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On Wed, 4 Dec 1996, Sarajanes wrote:
>
> Somewhere in the midst of considering
> issues addressed in E. Cook's thoughts on drumming with loops, and
> the more recent "implied music" post, I found myself uneasy with the
> seeming dichotomy of these two texts as they related to the
> description of musical events.
I'm not sure if the dichotomy is as strong as you feel it to be, but let's
continue.
(I'm understanding you to mean a dichotomy between
"accidental"/"implied" and "premeditated"/"explicitly conceieved"
composition, yes?)
> The "linguistics & semantics" game
> has always annoyed me as a person who plays music by ear, and who
> could not stomach the scholasticism that musical instruction and
> theory always seem to be anchored in.
This is a problem, yes ("language and semantics"), especially in areas,
like, say, looping material, where some of the standard rules of notation,
rhythm, and such forth are bent, or just plain inapplicable.
Yet, if you want to talk about the music, you have to at least passively
confront this issue, as it's bound to come up sooner or later.
> "play along" as it where, but for me at least the notions expressed
> in "drumming with loops" seem far less viable than the plan of
> attack presented in "implied music".
And here's where I think the dichotomy is pointed out to not be so large.
What I was presenting was just a collection of "rules of thumb" that have
worked for me, in a practical sense, over the years as a largely
self-taught musician. That whole discussion, in some tangential fashion,
came out of a prior discussion on the role of asynchronous loops and the
importance of accepting the "happy accident". The more recent thread on
"implied music", to me, continued the asynch/happy accident train of
thought, and I agreed with it to the point that I felt no need to add
anything.
The mistake, I think, is taking the suggestions that I presented on
drumming w/loops as a set of rules, an ideology, whereas it was just a few
tips, and perhaps places to start for a conceptually blocked percussionist
to start thinking about ways to approach their musical partner's looping.
> I know "different strokes for
> different folks" and all
Less this, I think (as that sort of winds up trivializing what any and all
of us do, if it's all "equally good for someone, somewhere"), than
"different approaches for different pieces". A piece of music with one
set of goals can and should be set up differently than a piece with a
differing set of goals. The form of the piece should be determined by
it's content, I think. [And you can read "form" in the broadest sense,
from choices of instrumentation, to approaches of composition, from
completely intuitive, to completely scored/organized].
> I'm still just looking for music, and I have
> always believed that along with rhythm, it will present itself.
>
I agree, with this, and many of the other points you've raised. There's
just more than one way that it will present itself, and more than one way
to deal with it once it does.
Good comments, Bryan, thanks.
--Eric Cook ecook@mail.msen.com
Gravitar-Guy http://www.msen.com/~ecook/gravitar.html