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Unsung Forum » a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more. |
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keith a 9570 posts |
Aug 31, 2008, 01:15
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zphage wrote: Give me Muscle Shoals, Fame, or American studios anyday over fops in makeup prattling about their cat, playing one fingered keyboard. Surely you're not having a go at this, Zphage? http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=g0vdt7f2YRw It's a great single!!
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stray 2057 posts |
Edited Aug 31, 2008, 02:07
Aug 31, 2008, 01:36
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I'm very familiar with Stockhausens music and his processes, he's an extremely important composer but I will always rate him below John Cage, Steve Reich, Angus Maclish, Delia Derbyshire, many people really.. Who did what first isnt actualy important, its where it goes and evolves afterwards that is, as many in this thread have already said. Also the comparison about wave-building isn't the same thing at all really to what I was trying badly to describe, although indeed a lot of processes we do quickly now do have long form (old school) analog processing comparisons. Edit : Also, the fact that we can do things non-destructively and with a much smaller time overhead means that actually we are experimenting a lot more than Stockhausen could. Its pretty much the same with Film and Digital Video comparisons, and much like the differences in the medium of sound/music, there are some things that cannot be done as easily or as quickly in the digital video medium as they can in the film enviroment, or at all frankly. Such as raycast film making, physically scratching on celluloid (Len Lyes 'Particles'), or anything Brakhage did tbh. There is absolutely no way we will ever be able to create a purely digital equivalent to those processes. It's the same with some of Stockhausens methods compared to how we work digitally. The Wouter Van Veldhoven link I gave is a perfect example, "four simple songs for five dead bumblebees". Wouters starting point is pretty much identical to early Stockhausen work, he uses many reel to reel tape decks which he jams with live (in terms of speed changes, stop/start) and then processes the results digitally afterwards. To set up a similar method entirely digitally would be a bitch, and would lack the hands on feel and beautiful performance possibilities. Heh, and unlike the early Stockhausen work this guys stuff has a definite musicality. :p I've never got on with Reason, I never found it to be flexible enough, and I've always had issues with it's timings and sound quality (yeah, yeah, everyone says they've fixed those issues, I know, I know). Also it looks fucking awful to my eyes and puts me off the actual work I'm doing. But then, I'm an anal, sad, pretentious sound junkie & snob, and also, as an ex software developer weird loking interfaces make me come out in hives. Edit : Oh, and good god no Stockhausen has not taken the 'science of sound' as far as it can go. sure he's an important pioneer, but god no, he's not got it all pegged. Bloody hell no. Also, philosophically speaking 'music ?' is a damn sight more of an interesting question to study, and for a good starting point with that (essentially pointless I know) chestnut is the writings of John Cage. Also, the main thing, harkening back to your point about visual culture taking over --- Music, Sound, Video, film are all 'Time based media', thats the jumping off point for that discussion and thats a whole other thread, paper, reading list and most definitely does not belong in Unsung.
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Aug 31, 2008, 09:00
Aug 31, 2008, 07:59
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zphage wrote: Lester Bangs said the last thing we all agreed on was Elvis. After that everything fragmented. I think any great innovation musically will be on the level of a composer, somebody with real compositional skills bringing many elements and genres together enjoyably. The glorification of musical ineptness has led us to the same staleness that 70's overproficiency that spawned a punk backlash. I agree totally. Moronic simplicity is no better than the moronically baroque and over-wrought. This idea that not being able to play has some noble peasant honesty about it is as misleading as Mao and culturally just as dangerous in its own way.
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Aug 31, 2008, 12:24
Aug 31, 2008, 08:33
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The only place where we fundamentally disagree is right here "Technical ability is even more over-rated than Randy Newman. Idea's are far more important than musical ability will ever be." All human beings can have genius ideas every moment of every day. The world is full of woulda coulda shoulda geniuses who let the ideas come and go for whatever reason. Ideas are nothing much. A spasm of the unconscious. What divides those that do from those that could is the will to make it happen, the economic circumstances, the dedication to master a craft and the tools to do it with. Put simply I believe that people with technical ability and people with a creative work ethic have more chance of making great music than those who don't. Being able to play (and write) requires practice, requires dedication and the bloody mindedness to stick with it when you sound like shit and you are impressing no one including yourself. It weeds out the wasters. A guitar teacher pal of mine is swamped with clients from better known indie rock acts (old and new) who are trying (on the quiet) to catch up to their own hype. People who are being ushered on to the big stage for the first or last time and know they don't yet have the know-how. Then there were the post punk musicians who really could play but hid that ability as best they could to avoid the ire of those with a penchant for inverted snobbery. They were as much bona fide gifted savants when playing in the naive style of the day as they were bona fide cockneys when dropping their aitches. Nothing was worse for ones cool in the late 70s early 80s than conspicuous ambition. Which is why chaps of a certain age still use the word bourgeois as a dreaded insult. Silly sods. Do they think Picasso, Miro or Bacon could have acheived what they did without amazing technical ability and burning ambition? Bertolucci or Herzog or Wenders? Ligeti, Henze or Reich? Porter, Berlin or Ellington? Becket, Camus or Weil? Richter, McCullin or Beuys? Gaye, Robinson or Mayfield? What Peel did (for whatever reason) was to make side-stepping the inconvenience of hard work a virtue. Yet being a snob (in the best possible sense) he never would have accepted the same thing in a Soul or Reggae record would he? Try making a "Heard It Through The Grapevine" or "Conquering Lion" without being able to play. It's like all the English football geniuses who have one or two great years and never get any better. It's cos they accept second best too easily and believe their own press. The English prefer those who don't appear to need to work at the fine details of their craft as that excuses their own sloth. The Bowles, Marsh, Hudson, Gazza syndrome. The so-called doomed geniuses. The nearly men. The English either like effortless genius or the sweaty, artless, huff and puff of the yeomanry. Making an effort at developing a craft is thought of with a suspicion which is redolent of the anti-semitic strains of anti-intellectualism between the world wars. I shudder to think how many potentially great bands never got close to what they could have acheived because they believed all the guff a Jonh Wilde or a Chris Roberts or a Simon Reynolds gushed over them after one single and a couple of gigs at the Bull n Gate. As for the economics of all this it's no coincidence that lower middle class kids made a lot of the best records in the 60s and 70s - it's because they had access to the tools, access to a range of influences (being able to buy records, being able to afford to go to art school, not having to take menial jobs to support families etc) and the time to develop that into something. And they were working in an era of great social mobility it was possible to turn ability and love of form into an escape hatch out of low level white collar drudgery. This all sounds terribly careerist but the greatest artists tend to be exactly that - Nietschean , monomaniacs. And it is exactly those kinds of people will put in the effort at any expense to develop the greatest facility. Which is why so many successful people are horrible to be around. They are not like that because they are successful. They are like that because selfishness is what it takes to build an audience and a body of work. British music history is full of examples of artists who spunk out a couple of great singles and then go back down the pub. Content with local hero status. They'll never write "The Idiot". They'll never record "Correct Use Of Soap". It is also why the hardest working, sharply focused and best organised bands are very often the most successful. It's certainly what pushed U2 ahead of Simple Minds and the Bunnymen. The will to power. Pre Joshua Tree it would have been impossible to say which one would come to rule the planet. For better or for worse. As with your Yes and ELP examples what made all those acts turn to shit was not being able to play too well. Being able to play is what gave them the opportunity. It was hubris what killed the radio star and an absence of taste. I love singles but they are just that. They are a short story, they are a minature, a ten minute film before the main feature if you will. The mark of a true artist is being able extend the idea into a series of statements or a single grand work. That and having the intelligence and self-awareness and the good taste to be able to successfully edit their own output. We agree on Randy Newman.
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singingringingtree 964 posts |
Aug 31, 2008, 11:04
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Hunter T Wolfe wrote: Folk music has survived for hundreds of years on the same basic tunes and just lyrics being updated and given a new twist; that's quite a sweeping statement ... do you mean "english folk song", or all folk music around the world? stuff like that can change form pretty quickly ... like when they banned the use of instruments in the scottish highlands, someone had to invent mouth music ... and so much folk music is, y'know, instrumental ... i'd make a sweeping statement that maybe folk music survives for a long while on the same TUNES, but it's the musical presentation that often makes it new (like Konono No1 or something) ... i'm not really sure what i'm on aabout, so i'll stop here but, yeah, new stuff's happening all the time - just a matter of finding it - but most straight rock music is pretty moribund these days (it's had its golden age + been trailing off for a while) + it's the lunatics on the fringes who are gonna be doing something useful ... i've only skimmed this thread, but someone mentioned Lighning Bolt = hell yeah, look no further - they're taking it + putting a huge rocket up its arse + it's beautiful + hyper-rocking + life-affirming + NEW
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Hunter T Wolfe 1705 posts |
Aug 31, 2008, 13:58
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Yes, I admit it's a sweeping statement. But, generalising, it is in the nature of folk music that the same songs are passed down from generation to generation, each generation feeling free to alter them to suit the needs of their time, and certainly in English folk song it seems to be fine to write new lyrics to an old tune, to make it fresh again. I don't have a problem with that. It's the same with blues, and of course Dylan and Led Zep have both contraversially brought this tradition into rock... and since rock music just keeps recycling the same three chords anyway, maybe it's unofficially part of that genre now too. As Lennon said, all you need for rock n' roll is something to say and a backbeat underneath.
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anthonyqkiernan 7087 posts |
Aug 31, 2008, 14:09
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Also: Two Little Boys How Much Is That Doggy In The Window Can't actually find the rest of her Desert Island Discs, but them three were
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keith a 9570 posts |
Edited Aug 31, 2008, 17:03
Aug 31, 2008, 14:32
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Yeah, I know what you’re saying, Ian, but just want to make a few points. *Not* everyone has great ideas. Or certainly, not enough of them to make a career out of it. The work ethic is something entirely different, and your U2/E&TB example is the one I would use, too. But that doesn’t make U2 any better for that, or the Bunnymen any worse. Just poorer! ; ) (Interestingly in view of your comments re Englishness, the successful act here are Irish. The others are English!) But I only need to look closer to home though to see another great example. Of course, it’s only that drive that stopped me being up there with the greats, Ian! ; ) As for Peel…he played what he liked. I certainly went through spells where I thought the quality dipped as Peel seemed more intent on playing something because it was 3 unheard of lads from Rotherham who had a good band name rather than whether it was one of the best things out at that time. But I think we’re all guilty of that to a lesser degree (well anyone who likes discovering new music, and I still do). But none of this alters the fact that Peel introduced to some great music. And being there doing what he did, he probably inspired a lot, too. As for the single. I’ll have to disagree. I love singles and albums. And albums just make you lazy cos you don’t have to get up and change the things all the time! Anyway, The Day The World Turned Dayglo has brought me far more pleasure than Sgt Peppers ever has. And I like The Beatles… PS Not sure Magazine are the best example here. Surely – as great as those first 3 Magazine LP’s are (and they really, really are!) – Howie could be classed as one of the great under-achievers of our time!
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IanB 6761 posts |
Edited Aug 31, 2008, 18:42
Aug 31, 2008, 17:50
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keith a wrote: Yeah, I know what you’re saying, Ian, but just want to make a few points. *Not* everyone has great ideas. Or certainly, not enough of them to make a career out of it. The work ethic is something entirely different, and your U2/E&TB example is the one I would use, too. But that doesn’t make U2 any better for that, or the Bunnymen any worse. Just poorer! ; ) (Interestingly in view of your comments re Englishness, the successful act here are Irish. The others are English!) Anyway, The Day The World Turned Dayglo has brought me far more pleasure than Sgt Peppers ever has. And I like The Beatles… PS Not sure Magazine are the best example here. Surely – as great as those first 3 Magazine LP’s are (and they really, really are!) – Howie could be classed as one of the great under-achievers of our time! The funny thing is that I think everyone really is capable of having great ideas they just don't act on them or they let other factors get in the way - fear, laziness, poverty, embarassment and, yes, even technique will stop you from going all the way with those flashes of insipration. My choice of U2 was deliberate for the very fact that they are not English. It was that which meant that they had no shame at working the hardest. Especially in America. And thus they out-sold and out-lasted all other competitors. It could have been the Bunnymen. They just didn't have what it takes beyond the musical realm. I think we semi-agree on the single. I love a three minute blast of genius as much as anyone but I want to hear it followed up, englarged, explored where ever possible. That's just me. Probably because I grew up more on albums than singles. Before Punk came along going to football always seemed better value than a single (especially as the b sides were nearly always album cuts in the pre Punk 1970s). As for Howard Devoto I think Magazine produced a pretty fine body of work. Possibly the best of the era. I don't expect more than five good years out of anyone working in rock and roll. There are just too many things that mitigate against longevity. The fact that he couldn't get his solo career off the blocks is one of those great unknowns but the 80s weren't a good time for men like him.
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Gnomon 1121 posts |
Aug 31, 2008, 23:29
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I love 'Jerky Versions of the Dream'. More than any Magazine album! Should I get my coat? ;o)
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