Learning to Listen

The Moog Forum Moog Music General Topics Forum
1

With complex sequencers controlling complex sample based keyboards with mega supplies of cliched samples as to appeal to the unwashed masses of pop bands trying to sell vanilla records, I find the Moog Voyager and Moogerfoogers really really refreshing. I can’t tell you how many times I have done something with them and said: “Wow, thats interesting”. That does not happen with my digital synth. Now don’t get me wrong, I like my digital synth and its large collection of samples which have their use, but I never hear something that I did not expect. With a Voyager, Moogerfoogers and an MP 201, I become a mad musical scientist with labratory.

I think what Moog products are teaching me is what I long for. I am a huge fan of the early composers of electronic music. I frankly find most music I hear today crap. I have loads of Tangerine Dream, Klaus Shultz and early Floyd CDs as well as the early electronic composers like Karlheintz Stockhausen and also the latter Morton Subotnick. What I hear in this music is the ability of these musicans to listen as well as play music. Sound is an incredible thing but if it becomes cliched as I fear it has in a lot of music today, then people stop listening. They stop hearing the beauty of the suble use of synthesizers.

Synthesizers were designed in the early days of Bob Moog and others to open up sonic worlds but the advent of the sampler has closed this off. I try to avoid being critical of hip hop because I know it is loved by so many people but frankly, its all based on a cliched set of sounds. Its started off being promising but now, the commericalization of it and the collection of samples handcuff the artist who seems to want to be handcuffed to cliched old samples.

I hope Moog Music keeps doing well and people learn to create music again and really really listen. Not just trying to copy that latest dance or hip hop sound but start by taking some joy in romancing a sythesized sound so that it reveals a hidden beauty. Such magic can’t be sampled (well, it can, but once it is it loses the mystery at least if its mass marketed in sample based keyboards).

Sorry to offend the vast sea of pop music but this is how I feel take it or leave it.

2

I feel the same way!
Try to get hold on some albums from Cluster and Harmonia, they really opened my ears with their albums. It totally changed the way I experience and produce music and I’m glad I’m not the only one feeling this way.

3

Lux,
I think part of what you are feeling is the interface. I don’t know about you but before I bought Moog stuff, I didn’t patch cords into ANYTHING. Really, the RINGMOD was only the second effect I ever purchased (behind the bassballs). I think this approach is what makes synthesis seem so much like were Dr Frankenstein.

I would slit my wrists before I would place any kind of faith in the Clearchannel radio stations to play anything worthwhile. I have seen time and time again so many genres and trends turn to crap because they were corporatized. I equate this to the time when “Alternative” music because a selection on the Columbia House cd list. That in itself is the epitome of corporate radio.

But you know, lets think back a bit. I thinkits always been this way. For example, old black guys were doing their thing on specific “colored” record labels. Elvis comes along and the only way he would get any air play is to make sure he wasn’t on a “colored” label because he was only doing what those old black blues pioneers were doing. Talk about vanilla records…

Then if you look to the Jazz era (and I consider myself to be a Jazz connisseur), you think about people like Gillespie and Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk, were doing their things and it was all Benny Goodman on the radio. Jazz was the pop music of the 40’s until the Beatles came along. Then, not to disrespect the Beatles because I love them SOOO much, but their early music was really simple compared to the Music Theory dominated Jazz Progressions. About the only things happeing in the Beatles Music was transitioning from major to minor (Lets not debate about the merits of the Beatles, I love them greatly but this is making a different point). As Rock and Roll became popular, three and 4 chord music began diminating the charts, and the only Great Jazz to beat any of those Beatles chart records was Satchmo with Hello Dolly, and that was the last time that a Jazz song got number 1. From the Jazz perspective, that is when music started going to crap.

Now the Synths started getting big (no pun intended). I started a thread awhile back about the Age of Modular Synthesis. Basically I think we are in a new Rennassance. If you think about the Music Concrete that was happening when the experimental tape based electronica was coming out, the Synthesizer came along and made it easier to make “Bleeps and Bloops”. This is what people wanted to do with their experiments. Then Bob made the Oscillators more stable after Switched on Bach let us know that the Synth was a real instrument and not just a noisemaker. Then the Synth got to its biggest manifestation and by the time the Mini was released it was time to make real pitch and tone based music again, and the genres followed suit with this technology.

Now in the present, we have more companies than ever before making modulars and they are as cheap as they have ever been, but a growing number of people are using Euroracks and returning to the bleeps and bloops of experimental music. There are people who specialize in Noize. I equate this to Abstract Expressionism. Jackson Pollock on a synth. People are doing this and it is respected in these circles. Synthesizers don’t even have to have oscillators and filters anymore. In fact, massive eurorack synths without Oscillators and Filters are very commonplace, because tones are generated in otherways, randomized, modulated and output like chaos. Hi fidelity noize.

Personally, I can only tolerate that style in low doses. I still work in a linear fashion, with pitches and things (call me old fashioned). But when you start getting on samples and things like that and Hip Hop, thats a whole different ballgame that I believe is analogous to synthesis.

I had a guy that I worked with, another Jazz enthusiest, I was telling him that I was going to buy a trumpet and he asked me why. I told him that I was totally against samples, and if I wanted a trumpet part, I wanted to be able to lay one down (not that I can actually play a trumpet well, in fact, mine needs to be repaired). He said “If it works, it works.” I adopted that almost immediately. Ive always had access to synth strings on the roland keyboards and they sound really fantastic. The sounds on the Fantom G8 are even better. My partner Gabe used the Quantum Leap orchestra program to put in cellos and trumpet fills, and Ill suppliment those with the ROland strings, and some of our stuff you can’t tell the sampled real ones from the synth strings. This is better than buying cellos and french horns and overdubbing nightmares. But I can agree that some of the crap that is top 40 hip hop is indeed crap. But some of the underground NY hip hop is fantastic. The stuff that these guys are doing with the new digital turntables is great. Mixing Robert Johnson with a hip hop beat and other overtones is really synthesis with a different definition.

If you think about it, with only what, 13 or 14 notes in the western scale, where is there any room for originality? A lot of people say that what the hip hop guys are doing isn’t original, but if you think about it, it sort of is. If the classical musicians hadn’t done what they have done, they mixed their instruments in certian ways, we do the same, our music woudn’t be what it is today. Also, you have to give props to hip hop artists like Dre and Snoop because they heavily sampled P Funk and those lines are heavily laden with synth. Fred Wreck (on the Moog artist page) has in his arsenal, MiniMoog D, Voyager, Rhodes, the same stuff we have. Even the Voyager has a “Compton Lead” that is a great Ode to hip hop for keeping the synth alive.

But, on the other hand, the more and more that people are using Bleeps and Bloops, the more cliche that becomes. Look at that synth documentary. People were pushing the envelope with synths, and then it got commercialized and the Human League themselves were saying that it was totally UN PUNK what the top 40 synthpop was doing…a far venture away from what using synths was all about, because that stemmed from punk.

Interesting philosophical discusion.

Eric

4

Interesting part about the high fidelity noise, Eric. I guess anyone can make noise with a modular but turning that noise into something created directly from the heart is what music is all about.

5

Now in the present, we have more companies than ever before making modulars and they are as cheap as they have ever been, but a growing number of people are using Euroracks and returning to the bleeps and bloops of experimental music. There are people who specialize in Noize. I equate this to Abstract Expressionism. Jackson Pollock on a synth. People are doing this and it is respected in these circles. Synthesizers don’t even have to have oscillators and filters anymore. In fact, massive eurorack synths without Oscillators and Filters are very commonplace, because tones are generated in otherways, randomized, modulated and output like chaos. Hi fidelity noize.

How big are these “circles,” and does anyone outside of them care? It’s similar to the avant-garde in the art world…if your art is as inscrutable as everyone else’s, and inscrutability is one of its defining characteristics, what determines whether it will be “shown” other than your power w/in the “circle”? Not a healthy situation, IMO.

6

“This guy’s beeps are pretty good…but this guy…this guy’s beeps are REALLY good. He has definitely progressed to heretofore untrammeled territory in making beeps.”

7

Like I said, Im not poo-pooing Noize. I don’t have anything bad to say about anyone who does what they enjoy, so please don’t take it like I have frowned upon “bleeps and Bloops”, thats definately not my intention.

“This guy’s beeps are pretty good…but this guy…this guy’s beeps are REALLY good. He has definitely progressed to heretofore untrammeled territory in making beeps.”

This is part of the critique that Pollack received. Its sort of like people thinking that abstract artists like him couldn’t paint regular pictures because they weren’t good enough.

I don’t know how big the circles are, but on my forays to forums and conversations with people from different regions, this appears to be a legit movement.

8

This is part of the critique that Pollack received. Its sort of like people thinking that abstract artists like him couldn’t paint regular pictures because they weren’t good enough.

Well, that’s not quite what I’m saying. Keep in mind I’ve got a giant Pollack print in my living room. The critique of “my grandkid could paint better than that” is a little off, in my opinion. Again, it’s that the contemporary art world becomes more about special pleading than the work itself – ie, the critical interpretation of the work is nearly as important as the work. You could argue that it’s even more important. And these critical interpretations are frequently vaporous. So how do you, as the artist, get them? Not necessarily through talent, but the skills by which you situate yourself within the “scene.”

It’s the same with postmodernist literature. A friend of mine went to a MOCA reading over the weekend. The work is all highly abstract, self-referential, stream of consciousness, anti-grammatical, “non-linear,” etc. etc. In a literary “scene” or “circle” in which this is “cool,” who and what establishes the standards of quality, and who grants exposure?

I love beeps too, but the aesthetic “frisson” is communcated pretty rapidly when that’s all the experience consists of. You get the idea after a few minutes – same with most avant-garde or experimentalist literary techniques. I suppose you could argue that you need extended exposure to such techniques for the “transformational” effect to really take hold. But the same argument applies: how many revolutionary aesthetic transformations do you need to experience?

I love Alban Berg’s “Wozzeck,” and once did a lot of research into the various musical forms Berg worked in there. It’s quite astounding. But the critical appreciation is, I think, different from the aesthetic appreciation of it. It’s not supposed to be, of course, but I find that a little dishonest.

Here’s composer Ned Rorum on the Beatles, somewhat germaine to this discussion:

http://www.beatlemail.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-32203.html

"I never go to classical concerts any more and I don’t know anyone who does. It’s hard still to care whether some virtuoso tonight will perform the Moonlight Sonata a bit better or a bit worse than another virtuoso performed it last night. But I do often attend what used to be called avant-garde recitals, though seldom with delight, and inevitably I look around and wonder: what am I doing here? Where are the poets and painters and even the composers themselves who used to flock to these things? Well, perhaps what I am doing here is a duty, keeping an ear on my profession so as to justify the joys of resentment, to steal an idea or two, or just to show charity toward some friend on the program. But I learn less and less. Meanwhile the absent artists are at home playing records; they are reacting again, finally, to something they no longer find at concerts.

“Reacting to what? Why, to the Beatles, of course, whose arrival I believe is one of the most healthy events in music since 1950. What occurred around 1950 will be the starting concern of this brief essay, an essay with a primarily musical approach. Most of the literary copy devoted to the Beatles extols the timely daring of the group’s lyrics while skirting the essential quality, the music. Poetry may be the egg from which the nightingale is hatched, though in the last analysis that nightingale must come first.”

9

Rorem: “The music that I and my colleagues write is not even despised because we do not exist in the ken of those educated people much less with the masses.”

http://www.axiongrafix.com/rorem.html

Oy.

10

But the same argument applies: how many revolutionary aesthetic transformations do you need to experience?

Don’t know, but I haven’t had nearly enough.

If you don’t feel the same way, then you’re really not interested in art as a means of intellectual/spiritual/emotional challenge. You’re simply interested in being entertained, which is what pop music or prog wankery is for.

Keep in mind that all of the criticisms that you’ve posited about avant-garde “circles” could be applied to pop or any other genre. The only difference is the circles vary in circumference.

11

I guess I would not try to force my music or any other music into any particular genre. I suppose that would narrow the circle but that is fine with me. If that makes me avant guarde then thats ok with me.

If you consider Bach. Bach was rather unpopular in his time and his brothers were much more popular. Now, most people don’t even know that he has brothers.

All forms of music can be creative including hip hop but I find that most want to copy and most people want to hear copies. Consider cover bands, the whole idea is to copy. Even synthesizers themselves are full of cliched samples that the music industry knows that people want to hear so that record companies can push their artists to keep cranking out the same stuff as long as it makes money.

Your average hip hop keyboard player is going to go to a music store and buy a keyboard based on the sound of the samples. Rarely, will he/she spend a lot of time programming it.

Entire genres of music become defined by samples. Most rhythmic structrures as well are pretty well defined by the genre.

Most musical innovation comes from those who push the envelope and yes, that means being part of a narrow circle but I don’t find that unhealthy. With the advent of internet music sales and the ability to sell MP3s on line, the world must got smaller and the circles much less distinct. I have both Tara Busch’s “Pilfershire Lane” and Adriane Lake’s Morning Glow. Neiither of these albums fit into a neat little category although I suppose some have labeled them with one. I got to know about them from taking to people on boards like this. I saw Tara in some Moog demos but not Adriane. I support artists like this because they are creative and frankly, I don’t judge there music by how many people listen to it.

On the classical side I listen to Gyrorgy Ligeti and Kristoff Penderecki as well as many others. These are not well know composers but there music has lasted a lot longer than I think Beyonce’s will for example. The Beatles music lasted because they Beatles were good songwritters, very good. You can here Legeti’s music in 2001 along with Johann Strauss who was a dance music king in his time. You can’t dance to Ligeti but then I guess you can’t have everything can you.

I listen to all types of music. I have seen to Pink Floyd in Yankee Stadium and the New York Synphony Orchesta in Lincoln Center. I have listened to jazz in a bar in Newark with only a few people there to listen and great music. So I guess I don’t care how small the circle is or what kind of clothing epople are wearing.

All musical innovation is by viritue of being innovative, going to have a small circle of listeners. I don’t find this unhealthy at all, its how music progresses. You can always make a meal of a whopper and fries but sometimes, its nice to try something more exotic. Chinese is good but I find Thai better.

As for my music, if the circle is narrow its ok with me. If I were back in Bach’s time I would be in good company.

12

Lets just say that the layman can look at a Pollack painting and easily dismiss it. This happened quite often. A lot of people who aren’t educated on such technique, such as that that results in bleeps and bloops will dismiss it as bleeps and bloops. In essence, abstract art isn’t for everyone.
I JUST finished a semester of Art Appreciation run by a freaking redneck moron. He even made the comment that despite what people thought, people that worked in that abstract genre didn’t do so because they couldn’t paint normal pictures. This might not necessarily be the case for everyone who makes “Bleeps and bloops”, or for every painter who paints in abstractions.

Also, one of the things that pissed me off about this teacher is that he spoke about the artists description of the work. "Anyone can be an artist, as long as you can do some shuckn’ and some jivin’. This reminded me of another rednect guitar teacher who said “The key to a good guitar solo is a bendin’ and a stretchin’”. Im gagging as I type these lines.

While I as an artist often interrupt my friends listning to my music to give the realtime artist commentary (if they want it or not, though they are always polite) I believe that a work of art stands on its own merit without such commentary and I don’t believe that it is as important as the work itself. Some artists include things in their art that is a secret to everyone but them and keep it that way. I think that to say that the shuckin and jivin is an important part of the piece is missing the point. That is the commentary that you are supposed to read long after you view the painting on your own.
If I just put a monotonic squarewave and tried to pass it off as minimalist, I woudl probably be shunned. :laughing:

Also you mentioned how an artist saturates themselves within a circle. This reminded me of people in high school who were poets and wannabe hippies (yet they were rich,popular, wore designer clothes and used soap) and who were too cool and aloof to be approached. Douchebags. (I think i just sneezed) Art scenes are definately just as political as everything else. If one saturates themselves in a circle all day long and their work is really crap, then why lend so much credit to circles anyway.


I went to a poetry slam once. Now I have stated before that I never like to compete with art, but I got up there and read a poem. It was a populatiry contest, the winner of which did a very animated sermon about frog lickin’. Jeez I gotta get out of Arkansas.

13

Lets just say that the layman can look at a Pollack painting and easily dismiss it. This happened quite often. A lot of people who aren’t educated on such technique, such as that that results in bleeps and bloops will dismiss it as bleeps and bloops. In essence, abstract art isn’t for everyone.
I JUST finished a semester of Art Appreciation run by a freaking redneck moron. He even made the comment that despite what people thought, people that worked in that abstract genre didn’t do so because they couldn’t paint normal pictures. This might not necessarily be the case for everyone who makes “Bleeps and bloops”, or for every painter who paints in abstractions.

The frequent criticism of Picasso, who might be a better case to talk about than Pollack. Picasso could do a hell of an oil painting by the time he was twelve, in the classical style, which made for an easy answer to the people saying “my grandkid could draw better than that.” And of course, art isn’t just a question of technique, but the ability to see. I guess one could say there is an imbalance in the current environment.

But considering Pollack, what makes him a greater artist than the ten thousand other people doing “action paintings” at the time? What is your answer?

14

False dichotomy. “Real” art isn’t “entertaining”? Intellectual/spiritual/emotional challenges are the essence of “entertainment.”

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If I just put a monotonic squarewave and tried to pass it off as minimalist, I woudl probably be shunned.

Because you don’t have sufficient “pull” to be taken seriously for doing such a thing. I bet someone could pull it off. I once knew this guy who would do living art exhibits that included things like being strapped to the top of a Volkswagon and driven to Vegas that way.

16

Now you got a point there. That sounds like Pop Art.

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Or “found art.” And I really like some “found art,” and have engaged in that type of activity myself. But like I said, it’s as much about the philosophical/critical interpretation as the art itself, and if that’s the case, what makes one “artist” better than another?

I’m not saying this just to be dismissive, by the way; I think it’s an interesting discussion.

18

ehm..during his lifespan bach worked as concertmaster at the court of weimar, kappelmeister at the court of coethen and kappelmeister in leipzig for 27 years, which means he was the most important musician in towns he lived in throughout his whole lifespan. he was also considered one of the greatest organ virtuosi of his times, throughout europe. but yet his peek in terms of public consideration reached its top in 19th century. then he had no musician brothers, but there were some talented musicians among the 20 children he did.

19

Well, I stand corrected on the details but I believe the crux of my arguement remains true.

I have little doubt that art, be it music or paintings or whatever artistic endeavor you can find, has some degree of influence of society which has nothing to do with how good a particular work of music or artist is. However, music and art of every age is culturally conditioned.

Certainly the musical avant guarde and many movements such as poetry which has been mentioned in an earlier post of this threat do sometimes make people provide positive lip service to a work that might not be that great. I guess the guestion is are those who promote a certain artist doing to because they really see something in the artists work or do they just say so because they are around a particular group of people (or circle if you will) that thinks that art is good. The answer to that question is really hidden in each individual that listens to the music but I have no doubt that some music is really not that good but it gets promoted because a group of individuals that think they are musically elite think its good (or perhaps just want to say so to be elite).

A good example is serialism. Now I don’t like most serial music. I do like some atonal music like Ligeti. I also like Olivier Messiaian but neither were part of that school completly. Messian made his own modes but he did not feel constrained by them. I have even at time experimented with certain modes to get a certain color to an improvised work. I guess the quesion becomes what is driving the appreiction of music, the circle of people who attest to a certain school, or something truely desirable? And of course, the answer to that is with the listener as well so there is no absolute answer here.

Another example from pop music is Lady Gaga who has rose to stardum very quickly. Now I must admit that there is a certain catchy quality to some of her music but much of her popularity is due to the her sytle, her uniqueness and her videos. Where does the music end and the pop glamor even advertising begin? No easy answer but one must clearly admit that there is a certain blurring of lines.

Despite what I have said, I even find Snoop Dogg amusing but I guess I would ask this question: “What music do I listen to that makes me a better musican or composer?” I am never going to really learn much from Snoop or Lady Gaga that I would use. However, I can draw some things from Ligeti, Messian or Pendrecki and even Pink Flloyd, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultz. All of these artists have been an influence on me and I would have to believe that there is something in the quality of what they do that draws me to them . I don’t use them as models because they are of a particular genre but for the quality of their music.

I think somewhere in there is the answer. It’s hard to separate hype and musical circles (i.e. clicks) from the art but I think its possible to some extent. So I try to learn what I can from what I think is good music regardless of how many people like it or not.

20

Despite what I have said, I even find Snoop Dogg amusing but I guess I would ask this question: “What music do I listen to that makes me a better musican or composer?” I am never going to really learn much from Snoop or Lady Gaga that I would use. However, I can draw some things from Ligeti, Messian or Pendrecki and even Pink Flloyd, Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schultz. All of these artists have been an influence on me and I would have to believe that there is something in the quality of what they do that draws me to them . I don’t use them as models because they are of a particular genre but for the quality of their music.

Consider this, (Back to the subject of interfacing)
I believe that anything that you can take in with your senses can be called your personal experience. Every breath you take, every molecule of air, whether hot or moist, whether dry or polluted; every bite of food you injest, every movement that you make (Ill be watching you…just kidding, Sting) is directly translated to chemical processes that affect your brain and body chemistry, your cellular metabolism. Our mind is the interface with which we experience the universe.

In philosophy, we try to define beauty. What is beauty? Well generally beauty is something that invokes an emotional response. Scientific studies of brainwaves show that when we watch fireworks our brain waves increase. Much like the the delight one might get when we see lightning. This type of experience invokes an emotional and likely a chemical response. When we see a waterfall we might feel relaxed or tempted to jump in and get swept away.

As an artist I do not see any seperation between what goes into our art and what goes through our mental interface. There have been times where I have felt absolutely nothing, but while noodling at an instrument, or with pen I get an idea that seems to come from nowhere. It just manifests. Some people explain this as God writing their songs or Tori Amos describes this creative process as being given to her by faries. Some people think they are merely the vessel through which these songs filter through. For me when I listen to a song, i hear things in my head, like when the fillings in our teeth pick up radio signals. I listen for the music to tell me what parts need to be put in the right place, and I try with my equipment to make that happen. If it is a guitar and I play a certian chord progression it is simply blissful.

I think about where that comes from. I didn’t sit down and say “Minor Chord goes here” I just hit that series of notes. But I wonder what inspired that minor chord.

THen I begin to think about how things affect me. How I am compassionate to the plight of my fellow man. I think about events like Hurricane Katrina or 9/11. I think about the last conversation that I had with my grandfather. I think about the day I met my wife or the times we went to New York on vacation. Or the time I saw Saturn with my own telescope in the backyard. These things all invoke emotional responces.

Our creation, I believe comes from our emotional responces to life. Now I guess I went a really long winded way to say that maybe you dismiss Snoop as being a sellout washed up gangster rapper who partook in the ripping off of many a P Funk riff. Subconsciously you picked up something from him. He might have had a rhythm to his words that you thought was interesting. There might have been a melodic line that you appreciated. He amused you. In some form he solicited a responce from you neurologically and somewhere down the line you might have made a rhythm or a melody that was affected by that moment in time. You might have been chastized by your boss, and later on down the line played a flatted fifth or something.


Everything that an artist interfaces from the universe goes directly into their creation. We might want to attribute that to the people we really admire, but in the end I believe that your creations come from the very essence of everything you experience. Positive and negative and neutral, all of everything and a little practice makes you a better composer.

Eric