That’s why art is so valuable to us (and music especially is a sensitive social litmus paper).
IMO ‘technical’ is the minor of all four.
Thanks Jacco.
www.urbandictionary.com is often of great help to me.
George
accessible music
I consider jazz a music mostly for performers, with the listeners hearing as if they might be performing. The bandwidth (as it were) of one's perceptual capabilities is necessarily high. So it is quite possible for some music to seem inaccessible at first.
The serialists like Boulez continue to suppose that, given enough time and exposure, people will come to appreciate serial music. Babbitt wrote a notorious essay to the effect that one might never expect people to "get" his music, and that it was o.k. I look at that variety of atonality as something of a dead end, with scattered greatness that does reward repeated listening --- the Berg violin concerto comes to mind.
When I had, in my teens, ambitions of being a composer, I was divided between serial techniques and jazz. With the former, the funny thing was a sort of learning aurally about common-practice Western harmony and counterpoint "in relief", that is, things that would pop out of certain decisions based on a given row etc. that had to be excised because they sounded like a cadence! The jazz was more honest and straightforward at least.
I haven't given up on writing music, but one must make a living. I think a promising avenue for new music that retains tonality is writing music in just intonation, and the tools for enhancing instruments, that are normally very limited trying to do such music with any substantial amount of modulation, are now available.
I consider jazz a music mostly for performers, with the listeners hearing as if they might be performing. The bandwidth (as it were) of one's perceptual capabilities is necessarily high. So it is quite possible for some music to seem inaccessible at first.
The serialists like Boulez continue to suppose that, given enough time and exposure, people will come to appreciate serial music. Babbitt wrote a notorious essay to the effect that one might never expect people to "get" his music, and that it was o.k. I look at that variety of atonality as something of a dead end, with scattered greatness that does reward repeated listening --- the Berg violin concerto comes to mind.
When I had, in my teens, ambitions of being a composer, I was divided between serial techniques and jazz. With the former, the funny thing was a sort of learning aurally about common-practice Western harmony and counterpoint "in relief", that is, things that would pop out of certain decisions based on a given row etc. that had to be excised because they sounded like a cadence! The jazz was more honest and straightforward at least.
I haven't given up on writing music, but one must make a living. I think a promising avenue for new music that retains tonality is writing music in just intonation, and the tools for enhancing instruments, that are normally very limited trying to do such music with any substantial amount of modulation, are now available.
Unfortunately Scott keeps coming up with links that on first listen sound like noise but become very listenable once you accept the challenge. And this sends me off on discovery.
For example https://soundcloud.com/egyptrixx Challenging yet enjoyable.
Mind you having listened to Max Richters sleep live concert saturday night sunday morning (well slept throught it) i bought the album.
On previous episodes, I've noticed that the likelyhood of a response is increased when I slip-up* and write ' instead of ''
2nd rule of fc, provocation.
(MD is one of my enlightened heroes)
(*oddly, when I do it deliberately, zilch. white brightness of plasma tv's is ~1000cd/m2. Late models do 5-10lm/W, napkin quicky makes 1500-3000lm for a 300W 42'', 1-2 times a 100W light bulb)
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Oh, I'm so sorry for you !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ui21On1RWjA
The prefered guitar of a guitarist is made half of wood and half with his soul, year after year. We should bury the guitarists with their favorite instrument.
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Bill.
I guess I'd have to call that avant-garde, it is hard to classify it as anything else. Synth music and some of the Dance music tracks are just so repetitive and just seem to carry some kind of a rhythm but soon bore the H*ll out of me. It just seems some create sounds that don't exist in nature or on a musical instrument and string those sounds together, I have a hard time with that type of sound.
Scott has a way of stretching us all, in electronics or whatever subject he brings up. A very open mind with an eclectic way of looking at the world.
I guess I'd have to call that avant-garde, it is hard to classify it as anything else. Synth music and some of the Dance music tracks are just so repetitive and just seem to carry some kind of a rhythm but soon bore the H*ll out of me. It just seems some create sounds that don't exist in nature or on a musical instrument and string those sounds together, I have a hard time with that type of sound.
Scott has a way of stretching us all, in electronics or whatever subject he brings up. A very open mind with an eclectic way of looking at the world.
As a cultural pessimist, I have always found Philip Glass half empty.
The same now with Egyptrixx after listening to them for the first time. They do a commendable imitation of a didjeridoo, but without the depth and variation that can can be wrought from that ancient instrument.
The same now with Egyptrixx after listening to them for the first time. They do a commendable imitation of a didjeridoo, but without the depth and variation that can can be wrought from that ancient instrument.
Some Glass I love, some is Meh. World would be a musically poorer place had be not been a composer.
What is interesting is where each of our limits are. When is music pleasing, and when it is just monotonous?
BTW if you can get in in your locale BBC Radio 3 - Schedules, 21 - 27 September 2015 the why music days last weekend are very interesting. I had not realised how widely music was used for torture for example.
What is interesting is where each of our limits are. When is music pleasing, and when it is just monotonous?
BTW if you can get in in your locale BBC Radio 3 - Schedules, 21 - 27 September 2015 the why music days last weekend are very interesting. I had not realised how widely music was used for torture for example.
I've been tempted at times to say that NYC lost a good cab driver when Glass went full-time as a composer. But reading a lengthy review in TLS of a new book about him has made me a little more sympathetic of his situation.
Minimalism is an even shorter trip to another dead end as far as I'm concerned.
Have you seen the cartoon Prisoner of Pachelbel? It may exist somewhere on the web. A man is sitting in a cell with bleary eyes as the large corner speaker blares "And now once again for your listening pleasure, Pachelbel's Canon in D".
"Comments are disabled for this video". Hmmm.
I rather like Peter Schickele's Einstein on the Fritz.
That would definitely take some mind altering compounds to sit through the entire performance!
Music is one of the only way I know for humans to share feelings and emotions without any intervention of understanding or intelligence.
The strings of our souls vibrate, or not, in harmony with the ones of the musician(s).
I'm born with a pianist mother, feed with milk, Chopin and Bach.
Music is like the air I breathe.
The day I will make an effort to "Understand" any music, I believe I'll die of suffocation.
Of course, with age and culture, we tend to be more sensitive to more subtle things, groove, more complex harmonies... and less to primitive or "easy" emotions. We just have to let-us fall in love with the beauty we can perceive at a given moment and don't lie to ourselves about our own and unique feelings.
The strings of our souls vibrate, or not, in harmony with the ones of the musician(s).
I'm born with a pianist mother, feed with milk, Chopin and Bach.
Music is like the air I breathe.
The day I will make an effort to "Understand" any music, I believe I'll die of suffocation.
Of course, with age and culture, we tend to be more sensitive to more subtle things, groove, more complex harmonies... and less to primitive or "easy" emotions. We just have to let-us fall in love with the beauty we can perceive at a given moment and don't lie to ourselves about our own and unique feelings.
Preference of string gauges being heavier for Gibson players is variable just as any other; hard to call that a fact, maybe supposition is better - unless you sell a lot of guitar strings? Humbuckers have more inductance and so provide more low-end response and less top-end response than single-coils, but that's not because of the strings. The brighter/heavier sound difference is more due to pickup configuration which dominates the difference between string gauges. If anything, players with longer scale length guitars tend to prefer lighter strings because they are easier to play. Same strings on a Gibson feel like tiny little rubber bands and can be bent further. Me, I like some fight in 'em. Make me work for it! I play the same gauge on 25-1/2" Strats, 25" PRS, and 24-3/4" LP. They all feel different, strings bend differently. They're supposed to. That's one reason Jimi kept playing upside-down right-handed Strats even after he could afford lefties; the distance between nut and tuner for the High E and B is much shorter, which affects how the tension changes with string bending, and he liked it that way.
Neck width on a 335 varies depending on production year (sometimes day!), and the 70's especially were pretty inconsistent (when Norlin owned Gibson), but the narrow years were usually 1-9/16" and wider years 1-11/16" at the nut - the earliest Fenders were right in the middle at 1-5/8" typical, and generally 1-11/16" these days. At the bridge, both vintage Fenders and Gibsons were typically at 2-1/16" string spacing, but modern Fenders increased that to 2-7/32". Gibson necks tend to have binding at the edges, but the effective width is, if anything, tending to be smaller than a Fender's. But there's a LOT of variation - I had two LPs which were made two years apart, and they were the largest and smallest necks on any electric guitars I've played. Couldn't play the big one, sold it to a guy with big hands, the other is my favorite guitar ever... Both were Norlin-era Gibsons. These days CNC has dramatically reduced the variation for all manufacturers.
As for frets... I typed out several hundred words here, and wiped them because I'm already too wordy on an OT tangent. Let's just say that fret height and width is an awful lot about taste and preference, and that all else being equal taller frets require less effort than shorter ones. I won't talk about differences in the sound 🙂
I've had similar conversations with a violinist/fiddler I recorded a few times, not about which violin was his favorite but about which bow. It's amazing what differences matter when using an instrument vs. listening to it.
Language barrier mis-understanding.
(on a cultural level it's divided we stand, united we fall, imo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO2l1JXS7HE
Steven you do touch on something there that I think is often characteristic of minimalism. The repetitions are hypnotic, and some of the pretty decent pieces have the potential of inducing a sort of trance state. The Steve Reich piece Come Out, in which we hear cumulative effects of looped tape recording and playback, and Terry Riley's In C, are examples that spring to mind.
But having said that, the stuff has been done. As they say, Been there, Done that, Got the T-Shirt. For me at least, like the woman who tells the rabbi she's leaving Hymie after fifty years of marriage, Enough is Enough.
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