Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic
Date:         Wed, 30 Sep 1992 14:34:03 EDT
From:         "Michael H. Bloom" <MHB@MITVMA.BITNET>
Subject:      All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand

From:         Sonia Kovitz <skovitz@MAGNUS.ACS.OHIO-STATE.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Lifeless Air Pudding

> (wonder what the Bloom-man thinks of your aspersions on "ambience")

McIntyre's absolutely right: ambience sucks. My long term goal for the Urbans
is to get into more structured compositions-- which is neither to say that all
parts are going to be predetermined nor that these parts will be notated using
the conventional staves and dots. One thing I'd like to see happen is pieces
that start out completely composed, then one player gets to play free (as in a
solo) while the other two still have stuff to play, then another player joins
the "soloing" while the last guy holds it together for a while, etc. The hope
would be to try to preserve the illusion of it being composed music as long as
possible, without using trivial solutions like just repeating the last written
measure.

Ultimately, too, I want to learn how to write successful grant proposals :-)

> OMC: I think I LIKE Ornette Coleman--his "almost" free jazz (not yet ready for
> all-the-way free--referring to myself, not Ornette) thanks to our
> homeboy-data-freak-ground-meat-loaf-librarian.
>
> But Albert Ayler--I just don't GET it?!?!?!!?  (yet)

Real jazzheads will tell you that Ayler is folk music. My take on it is, if
you can detect the blues in Ornette's solos, apply the same transformation to
gospel music, then add amphetamines, and you should be in Ayler's neighborhood.
He made some records with a rock'n'roll rhythm section, I think Canned Heat's,
which sound like bogus acid casualty music and should not be considered
representative.

From:         Dave Hall <USTS060@UABDPO.DPO.UAB.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Rick, are you there?

> How do you feel about _Nonsvch_?

Sorely disappointed. I wasn't overwhelmed with the fruit salad record either--
although I'm distinctly not one of the punk-XTC fans; my favorites are _Big
Express_ and _Skylarking_, followed by _Black Sea_ and Dukes of Stratosphear.
I have a problem with when Partridge gets too happy, I think he loses his edge;
consider the first side (I got it as an LP :-) of _Mummer_, where he's just in
la-la land and doesn't even change chords until Colin reminds him to!

From:         JBRIN@WNEC.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Xenakis

> This one is for Rick, who would like to be understanding.  My original
> comment, that "electronic music" is an oxymoron, is an opinion that many
> people share.  Since, as Mike B. pointed out, there is no satisfactory
> definition of "music", there is no way to prove its truth or falsehood.

There were a couple of things I wanted to suggest with my hasty comment there.
Firstly, that the John Cage revolution meant that there wasn't any fair way to
draw an arbitrary distinction between musical and non-musical sounds; something
becomes music because a composer declares it so (and, equally, one becomes a
composer by calling one's output "music") and who are we to say otherwise? You
can go on to say that it's *bad* music, and I won't argue the point; I know as
many lame "conceptual" composers as you do, but I also know some good ones.

The other point is the condemnation of sounds from electronic sources. I know
it became fashionable at some point to condemn synthesizers for an "unnatural"
sound, and a clumsy and inexpressive human interface, by comparison to the old
traditional orchestral instruments. I've used that argument myself, and had my
face rubbed in it once too often, to let you get away with it here! The air
doesn't care what makes it vibrate. And there's no way you can scrutinize the
process of building a bassoon and call it "natural." I'd have an easier time
wiring up and using an oscillator circuit than I would cutting a double reed.
I think the expressiveness issue is moot at this point, what with aftertouch,
all those mod wheels, and all that other stuff that garbles the MIDI specs :-)
If players aren't using that stuff expressively, it's not for want of trying
on the part of the manufacturers. Me, I wanna get a WX-7 and a bagpipe patch!

> I regret that I jangled so many nerves.  If we can move to an art analogue,
> so that emotions might be more distant,there's a remarkable burgeoning of
> computer-generated pictures(I avoid the A word).  Math books use them
> liberally where the graphics of Escher held sway only a decade (or less)
> ago.  Calendars and greeting cards feature these fractal images.  Many of
> them are breath-takingly beautiful.
> But are they art?  In lieu of a satisfactory definition of "art", we have
> to each make that decision for ourselves.  And maybe it doesn't matter

Again, it becomes art if the artist says it is; this time I refer not to John
Cage but to Marcel Duchamp and his readymades. I wouldn't have noticed that a
urinal was actually a graceful design if he hadn't pointed it out (though I'm
not so wild about his rake; I prefer Eugene Chadbourne's).

Some artists you appreciate for craftsmanship-- Wyeth and his obsessive brush
strokes and egg tempera colors. Some artists grip you instead by the force of
their ideas-- there's not a lot of technique in Frank Stella, but he makes you
think about pictorial space in a new light. Taking that to an extreme, you can
envision an artist with no drafting ability at all, using an automated medium
such as a computer to produce an image defined by some algorithm. Why is that
not art, at least as much as photography?

> what that decision is.  But to be honest, my negativism in the case of
> electronic music(?) comes from never having been more than mildly curious
> about any of the works I've heard, let alone overwhelmed the way I HAVE
> been by fractal images.  Art?  Maybe.  You decide.  As for Subotnick, no,
> Sibelius, yes, and bagpipes, sometimes.  Cheers.

I'm a fan of Subotnick, and I was privileged to hear him lecture once about his
compositional technique. There's a lot of body movement in his work-- he had a
special synth controller built for him by Buchla which allows him to play in an
almost percussive manner, and it works for him, his stuff is real rhythmic and
propulsive, almost funky at times. So as far as I'm concerned, Subotnick is the
antithesis of the sterile electronic composer-nerd you imagine. I recommend you
check out _The Wild Bull_ on Nonesuch, which used to be widely available in
used record stores all over Boston, back before there were CD's.

From:         SUPSFRAN@STETSON.BITNET
Subject:      Re: Halloween Music

> What about M.J's Thriller and Spooky( an oldie but a goodie)?

"Spooky" is a pretty decent tune, as opposed to anything else that band did--
the Classics IV, who later metamorphosed into the Atlanta Rhythm Section. Yuck.