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