On 04/01/2014 11:23 PM, Hartmut Noack wrote:
Am 02.04.2014 10:18, schrieb david:
On 04/01/2014 09:21 PM, Hartmut Noack wrote:
Am 01.04.2014 23:47, schrieb Fons Adriaensen:
On Tue, Apr 01, 2014 at 10:57:44PM +0200, Hartmut Noack wrote:
Am 31.03.2014 23:03, schrieb Len Ovens:
On Mon, 31 Mar 2014, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
Music isn't a competition about smartness.
I think that is what was being said. Music today seems to be no longer
about communicating anything at all... merely soundiing somewhat pleasant,
or showing off some vocal (or other) gymnastics seems to be most of it.
I dont see that. I think, that today music is in the best shape I
experienced since I taped the radio shows in memoriam John Lennon back
in 1981.
There's a daily program on RAI radio 3 (the cultural channel here
in Italy) called 'alza il volume' or in plain English 'pump up the
volume'. It keeps a look on the 'non mainstream' music scene. Much
of what it outputs is just entertaining and at times plainly boring,
but every now and then there will be some real gems. And most of
those gems are very probably produced using software such as Bitwig,
I think, where the attitude of a musician reaches the point of "I know,
what to do and I will do it just right." the choice to tools becomes
liquid again: there are some great recodings today that are made on
antique 4-Track tapes, Portishead use a hardware HD-recorder from the
90ies, most will use Pro Tools though...
and would not exists without it. So in that sense you are certainly
right, this *is* an interesting time for music production, at no
time before there was such a range of tools available as we have
today. But at the same time there's an incredible number of people
who are using these tools but absolutely fail to produce anything
that stands out, to put it mildly.
If music is about 'communicating' anything, it should probably
(IMHO) first communicate itself.
Absolutely! I want to hear music, that speaks for itself, before I
accept thoughts and feelings transported by it. Anyway it is all about
individuality plus love for music, both combined will almost
automatically reject any boring standardisation and enable the artist to
produce something worth listening to with *any* tool that offers the
needed flexibility to fit the vision.
There's nothing more boring
than an artist trying to communicate his or her very personal
feelings, be they sorrow or anger. The very least you need is
a wider context that is relevant to others, and the music (or
any form of art) that will most strongly communicate anything
but itself will be the one that in which the creator himself
disappears completely.
Rock/Pop music is performance art, the "Rockstar" is a role, that is
played by someone, who happens to sing/play at the same time. The result
is not music in the sense of Bach or Mahler but still relevant art if
done right.
But Bach and Mahler and many (if not most) of what we now consider
"classical and/or/great" musicians wrote for the same reason: to write
something that people would pay money for.
No, they wrote the music to become famous enough to get a well-paid job.
Some tunes they where paid for directly but that was: "Oh, I am lucky
enough to have this famous Gustav Mahler being kind enough to write
music for my humble orchestra." And there was no producer, who
controlled and influenced the writing and if the work would not be
asuccess, it may have had impact on the the fame of the composer but not
the payment directly.
Bach wrote some of his now most famous(and influential) works for the
drawer as some kind of theoretical research on contrapunctus etc The art
of the fuge was seldom performed in his day for a small circle,of
specialists.
Another thing: in those days, the composer was usually the conductor, too.
--
David W. Jones
gnome@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
authenticity, honesty, community
http://dancingtreefrog.com
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