pattycakes_

Can turn naughty
I kid

It's all non-musical sounds, excluding dialogue.

Footsteps, wind, door closing. Also special fx like lightsabers yeah.
 

luka

Well-known member
Mvuents we're happy to be mocked but you have to put your neck on the line here. Throw the sharks some chum.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
absolutely. I'll actually contribute to my own thread a bit in a few hours. later tonight, in my obscure part of the world.

(edited for accuracy. plus to decrease the appalling amount of mockery ITT)
 
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blissblogger

Well-known member
i love to listen to this stuff but i'm not sure i really understand it beyond "that's a bunch of cool weird noises in a pattern"

and i think there is something to understand, usually, because these are generally Proper Composers, steeped in the tradition, inheritors of Beethoven or whoever - and most of them feel like they are contributing to that tradition - even if the recital hall middlebrow public doesn't agree with them - there's a lot of lofty themes and references to classical literature and so forth - or the nature of time... philosophical, spiritual, religious notions.... it might sounds psychedelic to us but i don't think many of these dudes were thinking 'i'm going to make some good noises to get stoned to or trip to'.

i feel like i can tell when it's done really well, and tell when it's done really badly, but there's a lot in between that is kind of "well that was pretty cool, but why listen to that one again, and not this other one out of 1000s of other examples"

a lot of the best stuff feels like you are entering a non-naturalistic space, or perhaps a space that is part of the natural world but is very different in its acoustics and perspectives to the plane on which we normally exist

so there's one particular piece by Parmegiani that always makes me think of a speleological expedition - like you're going into a disorienting cavern system

the writing about it in serious books, or the liner notes of records is fairly useless in terms of what Luka is enquiring about - tells you a lot about the technical ways in which the sounds were achieved, or the lofty intent behind the project, what it's official themes and meanings are - but it is pretty dry stuff - the books especially are almost entirely about the technology side and nothing about how it feels as sensations or as a moodscape or whatever

one thing that has struck me that is analogous with the musique concrete tape-snip stuff is animation as technique - like an arrangement of heterogenous audio objects brought into the same space and given eerie life

this one always make me think of The Clangers

 

mvuent

Void Dweller
^ “there is something to understand” exactly!

I do think describing this stuff as psychedelic is helpful to some extent. don’t think treelethargy meant to imply these composers were lava lamp variety hippies or stoners. (though I’d bet money on stockhausen owning one at some point in his life.) more as a way to get at the perceptual ideas related to space, perception, etc. you mention.

unfortunately have no faith in my ability to intuit which works are done really well, so I’m stuck making this thread in the hopes of eventually understanding them well enough to figure it out. (the ones Im confident are masterpieces so far are gesang, kontakte and artikulation.)

I don't really know what he's trying to say there. Btw what is foley fx?

I thought what Parmegiani means is that his music is more than a collection of interesting sounds, because to him how those sounds are arranged and organized can be just as important, maybe even more important. so he's saying that early in his career he was simply infatuated with sounds on an individual level, but de natura sonorum was a breakthrough because (for the first time?) he used them in a disciplined manner: as building blocks to create larger forms. so by complimenting him on the beauty of the sounds he creates, listeners are perhaps missing the full picture.

idk, I just found him saying that pretty surprising when I first read it.
 
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mvuent

Void Dweller
maybe there are three perceptual “levels” that are worth paying attention to with this kind of music.

the first is individual sounds / timbres, as we’ve been talking about. what parmegiani refers to in that quote as “the power of Orpheus.”

the second is what would be referred to in dance music producer talk as sequencing. i.e. the level of rhythms, melodies, interplay between different elements.

the third would be structure. verse-chorus, sonata, that sort of thing. structure is a major focus in the classical tradition, and as blissblogger pointed out these people were all steeped in it.

so combining this with the quotes last page from the other thread, “impossible” or surreal things could happen on any of these levels.

when dance music producers want the listener to wonder what the hell they’re hearing, they tend to focus on the first level and to some extent the second. so in a sense you could say that their magic is limited

electroacoustic composers are about equally capable of generating “the sickest, most insane sonics” but more willing to extend the psychedelic to the other two levels. in terms of sequencing it doesn't feel tethered to a midi grid or a steady 130 bpm. structurally it can be developed in mind-blowing ways and turned inside out.

^^^^don't think this attempt was any good but it's just a quick start.
 

luka

Well-known member
I'm sure you're right but I'm not sure it matters. That there are more conservative (dull, conventional) aspects to this music is probably true but I don't think we've got any obligation to root them out. I think we are better off ignoring them.
 

luka

Well-known member
The other thing is that if we collectively are completely incapable of perceiving these other more abstracted conceptual levels then we have no means of investigating them 'phenomenologically' They become like the Loch Ness Monster. Maybe there lurking in the sunless depths of the loch. ...but who knows
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
with both those threads the underlying question is what is the value of repetition and predictability?

Well, I'm reminded of chava saying that early titonton (techno producer) is completely undanceable. I obviously disagree but it's a common refrain isn't it? Electroacoustic to us helps break the mould of the structure of the populist commodity. it avoids standardisation in some respects though as the tradition develops it itself becomes standardised, as bob ostertag put it... For instance the only electroacoustic records I've been huge on these years are the Sote ones, merging the microtonal maqam system with sickest insane modular/fm synthesis. Phrygian mode for all yer needs...

 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
is it a fair representation to say that listening to someone like parmegiani is like listening to an interesting collection of foley fx for you? that was meant as a prompt, not a shut down of course.



de natura sonorum is woebot cannon so maybe it's worth mentioning. is your experience with it consistent with what he says here?

yes, I find De Natura Sonorum far more organised and far more structured in the sense of moving like a musical piece. yet it's not even music in the sense of atonality that you might have in Cecil Taylor or even Schoenberg because there aren't melodic tonal antecedents to compare the sound to.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
I'm sure you're right but I'm not sure it matters. That there are more conservative (dull, conventional) aspects to this music is probably true but I don't think we've got any obligation to root them out. I think we are better off ignoring them.

not sure I follow.

The other thing is that if we collectively are completely incapable of perceiving these other more abstracted conceptual levels then we have no means of investigating them 'phenomenologically' They become like the Loch Ness Monster. Maybe there lurking in the sunless depths of the loch. ...but who knows

very true. the "levels" I had in mind are perceptual though.

with both those threads the underlying question is what is the value of repetition and predictability?

interesting connection! I might flip around how it's phrased. the value of repetition and predictability is a given. the question is to what extent moving away from them can be fruitful, and why anyone would want to do that in the first place.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
maybe there are three perceptual “levels” that are worth paying attention to with this kind of music.

the first is individual sounds / timbres, as we’ve been talking about. what parmegiani refers to in that quote as “the power of Orpheus.”

the second is what would be referred to in dance music producer talk as sequencing. i.e. the level of rhythms, melodies, interplay between different elements.

the third would be structure. verse-chorus, sonata, that sort of thing. structure is a major focus in the classical tradition, and as blissblogger pointed out these people were all steeped in it.

so combining this with the quotes last page from the other thread, “impossible” or surreal things could happen on any of these levels.

when dance music producers want the listener to wonder what the hell they’re hearing, they tend to focus on the first level and to some extent the second. so in a sense you could say that their magic is limited

electroacoustic composers are about equally capable of generating “the sickest, most insane sonics” but more willing to extend the psychedelic to the other two levels. in terms of sequencing it doesn't feel tethered to a midi grid or a steady 130 bpm. structurally it can be developed in mind-blowing ways and turned inside out.

^^^^don't think this attempt was any good but it's just a quick start.

btw this isn't a knock against music everyone here loves. if dance producers are more conservative at the 2nd and 3rd levels it's for very good, self-explanatory reasons.

the point is, setting "functionality" aside, the values or magic of both kinds of music are deeply similar. eshun quotes or references stockhausen like 6 times in more brilliant than the sun, which might seem odd given how stockhausen felt about "post african repetitions". I think it's telling that despite that, eshun recognizes him as a kind of kindred spirit. in energy flash the idea of approaching electronic dance music as "audio sculpture" comes up (for me "audio animation" might be even more helpful)--and it's an idea that's very transferable to electroacoustic stuff. even formally speaking, both use some of the same tricks. stockhausen and ligetti were playing with the sudden introduction of reverb and delay years before dub existed. maybe they didn't come to those tricks in the same way, but the results feel similar.

the second part of that idea is that if you're interested in exploring the application of said values, it makes sense to, uh, wade into the deep end of electroacoustics. my recent interest in / much greater appreciation for this stuff came entirely from listening to dance music (particularly early hip hop and 90s nuum material) and wanting to hear music that (successfully) went further. of course music with a dancable beat is great--but if you think mantronik's edits are mind-blowing... wait till you hear parmegiani's. and not just in the sense of virtuosity or complexity.
 
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chava

Well-known member
Well, I'm reminded of chava saying that early titonton (techno producer) is completely undanceable. I obviously disagree but it's a common refrain isn't it? Electroacoustic to us helps break the mould of the structure of the populist commodity. it avoids standardisation in some respects though as the tradition develops it itself becomes standardised, as bob ostertag put it... For instance the only electroacoustic records I've been huge on these years are the Sote ones, merging the microtonal maqam system with sickest insane modular/fm synthesis. Phrygian mode for all yer needs...


Hey, I didn't diss titonton records. You can play them as a dj but you need a non-techno crowd to make them work. It's deconstructed funk music more than techno. His stuff is high on structural invention (in a dance context), low on the acousmatic end (as all american producers often rely on easily recognizable synth work).

All music balances predictability and surprise, perhaps in the three dimensions mentioned. Simulation of how a lateralized brain learns.

Lots of electronic dance stuff in the third category (sequencing) has become stale mainly because of a very lazy standard shuffling preset often used (and very often by UK tech house producers). But some producers has their complete own feeling because they sequence uniquely, often it is very subtle but hard to decipher. It is very recognizable in a few producers.
 
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