I decided to read into experimental music, and this book stood out to me. I was looking into Brian Eno’s work throughout my prototype and this made me want to read this. Overall I think this book gave me a good understanding of experimental music and the types that exist and the processes involved within it. As well as the main artists who pioneered this. I am curious though why it’s focused on USA and UK, I get that perhaps the writer was intrigued by this, just was strange to me.
A few things that stood out to me, were number one graphic scores, and notations of music. Which I will try when recording drums next week. Number two was the idea of separation between the actual reason why an object was made, for example, a piano. And instead, use it as a sound-emitting source.
I overall didn’t totally enjoy this but It has guided my ideas and will impact my process going on forth when making music. As always here are some quotes.
a feeling that music should be something more than that which could be contained in concert halls or on records, that it must somehow extend itself into our lives.
A written foreword by Brian Eno, I totally agree with this statement. I think in any sort of left-field music that lends itself to Field 3, the spirit. Shares this common idea that music is more than something to commodify and capture on a record or just pay a ticket to go watch, it is part of our lives and existence.
It made a point of being more concerned with how things were made – what processes had been employed to compose or perform then – than with what they finally sounded like. It was a music, we used to say, of process rather than product.
Again this interested me, being more concerned with how things were made rather than the outcome. I can also say I am definitely interested in the outcome. But also some of my favourite work is heightened by the process. How are things made gives immense context to pieces and their meanings, something I considered from the book 33 1/3 on Donuts.
On the one hand, we applauded the idea of music as a highly physical, sensual entity – music free of narrative and literary structures, free to be pure sonic experience. On the other, we supported the idea of music as a highly intellectual, spiritual experience, effectively a place where we could exercise and test philosophical propositions or encapsulate intriguing game-like procedures.
Music is free of literary structures, a purely sonic experience. Nail on the head of what I am trying to capture.
So if this was ‘experimental music’, what was the experiment? Perhaps it was the continual re-asking of the question ‘what also could music be?’, the attempt to discover what makes us able to experience something as music.
I liked this as it made me consider my own ideas, if I am trying to make ‘experimental music’ what is the experiment? what am I trying to do, what can music be? Am I trying anything new or just following inspirations.
If there is a lasting message from experimental music, it’s this: music is something your mind does.
Again similar to the last book I read, music lives in field 3, the spirit. Something that your mind makes, the music itself and sound aren’t created and given meaning by just existing.
Experimental music exploits an instrument not simply as a means of making sounds in the accepted fashion, but as a total configuration – the difference between ‘playing the piano’ and the ‘piano as sound source’
Playing the piano and the piano as a sound source is a really interesting duality. Can I do the same with my turntable? I’ve been enjoying it so much recently.
So lastly here are a few things that captured my attention,
Pendulum music,
Swinging mics over speakers.
Morton Feldman Graphic Scores
Between 1952 and 6 Cage worked on two large projects – Music for Piano 1-84
Marvellous Aphorisms Are Scattered Richly Throughout These Pages.
I think overall this has given me something new to consider within my own music creation work, not that I have to go to the extremes presented here, but also conforming what I think music is or should be, alongside what I think music creating devices should be used, and the ‘correct’ way of using them.