Re: The importance of accidents in music.

[andy butler <akbutler@tiscali.co.uk>]

mark francombe wrote:
> Per Boysen " For solo musicians its very important to develop strategies 
> to allow accidents to happen"

Or rather, a musician needs to learn how to deal with it when
accidents occur.


> im not sure if this conversation is only regarding 
> improvisatinal music or not. 

...exactly.

I'd see it this way...


Playing note for note renditions of composed pieces,
and getting all the right notes in all the right place doesn't
rule out the accidental element.

To assume it's always lack of technique, a mistake, is a simplification.


I can also see that something similar could happen when writing a 
composition.
(actually, I'm sure it can)


> more like an "unexpected turn of events". And they are very important in 
> music.

I'd call it the "anomaly".


Looking at it from the audience point of view it's only the musician's
face and reaction that will give away if it's pre-planned, a total mistake 
or some
kind of pre-programmed randomness.


The EDP already works to create the anomaly (though personally I didn't 
find this
happening in Andreas Willeas' loopfest performance as Matt describes)
Loop windowing is of course the classic example, while in theory it's 
quite well
defined what's going to happen it's all a bit complex to figure out, so
the human input effectively becomes the randomising element. 


andy