Why Improvised Music is so Boring

[negative potential]

when a piece of art, whatever that art is, requires so much explanation and narrowing of its possible meaning or of artist's intention to be properly understood (if such thing is possible) and to show it assumed "worth" (for a lack of a better word), what's exactly the point of it?

Yeah, because "great art" is so self-evident and unnecessary of explanation.

So much mystical bullshit. Go read Terry Eagleton's The Ideology of the Aesthetic, and realize your understanding of "art" is merely a couple of centuries old.

That's fine, I guess, though I for one am happy listening to music that's content to just be music. But why do all these performance pieces, the basic point of which is invariably "music should express ideas," never actually express any ideas besides "music should express ideas"?

I call bullshit. Mattin, for one, expresses plenty of ideas, it's just that whenever he does so, the Middlebrow Brigade at places like IHM get huffy about how shrill, didactic, and polemical it all is, thus confirming once again Dario Fo's observation that anybody who says "don't talk about politics" is really saying "don't bust my balls".

[mudd]

you know i'm already pretty sick of shifting things over to the DLO, try not to be quite so condescending.

m

[Jesse]

Jesus, what a tone.
Hard to fathom you deign to drop by, NP.

[jkudler]

is it really particularly anomalous? in this thread even?

while checking the first page to verify that, i did see this:

The root of this kind of thing seems to be the idea that it's somehow not enough to just make sounds, that it's not enough to just make music, that there has to be some Big Idea.

That's fine, I guess, though I for one am happy listening to music that's content to just be music. But why do all these performance pieces, the basic point of which is invariably "music should express ideas," never actually express any ideas besides "music should express ideas"?

i don't mean to single you out, ed, just that this fairly pithily encapsulates a sentiment that a lot of people seem to share, and which i think describes a categorical mistake. i don't think diego's work implies a rejection of music or a binary of some kind; simply that he personally is interested in music along with text, performance, etc. i could maybe see this applying more to mattin, who tends to make stronger and more provocative general statements (or, alternately, in his tendency to lard recordings of nice music with a lot of extra text). but overall, i don't think this kind of work rejects music qua music anymore than texture-based improv rejects tonality or pitch. which is to say, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, but i don't think it's a true feature, in the way eg schoenberg and the early atonalists "rejected" tonality.

i think it's also worth noting that even music qua music can connote or contain "big ideas," eg:
http://erstwords.blogspot.com/2009/01/el007.html
or http://web.archive.org/web/200001091839 ... /rowe.html

-jesse

[mudd]

yeah, the tone and levels of condescension are pretty far apart actually. i don't have a particular problem with np's arguments, but he if he's not going to be less abrasive about presenting them they are unwelcome.

m

[jkudler]

there's some other rather snotty stuff on this thread, but i just saw, to your credit, that you intervened there too, mark.

[sevenarts]

i don't think diego's work implies a rejection of music or a binary of some kind; simply that he personally is interested in music along with text, performance, etc.

Except that neither of the performances in this thread are, in my opinion anyway, interesting as music/sound. In the first one, the Q&A session even explicitly interrupts the music, which then becomes a background component and little more. There's no need for there to be a binary between music and ideas, of course, but with the performances here and with a lot of the stuff surrounding Mattin in recent years, there's this vibe of "OK, we're going to stop actually making music now so we can talk about it instead." And I say that as a big fan of Mattin when he's not doing things like failing to show up for gigs and calling it art.

Maybe the problem is that it's kind of hard to make statements, really, with sounds alone, which is why we get things like lengthy notes about politics with incidental connections to the music they're supposed to accompany.

[Richard Barrett]

i don't think this kind of work rejects music qua music anymore than texture-based improv rejects tonality or pitch. which is to say, maybe it does and maybe it doesn't, but i don't think it's a true feature, in the way eg schoenberg and the early atonalists "rejected" tonality.

Actually, though, I think Schoenberg would have said he expanded the concept of tonality rather than rejecting it (plus he wrote plenty of tonal music throughout his life). In the same kind of way you could say that texture-based improvisation expands the concept of pitch (to include timbre, which is always more or less implicit in pitched sounds anyway). I'm not sure whether anything is expanded by superimposing a chat to the audience on a musical performance. What seems to be rejected is the idea that ego-displays aren't appropriate to this kind of improvised music.

[jon abbey]

while checking the first page to verify that, i did see this

that's the same quote Alex/np was talking about three posts above yours.

[Jesse]

Good post, Richard.

[maRi]

What seems to be rejected is the idea that ego-displays aren't appropriate to this kind of improvised music.

Which kind of improvised music? And what do you think about this idea of "ego-displays"? Is rejecting it good or bad to you?

[jkudler]

i don't think diego's work implies a rejection of music or a binary of some kind; simply that he personally is interested in music along with text, performance, etc.

Except that neither of the performances in this thread are, in my opinion anyway, interesting as music/sound. In the first one, the Q&A session even explicitly interrupts the music, which then becomes a background component and little more. There's no need for there to be a binary between music and ideas, of course, but with the performances here and with a lot of the stuff surrounding Mattin in recent years, there's this vibe of "OK, we're going to stop actually making music now so we can talk about it instead." And I say that as a big fan of Mattin when he's not doing things like failing to show up for gigs and calling it art.

sorry, i kind of conflated two things and mixed metaphors. setting aside the question of whether the titular piece is interesting as a music experience, i was really focusing on whether it was attempting to do violence to the notion of "pure" music, which i don't think it was. it was perhaps parallel to that work but not contra it.

mattin's work is a lot of things, and i really like it sometimes and really don't like it other times. i think he perhaps more fully embraces a kind of art-world version of conceptual/performance art "event," via explanatory texts and more overt descriptions of the socio-political meanings of what he is trying to do.

that's the same quote Alex/np was talking about three posts above yours.

ugh, duh. i guess it was the first part, that NP omitted, that called out to me more, though.

Actually, though, I think Schoenberg would have said he expanded the concept of tonality rather than rejecting it (plus he wrote plenty of tonal music throughout his life). In the same kind of way you could say that texture-based improvisation expands the concept of pitch (to include timbre, which is always more or less implicit in pitched sounds anyway). I'm not sure whether anything is expanded by superimposing a chat to the audience on a musical performance. What seems to be rejected is the idea that ego-displays aren't appropriate to this kind of improvised music.

sure - i didn't mean to get into a sidetrack about schoenberg as much as refer to the very literal meaning of *a*-tonality, i guess. which, from what i understand, was situated hierarchically to music history as well.

-jesse

[drip]

i don't know... after watching the video from the initial post out of curiousity i must say, that the appearance of diego seemed actually refreshing (and fitting) to me. i would maybe expand his question to "why is this kind of improvisation so boring", but i must say that i'm happy to have never actually have seen such a dull performance than the 10 minute of guionette and murayama before. diego also says "[...]besides a couple of musicans no one is doing anything special".
so that implies not every improvistation is boring and by reading the board here regulary i'm pretty sure many of you agree.

and i also think by forcing the audience to answer questions, they actually become the improvisors, which i find pretty interesting...

[jon abbey]

the appearance of diego seemed actually refreshing (and fitting) to me.

this is one point that has maybe been ignored so far, that in the context of this specific edition of INSTAL, his appearance was not only fitting, but presumably anticipated by many or most in the audience. the same performance in the midst of Freedom of the City or the Vision Fest would of course have had a very different tension in the room, not one of largely preaching to the choir.

once I asked Christof Kurzmann if the schnee duo would go back to doing improv shows at some point. he said that if a pop music fest invited them to play, they'd probably do an improv set, but in the context of experimental music venues/shows, they'd probably keep doing songs. along those lines, it seems like nothing would have been more radical in this particular festival than a full set of improv.

[grisha]

when a piece of art, whatever that art is, requires so much explanation and narrowing of its possible meaning or of artist's intention to be properly understood (if such thing is possible) and to show it assumed "worth" (for a lack of a better word), what's exactly the point of it?

Yeah, because "great art" is so self-evident and unnecessary of explanation.

So much mystical bullshit. Go read Terry Eagleton's The Ideology of the Aesthetic, and realize your understanding of "art" is merely a couple of centuries old.

well even it's 200 years old, why does it make it worse than yours, exactly? and what's mystical about it? i admit that this particular post is not particularly well articulated (what can you do, english is not my first language, and people started quoting it quite quickly, so there was no point in editing it), but you could scroll down just a bit, and read my explanation in my next post. then, if you actually presented a better argument than "i read books by marxists so i am smarter", some sort of discussion might develop.

[Richard Barrett]

What seems to be rejected is the idea that ego-displays aren't appropriate to this kind of improvised music.

Which kind of improvised music? And what do you think about this idea of "ego-displays"? Is rejecting it good or bad to you?

Music in which the priority is (or sounds as if it is) interaction between sounds rather than interaction between personalities. The problem with the "intervention" for me is that it immediately relegated the others to playing the role of generic musicians in the background, and that as soon as the talking began it didn't matter any longer what sounds they made, which as a collaborative strategy seems to me selfish and unproductive.

[Dan Warburton]

Yes, of course. We're biologically programmed to focus attention on the human voice, whether we want to or not. It's a problem I have with vocal improv in general (not that previous posters' partners' vocal talents aren't something to marvel at ) - voices stick out. With reference to the original video, I thought the musical content itself was rather under par for Guionnet and Murayama to start with. As soon as MC Diego started rapping, it receded even further into the background.

[notoriousd]

Yes, of course. We're biologically programmed to focus attention on the human voice, whether we want to or not. It's a problem I have with vocal improv in general (not that previous posters' partners' vocal talents aren't something to marvel at ) - voices stick out. With reference to the original video, I thought the musical content itself was rather under par for Guionnet and Murayama to start with. As soon as MC Diego started rapping, it receded even further into the background.

Wow I'm glad I'm not the only one!! I have to be really deep in the "zone" to properly follow the contours of a human voice over time as a "sound" in general (in the nonrepresentational sense) so I tend to avoid voice improv. I'm getting better at it, but for the first minute of listening to a record with voice I still get a lot of "human" and identifiably "emotional" (memory/nostalgia) references popping up in my head. An improv record which really helped me to get over this was Temps Couché - Michel Doneda / Beñat Achiary / Kazue Sawai (http://www.discogs.com/Michel-Doneda-Be ... se/2403333), but then I'm a sucker for any record with Michel Doneda... OOo and also Plus Equals by Furt on psi

[Dan Warburton]

So am I - but I guess that takes us towards another thread on vocal improv, if there is one. Actually, trying to keep this one on track, I happen to find most vocal improvisation, erm, rather boring. As you probably know

[mudd]

vocal improv: http://ihatemusic.noquam.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4230

speech and voice are pretty different things in my mind. i'm not sure i believe speech can be improvised to the same degree that voice can.

m