new site: erstwords

[Keith Rowe]

Hi
Thank you ..... Jkudler (hi how are you?) yes I think I agree with you, that a work should in the final analysis stand up unsupported by intellectual underpinning / hype / ideological pressure etc. although reading "the Sight of Death" T.J. Clark. where the author visits two Poussin paintings over a couple of years, and records his responses in a notebook, I would have to confess french painting from the mid sixteen hundreds posed a problem, I could never find a entrance into this world of classicism, but after reading tSoD, I found that I was able to locate the emotions within these paintings, and Picassio's Bread Fruit and Table (1908/9) the knowledge of this works process of transubstantiation, transforms its importance for me.

On the importance of retaining " ambiguity and Mystery" in a piece of work, one way of seeing this this is perhaps as a mirror image of the process of its very creation, for example I recognise elements in how I work when reading how the great Henri Poincare ( Poincare's conjecture) approached problems, that was to saturate himself with the problem, work on it intensively then forget about it, in the faith that his sub conscious would continue working on the issue, then at some point in a flash the solution would appear, that's pretty well the way I work, I absorb as much as possible almost never ceasing not an hour of any day will past with out reflecting on the issues from the basic questions upwards, and when I sit down to perform I work pretty well intuitively, drawing from the sub conscious, but I think its hugely important for me to have worked extremely hard between performances.

The Audience relationship .... the people in the room are part of its whole, therefore how they feel, their level of concentration, their ability to also "be in the room", will fundamentally affect the performance, in fact I often feel its the audience who make the performance, I always feel inferior to the audience, their collective knowledge and experience is greater than mine,

Oh! one thing to remember here, is me writing out how I approached a particular performance is rare, not just rare, but extremely so, in a half a century of making music this is the first time I've openly written about the process of a solo performance.
Best wishes
Keith

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

I'm reading!

[hatta]

one thing i enjoy in a lot of so-called "abstract" music is ambiguity and mystery, material that is on some level difficult to put into words. a one-to-one correspondence of sounds to literal real-world referent i have to say takes something away for me, reduces it to a single interpretation. while i am more curious to hear this recording now, on one level, i also wonder if it will excite me less over repeated listens than "the room," which has a lot of curiosity and mystery to me still. i don't know if i find the process behind the piece problematic (i might. . .) or just the text.

I have to say that I find this sort of perspective rather incomprehensible. I like Cardew think that music is "a dimension of perfectly ordinary reality" and that there really isn't any magic or mystery there. If one is really in the moment, living ones life with intentionality in all that one does the same degree of attention and beauty can be found in any activity. Yet we don't demand that there be mystery in cooking dinner, in fact we demand the process be as explicit as possible. The "mystery" in human experience is that our experience is always our own and we are always projecting that into what we think others motivations are. This is the same for music, as it is for literature or coffee with a friend. Deliberately obfuscating process doesn't change this at all and at the same time neither does laying it out explicitly. I for one have really enjoyed talking with other musicians who explicitly go into process and ideas. It doesn't change at all for me the essential limitations of understanding another person, but it removes some of the barriers. I find those musicians who hide their process, refusing to even talk about such basic things as tools to almost always be covering up a lack of underlying thought. But in improv circles I find this rarely, almost always musicians love to talk about what they are doing and what they are trying to do. Rarely though is it published, as Keith says this is the first time he's laid it out this explicitly in text. But we talked about that performance after the show and he told me a lot of those details. And I recall a workshop in Vancouver where a question was asked about his underlying motivations in his solo from the previous night and Keith began to go though almost as detailed a thought process, breaking off after only just describing the opening minutes. So I think this is really fantastic insight, one that hasn't even remotely lessened the piece to me, because ultimately nothing can really change my reaction to it. Sure certain bits of information may make you rethink things, but I for one think that is good.

So all that being said I completely agree with Jon that I want to hear a piece of music without to many preconceived notions. Information prior to an event I think sets up expectations and that can color your experience. But after you have come to your own opinion on a piece of music, then I think further information should just add to your experience. I have to admit I find it a bit bizarre that people have read these notes who haven't heard the album yet.

Thanks Keith for your further clarifications here, as someone fairly new to public performance I find these notions fascinating. The relationship with the audience is something that I for one haven't cultivated too much, but there definitely is a very different component and energy in a live performance. Recordings are a strange thing really, they really are the aberration only really existing for about a hundred years. But the performer/audience relationship that had existed for millenia seems to have been completely subverted in that short period of time. One of things I've enjoyed the most in Tilbury's Cardew bio was the chapters on the early days of the Scratch Orchestra where trying to change the audience/performer relationship was a going concern. In a way I think a lot of modern improv tries to if not drastically change this, to at least subvert a lot of the "placing upon a pedestal" aspect of modern performance. Anyway a lot to think about.

[jkudler]

robert and keith - i want to write a thorough response, but i have to wait to have time to be a bit more thoughtful about it ("i don't have time to be brief"), but i plan to think about it and get back to you. one thing i wanted to say, which i almost mentioned earlier but neglected to, is that i am maybe being more explicit or even more critical i think partially *because* i really like keith's work and have been influenced by it so much. so it's in some way important to me to articulate potential problems or disagreements i have, in a "kill yr idols" sort of way. if that makes sense.

and yes, keith, i am good, thanks! meant to add that this is jesse in philadelphia, but i think you figured that out.

more soon, i hope.

-jesse

[Eulvin]

not to preempt keith's answer at all, but I will say that this is one reason why neither of us wanted the notes for 'the room' to come out for at least a year or so after its release (although we've overshot that now). this is also why I almost totally avoid talking specifics about the music for ersts before they come out, as well as in the PR (one sentence about the music in each, no more).

in this case, there was about 6-7 weeks lag time after the CD was released, so hopefully a fair amount of people got to spend time with the music to form their own perspective on it before reading the notes. I'd personally never read notes like these about a CD I planned to listen to before spending time with it myself, just like I try to totally ignore all film reviews of films I know I'm interested in seeing before I see them, but I know everyone's not like that.

Hi and thanks for the very interesting discussion. I'm a long time lurker, but first time poster.

When talking about about the choice of reading or not release notes, and to get or not a "context" to a release, Francisco López comes to mind. For "La Selva" (but among other releases i think), the CD came with a closed 48 pages booklet, to be read only if one desires so.

The processing technique behind a field recording work is an important issue indeed, in a similar way it could be for EAI records : where was it recorded ? How ? Was it processed or altered in any way ? What are the artist intentions by proposing that work ? I didn't opened mine, but referring to some online sources, "the booklet contains the background philosophy behind the recordings, as well as a detailed list of sound sources and the spacial-temporal locations of the recordings. López feels that knowledge of the theory which informs this project takes away the "crudeness" of the work's possibilities, and that it will undoubtedly change the listener's experience of the work, for better or for worse." (http://www.incursion.org/imr/archive/002.html)

So reading about it, before or after having heard it, transforms the artist's work itself. It's like discovering a theatre backstage : it somehow ruins the magic. I always felt inconfortable with people talking with a performer after a improvisation set, or looking at the equipment used, how sounds were generated, etc. Same applies when talking about a movie with friends afterward : "why did he did this, where did that character go, what did you undertood about the plot", etc. Did anyone seen "Eyes Wide Shut", last Kubrick's movie ? There's a scene at the end of it where Sydney Pollack's character explains everything to Cruise's. It somehow ended up (but not ruined, i think it's intentional) all the dreamy and magic atmosphere of the movie, so the spectator wakes up at this point. When coming to art, i think it's better to keep our eyes and ears "wide shut".

[jon abbey]

that's a really good post, and I tend to somewhat feel the same way myself, which is one reason I learn only as much about technical issues as I absolutely need to. I know that certain sounds in keith's work have bothered others in the past simply because they know how they're generated and it breaks the mystique (I recall some discussion about one specific one in The Room). I think I've only ever listened to one or two DVD director commentaries in my life (robert altman near the end of nashville is the only one I can actually think of), no matter how much I love a film.

but in this case, taking a microscope to a single solo set from a four decade-plus career seems to me to be quite revealing, I'm glad keith did it. I will say that while I played this recording probably thirty times so far, none of those have been since reading the notes (I'm working on the keith/sachiko double CD now, as well as some of the other 2009 ersts), so it'll be interesting to see if they impact my enjoyment when I do. I tend to think they'll only make me appreciate it more, but that balance is different for everyone. I also hope they'll make people think in a different way when they listen to some of keith's other recordings, along the lines of "if all of that subtext was going on in EL007, I wonder what the subtext here is?".

[William Hutson]

which is one reason I learn only as much about technical issues as I absolutely need to. I know that certain sounds in keith's work have bothered others in the past simply because they know how they're generated and it breaks the mystique (I recall some discussion about one specific one in The Room).

to be fair, being able to identify that sound doesn't require a familiarity with "technical issues."

the thing about mr. rowe's 007 notes is: they aren't included in the packaging of the cd. they are quite separate from it. 007 is a complete statement, as it is sold. this isn't the same thing as including "demystifying" liner notes in an lp. in fact, i would imagine that only a small percentage of people who purchase the cd will stumble upon the erstwords site. for these reasons, i'm not sure how these notes are different from the extra-musical information available about lots of pieces of music, in the form of reviews or interviews with the artists. are we debating the appropriateness of any discussion by an artist about their work?

on the other hand, as fans of mr. rowe's music could tell, 007 was different from what we're used to in a keith rowe solo. when i first put it on, i had forgotten the descriptions of the live event that i had read months before, so the appearance of the first classical piece was a huge shock to me. with mr. rowe's music (having heard him speak about it before) i tend to assume that there is a complicated system of intentions guiding the choices being made, but that i don't need to understand them in order to enjoy it. (we're not talking about conceptual art, here, the pleasure of which lies solely in the understanding of the process-- this stuff actually sounds undeniably beautiful). this is why i don't necessarily think that notes to 'harsh' or 'the room' will enhance the pleasure of those pieces for me. however, after listening to 007 about a dozen times, i wrote to jon asking if mr. rowe would consider writing some notes about the piece. apparently, i was only one of a good number of people who'd made the same request. 007 is different in that it broadcasts its conceptual structure. listening to it, it is clear that there is a lot going on that is, in a way, unavailable to the listener, starting with the ideas that guided the selection of the classical pieces. their inclusion prompts a kind of curiosity that rowe's instrumental techniques do not (even though those have as much history and thought behind them as the classical pieces). 007 needed some extra information available about it, not because it is in any way incomplete, but because its overtly referential moments make this kind of discussion inevitable.

[vomir]

about Eulvin

that's a really good post, and I tend to somewhat feel the same way myself, which is one reason I learn only as much about technical issues as I absolutely need to.

I second that ! And in any ways, it is not because you know the techniques used that you can produce the same sound... I should quote Zbigniew Karkowsky here talking about the use of computer (approximatively...): " a mac powerbook in the hands of Masami Akita will always sound as Merzbow! Attitude is what counts."

[Dan Warburton]

that's a really good post, and I tend to somewhat feel the same way myself, which is one reason I learn only as much about technical issues as I absolutely need to.

Yeah, you have be careful with liner notes (and press releases).. reading that Variation 12 is the last Rebecca recording certainly changed my reaction to it. Idem the voluminous essays accompanying Prévost and Wright's Gamut (which I decided not to read until I'd heard the album all the way through). Liner notes should be informative and entertaining, and not talk down to the listener.

I should quote Zbigniew Karkowsky here talking about the use of computer (approximatively...): " a mac powerbook in the hands of Masami Akita will always sound as Merzbow! Attitude is what counts."

A typically dumb quotation from a much overrated musician. A tenor sax in the hands of Coltrane will always sound like Coltrane.. duuuh.

[vomir]

A typically dumb quotation from a much overrated musician. A tenor sax in the hands of Coltrane will always sound like Coltrane.. duuuh.

; )
a tenor sax in my hands will never sound like Coltrane... ; #

[rainey]

In the spirit of full disclosure, I admit that I like to go into my art experiences fairly ignorant of the whos and whats behind it.

However, I ultimately think this is a silly game based on a silly notion of some kind of listening purity.

On a board where Keith Rowe is discussed on a first-name basis, imagine the amount of knowledge, technical and otherwise, that frames the experience of listening to "The Room" for the first time. A mere familiarity with the general genre casts an unfathomable cloud on judgement. A lack of familiarity is equally obfuscating. Having been alive and not deaf is already too much.

Information can be a beer or two: a temporary opportunity to color things for the worse or better or both. It wears off, and if you happen to bring something with you after the buzz, you've had some luck.

Which is not to say that the willful disclosure of information is not a potentially delicate craft.

What I like is the game, no matter how silly. What I dislike is pride in ignorance. If music is so weak that the knowledge of how it was made destroys the enjoyment, I say seek that knowledge and kill music now.

[jcg]

If music is so weak that the knowledge of how it was made destroys the enjoyment, I say seek that knowledge and kill music now.

Interesting point.

A more frequent situation (at least for me) seems being able to enjoy music better when being aware of how/why it was made. Sometimes it helps you focus your attention on particular aspects you wouldn't have noticed. Or knowledge is simply more "satisfying" for the mind which can be more receptive to the concept behind music than to the music itself. For example, I found a recent disc by John Hudak (the aptly titled On and On) pretty boring. Reading the liner notes didn't really make it better but I listened to it differently. So the overall "listening experience" was richer for me. I'm sure I could come up with better examples but this is all I can think of right now.

Oh and just in case you wonder, here's Hudak's blurb about his record:

The other day, I heard a sound that sounded like music. It was a bird's song - a black-capped chickadee. The song consisted of four notes: A to G and G to F. First A to G for awhile, then G to F. The next day, the bird only sang A to G. The early morning was the only time I heard the song.

When I hear a sound, I think of what the sound represents; but I also think of what it might sound like reduced to the basics of rhythm, melody, and texture. To create "On And On," I recorded myself strumming a guitar for a long time. I converted the strumming audio to midi information (a collection of numbers that hold the basic pitch information along with duration and volume). The computer had to simplify the strumming, and in this simplification, left me with a melody ... a succession of number information that I used to trigger the pitches of an instrument much like a dulcimer.

[jkudler]

What I like is the game, no matter how silly. What I dislike is pride in ignorance. If music is so weak that the knowledge of how it was made destroys the enjoyment, I say seek that knowledge and kill music now.

still don't have time to say everything i want to say, but: is this the perception of what i was saying above? this isn't what i meant at all. obviously, i spend plenty of wasted time on here, blogs, discussions with people, etc., etc. i vaguely recall talking to keith about batteries for electric fans when he was here. what i was getting at wasn't so much the knowledge behind something as the laying out of a specific programmatic intention. knowing "this was made with a tooth brush buzzing on a contact mic" or "this was recorded right after tilbury's mother passed away" is entirely different than "the tooth brush buzzing signifies the time my mom bought me my first pair of glasses."

-jesse

[rainey]

is this the perception of what i was saying above?

No.

knowing "this was made with a tooth brush buzzing on a contact mic" or "this was recorded right after tilbury's mother passed away" is entirely different than "the tooth brush buzzing signifies the time my mom bought me my first pair of glasses."

I disagree. Different, but not entirely different. Both bits of information suggest listening orientations and offer compositional insight. And both will be integrated into the framework that includes "listening to this reminds me of when I listened to something like this in that house with the gas leak" and "damn, these speakers sound good".

I'm not suggesting that we should turn off our information filters. Maybe we could trust and develop them more?

[jkudler]

knowing "this was made with a tooth brush buzzing on a contact mic" or "this was recorded right after tilbury's mother passed away" is entirely different than "the tooth brush buzzing signifies the time my mom bought me my first pair of glasses."

I disagree. Different, but not entirely different. Both bits of information suggest listening orientations and offer compositional insight. And both will be integrated into the framework that includes "listening to this reminds me of when I listened to something like this in that house with the gas leak" and "damn, these speakers sound good".

I'm not suggesting that we should turn off our information filters. Maybe we could trust and develop them more?

certainly. but the examples you cite above are of a type universal to any listening experience. obviously, one brings a host of personal background, taste, attitudes, etc. and obviously i am to some degree implicitly comparing any music i hear to all the other music i have ever heard. but the difference that i described as "entirely different" speaks to *meaning*; that is, it confers a very specific meaning to very specific gestures. it creates a symbology. i see that as a significant distinction. we've gone from "orientation" and "insight" to x means y and a means b. for me, a lot of the interest of listening to music is in sussing out those connections myself.

-jesse

[rainey]

I feel entirely confident that not only smart folks like you, but also the average anybody is not so easily duped into accepting specific meanings for musical gestures as assigned by others. Again, I believe that this kind of information provides a temporary color that may or may not yield a semi-permanent takeaway, and that the color only differs in degree (as opposed to kind) from the various filters we bring to all experience. The most questionable effect it has is not in the perception of music, but in the way we talk about it.

[schiksalgemeinschaft]

Interesting posts, mostly I like my first listening/viewing experiences as unspoiled as possible.

But, information is vital to me. Knowing more about a work enhances understanding, and an enhanced understanding helps me in determining my feelings and judgements towards an artistic - and any other kind of - statement.
If the information alters my feelings and/or judgements about a work of art to 'bad' or 'wrong' or, mostly, 'uninteresting', I'm perfectly fine with that. So there's no point in listening to stuff I feel/think don't merit further listenings anymore - whatever the numerous reasons that add to those feelings/thoughts...

Why would one deny himself information, ever? Information can make you more aware, more awareness enhances your decission skills, and those help you to become more free.


And let's not overlook that, very often, information about a 'good' work of art, enhances it's depth, and broadens the ways we experience it.

[jkudler]

I feel entirely confident that not only smart folks like you, but also the average anybody is not so easily duped into accepting specific meanings for musical gestures as assigned by others.

i'm in the uncomfortable position now of defending a position i'm not sure i meant to be advocating so strongly; it's a subtler problem than the binary that i fear is being established.

in any case, possible patronizing tone aside, "duped" and "others" don't really speak to the situation under discussion, i think. the creator of the work has laid out a mostly minute-by-minute guide to what each gesture is meant to signify. that provides a significant weight that "some guy" wouldn't have.

anyways, i am going to try and stay off this thread until i re-read keith's, robert's, and some others' posts. as to the question of whether these notes will lastingly affect my listening, i can't rightly say. i've only heard the disc once or twice from luka's radio show online, so i'm looking forward to actually getting a cd copy (aside to abbey - i have an order for you long-gestating that i need to really whittle down). i feel slightly moved to play the contrarian in this thread, because a whole bunch of posts kissing ass gets boring, and i think it's more interesting to discuss problems that keith's notes might imply. i didn't mean to say it ruins the record, or even to imply that, but i think the kind of textual explication or explanation an artist brings to a work can really affect how it's perceived. in a different way than reviews, gossip, interviews, ear infections, bad moods, etc. can.

reading bill's description, i am a bit jealous i didn't hear the record and then see the notes the way you did. oh well.

-jesse

[rainey]

possible patronizing tone aside

Give me a break, Jesse. If I am being patronizing, it won't appear as a mere possibility, and if I refer to what I read as your specific attitude, I will make that clear. I don't have all day to write in every subtlety of my thoughts, so please use our amicable history as a guide if you have doubts.

"duped" and "others" don't really speak to the situation under discussion, i think.

Why not? Didn't you study music at Wesleyan? Weren't you inundated with "expert" commentary on pieces? Including composers' views? I don't think it is at all uncommon to hear an artist's view of his/her own work and find it to be dissonant with one's own perception. Nor do I think it is all that uncommon for a critic's ("other's") view to be more dominant than an artist's (Greenberg?). There's a lot of noise out there, and what I think is pretty common is for people to try out different points of view and see how they fit. Then adapt.

Meanwhile, your point of view seems hardly contrarian, given the number of posts (including mine) that state a preference for a certain amount of ignorance when approaching a piece of music. My problem is not with playing ignorant but with codifying that into a practice. Could you accept that an artist's discussion of his process/intentions is inherently a problem? Perhaps it is the impossible desire for an unbiased listening experience that is the problem; the fear that a powerful suggestion of meaning might sully your enjoyment. I think that both good art and average audiences are more resilient than that.

a subtler problem than the binary

I don't see the binary and do see a lot of possible contradictions that might be confused for "subtlety".

What I also see are a number of posts that describe actual, positive experiences with information compared to a number that disclose a theoretical fear or disinterest (Jon doesn't watch the commentary, Jesse doesn't want a symbology, Eulvin never opened the booklet). I'm willing to bet that all who have expressed this theoretical distaste have also read tons of poorly written liner notes and crackpot artist commentaries and have eventually forgotten them in the course of enjoying the music. At the very least, I have.

[Stephen]

I've only just had the chance to get to grips with this thread, as I've not heard EL007 I ducked out of reading the notes on erstwords as soon as I saw how much detail was involved, but I am interested in this:

... the way I work, I absorb as much as possible almost never ceasing not an hour of any day will past with out reflecting on the issues from the basic questions upwards, and when I sit down to perform I work pretty well intuitively, drawing from the sub conscious, but I think its hugely important for me to have worked extremely hard between performances.

I'm sure I've read/heard elsewhere that you 'don't even take the guitar out of its case between gigs', so I was just wondering what form the "extremely hard work" takes? Is this mostly in thought? painting?... er.. soldering?