Describing your music to coworkers/family/nonEAI friends

[horaflora]

Something I get curious about, and meant to post long ago.

My day job is at a higher end northern Italian restaurant and wine bar... I have a show tonight, and was cordially inviting them, but, without getting into the meat of it all, had trouble describing quite what I do, and what to expect at the show...

At a previous job as a Batista in a Hilton, the closest anyone got to understanding what I do was a girl who was familiar with nine inch nails(!)
Not quite there!

I usually describe my basic actions to them and sorta act it out, but this gets tiring!

My family finally came to see me play, so now I just havevto fend off their insistance that I go out for the blue man group or stomp!

...some people at work know what I mean by "noise", which portrays plenty, but for every one of them, there's 12 who think I must be a dj, or try to argue that something cannot simultaneously be electric and acoustic! I love that conversation....

Ok!

[Richard Pinnell]

I had an interesting experience along these lines a week or so ago. There is a young pakistani guy working in the same building that I am currently in. He is a student that has come over to study at Oxford University, has only been in the UK for a few weeks, and has got a part-time job with my company to bring in extra funds. He's a very bright guy and is essentially soaking up Western culture as fast as he can, but he also mentioned that his favourite Western musician so far was Justin Timberlake...

We get on very well and he took a real interest in my musical tastes when I mentioned them, so I gave him a copy of the recent Cathnor CD by DurrantPatterson/Vogel to see what he made of it. He came back the next day and said that it sounded "just like all of the other noises already in his room" and that "when he turned off the CD player he went on listening"

Although I had tried to describe the music for him in our chats beforehand I hadn't really mentioned anything like this to him and was really pleased by what he said. Made my day that did.

[jon abbey]

I usually go with something like "the musical equivalent of abstract art, like Jackson Pollock", most people I talk to seem to know him. I did get some hilarious feedback from my UPS delivery guy after giving him a couple of Ersts (the most 'accessible' ones), I don't think he's ever looked at me quite the same again.

[MRS]

I'm no better or worse than my aunt who likes Dan Fogelberg or a coworker that has a Dave Matthews too on his calf, but bringing a very old friend who coincidentally then lived in Cobble Hill to that Jerman/Davis show (turns out my friend lived next door to Davis in the dorms at DePaul in the mid 90s) was one of the funniest things I've ever seen. 20% distatse, 80% I don't understand what's remotely going on right now. Again, I'm not boasting because I sometimes enjoy somewhat edgy shit, but glee gleaned purely out of his incredulous reaction, a countenance like you've been told you're a father by two different women on the same day. A couple years afterward at a quasi-old gang reunion this came up and was the hit of the party, he took rocks from a bamboo plant pot atop the crapper and started rubbing them together hysterically laughing in front of maybe twenty people. Hey that was the same show Jerman pulled out the Mick Dundee animal alert signal he used in CD deux when the diabolical Luis Rico and crew chased him all the way to Walkabout Creek.

[Chromosome]

I usually go with something like "the musical equivalent of abstract art, like Jackson Pollock", most people I talk to seem to know him.

Earlier today my mother said that thinking about this music as being aurally similar in concept to Abstract Expressionism helped her to understand it. She knows there's still quite a difference, but that was enough for her.

[mono tony]

i played the first few minutes of duos for doris for my ten-year old cousin, one christmas morning, a few years ago. This was on their brand-new, xbox 360 and HD surround system. my cousin remarked "there's NOTHING happening!"

[Vincent Kargatis]

My son, 3 yrs old at the time, labeled it, when iirc Rowe/Nakamura was on, "elevator music", since it sounded a bit like elevators (of which he's a huge fan). I thought that was hilarious, and as apt as any description. Ever since then, I've used it as such with him consistently, presumably planting an amusing semantic time bomb for later when he runs into the more common usage of that phrase.

[Dan Warburton]

the closest anyone got to understanding what I do was a girl who was familiar with nine inch nails(!)

How did she manage to work without breaking them?

[Alastair]

I'm no better or worse than (...) a coworker that has a Dave Matthews too on his calf

Oh, I think you are.

[aldo]

I don't know what to answer, in my surrounding there are many poeple that know what is EAI (or if they don't know I give a name and they say ok). With my family, I don't speak about music.

[p_ano]

"sound art"

[RFKorp]

I've given up describing it. I used to use vague expressions like "experimentally based" and "heavily improvised" and "post-John Cage"

But now I just tell people what instrument I play and let them figure it out. There's a tremendous world of meaning in "I play percussion using small motors and found objects rattling against each other and sometimes amplify the internal noises of my laptop with a set of pickups designed for recording phone calls."

[anasara]

I typically just use the term "experimental" as most people have some sense of what is being implied.

If they're interested further, though generally they're not, I try to elaborate as much as they'd like.

[Stephen]

"I play percussion using small motors and found objects rattling against each other"

That is a whole lot more evocative of what I've heard of your music than any broad genre generalisation could be.

[SOZ]

I just call it experimental music. Usually to simplify things, I'm speaking in very general terms which encompass eai, earlier free improvisation, modern composition, as well as free/avant garde jazz. I have a friend who called it 'eeeeeeeeee' (simulating a Sachiko M-like high pitched sine wave tone)

[vegetable mind]

once i put on Cosmos - !!! when my friend and i were on acid, and he called it "human music" which i found apt at the time

[jkudler]

what anasara said. sometimes, if i say "electronic," people are like, "you mean like aphex twin?", and then maybe i'd say, "well, there aren't really any regular beats; it's more about texture and sounds." never thought about the analogy to visual art - that seems useful.

-jesse

[reed]

Depending on how serious the conversation is it'll range from describing as soberly and matter-of-factly as possible to the self-deprecating and eai-deprecating "weirdo shit".

[mono tony]

Depending on how serious the conversation is it'll range from describing as soberly and matter-of-factly as possible to the self-deprecating and eai-deprecating "weirdo shit".

hah, this is a good approximation of my experience. i share a joke (reduction) term with a friend, we say "weird sounds"

[RFKorp]

Weird dudes jamming synths. Alone. Social Problems. Problems.