Dramatic space and structure within eai

[jon abbey]

I feel like I've written this publicly at least ten times before, and I'm sure it's in the Malfatti thread, but sure, one more time...

there's not enough music on beinhaltung for me for it to hold together, the ratio of space to sound is too high. what puts dach over the top (no pun intended) is the extra roof and other environmental sounds. also, the volume level on beinhaltung is too low.

[Richard Pinnell]

Indeed the "which do you prefer Dach or beinhaltung?" query is probably the most tediously over-asked, pointless question in EAI messageboard history!

I've no idea why it matters as they are both great, great records, but as I have also replied before several times beinhaltung is my favourite, and would actually make a top ten list of my favourite releases ever if such a thing existed. So yes a huge landmark for me as a listener.

[Cornelis]

I'm so surprised that people in general don't know these groups. I think IHM is a bit like the Wire, focussing on the US and the UK.......
So I thought let's throw a stone in the pond, for the balance of things

that's not really fair, that's probably where the majority of posters are from but hardly the main focus of discussion here. I think Japanese musicians are discussed more than either US or UK, Berlin, Vienna, plenty of other scenes are covered far more in depth than the Wire does.

Okay, fair point
IHM is better than the Wire anyway

I think part of the problem with some of the Amsterdam musicians not being better known is terrible distribution (for X-Or, the Raaijmakers box, etc).

But, to bounce it back, one thing leads to another, if you find no interest on the other side you just give up after a while. It's not just distribution alone, its also finding somebody who is interested/giving feedback/energysing you...

Anyway, Jon, do you know "Fundamental" by Loos??
I think it would (should?) interest you
Cor

PS
http://www.kunstbus.nl/muziek/dick+raaijmakers.html

[jon abbey]

I don't know the Loos record, no, although your description of them starting as a "free funk" ensemble is far from tempting. is it still in print?

FWIW, I do know Maarten Altena (the Hat Art recordings at least, I was never a fan) and I've had the Raaijmakers box for a long time (he's in the pantheon of the best handful of electroacoustic classical composers ever IMO, I especially love 'ballad for loudspeakers').

back to beinhaltung/dach, the atmosphere of the first feels dead to me and the second alive. I do think the great radu superminimalist improv musical document has yet to exist, though (I love dach, but as I said, it's the environmental noises that really make it, not the actual music).

[Dan Warburton]

there's not enough music on beinhaltung for me for it to hold together, the ratio of space to sound is too high.

Funny, exactly what I feel about Futatsu! Haha.

[bonniejones]

Enjoying the read here - but have only gotten to page 4 and it's time to get off the computer so will need to continue again tomorrow... A few thoughts - Goh Lee Kwang's comments about individuals and being part of a big picture situations resonates a lot with me... a lot.. in fact this is very very similar to something that I have always thought of when it comes to making art. Always a student - never a master. So thanks for that!

as i should not talk for others musicians, i m sharing my own point of view of rather being as part of the overall picture then the individual. i rather to make my music insignificant then make something peoples can tell who is doing it in 10 seconds. the reason is once it become significant, it will draw the clean line to set apart between the music/ works and the people, it will be like the art works in the museum, it is a dead end. and i want my music to stay young / fresh, i don't want the peoples just to come pick up what they want, without thinking what is the musician actually doing.

in my experience, i understood most people prefer the "old" music because it is easy to recognize, just like you can actually learn who is mozart, van gogh, how is their life... from cinema, magazine etc... without listen / see their works. and if you are insignificant they will consider you are still in the search of your own voice, they'd consider you are still yet to have a masterful skill.

one of the reason i prefer to be part of the overall picture because that is my position in this world. i don't want to be the legend and hanging on the street with my dog and talking to dummy

As for dramatic arcs and I'm thinking this is intended to mean the general shape of a narrative / three act play / etc - here's a nice pic -



Speaking for myself - the "story" or "narrative" is EXTREMELY important to me - more specifically I'm concerned with atypical narrative, or disjunctive story structures, or heck let's call is experimental poetic structures - so this can be heavy on the dissonance and the refutation of "traditional" story structure) So "dramatic arc" to me is old hat - and I'm pretty uninterested in carrying on that specific strategy of up and down, build and release in that fashion. (unless it's in a weird 5 sec microcosm in a piece where it's actually referencing, alluding to that structure that in most cases is not going to happen on my watch)

So what's at stake - I'm very interested in building new types of narratives and new types of sound and (player/improv) discourse - a new kind of dialogue structure. Something that might provide more unpredictability, might write out/sound out some different / new paths. And I can certainly see how this can alienate those who want to take the same path in a different way and refreshed way.

The thing is - every time I sit down I'm trying to solve a problem - be it with the structures of the music, the dynamics of the actual physical individuals I'm playing with, the anticipation of their actions, the interpretation of their intentions. In fact, it does sometimes feel pretty "old" and GLK would say.

So why the new sounds - the EAI sounds? Because the new sounds - to my ear - do a few fairly radical things - they remove this "naturalness" and it's sense of "human" but at the same time are completely imbued by the improvisation and the humans doing that improvisation. (Improv to me is an extremely human thing and perhaps the most natural thing aside from our autonomic functions that our bodies can do).

The sounds I can produce with a bunch of broken pedals however are more environmentally real these days than most acoustic instruments. Electric / Electronic sounds - sound like most of our lives - except those lucky people who live in the middle of a desert/forest/mountain. So point in fact - space is quite extensive in EAI - both in silences and in the sounds that extend beyond the piece into the world - and the sounds that become part of the piece in the world - I'm thinking about bar ice and Malfatti - unintentional yes/no/doesn't matter/matters more than anything. Yes - I have described the music as sounds your fridge might make, or your broken CD player etc.

and there's probably more... but... I gotta take a pause - but will continue reading through these great posts!

Thanks all -

[gohleekwang]

Yes - I have described the music as sounds your fridge might make, or your broken CD player etc

a few months ago i was joking with a friend asked me how i get into experimental music, and i answer was "since the fridge at parent's place were not working properly anymore "

[simon reynell]

Thanks, Bonnie, for a really interesting post.

A couple of quick responses:

whilst I agree very much with your desire to get away from the predictable narrative structure you outline, and think that that has been much over-used in efi/traditional improv, I think it'd be wrong to simply equate the two. There is lots of efi that avoids that narrative arc, and conversely it's a structure that sometimes occurs in eai performances. Yesterday I had to spend hours driving and listened to several discs. The traditional arc structure was far closer in the Annette Krebs/David Lacey/Keith Rowe/Paul Vogel disc I listened to than on the Derek Bailey/Tony Oxley duos that I also played. In fact the spiky Bailey/Oxley pieces from the 70's seemed to very effectively demonstrate "atypical narrative, or disjunctive story structures....heavy on dissonance and the refutation of traditional story structure", as you put it so eloquently. So whilst I thought your comments were very much on the button, we should avoid sliding into big generalisations or over-simplifications (efi = old narrative structure, eai = exciting new experimental forms)

I was also very interested in your comments about 'EAI sounds' & think you're perhaps really onto something:

Bonnie wrote: "So why the new sounds - the EAI sounds? Because the new sounds - to my ear - do a few fairly radical things - they remove this "naturalness" and it's sense of "human" but at the same time are completely imbued by the improvisation and the humans doing that improvisation. (Improv to me is an extremely human thing and perhaps the most natural thing aside from our autonomic functions that our bodies can do).

The sounds I can produce with a bunch of broken pedals however are more environmentally real these days than most acoustic instruments. Electric / Electronic sounds - sound like most of our lives - except those lucky people who live in the middle of a desert/forest/mountain."

As someone over 50 who has followed improv since its early days, I do sometimes struggle to enjoy some of the synthesised electronic sounds in eai. With some irony Skrobek picked out the high-pitched sinewave as a sound that at one time was a marker that an eai piece was modern or cutting edge. It's a sound I personally have always struggled with. There are discs I love where it is one element amongst others (e.g. 'absinth' on grob), but I have never liked, for instance, any solo Sachiko disc. I am not saying that this is right or wrong; it's simply a matter of taste and my problems with it probably do, as Bonnie suggests, reflect my age and upbringing. So similarly I still love the textured sounds of an acoustic instrument played in an 'extended' way - scraped violin, inside piano, breathy sax or trumpet, bowed cymbal etc, while these may well seem "old hat" to a younger listener. Of course it's still what you do with the sounds, what structure you develop that then determines whether it will be a good piece of music or not, but it is undoubtedly true that there are some sounds I like more / am more comfortable with than others.

[I should make clear that I'm not at all against electronics per se, far from it. But it's probably true that I tend to prefer analogue over digital synthesis (Thomas Lehn is a hero for me), electronic processing of acoustic material over pure electronic synthesis (table-top guitar over laptop), and above all I prefer electronics combined with acoustic instruments over electronic duos or trios. Again, I'm not saying that this is right or wrong, and I can immediately think of discs I love that contradict such generalised statements. But Bonnie's comments got me thinking more about what particular sounds I happen to like, and why this might be. Perhaps it's all because I'm an old man living on the very edge of a city with beautiful open countryside out the back...]

[Richard Pinnell]

we should avoid sliding into big generalisations or over-simplifications (efi = old narrative structure, eai = exciting new experimental forms)

Indeed. The over-simplifications for me begin with the EFI and EAI descriptions anyway. Yes they help us make vague generalisations to assist these conversations, but the cross-over between the two is considerable and there are hundreds of examples that don't fit easily into either box.

That said, I do sense that in recent years that newer forms of narrative structure may be being considered in the way Bonnie describes. Her term "disjunctive story structures" is a nice way to try and get at what I am thinking about here.

Both the call and response take on improvisation (and for all its angularity this is where I would place most of Derek Bailey's music) and the slower, laminal AMM-like style have both existed for a while now in improvisation generally. Certainly the use of layered textures and tones is far more prevalent in what we know as EAI than it ever was in EFI, but much of the earlier call and response approach can be found in all areas of improv.

This newer, vague approach I am thinking of but am struggling to really outline here sits a little outside of either of the above. As Bonnie maybe suggests it works in a more disruptive manner, perhaps using surprise or angular shifts in both dynamic and texture to create a degree of confusion in the music, avoiding flow and creating tension. Keith Rowe's thoughts on "not listening" inevitably reappear here, but its not so much a case of musicians ignoring one another, rather a relationship built on challenge rather than harmony. Bonnie's allusion to experimental poetic structures helps here. A nice analogy would be a poem that doesn't scan, that rhymes in places but not others, that changes meter or even its subject matter suddenly without warning.

No idea if that makes sense to anyone. Not easy stuff to try and explain. [/quote]

[simon reynell]

yes, Richard, that makes a lot of sense.

[Dan Warburton]

What a cracking thread!
Simon: if over 50 qualifies as old I'm heading there fast. Cripes.
Bonnie: some excellent points, thanks for sharing this
William: idem
Jon: CAN'T WAIT for Radu / Klaus disc!
Dachte Musik: It was Radu himself who told me he wanted it slowed to half speed because the first take was too "gabby"

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

So why the new sounds - the EAI sounds? Because the new sounds - to my ear - do a few fairly radical things - they remove this "naturalness" and it's sense of "human" but at the same time are completely imbued by the improvisation and the humans doing that improvisation. (Improv to me is an extremely human thing and perhaps the most natural thing aside from our autonomic functions that our bodies can do).

The sounds I can produce with a bunch of broken pedals however are more environmentally real these days than most acoustic instruments. Electric / Electronic sounds - sound like most of our lives - except those lucky people who live in the middle of a desert/forest/mountain.

Good post, but why would you imply the dichotomy natural vs. not-natural? I think it doesn't serve a purpose, and moreover, it's misguided, unless you only wanted to say you like newer/unfamiliar (hence mostely 'mechanical' sounds, results of new technology or new use of technology) sounds better than sounds you are used to (hence mostly acoustic sounds, or nature sounds minus all human interference).

Because what would you oppose to 'natural'? Mechanical? Cultural? Artificial? But those 3 and all possible others I can think of are also imbued & grounded by humanity. So I really think your main point is simply a new vs. old-one... Electric guitars, saxophones, pianos, moogs, violins, theremins, drums, whatever, are all mechanical, artifical, human and cultural too. And once we're in The New vs. Old Zone of Discussion, it automatically implies the merry 'originality' vs. 'not-original', and from thereone it's off to unknown vs. know...

I guess your bottomline simply is "I'm mostely interested to learn/hear new(er) ways of making music."
Well, I agree!

One a sidenote, viz. that 'human' remark, I guess you meant 'natural' there too, since I interpret your first use of 'human' as the 'romantic' concept of humanity. If not, could you explain it a bit more?

[kangaroo?]

Because what would you oppose to 'natural'? Mechanical? Cultural? Artificial? But those 3 and all possible others I can think of are also imbued & grounded by humanity. So I really think your main point is simply a new vs. old-one... Electric guitars, saxophones, pianos, moogs, violins, theremins, drums, whatever, are all mechanical, artifical, human and cultural too. And once we're in The New vs. Old Zone of Discussion, it automatically implies the merry 'originality' vs. 'not-original', and from thereone it's off to unknown vs. know...

I guess your bottomline simply is "I'm mostely interested to learn/hear new(er) ways of making music."
Well, I agree!

i think you've got it all wrong here in seeing a natural-unnatural dichotomy in this. she was merely referring to the present cultural significance of the material utilized. questions of originality don't come into play either, just a matter of awareness of one's environs.

[Richard Pinnell]

Yes. Didn't Bonnie place inverted commas around the words "naturalness" and "human" because she knew they weren't perfect but helped convey what is a quite abstract concept? I understood what she meant without the need to get into semantics again.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

I'm just curious why she used those words and what she actually meant by them, and why the removal of said 'naturalness' and said 'sense of human' would be something that is favored?

Of course I presupposed that in wanting to remove something that Bonnie favored its opposites, if this is not the case there indeed is no dichotomy - yet it would lurk anyhow, as the oldnew & originality question, e.g. Bonnie also said : "So why the new sounds - the EAI-sounds? Because the new sounds - to my ear - do a few fairly radical things in removing (...)" - radicalism, newness, it's there. Something that is original always is new, and vice versa, that's obvious.

[William Hutson]

I'm just curious why she used those words and what she actually meant by them, and why the removal of said 'naturalness' and said 'sense of human' would be something that is favored?

i am in no way speaking for ms. jones here, but i understood this bit in her post to mean something different. one of the major criticisms of electronic instruments in eai (from eddie prevost and others) has been that they do not yet have the type of intuitive interface that an acoustic instrument does. when playing an electronic instrument, a player does not have every sound thy can make available to them at every moment. a saxophone player can choose to make, more or less (preparations aside), every sound possible sound on that instrument at any time-- her mouth is on the mouthpiece, her fingers are on the keys. but an electronic musician might have to re-patch their entire setup to get to the sound they want to play next. also, electronic instruments do not translate human gesture into sound the way that an acoustic instrument does. when you hear a violin player sawing away, you are listening to the movement of her arm and body. an index finger on the trackpad of a laptop does not have the same relationship to the sound being made.

having said that: i think what both ms. jones and mr. foster achieve with their opened-up delay pedals is something much closer to the intuitive, gesture-based relationship that acoustic musicians have to their instruments. the movement of their hands actually produce the sounds. the sounds are radically changed by mere millimeters between points, and are somewhat unpredictable, based on bizarre conditions (like the order in which the resistors were charged, or how much coffee the player may have consumed before showtime). a drone is difficult to produce with circuit bending in this way because the players cannot possibly remain still enough. these instruments make sounds that fall into the category of electronically produced sounds (unnatural) but are clearly produced by the shakey hands of humans.

[howsthatsound]

Indeed. The over-simplifications for me begin with the EFI and EAI descriptions anyway...

very nice post. that summed up well a number of things i have been thinking of late.
i find the element of disruption to be particularly interesting.

the "obvious solution" is something that should be used very sparingly i think. so that when one is playing, one is always weighing what approach would be most effective in creating a situation in which some particular interest ("newness", tension, resolution, diversion, etc.) could occur, and is concerned less with returning to familiar pastures for the sake of safety.

i perceive this type of playing in many more recent performances and recordings, and find it to be pretty rewarding thus far.

[Richard Pinnell]

an index finger on the trackpad of a laptop does not have the same relationship to the sound being made.

Actually, just yesterday I spent the day with John Wall, who is just learning to use Lloop, Klaus Filip's patch for Max MSP. I was stunned (as was he) at the relationship between simple movement of the finger to changes in the sounds generated. Its not the same as the touch of a bow on a string, or a finger pressing on a piano key of course, but the level of human to sound interaction really shocked me, and I guess this can only improve over time.

having said that: i think what both ms. jones and mr. foster achieve with their opened-up delay pedals is something much closer to the intuitive, gesture-based relationship that acoustic musicians have to their instruments.

Agreed here. Bonnie describes what she does a little in her add limb interview:

The pedal created all the sounds I was interested in and had the benefit of being both electronic and tactile/gestural. I currently play about 3-5 different digital delay pedals by exposing the circuit board and touching the board with instrument cables, metal objects and my hands.

[bryan]

So why the new sounds - the EAI sounds? Because the new sounds - to my ear - do a few fairly radical things - they remove this "naturalness" and it's sense of "human" but at the same time are completely imbued by the improvisation and the humans doing that improvisation.

Yes, the flat sounding electronics can stand in contrast to how they're used and set the communicative gestures in higher relief. This is why I like the raw electronics, there's less for the player to hide behind and little motions can be writ large.

Metaphorically, it just works: music simplifying time via placement of sounds, electronics simplifying the material of music: sounds. It's more than just novel funny noises, there's meaning to be had.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

Metaphorically, it just works: music simplifying time via placement of sounds, electronics simplifying the material of music: sounds. It's more than just novel funny noises, there's meaning to be had.

yes, absolutely, although also other means than electronic ones simplify the material of music, and they have a history much older than electronics.

--

unexecptedness and newness are related