Re: What public is attracted by a Y2K Sampler Video? (antipaganda)

[Kevin Cheli-Colando <kevin@minds-eye.org>]

Thanks for articulating this point Mathias, its really gotten me
thinking (so much so in fact I dreamt I was explaining this point to a
friend of mine last night while I slept).

I have been looping for a long time now and generally improvising
while I do so.  I enjoy the process very much, but always find myself
uneasy with the result.  People are talking about what labels and
categories their music fall in to (or out of) but I find myself
wondering at times if "Music" is even the right category for what I'm
doing.

The idea that this process may be primarily about inducing a trance is
very appealing to me and explains some of my quandary in thinking
about this music of mine.

Its not a huge concern for me since I'm not attempting to earn a
living doing this nor am I ever likely to, but I do think about doing
this for a potential audience now and again and I find that thinking
in terms of the presentation of a potential trance is both easier and
more difficult.  I'm not really sure how you would entice people into
that experience, but I think I'm more comfortable trying to do that
than I am in trying to present myself as performing musician.  In my
case, the 'music' is secondary to what goes on while its being
created.

So anyway, thanks for that perspective and yes, I truly do enjoy the
fact that it does work and I can produce my own trance.

Kevin

On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 1:51 PM, Matthias Grob <matilists@gmail.com> wrote:

> Let me start with an example of my own experience:
>
> I have mainly been playing with non musicians in a group of up to 25
> improvising happy noise making people.
> It worked amazingly well! For those who did it regularly, it was like a
> spiritual shower, leaving us fresh and optimistic, with a different body
> feeling and so on, while others came the first time and in the end had a
> huge smile on the face, saying: "I did not know I was able to play 
>music!"
> but:
> I never recorded that music. Many asked me to, but in the middle of the
> trance I sometimes put my daily ears back on, just to realize that we 
>were
> mostly making noise, out of tune, boring... so I did not want to 
>disappoint
> anyone about it and left the great impression we had when the REAL energy
> was flowing and bringing us together, which is the essence, much more
> important than the recording.
>
> I then learned from it, that with solo looping I went through a similar
> process. I liked my first recordings and the trance went on all day while
> designing the looping tools, I did not care/notice that my friends did 
>not
> like the recordings so much.
> Doing it live, I sometimes managed to spread the trance over some public 
>and
> they became fascinated. After years even over a bigger public. Then,
> finally, a few people went off with my recordings - also because I 
>carefully
> edited them all, taking out wrong notes, boring parts, and more and more 
>the
> "experimental" parts, too, observing that the fans did not like them (a 
>big
> advantage of selling cassette tapes: you can visit a client and look 
>where
> he stopped your music :-)
> But after all those years of free music of mine on the net and a CD on CD
> baby and what not, the word of mouth is still not spreading my music -
> because its not good enough!
>
> So:
> there is a very long way from serious trance producing art to something 
>that
> people actually buy.
> we have been talking a lot about commercial music and how bad it is and 
>how
> successful musicians have to bend...
> I see it different now:
> don't bend your personality, play your real trance thing, but so well 
>that
> people can understand and follow it, even if they are not in a room with
> you!
> or accept that it only works live
> or only with a few friends
> or only by yourself
> BUT: enjoy that it DOES work, its an amazing gift to be able to produce 
>your
> own trance !!
>
> (I am using "trance" in a more open way, following http://trance.org)
>
-- 
Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a
form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.

- Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

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