{"id":847,"date":"2012-12-29T20:25:22","date_gmt":"2012-12-30T01:25:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pugix.com\/synth\/?p=847"},"modified":"2012-12-29T20:25:22","modified_gmt":"2012-12-30T01:25:22","slug":"music-without-composition-or-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pugix.com\/synth\/music-without-composition-or-performance\/","title":{"rendered":"Music without composition or performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

My last post, Prediction, was a postcard recording that I think of as music without composition and without performance.\u00a0 And yet, I did make it.\u00a0 I chose which modules to use.\u00a0 I made a patch, the set of wires connecting modules together.\u00a0 And I played<\/em> with the patch until I discovered something I found interesting.\u00a0 I was looking for patterns that would change in ways that might surprise and delight the listener, but without being predictable.\u00a0 Hence the ironic title.\u00a0 It would be a stretch to use the term ‘composition’ to describe this activity.\u00a0 I don’t look at this as a creative act on my part, either.\u00a0 I was exploring and listening.\u00a0 I found something I liked and recorded it.\u00a0 I did not have those sounds in mind, with any specificity, when I started out.\u00a0 I was not composing or creating anything.<\/p>\n

Neither was I performing.\u00a0 After I set the patch going, I let it continue without doing anything other than just listening.\u00a0 This can take patience and discipline.\u00a0 It is easy to start feeling bored, wishing for some change to happen, and then start twiddling a knob or two.\u00a0 That impulse has to be resisted, or something great might never come to pass.\u00a0 I could just as well ruin the sounds as make them more interesting.\u00a0 This implies that I bring aesthetic judgment to bear in the process.\u00a0 I recognize this to be true, but I admit to being unclear about my aesthetic criteria.\u00a0 That is a question for future reflection.<\/p>\n

I prefer to participate by exploration and listening, as opposed to performing or improvising.\u00a0 It seems to me that, until I achieve more clarity about my aesthetic criteria, improvising is hazardous.\u00a0 To improvise with the synthesizer means to involve myself in instantaneous decisions.\u00a0 It risks easily going awry.\u00a0 Meaning that all of a sudden I’m rather displeased with the sound and confused about what to do.\u00a0 It’s better to explore and then let the sounds unfold.<\/p>\n

John Cage once made a remark to the effect that there is a type of music that is not performed, and that with this type of music mistakes are impossible.\u00a0 The electronic circuits cannot err.\u00a0 They follow natural laws.\u00a0 They possess no aesthetics.\u00a0 And yet out of their activity can emerge very striking sounds, when listened to.\u00a0 These sounds bear a similarity to other natural sounds, like water in a downspout or thunder.\u00a0 I go exploring for sounds and love the joy of finding them.\u00a0 I don’t make them.<\/p>\n

Sometimes I do feel like playing around and improvising.\u00a0 But that is something different.\u00a0 I am much more ambivalent about improvising than I am about exploring.\u00a0 I feel that I have more skill in the latter than with the former.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My last post, Prediction, was a postcard recording that I think of as music without composition and without performance.\u00a0 And yet, I did make it.\u00a0 I chose which modules to … Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[125],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-musings"],"yoast_head":"\nMusic without composition or performance - Richard Brewster's Electronic Sounds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pugix.com\/synth\/music-without-composition-or-performance\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Music without composition or performance - Richard Brewster's Electronic Sounds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My last post, Prediction, was a postcard recording that I think of as music without composition and without performance.\u00a0 And yet, I did make it.\u00a0 I chose which modules to ... 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