AW: What's experimental?

["Rainer Thelonius Balthasar Straschill" <rs@moinlabs.de>]

So...again, I'm going to try the analytical approach, and comment on some
posts as I go (and I hope you authors pardon me for not specifically
mentioning you there):

It's interesting if we look first at what wikipedia has to say about it
("it" being "experimental music":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_music

"Experimental music is a term introduced by composer John Cage in 1955.
According to Cage's definition, "an experimental action is one the outcome
of which is not foreseen" "

and furthermore (paraphrasing here):
Michael Nyman used the term to describe American composers as opposed to 
the
European avant-garde at the time.

According to David Nicholls, avant-garde is at the extreme of the 
tradition,
while experimental lies outside of it.

So we have more or less three different definitions:
        (1) music for which the outcome is not foreseen (Cage)
        (2) odd music from America (Nyman)
        (3) music which has no relation to tradition (Nicholls)

Not very helpful here...so I looked at wikipedia's definition of
"experiment":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment

"An experiment is defined, in science, as a method of investigating less
known fields, solving practical problems and proving theoretical
assumptions."

Of these three parts, I don't understand what is meant by the second one in
this context, but I can well understand the first and the third one and
agree with them also in our musical context.

It's again nice to see that only Cage's use of the word "experimental" in
musical context has any relation whatsoever to the meaning of "experiment"
and is such somehow valid etymologically. So how to apply that to our
discussion?

Ted said: "If you "make it up as you go along" but still everything sounds 
more-or-less like a 3-minute pop song that's not very experimental.

If you do the above and add a recursive loop or ebow drone it's not 
really any more "experimental" than if you'd added a kazoo."

Hey, that works with the Cage definition. In both cases, the outcome is
foreseen.

Jeff said:
"I call it experimental but the music and technique are old school and 
nothing new. What is experimental for me in this instance is the video 
itself because I am trying new things. Even that is experimental only to 
me because the effects that I am experimenting with are tried and true 
stock

stuff."

Obviously, you couldn't foresee the outcome here, so yes, experimental!

And now Warren:
"i thought the operational defn was simply "music no-one likes". "

This is a little bit trickier. Now I have the theory that the majority of
people want to have predictable things in their lives. So if we replace
"no-one likes" with "the majority does not like" (and I think you implied
that), then that definition fits (if my theory is correct).

However, it is important to see that this definition does only work in one
direction, as we clearly can see from Ted's next post, where he goes on
about people saying:
"3) I play music that no one understand or likes . . . so I must be an 
experimental musician."

So obviously, while experimental music is music no-one likes, music no-one
likes is not necessarily experimental.

(Btw I think it was you, Ted, who had that great sig saying something like
"Different is not always better, but better is always different")

Now another thing from Daryl:
"If the goal is to genuinely try out something new that you have not done
before, I call that experimenting, hence experimental."
- which also fits with the Cage definition, btw.

So obviously, it first of all matters that nobody knows what will happen
(which makes doing it a lot easier, because you do not always find
completely new approaches). But still with that in mind, I believe it is
necessary to define some kind of threshold, which of course then is
completely subjective.
(For example, if I do something completely conventional, like perform
Beethoven's op.110, which thousands of pianists have done before, a string
might break, which I did not foresee).

Finally, in my own music: it stays experimental for some time, until I get
used to it, then I do something new. What I did at this year's Boise
Experimental Music Festival was experimental, because I had no idea how the
combination of playing trombone (which I haven't been doing since 2001) 
with
a new configuration of my laptop setup would sound and develop.

        Rainer

(sorry, got rather long-winded. All hail Cage!)