A circus with no animals

Performing our CIRCUS of music was definately the most unusual concert performance i can think of ever participating in. Unusual, but i have to say i greatly enjoyed it. I was dying of laughter inside when i stopped mid-sentence and people shuffled in their chairs and curiosity entered their brains. I didn't expect their reaction of complete silence as a respect to the performance, and was actually quite SHOCKED despite their likely associations to performance ettiquete because I found it hard enough to say nothing for 4:33 as a performer. My text was really hard to read off being that i had mixed the lines so much with more care for mass confusion for the listener by way of random assortment and repetition than for something more substance based or informative. However, I do believe my choice of arrangement greatly fit the piece as we had tangled it as a whole.

I Felt like everyone did an amazing job with their readings, and absolutely loved how the different parts chose stating what portion of readings were being used were totally out of order. It obviously was meant to not matter the way we set up this performance, but it still created a comic effect for anyone that caught the statements of different parts of the reading. I felt that the use of the gong part in the center couldn't have been placed better and it was so perfect to have Aaron's voice disappear in the noise and return upon the decline of volume. The ending came perfectly with the stopping of the music and final statement as if it had been rehearsed numerous times despite our method of self practice. Despite the unfamiliarity i have for this type of performance I would be open to this again and/or other things for sure!

Monday night we exited the circus of no animals, but maybe some animal noises ;)

Chris Lundeen

Reflection After a Performance

So here we are post-performance. It was quite a performance. Thank you all for doing such a great job it was one of the most interesting performances I have been to/participated in.

It was kind of odd however, sitting and watching while others were going. The uninterruptedness was something that doesn't come around here all too often. There were no breaks between "songs", there wasn't a backroom for us to go and hide and build up any more nervousness that sometimes comes along with performance of music. We were all, in a way, performing the entire 30 minutes, which brings all of the pieces we performed together, together even more so than if we would scuttle back offstage. We were all engaged the entire time.

Musically, our form that we created was very satisfying. There was a pretty even distribution of sound and "energy" throughout. You could say it was phrased very nicely, not being too dense with sound as to create just "noise". There was ebb and flow, and it was good.

When I had said before, well, after we performed that the text wasn't quite music to me-I just wanted to let you all know that it was only an opinion of mine and not anything that I have heard from any source other than others that share my view. It is one of the concepts that I cannot seem to work through since I get so caught up in the meaning of the content of speech. And really, the more interesting the content, the harder it is for me to justify it as music. Music acting as a conduit of meaning, and text being the literal meaning in the flesh, having its own conduits i.e. through metaphor, analogy, etc. I suppose that this idea could also be shared by literary artists as well, them perhaps not wanting lines to be blurred by saying that their own poetry is "music". I could be absolutely wrong though. I guess I just am still unsure of this myself. A good question can't be answered without being asked.

Counterpoint: it definitely is sound, and thus can be defined by sound's parameters.

Continuing on:

I am still, to this moment, 3:19pm 12/11/07, that the form that we created was brilliant. It was so abstract when we thought it out and figured in amounts of time, and divided time up in multiple certain ways, but sounded so fluid when it was performed. I know that part of it could partly be coincidence, but the process that we followed through with to determine time was plainly uncanny. So... good job us!

The clothing really tied things together, just like the rug in "The Big Lebowski". "It really tied the room together."

We could have asked for a slightly larger audience, but too big could have been problematic as well. I mean, we're not singin' folk tunes that any regular "billy" would hear on a day-to-day basis. And no, not 'hillbilly'. Although it could also ring true. It is really music that is for people open to accept it. It would be socially unacceptable to bring our crew as an opener for Slayer, so I think the social context that we performed it in was very acceptable.

As a sort of random ending note:

Isn't it weird that some "New Media" is almost 50+ years old?

Feel free to post your comments on that if you still check this at a later date, now that we all have a blogger account if we didn't have one before.

Cage Circus Chaos!

As soon as I ended a somewhat awkward post-performance / waiting to clap silence by saying "the end," I felt pretty good. With no run-through and a pretty loose yet calculated structure, I'd say we did pretty good at pulling it all off. Having never truly been on a stage like that and in front of others, I was a bit nervous (which wouldn't have changed whether there was 8 people or 800 in front of me). The simple beginning of just one person talking on stage was a good introduction and the mid-sentence stop which began 4'33" was just brilliant. It was amazing how long four and a half minutes felt and the way the mind would drift to all sorts of sounds, as the piece intended. Whether it be the hum of the room, people walking around the halls outside the theater, or just the shuffling of people in the room, our ears were made very aware of every little sound. I remember scratching at my beard at one point and it just seemed extremely loud and rough sounding. I was a little saddened that Lucier's long thin wire didn't quite pan out, but as was explained both in class and after the performance, the set-up is pretty temperamental. There was a kind of cool eerie and subtle type of feel to it, though, and there was definitely at least one moment where the magnet made a really cool sound. The centerpiece of the performance, and from what I could gather was most people's favorite, was Having Never Written a Note for Percussion when combined with the highly repetitive part of Cage's Lecture on Nothing. I'm very interested in hearing the recording of this, because it sure felt strange being on the inside of it and trying to speak as if there was no loud gong rising in intensity right next to me. I also really got into giving the reading a sort of monotone and pronounced tone to it, especially using key pauses after the word "slow." During the midpoint of my part and the height of the gong-banging frenzy, I literally felt like I wasn't speaking out loud and it was very strange to try to make myself feel like I was still reading in the same manner as before. I am very glad I took the advice of my fellow classmates in not changing to a higher volume and I'm also satisfied that I cut to the silent / sleep part a bit early to let the gong have a brief moment as the only sound being produced for the piece. Radio Music would have felt a bit too anti-climatic had it come right after Having Never Written... and the 4th segment was a nice sort of breather and going back to the Lecture on Nothing being the sole focus mostly. It was a bit hard to gauge how successful the Radio Music session was, with me being in the back and focussing on doing my part. I do remember a moment where I had heard someone else's radio fade out from a certain station right as I was fading in the same station, which was neat. I think overall the performance didn't really have any bad moments or weak points and that our small little audience enjoyed it to some degree. I really enjoyed hearing that one man tell us how he had seen a Cage Circus/ Radio Music in the 60s with Cage himself there! That was quite impressive and it would have been fun to get more of a sense of how it compared to ours. Also the woman pointing out that at 71 she was pretty open minded to be coming to something like this, which was kind of funny. I really dug the fact that the audience asked each of us, as performers, are views on the experience. I think all of us got a real nice opportunity to give our thoughts on not just that night but how the class in general had helped shape and form our ideas about not just experimental or avant garde styles, but music and sound in general. I will definitely look forward to hearing the recording of this night! Hopefully now in the future I can experience more things similar the stuff we talked about in class with a better understanding of some of the elements at work. Well, it's been fun... have a nice winter break / life / eeyah!

My post experience

Omg that was so fun. I would def. love to do that again. (valley girl). Anyways I LIKED IT A LOT. It was so interesting to move along the timer. I liked that idea to have the timer there. It represented a lot of interesting feelings. Like that painting with melted clocks. It was just artistic within itself. I think Logan had a lot of cool examples when he was explaining it to the crowd. We all did such a good job reading, and I think it was so wicked how the silence overcame everyone in the start. Awesome. I did feel a bit weird reading that nothingness. But in a sense it actually meant something now that I had more time to think about it. We are nothing, or at least were nothing at one point, so it's okay to be nothing again! As if it was ever a bad thing to be nothing! That is a wonderful statement that I will cherish for the rest of my life. That guy sitting on the couch eating potato chips gets called lazy and a no good. Well he is being a nothing, and that is beautiful! ;). Yay now I can become lazy and be nothing until I die and birds eat me. This will be a wonderful life knowing I have more options with my own state of mind. Being bored and insecure is a good thing and i should cherish that. Thank you CAGE! Right cage? I think so... Yessss

With an hour and a half to go...

...I'm remembering when, years ago, I'd have piano recitals in the Performing Arts building and how nervous it made me, having to sit in the back room until it was my turn, having to walk on-stage under the lights with everyone and their parents watching in the seats, worrying if I'd make any mistakes while running through what I'd been practicing for weeks. I like to think I've gotten better about nervousness before a performance, though. Granted, every time I'm thrown into an unfamiliar performing situation, like playing with a new band, or especially improvising, I still get those fight-or-flight sensations.

Generally humor's gotten me through a great deal of those situations. One time while I was in a band playing at the Varsity Theater, I definitely felt strange being up on the stage with all of that space and all of those people out in the crowd. Luckily, the icebreaker occurred when the guy who booked the show got a hold of the smoke machines that were mounted on the ceiling and rained down ridiculous amounts of it down on us as a kind of B.S. grand entrance during our first song. I had to laugh inside, though maybe I did scowl slightly at the over-the-top nature of his gesture. I have a feeling when I step foot in the recital hall after over a decade of being away from it that things will seem smaller than as I once remembered them, and this is a little funny to me.

One other thing that helps get me through is the struggle against the adversity of other people's negative perceptions of what you're doing. Nothing makes things easier for me than a good old-fashioned showdown mentality of "Hey, I'm on the stage and doing this, so if you like it, great, and if not..." As the nature of the pieces that will be performed within the next two hours is decidedly avant-garde, especially given the context of this being Saint Cloud and all, I'd thrive if people got nervous or reacted negatively...but what would also make my day would be if people enjoyed it and even joined in the dialog, so to speak. And so I continue to wait...

Music-Making Methodology... ISM

Probably the best thing I got out of this class was learning about the concept of many different types of experimental / avant-garde / minimalist / abstract examples of music. The idea of what music even is and how there are so many different types of approaches that can be taken that challenge preconceived notions of how music can be made was something I've always been interested in. When I spoke of making "songs" that were 0.99 seconds or under, it was just one example of ideas I've personally had in trying unusual, often comical ideas I've had when making sounds. That was sort of a hyper-styled approach to one I often take... where many different short bits of music are thrown together to create something that is chaotic and discordant, but taken as a whole or the sum of its parts is something that may be very primitive but I find to be creative. The other example I spoke of in class involved where me and a fellow music-maker from England employed the idea of both of us creating short songs of just vocals with the other person creating the musical backdrop that would be the same length in time without knowing the melody of the vocals-only track and then slamming the two together for better or worse. A similar idea was 5 people each making 5 minutes of very minimal music and all 5 being layered together without any idea how the others sounded or how it would turn out. Often experiments like these somewhat fail, but the few times they DO work are glorious! Sometimes they turn out okay, but the method cannot be clearly heard, such as the time I layered 3 sets of vocals over each other with one being from the other end of my house, one being behind closed doors in a bathroom, and the third being from outside through a window, all of this done to see how the varying effects the differing areas of singing had on each other when meshed together. A final example is kind of similar to I Am Sitting in a Room, where I would create music, then play it over the phone onto an answering machine, then record that and repeat the process over and over. After only a few times the melody and sounds were completely distorted and destroyed with very annoying "squelchy" sounds being added in more and more each time.

I also think it's worth noting that in the age of the Internet, it's really great how one can find people to make less traditional music with, where you send things back and forth and come up with fun ideas... From like-minded people a sort of joke-like genre of music was born called ISM, a play on the genre of IDM [where the former stands for Intelligent Shit Music the latter is, of course, Intelligent Dance Music]. As stated on http://www.editthis.info/intelligent_shit_music/Intelligent_Shit_Music ... it can be said that "to understand ISM you must become ISM" and that the only rule in the genre is that there are no rules...

Here is a pretty good example of ISM (assuming it even works since geocities isn't exactly a very reliable hosting site): AVENGING GLACIER - SAPMULER

Sound and Space

The idea of a room creating up to 45 seconds in sustained or delayed sound was a very strange concept for me to get my head around. The way that just a few trombone players could create a wash of noises that sounded so far removed from their original type of sounds produced got me truly thinking about how one could utilize a space like that to create music and sounds that seem very alien and distorted without the need to tinker with effects or post-production. This also got me thinking about the space or environment in general that musicians use to create music and how it might greatly affect the end product in ways that not only would influence how the music sounds but how it would hold sway on the way a musician might feel in the space they record in and how that plays a role. It's somewhat of an embarassing example, but I remember once reading how the Iowa band Slipknot had recorded their 3rd album (called "Iowa"!) in a very tiny enclosed space that was extremely hot. The fact that there is nine people in the band would only make it more cramped and heated, and their reason for doing this had such a purpose. It was to somehow inspire them to channel anger and discomfort into the music. In some ways this would make the emotions more fake or forced while in other ways it would make it more real. Another similar example of this type of thing comes back to the band Animal Collective, who try to have a different type of sound and recording style or method from album to album. For their last one they specifically chose to record in the desert setting of Arizona. This is a great instance of showing how a change in environment or setting can actually change or influence the creative ideas and therefore sounds of the music being made.

The Physical Force of Loud Live Music

A word about a concert experience I had this weekend. The concert I went to last saturday (Menomena at the Varsity Theater in Dinkytowne), I just wanted to make note of the idea of music, especially live, often having the physical aspect worked into it. The bands had ultra thumpy electronic and bass noises that were so intense at some points that the empty beer cans and glasses on the stage bounced about and one even moved 2 feet forwards and fell off the stage! haha! Also the stage having a certain amount of "give" to it really made the opening band's stomping of their feet at some points have a real heavy-hitting aspect to the sound. In general, I think there is definitely a very physical aspect in hearing music in a live setting. While too often the music is cranked up to a level that can take away from certain elements, whether they may be hearing the words being sung clearly or certain instruments being completely drowned out by others, I think it often stands true that when done right, the louder it is the better up to a certain point. The other downside of when it is too loud is that the physical force of the sound pummeling you can actually have a sort of draining effect. I know I would often feel like my body and head took a beating after certain shows and i'd feel wiped out even without really getting into it by way of moving about.

Pre Show

I am really nervous for this show tonight. I have no idea how it is going to be calculated. I have never done a piece like this live before. The feelings I have are scared but I know we will kick ass. I feel that although I am scared, you all know your material very well. I have always had troubles finding out how to get into New Media music but with the help I received from everyone in class was awesome. I enjoyed the way the poster looked whoever created that. The way the guy laughs looks really awesome. The noises tonight will be fun to make and the lyrics of nothing will be extraordinary. I hope everyone has a good time and I can't wait

EA Arts Ensemble: Rupert Murdoch Wants YOU

It's no secret that Murdoch's company News Corp has been in an acquisitive mood for some time--they recently have tried to purchase the media firm Dow Jones, which owns, among other things, the Wall Street Journal. More importantly, at least with regard to this blog posting, News Corp owns Myspace, the new media phenom that has lonely singles and not-so-singles, bands that have yet to leave the bedroom for the garage, aspiring filmmakers, and even comedy troupes vying for everyone else's attention. And, although they have yet to be as ubiquitous a force as every other neighbor kid with an electric guitar that might be in a band (or maybe just a Guitar Hero aficionado who plays Rock Band every now and then), those who make the more 'experimental' garden varieties of sound have been making themselves heard as of late, and now have a couple Myspace-approved genres with which to tag their music profile.

Anyone in this class start a band profile (yet), and if so, did you notice the seeming wealth of genres to choose from? Leaving aside those which have been historically related to relatively pioneering in the popular, er, "sound" realm (i.e. Industrial, Ambient, etc.) budding EA Arts Ensemble'rs with an eye towards self-promotion can choose from these pertinent choices:

Acousmatic / Tape Music
Electroacoustic
Experimental
Live Electronics

and of course

Other

(it's worth noting though that there's been a bit of a screwball movement of those who would rather humorously label themselves and thereby have fun with genres and unsuspecting Myspace music searchers)

So why this allotment of recognition? Is there somebody "cool" at the right hand of "Tom"? Rather, I think it's a testament to the data collecting powers of a site like Myspace, where everyone, regardless of what they put in their interests section (for instance) can be spammed for friendship/praise/credibility/booking/$$$ by any number of real and/or otherwise profiles clued into their presence by one particularly half-thought out keyword. Thusly the all-commodifying power of global capitalism seeps its way into the friend request and event invitation boxes of even the most noisiest of noise mavens...tribute page or no.

Proceeding from the question "why would anybody do this?" . . .

... and dredging up something that was brought to my attention a couple weeks ago, a documentary about noise artists in Portland, Oregon will soon be out, and it's called "People Who Do Noise" (trailer below)



And this video response, as it were, is hardly meant to fully answer the question, but rather to shed a little light on a particular community of people who do art through sound in this way, using these means. Political, aesthetic, and even purely hedonistic-seeming discursive threads can be seen running through each of the little blurbs of interviewees shown in the trailer. The portrayals, brief as they are, seem to indicate a group of people who have taken stock of their surroundings and worked out little niches for themselves to explore and share with each other, in contrast to how some detractors of experimental music would probably, at first exasperated and dismissive, tag perceived members of any avant-garde with trying to outdo each other in terms of pushing the envelope and doing what had yet to be done. I hope to be able to catch this movie when it comes out to see how well it will be executed as a film and also to hopefully catch some interesting presentations of music.

Mincemeat or Tenspeed

In my time both going to local shows in the Twin Cities and traveling across the country making music, I’ve had the pleasure of seeing a Philadelphia-based solo electronics/noise/dance (emphasis on the last genre tag but accomplishing that goal through ingenious use of the other two) music performer by the name of Mincemeat or Tenspeed twice. The first time was in an upstairs illegal venue in Oakland, full of kids who frantically got their party on in a seething mass before the Bay Area Rail stopped running in the AM and left them stranded until the next morning. Then, after forgetting what his performing moniker was, I saw him towards the end of a ridiculous nine-band bill, which ran the gamut of acts from shambolic folk to hip-hop to dub-noise, at the Hexagon Bar in Minneapolis. Subsequently that night, I was hit between the eyes by the fact that I’d seen him before, the euphoria upon my recognition of him (small world, eh?) being lifted even further by his triumphant and exhilirating pieces, which caused the assembled music-weary crowd by night’s end to forget the last 2.5 hours and move about his rig in front of the stage.

I found this description of his approach and work online:

[f]or those unfamiliar, Mincemeat or Tenspeed (yes, thats one band, one name) does NOT use any drummachines, sequencers, samplers, computers, etc to make his beats. Instead, he uses an intricate and delicately balanced series of gated mixer-feedback loops to create intense rhythms with a texture unlike any other type of beats you will ever hear. Highly recommended for anyone interested in cutting edge techniques for making hardcore electronic music.

And, although the videos I’ve found on YouTube of him don’t do his live performance all that much justice, on account of the sorry state of widely-available videorecording devices being very easily overdriven to the point of erasing the kind of nuance that makes someone like MoT pretty amazing on a couple perceptual levels, here’s a short clip of him mid-show:



I thought him especially relevant to this course due to his employment of handheld, mostly-battery-operated effects pedals and a few mixers, taking basic building blocks of sound through a painstaking process and achieving similar results to artists who would require more traditional means of reproducing sound.

Brought to you by the fine folks at kidsbegone.com!

With regards to the sensory power unleashed by Steve Reich’s “Pendulum Music,” I was glancing at some reading about the idea of sound as weapon and came across a device that purports to use the keen ears of youthful teenagers, who may also be prone to acts of petty criminality like . . . er, loitering. It’s named the Mosquito, and it was designed to affect people from their teens up to the age of thirty or thereabouts, when the average person’s ability to reliably hear the frequency at which is broadcasts, 17.4 kHz, diminishes. Apparently the annoying quality comes into effect if the unfortunate soul remains in place for longer than ten minutes. The makers of the Mosquito, Compound Security (http://www.kidsbegone.com), maintain their device meets safety standards and cite the example that children have used their particularly higher hearing attentuation to make cellphone ringtones that elude adults’ (i.e. teachers) ears. Ingenious, no?

However, concern has been raised in the UK about the legality of such means, with detractors arguing the Mosquito falls in the realm of a violation of human rights. Not surprisingly, Compound Security’s research into the matter is at odds with such criticism.

Stumbling from that onward to an additional tangent, apparently the Republic of Ireland has found the Mosquito to be illegal on the grounds that--

anyone who "directly or indirectly applies force to or causes an impact on the body of another ... without the consent of the other" ... including "application of heat, light, electric current, noise or any other form of energy", is guilty of commiting assault. (wikipedia.org)

One wonders how well someone could make a case against noise bands like Wolf Eyes or even plain loud rock bands touring Olde Eire based on such criteria. It definitely gives me pause on the odd moment where I think about touring the Emerald Isle...er...

Reflection Before a Performance

So here we are. The night before our circus.

I have never uttered those words ever before in my life.

I'm guessing only those that have traveled with the circus have. I doubt anyone in class has, but if so- I apologize. I think the real fun tomorrow will be all of the collaboration during the overlapping sections. It may not be really fun for the audience since they don't know what has transpired in class to bring this particular performance to them, but maybe they will see us enjoying our sonic mayhem and live through us vicariously.

So this post is really not too academic. But then again, I don't want it to be. There will be one after the performance that will have way too much jargon and vernacular pertaining to class. This post is my reflection of what I think sometimes we neglect learning all the particulars about music. At it's heart- music is to have fun. Plain and simple. You could say historically it was to please the gods- but if you think about it- if they (He, them, it, whatever you believe) are pleased: we're more likely to have fun, huh? So there it is. I'm sure we'll all have fun and show some unlikely audience member what they are missing out on.

Short post I know. Just remember to have fun! That's what it's all about!

When I Wake Up Each Morning, My Alarm Plays Caribbean Music

It's been a while since I started. "What?" you ask... Well, anything. But music, school, and breathing come to mind upon first glance. These things have always been there. They have always been things. I often don't make sense. But I keep talking. Unfortunately for you readers, it is late, and I am sleepy, and yet, motivated to write a blog. Web-Log. Weblog. We-Blog. We do blog don't we.

...

Wow. OK, so the point of this weeks installment of my blog is in answer to many threads on "our" blog that are generally speaking about music and/or New Media. Or something completely different. I liked James' last post about inspirations. It really gets to the point of music, the reason for music. Inspiration. Whether it is a "who" or a "what" or a "when" and so on, it is something. Something not to be trifled with. Or at least without a good reason.

The post made me recollect what I like about my favorite music. I draw a blank absolutely every time. I have been a music student for 5 years and all I can think about is "what" the music is doing, not entirely "what about the music" I like. And if I am a little unclear, which I may be, I will reiterate: I can't exactly put my finger on what exactly gets me intrigued about my favorites. You know, the CD's that are always playing. Or the songs that give you the chills when you just even think about them. I'm also not sure if everyone has that sort of reaction to a specific musical event. But some do.

Why is there a difference between that "favorite song feeling" and "muffled, radio bar-rock"? Isn't it just sound? NO! And Yes! :/ and maybe a couple more "no's" and "yes's", but who knows. It's so different from person to person. Yet we are taught in college to recognize potential differences in these different forms of sound. There is just so much variety out there, it is hard to distinguish between these sounds- if we were to put them in categories.

In an attempt to segue to my point: hypothetical question: do you listen to only one style of music? If not- what styles are they? And how do they differ? If yes- what is it that draws you into this style of music? Are there other styles/types that you are not as interested in or just slightly less interested than your favorite?

I'm sure there are answers all throughout that continuum. And music students of any emphasis, and music lovers in general will most likely have different answers across it, but they can all appreciate seeing someone else's point of view- even if it is very different from their own.

A sort of stereotype that I have run into being in musical academia is the "so, ya talk about Bach and Mozart all day, eh?" (apparently a Canadian asked this individual time, maybe a northern Minnesotan). But I always wonder why music is never related to a foundations/emphasis duality. You learn foundations (basics- the words, the early works, the traditional theory) and then you move onto the emphasis (not the basics- oppositional viewpoints, analytical and creative techniques, avant-guard musical selections, and more technical aspects that the less interested seem to be, well, less interested in.) And that is leaving out performance practice of the music itself. It can get complicated, but then again, what field isn't complicated at some point? Math... yep. Econ... yep. Aviation... yep. History... good God. I guess my sub-point here is that many see music as being irrelevant to these, but in reality, is so irreversibly intertwined it is impossible to take them apart (awesome alliterations).

To these people from above, I usually say, "Yep. That's all we do."

Just kidding. I usually begin explaining what I just did, but they walk away when I blink.

These complications are important however long winded they can be to explain.

Think of the best "music industry" producers. They're makin' the "big bucks" right? So could they make it in the "industry" without a pretty good grasp of music on a complicated scale? Even though they have all the technology in their hands- they not only need to know how to operate it, but also what the hell they are trying to accomplish **e x a c t l y** to their specifications. Many have gone through the trials and tribulations of sheer experience, but I am pretty sure that a few mind bending classes (or lessons, or apprenticeships) have been taken to make them the best at what they do. They may have not used every single concept (i.e. I'm pretty sure I can't find a worthwhile application for a Lucier Wire at the moment- for myself that is) but these people use the concepts to think outside of "THE BOX" the dreaded Hypothetical "BOX".

This box really doesn't exist unless we fail to let it not exist. Hmm... Let me try and explain that one. So I am taking a basic music class. I just learned what a triad is. The much beloved 3 note chord. I believe in this triad, for it is what I know. This is my box at the moment. Anything I learn and accept will be a part of this box. Thinking out side the box is really just willingness to pursue new knowledge that you didn't know or believe in.

Now what we all truly want to do is blow the box out of the "water". Where the water came from I don't know, but we sure as hell want to blow the box away and not have it anymore. This is when we not only are pursuing new knowledge out of our box, but understand it so thoroughly that it poses no limitation on us and all aspects regarding the box are thrown away. Ta-da. Ding. *Bell noise* We no longer have to rely on some box that never really existed in the first place. We had to believe it did, otherwise we would have nowhere to put new information. I am being somewhat redundant, but this is such an important concept.

I will always have some sort of box however, personally. I have a math box. I think 99 percent of humans have a math box. Don't you agree? I don't know the square root of -27, and neither should you. It is out side of our math box and only if we really loved finding the SQUARE ROOT OF MINUS 27 would we ever escape our math box. Or in other words, make it not exist.

Sooooooo... New Media got ya' down? It may not be vital to your survival, although it may enrich the other areas of your life if you just go with it. It all in all is a good experience. And by no means is it comprehensive yet- in my mind. If it is """"""New"""""" it could still be in the creation process today. Who knows, maybe something on of us 5 does will kick start a new trend in the musical world. Or math world. Or something else.

I am running out of brain for the night. I could go on, but I need to sleep, and this is quite long enough for tonight. Although I do recall promising MIND BLOWING BLATHER!! So there it was. I will most likely continue with this later being that I am short a few blogs.

Please feel free to ask questions about anything- especially if I am at all unclear.

Thank you and Congratulations for making it through this.

Inspirations

I am unsure of where these inspirations come from. new media. what came first the new or the media? Whats so new about it? i think it's a miscommunicated seducing persuasion. I stepped into New Media thinking we would be working with equipment beyond the imagination. Little did I know New Media is using your imagination beyond the equipment. Oh well. What is my inspiration with music if all I do is write complaints about what I am already involved in. I'm unsure. But it seems a rebellious personality never hurt anyone. I guess going against the grain... well I should of researched further into New Media before taking such a dramatic impulse of dreams towards it. On a positive note: New Media taught me things I would of never imagined. Danke :) you New Media. so i still dont get it. What is your inspiration towards music? really i would love to know. I didn't mention it two sentences ago but a sudden impulse of satisfaction came over me at the idea of your Inspiration. You may read this thinking i'm a failing teacher of pride/honor unlike the coach of Remember the Titans or any other inspirational movie. You may be right, but I would still like to know exactly why music is your charm. I would like to think of myself as a quiet child unable to grow without the nourishment of emotional knowledge. I hate logical concepts. I don't care for them due to my own self issues of past relationships. Go figure. Speaking of emotional concepts, that seems to be the only thing that flows out of my finger tips or lips whenever a decision no matter how serious or complex.

advertising and its lovely complications

When you have a product you obviously want it presented and any free promotion you can find is obviously desirable right?
Well, one great market that advertising is hugely active in is the world of Myspace. The question is what is cool to use and is really fair game and what is uncool? Often bands or companies messages massive quantities of people presenting their music, show, or product. Many people flip out in anger that it is SPAM!!! However, sometimes these messages are personalized based on information that involves much of your profile. I personally think the random duplicate message are almost surely classifiable as spam, but what about the messages with personal attention? Really myspace is a place for networking and friendmaking so couldn't a message like that be placed in the same category as a hello message stating the interest in talking to someone?

It has been clearly defined that emails from random sources are spam, but with a networking world such as myspace what do you do because while some people are absolutely against a message from a stranger, isn't that the same thing that you see on television called a commercial that alot of people DON'T WANT TO WATCH? I have thought about this a lot and one idea i thought about was...What if on your page you could choose whether to allow messages from people you didn't add or not, wait that is an option! That means that people that don't want the messages can prevent them, however i do sympathize the technologically challenged somewhat...ok enough sympathy, figure it out already. If you are going to be on myspace you better be ready for complex technology because it employs all sorts of multimedia and linked pages!

When dealing with music the purpose of myspace is to be able to be heard and get your name out there. Here's to the creation of filling out a section of musical preferences to be added to your personalization of your profile so you can only receive messages for your style of music!!!

Chris Lundeen

Who's right is it anyway???

When there is a loved member of anything it is common that a great deal of wondering about what should be done will occur regardless of personal involvement in whatever that may be.
We will be performing 4:33 with two people performing it in duo which directly correlates to a situation of a local musical group, and in fact MANY musical acts.

The local giants of underground hard music, AFTER THE BURIAL had their signer leave the band in July this past summer. He was by most people the most known member of the group and beloved. The members which do/did most of the musical composition still remain in tact now and replaced their drummer and the missing singer spot with members of a band they were friends with.

The reason I'm going on about this is I heard alot from people about how they should change their name because it wont be *the same band.* I understand what is meant because of the belovedness of the original frontman and stage energy that he had unlike anyone else, however isn't it kind of the band's right to choose? They haven't even debaited name change as far as i'm concerned, but i just thought about it because it is a common happening that a band once known for its original members may only have one original member when it becomes hugely popular and who's right is it to decide if they are the same band? That in mind, is it right of us to call 4:33 just that or are we being too experimental with it? Who should decide the right's of anyone else and is it fair to call something by the same label when the components have changed greatly? Who's right is it anyway???

Chris Lundeen

Radio Music

The frequencies suddenly appear from the air. It seemed to come from out of nowhere. Stations are coming in and out and noise replaces silences spot. A fond song airs and gets you hooked. Just at that time you are shook. The song is gone but didn't end, they're searching for a brand new friend. Too much to capture all at once, constant change takes place and then...it stops.

Chris Lundeen

Draft of a Blurb (Blurb of a Draft)

Early in the semester, we as a class examined a piece by deceased composer James Tenney entitled, “Having Never Written a Note for Percussion.” Professor Twombly wrote out the entire score in class for us, which can be seen above.

He then demonstrated the performing of it with the use of a single gong and two mallets, playing a version of it which lasted six minutes. As can be seen by the notation, the piece calls for a gradual crescendo over the course of an extended period of time, coming to the loudest possible volume somewhere in the middle and then followed by a gradual decrescendo.

Noted avant-garde percussionist William Winant, who adapted the piece to be played by himself and the members of the experimental rock band Sonic Youth for their album Goodbye Twentieth Century, describes some of Tenney’s thought behind these works: “[Tenney] had all these compositions for solo instruments that were musical analogs of Zen koans, musical questions to ponder that would bring enlightenment.”

Karl Konz will be performing this evening’s version of James Tenney's “Having Never Written a Note for Percussion.”

Isaac Rotto

Scary Music!!! : Perceiving the perceptions

This past weekend I had a lengthy conversation with a lady friend and at the beginning of this talk I was greeted by a shreek followed by "Are you listening to scary music?"

I was playing a band that I am friends with that I was previously planning to take this girl to in a couple of weeks because she had never been to the club they are playing. Now, we'll see because what she was referring to by SCARY MUSIC was music with screaming. I guess i hadn't realized how normalized it has become to me because now it's like no big the and the WEIRD stuff i listen to is associated with these new media classes in my own mind. I dare to say i don't think i'll be playing it for her anytime soon due to a lot of explaining needed to get to a point where she could comprehend the purpose.

This really helped me get a better grip of connotations of what is music. Really i have been grouping new media music into the CRAZY and WEIRD categories without realizing that that's what people near me think about the music that i enjoy on a daily basis. I have "perceived perceptions" in a new way and i'm glad this conversation with the girl took place. Really i have been trying hard to accept new media into the realm of MUSICAL PIECES or WORKS but at the same time unconciously denying it that very right. I've felt like it's just crazy even though i get the technical and skillful aspects correlated with the music.

My point is...No matter what you enjoy listening to, someone find its to be CRAZY or STUPID and any genre of music should be considered as quality. You just have to learn to perceive the perceptions you've known your whole life in a new way.

Chris Lundeen

Music On A Long Thin Wire WRITE-UP

In 1977, experimental music composer Alvin Lucier created a musical piece titled "Music On A Long Thin Wire." The set up for this piece involves a wire being extended across a large room and clamped to two tables at either end. It is there that the wires are connected to loudspeaker terminals of a power amplifier with a sine wave oscillator connected to the amp. A magnet "straddles" the wire at one of the ends while wooden bridges are put under the wire at both ends with contact microphones imbedded and then routed to the stereo system. With changes to the frequency and volume of the oscillator, the vibrations produce a variety of sounds, though Lucier admitted himself that a shorter wire would create as good, if not better, results over a longer one and that the best way to create sonic phenomena is to leave the set-up alone. Trivia note: the United States library of Congress did not allow Lucier to copywright this piece, saying that it was not a work of authored art, but rather a natural phenomenom being produced!

Cistern as Instrument

I have to admit that Stuart Dempster's piece that we listened to in class last week fooled me. The recording and the instruments involved sounded all the world to me like they were heavily processed and/or synthesized. Also, seeing as a new “final cut” of the movie had been released, I thought it might have been part of keyboardist Vangelis’ score to Blade Runner, partly due also to my rough memory of there being hand-chimes/bells played somewhere during the soundtrack.

I would’ve loved to have found out just how the performance of the Dempster piece was recorded. I’m sure if they had used unidirectional close-mic’ing of the instruments the results of the performance would have sounded much different than whatever mics were used to capture the rich resonating and echoes of the cistern as “activated” by the ensemble. I also wonder to what extent trial-and-error factored into the recording situation; if it was a one-take deal or if several, possibly shorter, runs in order to nail down a satisfactory mic situation were attempted; and how frustrating it might have been to have to wait after a botched take for the echoes to die down in order for the next take to begin as envisioned.

In doing a little reading about Oliveros and deep-listening, I was struck by this part of her Wikipedia entry--

Oliveros coined the term "Deep Listening", which she then applied to her group The Deep Listening Band and to the Deep Listening program of Deep Listening Institute, Ltd. (formerly The Pauline Oliveros Foundation), which she founded in 1985. The Deep Listening program includes annual listening retreats in Europe, New Mexico and in upstate New York, as well as apprenticeship and certification programs. The Deep Listening Band, which includes Oliveros, David Gamper, and Stuart Dempster, specializes in performing and recording in resonant or reverberant spaces such as caves, cathedrals and huge underground cisterns. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauline_Oliveros)

The idea of a group of people traveling around and exploring both natural and artificial structures’ sound really intrigues me. As someone who has played music in various places around the country, the sound of a room almost becomes at times a personal bane, a never-ending struggle with trying to sound similar, a different room night after night, to how things sounded in a “control” room like a practice space. Here is an aesthetic that prides itself on going around and activating those places’ characteristics! In a way it almost undercuts traditional notions of the performer, in that it could be said that greater allowance is made for aspects of individual spaces to play the musicians after a fashion.