involved with a
bar band, that electronic keyboards could not replace piano and that practicing
with bands and on electronic instruments was no substitue for the "real" thing.
 Hell, I knew that playing my keyboard was different from playing any acoustic
piano and I never intended for one to replace the other.  I quickly learned,
though, that the instructors were not making a mere factual claim...There was
evaluation of me and my musical interests going on here.

At any rate, I dropped out of the major and pursued other fields.  To this day,
I continually try to convine people that playing keyboards is far different
from and requires as much skill as playing acoustic piano.  There is an art to
sound creation and to the use of computers, sequencers, and other electronic
equipment.  Indeed, if one doesn't know what one is doing, things get to sound
real ugly real quick.

One other comment.  I, having been trained in piano for so many years, learned
toread and write music.  I have lost my vision since my stay at CMU (it's not a
big deal...I knew it was coming) and have not missed notation at all.  Metlay's
emphasis on timbre is, to a large extent, inexpressible in written notation as
are so many other factors and aspects that the e-musician contends with.
Indeed, the written notation only mirrors the restrictions that are imposed
upon we keyboardists.  The keyboard, as a controler, is convenient but rather
limiting.  Two- or three-dimensional, half-tone instruments represent only a
small fraction of what is possible.

Oh, well...that felt good and I've probably said enough.

     Mike Squillace
     squillac@student.msu.edu
 > > >
> >          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)
>
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