Experimental Music and the Ego
Posted on 4 November, 2010 in Essays, History, Inspiration, Music Theory, People
I’m doing research on material for this blog and for my personal creative endeavors and I’m having quite a difficult time finding blogs and other online media covering experimental music.
Why is this?
I don’t think it’s for a lack of current works; it seems like there are plenty of young people out there trying new things with sound and music itself as a concept. Magazines The Wire and Signal To Noise prove there’s enough interest to garner advertising dollars in this niche. Pop acts like Animal Collective and Ariel Pink prove there’s at least some curiosity among the trendy, urban, fashionable crowd. Why then hasn’t the current generation seized on the fruits of seeds sown so long ago?
I could speculate, but doing so would open the gates of cynicism and egocentric shortsightedness. To be fair, experimental music in the Post War era never much got attention beyond academia, some dedicated music enthusiasts, and the fringes of pop culture, so it’s likely not a generational issue. Granted, the current generation has greater access to both the means of production and instant, worldwide communication than any generation before, but our culture and society overall haven’t necessarily adapted to take full advantage of this, or to let it affect its tastes or its general cultural awareness. Whether we ever will is another discussion.
There’s something deeper here. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how people perceive music and I keep coming back to arguments that John Cage made about how people typically perceive music, and more importantly, how one decides if something is, or isn’t, “music”. I’ve had many conversations with strangers about the music I’m making and it usually takes a bit of explaining before I see in them some kind of recognition or understanding of what I’m trying to achieve. I’m using my experience as an example because it’s what I know best. In my case, after the first question of “What kind of music do you make?”, there’s usually something like “So you make ambient music?” or “Oh, you make noise music”. Both are way off, but how can I succinctly describe to someone something that is so core to the experience of sound as an art form in a way that’s easy to understand?
Most people are not stupid. Most people will understand an argument for concrete and/or pure sound as music; I’m pretty sure of that. But what’s not happening on a wider scale is a sort of “wait and see” approach to music, where the listener disables her critical voice for the duration of the program and actually listens to what’s being presented to her before making her mind on what she’s heard. It’s sort of like when a stranger approaches you on the street and says “Excuse me, Sir”: you don’t know what this person is going to say, and if you’re not weary of strangers, you’re probably going to listen to what they have to say before you make your judgment and give a response. Why then isn’t this the same for music? Preconceived notions of what “music” is? This can become a circular argument – and again I’ll try not to speculate further on why this is – but I want to share some observations I’ve made on people’s reactions to unfamiliar musical styles.
One of the most difficult things I’ve encountered as a musician is that when I’m presenting my music to someone, often times the listener’s first reaction is to speak. Why, I’m not sure, but again I’d like to not be too cynical here. This actively defeats the purpose of listening to new music for two reasons: 1) They’ve already formed an opinion in just the first few seconds, and of course 2) They’re speaking and not listening. Secondly, after presenting my music, I’ve heard things like “The melody/riff/gesture didn’t go anywhere”, “There’s no melody”, “I expected a beat”, or “It never resolved itself” (strange, but I’ve heard it). Granted, I can’t make music that pleases everyone (or even a few people, sometimes!), but to me this speaks of what’s ostensibly some kind of commonly-held belief of what music is or should be. Tragically, to me, it seems like most listeners demand that new music meets the criteria of works they’ve already heard and have practically canonized.
I say that it’s tragic for listeners to expect new music to easily measure up against their sum total personal understanding of music because this effectively blocks any potential for surprise and growth. One thing I’ve said many times is: “Fear is anxiety over the unknown.” To take a philosophical turn here for just a moment, fear is something that manifests itself in human behavior in a number of ways, and a typical response to fear is to assess the situation, compare it to our own personal experience, and to categorize what’s happening at the moment accordingly. When we venture into unknown territory we’re on keen alert and we’ll quickly compare whatever stimuli we encounter to what we already know. Evolution proves that this is useful for our survival but in other avenues of life – specifically in the arts – it’s dangerous and detrimental to our growth as thinking, feeling beings. Why not take something at its face value instead of comparing it to what we already know? Why not take the artist’s expression in its purest form – her art – and accept it for what it is? Why must we assess, second-guess, and otherwise deconstruct the meaning of a piece instead of valuing it as a unique experience? I know that all of this seems incredibly idealistic but I see it as a practical approach to developing a personal understanding of art.
This argument / rant, nearly a manifesto without real demands, has been rolling around in my brain for a long time. I recognize that I take a very personal approach to music which projects my ideals onto the form as a whole. I fully acknowledge that not everyone sees the value of art in itself, and that most people have their own priorities in life that are much different from my own. Call this a plea for greater understanding, or call it a late-night rambling blog post, but either way, I accept that I’ve met an impasse and I’m dedicated to overcoming it.
i will attempt to respond but i must preface with the fact that i’ve been drinking:
“but to me this speaks of what’s ostensibly some kind of commonly-held belief of what music is or should be. Tragically, to me, it seems like most listeners demand that music meets the criteria of works they’ve already heard and have practically canonized.”
I found this passage to be the most interesting primarily because it used the word “canonized”. what does canonization mean? well, i know with literature, canonized works have withstood the test of time in their breadth and scope the human experience and still continue to resonate within the human mind/spirit. i think music, in a way, kinda does the same thing: there are certain sounds, melodies, and chord structures that have been cemented in our psyche as a way to describe basic human emotions. so when we hear these musical staples we can interpret with they mean and draw our own conclusions about what the artist has to say and how it resonates within our own lives. the difficulty with experimental music (as with experimental literature) is that we can’t expect it to touch those same emotional “buttons” in the exact same way. experimental music may present it’s own emotional reaction, but until it’s withstood some test of time and general acceptance, it’s difficult for the majority of people to sink their teeth into. that doesn’t mean it can’t happen, it just can’t illicit a hearty embrace immediately. anyhow, maybe i don’t know what i’m talking about but that’s the best i can come up with in this inebriated state and i hope it makes some sense.
JAWBREAKER RULES!
-s!
Remind me to tell you about tehomaphobia.
j, darlin.
i think sim’s allegory to literature is right on the mark, but thats because i am a writer and was once an english major and i think the problem that you are running up against is one of translation.
for me, music is a foreign language. i can enjoy hearing it for the aesthetic value i find in it, but trying to interact with it is exactly like trying to express my thoughts in a foreign tongue, i could only do it if i spent hours and hours in learning and practice. when in school i took music theory, and it kicked my ass more than latin would have. because the ‘canonization’ im hearing you talk about is, for me, more about the grammar of music theory that it is felt one needs to know in order to interact with the language. the rules and how to not break them.
now what i hear from you is a questioning of the need for rules and peoples inability to listen to something that is breaking them. thats like asking someone to understand a story written in english that doesnt follow the forms of sentence construction and grammar and idea and narrative arch etc. now, i think you know that if you broke every single rule in the language of music people would not be able to distinguish it from noise, but what i feel you are asking is why cant people reserve their judgment of you breaking some of the rules before they have really digested the new construction? and the answer is, its just different enough that people feel like they are missing something. like, the first time you try to read ‘ulysses’ or something else equally experimental and ‘non-objective’ (was that your term?). its like being in a foreign country and only catching a tiny bit of anything anyone is saying. its disorienting.
people just expect you to speak ‘their’ language. the one that the history of music theory has set us up to believe is the only way one should write in.
you are creating a new language and its gonna take a long time for people to catch on.
(just like the idea of non-binary gender and the new language in use around pronouns. it will take a long time for it to become recognizable to the masses, but that doesnt keep us from using the language now and acquainting as many people as possible with it…)
patience, grasshopper. i know its frustrating, but i salute your efforts and support you in carrying onward in your quest to open peoples musical minds. you have a community of people battling preconceived notions in music in many varying corners of the music world, i think.
<3
ray
Ray says exactly what i’m trying to say and far more eloquently. Cheers to you, dude.
-s!
ps. i forgot to comment on the use of the female pronoun: redefining the gender role in written, English language?
(youve heard about stravinsky’s first audience for ‘rite of spring’ rioting in the streets, right?) http://classicalmusic.about.com/od/20thcenturymusic/qt/rite-of-spring.htm
Great post Jeff, this is a problem I often thought about myself. I wish instead of replying through writing, that we could sit down and chat about the subject because there are so many things to say and very little that isn’t subjective and wouldn’t profit from some back and forth. Here are a few thoughts in lieu-
-Music is the must abstract of the arts (writing uses words that often refer to concrete actions and objects, the visual arts are often mimetic and even in abstract forms refer back to color, form and shape, but music tends not to refer to anything tangible) and thus demands the most from its listener. To take meaning from a musical experience most people have developed the ability to identify patterns (cadences, tonal patterns, rhythmic patterns) that allow them to frame what they are hearing. The framing then allows them to reference other works they’ve heard before (this pattern is like another pattern I’ve heard) developing a repertoire of musical ‘ins’ (ways into the music) that becomes more nuanced with every listening. The more advanced listeners (those who have more musical experiences) who are able to identify more of these patterns and become bored with the more hackneyed utilizations thereof, tend to enjoy hearing these patterns, morphed, changed, transgressed, etc. In the time I spent as a music major it was almost always the better musicians who understood and enjoyed 20th century or avant-garde music, the musicians who had played and listened to more music. Alternately, if you have mastered the basic vocabulary of music (which as pop music becomes a larger and larger presence and the more difficult but vocabulary rich forms of music like jazz and classical are relegated to foot notes, is the majority of the population) then when a new or more difficult musical gesture, form, timbre, etc, is used it is seems simply incomprehensible. And of course of incomprehensibility more often than not leads to frustration, hostility, anger, irrationality, and riots like Stravinsky got. So where does this leave you? Someone who enjoys transgressing these boundaries and developing new ideas? My best guess is with a small musically educated audience —where most of the innovative composers from Schoenberger onward have found themselves.
-Yet I’m not sure that what I’ve just said is totally relevant to your case because a) I think you might advocating for a non-analytic approach to music appreciation and b) your music tends toward the static or repetitious which doesn’t require a larger musical vocabulary so much as particular way of listening.
To address a), it is very difficult to listening non-analytically. Turning off the critical facilities that are in use all day long, is a demand similar to meditation. Even if we are able suspend value judgments about the music, it is impossible not to listen with ears that are tainted from the deposits of everything else heard during our lifetime. To overcome those obstacles seems to me transcendental, and the place where this kind of music tugs on the mystical (though I do not mean here a necessarily religious or theistic form thereof). Very few times in musical life have I listened this way, and very few times I have felt that an audience listened to me this way (though the one time I felt it happen was during a performance I gave of 4’33’’, a feeling later confirmed by conversations with a few audience members). How I got there during those times has always been a mystery to me, though I wish I was able to access that type of listening whenever I want!
To address b), static music makes seems to require theses difficult non-analytic listening skills. Presented with a constant pattern one either looks incessantly for any kind of variation or settles into a trance like state holding inwardly the singular emotion of the music. Again, this is a situation hard on a listener used to small nuggets of music that has a fairly quick rate of change. It takes someone either tired of such music or with a willingness to experience a different aesthetic. Jointly with this is another issue that comes up, an issue for the composer. Due to the lack of variety if the emotion of the music doesn’t immediately capture one then there is no change or variety to win the listener back later. This is why Philip Glass and Steve Reich spend so much time finding the right orchestration (and electronic composers obsess over timbre), because they have a single shot at capturing the listener and must present an interesting sonic palette with which to capture them. The minimal composer must be a complete master over the few elements he uses or the listener will not be convinced! Like a dress of a single color, that color must be suitably eye-catching.
On the ultimate question on why the mis-understood or difficult to understand elicits such unintelligent and knee-jerk responses, I think the answer lies somewhere in the realm of culture and the social. Everyday life doesn’t have many situations where one is put into such an alien territory (all the other forms of art, even when avant-garde, can accessed by an everyday use of language or sight) and doesn’t know how to respond. This often only arises in embarrassing or awkward situations, situations people try to avoid. Thus your music brings people to this state they want to avoid, a state that in other spheres of their life they try and avoid.
Of course none of this excuses the bad behavior of your listeners, only (maybe) explains it. Personally I have always enjoyed new types of aesthetic experience and have grown bored with those that are overused by society. If a piece of music doesn’t challenge me as a listener I find I get less from the experience and won’t give it repeated listens.
-Alright, enough said. I hope there are not too many grammatical errors in this, and excuse those present, I think it’s time for me to get to bed. Additionally, if you are up in the Portland area during Christmas and want to have a beer and talk about all this look me up. I would enjoy it!
[...] want to thank everyone who read my previous post, re: Experimental Music and the Ego. The link was passed around the Web (Facebook in particular) and it elicited a number of responses, [...]
i was going to quote this, but then i couldn’t find my hard-copy and when i searched for it online i found this pdf of the whole thing, so i’m just going to give you the link and hope that you read it: http://www.csimpson80.com/articles%20Odyssey/Composition%20as%20Explanation%20by%20Gertrude%20Stein.pdf
the lecture is called composition as explanation, and it’s obviously about her poetry, but the ideas could very easily be applied to your music. now she takes the difficulty that people have in receiving new forms to be a generational issue, which i don’t entirely dispute, but i don’t think it’s that simple. at least in our era of post-modern sensory overload it’s not that simple…but the salient point, that unfamiliar things are rejected until they become familiar, is a good one.
also, as you probably guessed by some inky indication on my arm, i’m in love with her.