Forum Review of Week 3 Forum

Today's forum was a journey. It was an opportunity to wake up, smell the roses, and break the chains of oppression. The revolution has began.

If a picture says a thousand words, David Harris' work that was performed today said about 1,160 or so; each word more powerful than the last (and the sum of the whole greater than the individual power of more than 1,700 words or so). But he did not choose to use words to say it... instead, David let him music do the talking. And boy, did it tell a story.

What David basically said, for the first time ever, is that music does not NEED to be tonal or metronomical to make sense. For me, this was a revelation. We are diving into unfamiliar territory here, I know, but bare with me. David showed that a work does not need to fit with "traditional" musical ideals, ones that state that music should be something you enjoy participating in, or at least listening to. This "pleasant" idea originated at the start of music, but the human mind has evolved past these naiive ideals.

Instead, David sees music as an opportunity to exapand your mind. Who would have thought you can grab a group of random notes and just write them all over the page however you feel for however many instruments the class has, and achieve such a powerful effect? David makes a statement that has not been made before, (it hasn't been made about 1,000 times), that music can be music for its own sake. And its very effective because it's such a new idea! David feels music does not need to feel pleasant and why should it? Happiness is just a state of mind, one that sometimes makes its presence accross our daily lives, but how about incrimental irritation? How about confused impatience? Or utter, even humurous disbelief? All these feelings, and even some negative ones were felt during the performance of the work. A true inspiration to the upcomming musician...

We have all heard the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin. But have we heard a random splatter of sound, with highlights including verbal expressions such as "the stomach lyning"? No. Is there a reason for this?... of course. We are IGNORANT. Totally ignorant, in a society that promotes art which creates positive feelings. Art can be so much more, or so much less, as this piece expresses. There is only one form of pure music, and that is the one which takes the least brain capacity to write, therefore leaving the rest of the brain to focus on other things, like dinner and teaching composition. If everyone wrote what sounds good, we would be living in fairy land. But what sounds good? That depends on the person doesn't it. To the common peasant, the commercial sounds of Elvis and Britney Spears are enough to satisfy them. But to the gifted savant, the destruction of harmonic language and common sense is only the beggining of the story... We understand the world on a different level. Tonality is not enough for me any more. I hope some day you'll join me. And the world will live as one... JohnyC, signing off.


...

Supercollider Week 2 Exercise

What doesn't collide, can't SUPERcollide; and what can't supercollide isn't worth colliding with....

SUPERCOLLIDER 3:

The return of the beast...



(
// build a table of note names

var table = ();

value
{
var semitones = [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11];
var naturalNoteNames = ["c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "a", "b"];


(0..9).do
{
arg o;

naturalNoteNames.do
{

arg c, i;

var n = (o + 1) * 12 + semitones[i];

table[(c ++ o).asSymbol] = n; table[(c ++ "s" ++ o).asSymbol] = n + 1; //determine sharp
table[(c ++ "ss" ++ o).asSymbol] = n + 2; //determine double sharp
table[(c ++ "b" ++ o).asSymbol] = n - 1; //determine flat
table[(c ++ "bb" ++ o).asSymbol] = n - 2; //determine double flat

};
};
};

"Pitch class and Octave Number, MIDI Note Number, Frequency Value" .postln;
a = table.atAll (#[a4].postln).postln;// Creates MIDI Note number --Enter Pitch class and Octave number here.


a = 2**((a-69)/12) *440; //Coverts MIDI note number to frequency value


)

Supercollider Week 1 execise

After much trial and error and learning stuff, a couple of us have manged to get together a working prototype of the midi to frequency conversion in the infamos SUPERCOLLIDER!!!

Supercollider is the best. If you are in 2nd year I feel sorry cause you won't get to experience the pure joy just yet, but hold on. John Cage with you.

(
     // build a table of note names

var table = ();

value
        {
                var semitones = [0, 2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 11];
                var naturalNoteNames = ["c", "d", "e", "f", "g", "a", "b"];



        (0..9).do
                        {
                        arg o;

                        naturalNoteNames.do
                                {

                                        arg c, i;

                                        var n = (o + 1) * 12 + semitones[i];

                                        table[(c ++ o).asSymbol] = n;
                                   table[(c ++ "s"  ++   o).asSymbol] = n + 1;
                                   table[(c ++ "ss" ++  o).asSymbol] = n + 2;
                                   table[(c ++ "b"  ++  o).asSymbol] = n - 1;
                                   table[(c ++ "bb" ++  o).asSymbol] = n - 2;
                                };
                     };
        };


a = table.atAll(#[c4]); // change the number where it says c4 to get frequency

a = 2**((a-69)/12) *440;

) 

Forum Review: Thursday March 8

This is the first of thousands of forums I will be attending this year, but it will remain the first I wrote my opinion of.

Stepen Whittington raised the question of originality in this forum, and spoke a little about some aspects of what could be considered a fairly debatable topic. He asked us to consider what is really originality, and gave examples of other cultures and how they view the topic. In some traditions, like in the Indian classical music field, one gets allowed to explore further away from the basics of music as they gain more experience, and trully understand what they are doing. This view was enforced by a story about a teacher and a boy who chose he would improvise extensively, only to be tied to a tree (I wonder what the indian teacher would've thought about John Cage, who breaks all the rules; like a rockstar only he breaks even more rules).

This story demonstrates that in some cultures, patience, hard work and gradual improvement is valued more than creativity. When the student is experienced enough to improvise, however, I can't help but wonder if his musical results might be a lot less creative than if he was allowed and encouraged to create early in his life (like it seems we are encouraged to do in our Western society). I think that this might be a sign that classical Indian music is still developing and has a long way to go before reaching its full potential, because I can't help to wonder if Western composers in the Baroque era and earlier might not have been similarly brought up. Slowly, composers started breaking the mould a little, and then came Beethoven, who shatered traditional views and gave way to the rise of real romanticism in music; real freedom. Maybe the Indian Beethoven is still to come? By this I don't in any way mean to disrespect Indian classical music, but raise an interesting question. For some reason, Indian classical music has a similar effect on me to baroque or earlier Western classical music, and I am just wondering whether it will stay the same in the next hundred years or so.

Stephen played some music that also made the class wonder about the effect of musical education on the creativity of a person. He specifically played 3 works by Erik Satie, who had had limited theoretical trainning before creating most of his famous works. However, after attending musical tertiary education later in his life, his works lost some of the innocent flavor that made him original and stand out. I can't help feeling this way sometimes; for some reason, I feel my most original works were done around highschool, with the least sophisticated equipment, and limited musical knowledge. Of course, you need to know a little, but knowing a lot seems to be able to tame the creative nature. Yes, the music might sound better, or more logical, or even more complex, but it is lacking an ellement that makes it unique, or emotional. This could be due to the fact that a lot of commercial music is based around the same tonal structure, and more you know about it, the more you want to explore inside it, rather than venturing out and just playing what "sounds" good. And what sounds good to a musician, I am learning, is different from what sounds good to a random person (except John Cage, who sounds good to everyone).

Another fact that I find affects creativity is the ammount of choice offered to work with. If you have a limited selection/knowledge of chords, you might make more interesting music because you are trying to express something complex through something simple which leads to interest! It is interesting because it is different, yet it is not offensive because both the harmonic language and ideas are valid. It is the same with a choice of instruments; I find that if I have to create a piece for just MIDI instruments, my ideas will be more interesting than when creating for a choice of thousands of synthesizers.

This could be because if you have an idea and say it exactly like you want, it is just boring. There is no tension, therefore no interest. You know what is comming up.

"I am this guy who is really awsome and super rich and make the best music and I'm so cool and probably have my own car but I'm not sure if cars were around when I was living"

is more interesting than:

"I am John Cage."

Capisce?

Then we heard Roadrunner, by John Zorn, which sounded ok for an according piece, but I don't usually like works that are made up of chopped up bits from other works, I just don't think they are interesting or offer anything trully interesting. It also comes down to what originality is, but in my view, taking 50 riffs from 50 places is just not composing. It is researching.


Anyways, a pretty good forum, looking forward to more.




Stephen Whittington, "Music Technology Forum"

Lecture presented at the University of Adelaide, South Australia, 8/03/2007.

Music Technology Year 3 Intro

Just started my awsome new blog at this new address. Anyways there will be MUCH fun times to be had here. Let's hope we have fun. Anyways I will start posting before Thursday's class in week 3 cause I only just got a new blog because the other one was too old and I forgot my password.

Until next time,
Regards.