I would like to bring this article to your attention.
http://textura.org/archives/articles/dronesarticle.htm
Thanks LV, very interesting.
"Of course, Young wasn't the first to use the drone—it's fundamental to Indian music—but he can be credited with reviving it within Western classical music."
Interesting that western tradition for this too started with classical music - though Young sounds like he didn't close him self off to any influence.
Though a question I have to ask - why compose in only one style?
So could one have morse code fragments as drones?
Quote from: "residentgrey"So could one have morse code fragments as drones?
if you take the Phillip Glass model to heart - yes.
QuoteThough a question I have to ask - why compose in only one style?
Drone music is not a style - it is music which uses a specific technique. It can be in any style and as far as I know Young did not limit himself to one style.
If we do speak about a person choosing one style, it must be that that person looks at the music he plays more than just 'style'. Style is usually just a form. But if a person does classical music all his life, it must be something more than a form which he sticks to.
I cannot speak for Young, possibly he explained his interest in drone music, but for me drone music is part of a philosophy of life. It is also part of being dedicated to something. One can try this or that style but when a certain form of music is really close to you then it is a good idea to perfect it and make it a bit more than just a form - soak it with content... I hope I am making sense to you )
nope, I'm afraid not at all.
I don't understand the genre pigeon holes modern music has. Why does one only write drone, or country, or techno? - It makes sense perhaps for an album but not a career.
Perhaps my view is more of a renaissance man capable in many fields as opposed to the ultra-specialization that I see in so many places - the sciences and the arts.
--------
A style is nothing more than a series of choices - one style implies that the majority of the choices are the same.
I only know that Young and Glass have been composing in a discpline called "minimal music".
I don't think this can be called a style. Well, they both have their personal styles of course within that discipline.
I has more to do with a certain technique of composing, like there is pointilism in painting.
Music with a drone, so with one stable ground-tone, is the most ancient and basic form of music.
Like indeed the tambura-player does behind Ravi Shankar.
In global music history it's only quite recent, that changing the groundtone with chords or transpositions was 'invented', mainly in the West-European tradition.
QuoteWhy does one only write drone, or country, or techno?
You cannot compare like this. I have told you - there is no such style of music as drone. Drone is a technique. It can be used in any music genre.
For instance, the music I write is something that one would call... maybe new age or something of that sort. My music is usually minimal, ambient (flat structure) and droning. But none of these - minimal, ambient, drone - are styles.
Of course, with time ambient did become a sort of a genre in minds of people. While I find that using this term in the meaning of genre makes things confusing, it does stand for a certain atmospheric music. Minimal is also thought of as a genre. But even when people use them, the terms are just too general to define a style, a genre.Drone is used in many stlyles: folk, metal, new age/ambient, classical, religious genres of many cultures.
QuoteI don't understand the genre pigeon holes modern music has.
Genre is more than using certain kinds of sounds. It is having a tradition behind your back - like jazz. Like classical.
Also I have a thought that before Internet people a only local music round. So they did it and developed it to the state of absolute art. Today there is more choice and more music forms available to try out.
But you wouldn't argue that if you are new to jazz, you would probably write some crappy jazz. A genre is much more than just using a sax in a tune. Much more.
I would say that genres as strict forms don't make much sense. Genres are cool for crude categorization. They are not cool to be thought of as blocks of variety in music. Jazz, for instance, has so many styles... and classical music to my understanding is in fact simply "music" - there is no style to it.
I think you are mixing two uses in english for the word drone.
one can have a drone note.... like a hurdy gurdy or classical indian music or medieval dance songs - you do not write this type of music.
and one can have a drone style
such as phillip glass, some Tangerine dream or your music where the idea is NOT to play a (traditional) melody against a drone note (or 5th etc) but to *abolish* melody and meter (Glass is a really about texture not melody). This is what you write. And it IS a style - as much of a style as Baroque, country, or a waltz. Many identical choices are made when composing in a style - choices are what defines a style.
Please do not get hung up on the word style - a style is simply a system, a collection of choices as you will. If you want to sound like Bach or Mozart or Beethoven you can study their music and understand the choices they make in their music and repeat the choices and create an emulation of the original.
For example - Hayden liked Picardy thirds and Bach didn't - so to emulate Hayden you make the last chord of the piece written in minor major - to emulate Bach you would never do this.
It is all choices.... that is all it is....
We have the benefit of hindsight here. Hayden was doing something new(ish) when he wrote symphonies and used the picardy third. The music Mozart and Beethoven and Debussy wrote was all *new* - this is why they are famous - they *created* styles by making different choices that worked - this was how they went about solving the puzzle of putting together melody and harmony.
When people emulate the choices of other composers - you get a group of people working in a genre. This happens in art too - impressionism and cubism and realism and.... so on.
When you approach a keyboard or start a sequencer or look at a blank canvas you start to make choices. The choice are not by definition neutral. And your choices define your style.
Personally my biggest challenge is to try to NOT make the same choice every time. And when it comes to improvisation which often relies on physical ability this can be a challenge indeed. (I too often repeat what I've done already)
So... yes... drone is a style.
Well, in that way, I would agree with you.
I agree in general with how you define style. I cannot agree that "drone" alone is a style.
"Doom drone" is a style, it's bands like Sunn O))).
"Soundscape drone" is a style, like Tangerine Dream or Steve Roach
"folk drone" is a style, like Indian music.
"any other drone" which bases the music on long notes or cluster of notes
"drone" alone is not a style and I am not confusing two English words. I am well aware that there is drone as a note and drone as in drone music. I simply explain that drone is not a style, it incorporates many styles.
The reason why you might not agree with me is because you perhaps have connected with "soundscape drone" only and do not know that drone music is actually a much broader term - but now I told you. If you want to research this, just try the Sunn O))) band or Nadja or Earth and you will see that it has nothing to do with soundscapes yet it is also drone.
btw, wikipedia calls both ambient, minimal and drone "styles". This clearly is a mistake. It's a mistake which comes out of a stereotypical way to look at styles, out of loose thinking.
Look at the bands which are considered to be explorers of the style:
QuoteExplorers of drone music since the 1960s have included Theater of Eternal Music (aka The Dream Syndicate: La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, Tony Conrad, Angus Maclise, John Cale, et al.), Charlemagne Palestine, Eliane Radigue, Kraftwerk, Klaus Schulze, Tangerine Dream, Robert Fripp & Brian Eno, Robert Rich, Steve Roach, Stars of the Lid, Earth, Coil, Sonic Boom, Phill Niblock, and Sunn O)))
Those are absolutely different bands which play different music with different approaches, ideas and ethics behind them. The only thing that combines them is the use of drones. The rest is different.
Actually, when you do communicate with drone music lovers who mistakenly think of it as style, you can see how much confusion and holy wars it creates, because each person considers his band to be the "true" drone. And all of it is a mere misunderstanding.
uncloned: as for your opinion on styles, it is interesting, I didn't hear it from many musicians and it might be a very interesting discussion to both sides but I don't want to pursue it here because it leads us away from the main topic.
LV you are seeing trees and missing the forest.
One can tell that from the answers in your rebuttal where you again mix the use of drones and the style of drones. For instance the focus of
Quote"folk drone" is a style, like Indian music.
is not on the drone.
PS - I suggest you
never tell an Indian his classical music is "folk". Indians have a very long musical history that is extremely developed and complicated. What Indian classical music misses in harmony is more than made up for in melody and the rules of improvisation during performance.
Quoteuncloned: as for your opinion on styles, it is interesting, I didn't hear it from many musicians and it might be a very interesting discussion to both sides but I don't want to pursue it here because it leads us away from the main topic.
That came from my music theory class... so I'm not alone.....
I am speaking about Indian FOLK music, not Indian classical music. I am very versed in folk music of many countries and I know what I am speaking about. Indian FOLK music can be drone-based, with not much melodies at all, but several drones and rhythm over it. Same goes for some forms of Australian folk music.
With absolutely no offense intended, I believe that the reason we have a problem here is because you did not listen to much drone music. If you do (the suggested band list above, try YouTube) you will see that all this different music cannot be called one style at all. To be honest, I do not see this as something to argue about.
please post a link to an Indian folk music example where the focus is not on the rhythm or melody but on the drone.
What I understand is drone style focuses on the drone such as your music.
And drone technique uses the drone as backing for the other instrumentation or melodic content.
Since you are the one presenting the POV about drone and have already found examples of your POV on youtube - could you post some links?
I still think you are mixing the two. Please offer me some examples to the contrary.
No, no. I mean drone technique as when the music focuses on the drone - there is a variety of genres which do it.
Steve Roach and my kinda music you already know, so let's look at something else.
Let's see the link for metal drone, Sunn O)))
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtnG6EHh1N4
Actually, this is what most people think of when you say "drone music". Around here I popularized the new age type of drone like Steve Roach, but mostly Sunn O))) is the first association. I guess it comes from the fact that the rock culture is very vast so more people are exposed to guitar experiments than anything else.
Here's another metal doom drone example, Nadja. You can hear in this example as the drone is the central figure in spite of the fact that the song actually has lyrics (!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgJdLr6uU80
The Indian music example I heard some years ago on tape, I will require time to find it. You can find some examples on YouTube like this one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ReN9tAUZkQ
But I heard a much more serious recording, drone based. In some part it does have rhythm, but the drone dominates fully and the whole music is much more impressive and deep than the example above.
Sun O)))) which was pretty boring (no real timbre change unlike your music) I can see being drone - though there were chord changes albeit somewhat slow ones.
Though you can see directly were the guitar comes from in this from 1970
Black Sabbath War Pigs (which I used to play incidentally)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtqy4DTHGqg
The idea for War Pigs was power and majesty in the introduction. Sun O))) seems to have taken this to an extreme - but loses the power and majesty by overuse - but that is just my opinion of course.
Nadja - is this a band or a female singer? In anycase this reminds me strongly of Sigur Ros. This definitely has chord progressions and movement - I don't see the drone as being the central object at all - the drone is to me functioning as a traditional western (and for that matter Indian) drone -- it gives the melody something to work against in order to judge the distance. By about 3 minutes into it the "drone" chord has been significantly turned down in volume.
Much better music version http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyeSlN9LhnQ&feature=related
The indian music example - where the drone is a repeated melody of root - fifth - octave above root - is totally contrived if you read the comments - but it is the closest to your drone music in all of the examples given I'll give you that. But it doesn't seem to be representative of Indian folk music. Perhaps Sam can enlighten us - he seems to know alot about Indian music.
"freezinghand (3 months ago) Show Hide Marked as spam Reply No sitar in this one, I left it with just the drone as I have found it was hard to find that drone sound online and it is such a powerful sound, People can add their own inner melody to it or drift off if they want! Thanks "
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Great Meditation Indian Drone with Ocean Waves Sound Music and Video! Christian Tatonetti Freezinghand Channel http://www.myspace.com/paul... The Soundtrack for the Tambura can be found on my cd...
Great Meditation Indian Drone with Ocean Waves Sound Music and Video!
Christian Tatonetti Freezinghand Channel
http://www.myspace.com/paultatonetti
The Soundtrack for the Tambura can be found on my cd:
The Art of Flying (Sitar, Voice, Piano)"
And what I read here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_folk_music
This article suggests Indian folk music centers around dancing and singing - not unlike European or frankly any other culture's folk music.
I'm not finding material to back your assertion LV.
With all due respect I think you may be biased in your POV.
I will heartliy agree though that you are working with drone - but I will say that for you drone is a style and not a technique in the normal sense of the word.
I will say this - drone, as well as repetition, are some of the easiest things you can do with music - it only makes sense that the use of a drone or repeated rythmic figure would be wide spread in indigenious and folk cultures.
QuoteI can see it being drone - though there were chord changes albeit somewhat slow ones.
QuoteThis definitely has chord progressions and movement - I don't see the drone as being the central object at all
Drone music can have as many chord progressions and movement as it wants. There is absolutely no rule that drone music should not have melodies or chord progressions. The rule is that the melodic changes if there are any are slow and/or not emphasized. Why do you think that drone music is drone only if it changes timbre and not the melody is beyond my understanding - because this is really not the case. I did not make this up, it says so even in wikipedia. And perhaps this is why you do not look at it as a technique.
Sunn O))) may seem boring to you but a lot of people actually enjoy it.
Perhaps another choice of words can help: droning. This sounds more like a technique.
I repeat once more - why can't I look at drone music as a genre? Because it is too broad. It embraces several genres/styles of music. This is why I showed you these several examples. Your response was that most of it is not drone. But this is not really debatable - all of the bands I showed you are considered to be drone - want it or not. And - as far as I can see it - they are all drone music.
QuoteThis article suggests Indian folk music centers around dancing and singing - not unlike European or frankly any other culture's folk music.
In my experience, folk music is not limited to one form. Australian folk music (with which I am a bit more familiar) has a section which is drone based - didjeridoo obviously. Not always it is accompanied by rhythm (although in most cases it is).
QuoteWith all due respect I think you may be biased in your POV.
In this case I do not think there can be a biased or an unbiased opinion. It's simply how I look at this particular matter. I do not believe there is any way to come to an unbiased opinion - yours can be considered as biased as mine.
To me such things are important because when I work with music theory I find many terms to be too broad or not exact. I find this in many-many things - this happens because people do not always need to differentiate, not all of them are interested in building music theories.
If in your life you use drone as a genre - it will work for communication. In music theory it does not work for me for reasons I've explained above. A bit later I will record a chapter of my music observations audio book and leave a link in the downloads - get i then. It will be about types, genres and styles of music in the music theory I am developing. It cannot be universally agreed upon of course.
This is what I read in wikipedia
"In music, a drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded throughout most or all of a piece, sustained or repeated, and most often establishing a tonality upon which the rest of the piece is built."
It says nothing about a chord change
"Most hurdy gurdies have multiple "drone strings" which provide a constant pitch accompaniment to the melody, resulting in a sound similar to that of bagpipes. For this reason, the hurdy gurdy is often used interchangeably with or along with bagpipes, particularly in French and contemporary Hungarian folk music."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurdy_gurdy
Hurdy Gurdy is perhaps the most direct reference for Western Music
Now back to the rest of your post
Well, I'll give you this - usually when one is trying to create something new, which I know you have been striving to do for some time, a position that seems extreme to others is often required.
I think though that for common usage - drone referes to a long, long, long note or notes, that extend the length of the piece. And I think Indian Classical music is an excellent example of this definition and bagpipes and hurdy gurdy excellent examples of instruments made with droning in mind.
The music you create - would fit within this definition where the center of the piece is indeed the drone. Phillip Glass to me is stepping outside (despite what we posted earlier) because his is textural music - the music changes subtly by almost imperceviable change in pitchs or pitch order.
I have ripped a CD from my father's collection - Ravi Shankar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Morning_Raga_/_An_Evening_Raga
whoa - from 1968 - an excellent example my understanding of drone. Beautiful music.... Two pieces each 25 minutes long or so...
LV - one limitation of your drone music is that using the sound sources you are you are bound by the harmonic series - when you do a filter sweep you are emphasising the same relative pitch each time. I'm trying to find a way around this limitation.
QuoteWell, I'll give you this - usually when one is trying to create something new, which I know you have been striving to do for some time, a position that seems extreme to others is often required.
Perhaps. I do not do this consciously though - it just happens that deeper thought usually makes you come up with conclusions which seem odd and extreme, with discoveries. But when you explain them they do make sense. I think that when I put out the style/genre/type/technique material and speak more about it you will if not agree than understand where I am going with this.
Quote from: "uncloned"
I have ripped a CD from my father's collection - Ravi Shankar
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Morning_Raga_/_An_Evening_Raga
whoa - from 1968 - an excellent example my understanding of drone. Beautiful music.... Two pieces each 25 minutes long or so...
Hey, this is fantastic! I heard this on tape a long time ago! Ragas which depend on time of day. Can you share the mp3 files or smth?
QuoteLV - one limitation of your drone music is that using the sound sources you are you are bound by the harmonic series - when you do a filter sweep you are emphasising the same relative pitch each time. I'm trying to find a way around this limitation.
This is an intentional move, believe it or not. It was actually the first thing I noticed about sound music - a certain irrelevance of harmonic content, melodic development being a distraction from sound development. I am just one example of what sound music can be. If you try Saafi Brothers, you will hear that sound music can be full of variety without emphasizing harmonic complexity or harmonic development. If you would like, you can either sear YouTube or I can send you a couple of mp3 examples.
In fact, this limitation is similar to limitations which exist in note-based music from the POV of sound music - like, the melody is played with a sound and it's timbre and sound is still, limited to one form.
However, sound music can certainly incorporate harmonic changes, so I am very interested in any thoughts you might have about this. Question is - where the boundary lies. How I see it - combining note-based and sound based music should be done very delicately, to the point of it not being advised at all. I tried doing this in Journey 98, but it only worked because the melodic part lacked any significant development and pronunciation. And to this day I wonder whether it was a good move there at all.
Well. this debate is getting in some 'drone' also.
2 LV : explain the difference between, what you call, Indian FOLK music, and Indian classical music to me.
It's a typical phenomenon from a western point of view to call any other music tradition 'folk' music.
It's a perception with a smell of superiority, which is totally inappropriate.
QuoteIt's a typical phenomenon from a western point of view to call any other music tradition 'folk' music.
It's a perception with a smell of superiority, which is totally inappropriate.
Superiority has nothing to do with that. Misinformation and innocent misinterpretation are the usual suspects.
I am familiar with folk music of many nations thanks to my numerous contacts in the folk world and interest to the music tradition. I have heard some serious Indian classical music and it is absolutely fascinating, but I did not listen to a lot of it. (And I can't see how one can call it folk, since it is so complex, but I guess that does happen.)
What I heard most from Indian folk is the percussion music tradition. I have also (very-very briefly) been introduced to the basics of Indian percussion. Don't possess the actual drums though, they are so expensive in Europe ( :cry: ). The tunes I've heard were either drum-based or drone-based with one tune being able to have both sections. This is something usually known as "meditation" music.
I wouldn't mind if a knowledgeable person would actually speak about Indian music and show interesting examples of instrumental folk music, I am not at all saying I am so well versed in it. But folk music is a diverse thing and I do know some of it.
QuoteThis is an intentional move, believe it or not. It was actually the first thing I noticed about sound music - a certain irrelevance of harmonic content, melodic development being a distraction from sound development. I am just one example of what sound music can be. If you try Saafi Brothers, you will hear that sound music can be full of variety without emphasizing harmonic complexity or harmonic development. If you would like, you can either sear YouTube or I can send you a couple of mp3 examples.
we bumpped into a stupid english language usage thing. Perhaps "partials" would be more understnadable.
The hamonic series is the complete series of sines/cosines that make up a "harmonic" waveform such as a square, triangle, or saw wave.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmonic_series_(music)
Which is distinct from "harmony" (and melody) which is how I think you interpeted my use of harmonic.
Here is my point -
look at the table in the link - specifically this graphic
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Harmonic_partials_on_strings.svg
All "harmonic" waveforms - square, triangle, or saw waves - are made from these partials - they only differ by the volume. When you sweep a low pass filter on a saw wave played at middle C you will -always- get the same "partials" emphasized. Change to a square wave and the same partials are emphasized. Same for a triangle.
What this means is that all sound music, if using "harmonic" waveforms will sound similar or worse yet the same. I mean to try to break out of this box - and in fact Barry made a couple VSTi's for me for this purpose.
The simple and direct approach is to use additive synthesis.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Additive_synthesis
Can you expand on this a bit? I think I understand but I never thought about it and I would love to have more information. Specifically - in what way is it the same? How do you apply additional synthesis to solve the situation - dynamically?
The harmonic series is really easy to understand once explained.
(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Synthesis_sawtooth.gif)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawtooth_wave
The Fourier theorem says that every sound that you hear can be described by a mix of sines and cosines at the appropiate volume and phase.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_cosine_series
Read these and ask for clarification where you need it.
In other words, what you are doing is during the performance or duration of track you are changing the osc settings to change the source of the synthesized sound, right?
no....
the graphic can be generated by a (severe) low pass filter sweep from low to high with little or no Q on an oscilator giving a saw.
A single note - unless it is a sinewave - consists of many frequencies. The ear -generally- hears the lowest frequency as the "note" and the frequecies above it make the "color" i.e. timbre.
Are you available on Skype or GMail voice chat? I am really interested in the subject and perhaps speaking about it live will clear everything in a matter of minutes.
nope, I'm at work actually.... I just don't have much to do the past few days.
perhaps someone can chime in with a better explaination?
or I can try to answer some questions.
Yeah - I understand what additive synth is, I understand the wave forms, I don't understand what are you doing with them.
my point is square, triangle, saw waves all have the same partials
when you sweep a filter with high Q you will always get the same sound more or less.
Hm. Yeah, it might. But it does sound sweet if done properly and can be a very hypnotic listen.
But using a filter is not the only thing you can do. I use vocoders, granulizer, slicer, just tampering with the sound and putting it together in weird combinations.
Yes, the harmonic series does sound nice.
But my point is that it is the same sound. For most every waveform normally generated.
If you take the sound of a bell for instance - a bell (usually) is inharmonic and you get different partials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inharmonicity
Of course any sound can be described as a mix of sine waves, or the higher harmonics of the wave.
This mix can be described as being a 'modulation'. So one periodical signal is influencing another periodical signal in time.
One of the first digi-keyboards, the DX-7, had a nice tool, to change the algoritms between four sine oscillators.
I still think a sine wave is not the basic building brick. It has to be made out of a noise signal with a narrow, resonating Q-factor.
Quote from: "Sam_Zen"
I still think a sine wave is not the basic building brick. It has to be made out of a noise signal with a narrow, resonating Q-factor.
This is an interesting idea - I wonder what it look like on an oscilloscope.
So it is. Just take some white noise, and narrow it down with a very sharp bandfilter, with a 'plus' amplification.
In nature, due to the filter circumstances and surrounding resonations, often sine tones are rendered in this way.
Quote from: "uncloned"Yes, the harmonic series does sound nice.
But my point is that it is the same sound. For most every waveform normally generated.
If you take the sound of a bell for instance - a bell (usually) is inharmonic and you get different partials.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inharmonicity
Well, I do not see a problem for sound music there. First of all, I rarely synthesize sounds, instead I use recordings. (In fact, synthesis by itself cannot be the essence of sound music, the ability to record and edit sound is)
And I can use any type of sound - be it bell, piano, just sounds from life around. I use all kind of sounds as sources and samples. In fact, most of my tunes use bizarre samples - not just pads with a sweep filter on them, but usually sliced sounds from different sources.
I hope I did understand you correctly though.
Quote"Well, I do not see a problem for sound music there. First of all, I rarely synthesize sounds, instead I use recordings. (In fact, synthesis by itself cannot be the essence of sound music, the ability to record and edit sound is) "
This sounds like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Musique_concr%C3%A8te
Sound music and music concrete are different things. Music concrete is part of what sound music is. Sound music is a more general term. I am sorry, I still did not have the time to talk about sound music and how I define it.
But in short, concrete music is a genre of sound music.
Lv I give up.
Give up?? Oh boy... I thought I was the one not understanding things...
Anyway, don't mind that. I will present the material. All your commentary is super welcome always. Discussions are necessary and help me a lot. I am still analysing the genre thing, thinking over what you said too.
to be honest I don't see how you can divorce pitch and not be some form of music concrete (with the exception of "noise" pieces like I've heard that was various shades of noise [pink, white, brown] with rhythmn of some type).
And the music of yours I have listened to was pitch based with filter sweeps and percussion. Certainly not sound sculptures like Sam Zen does - or say my piece "And War Itself"
http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=2436.0
And my piece you like the most, electronic dream #1 is totally pitch based
http://forum.openmpt.org/index.php?topic=2464.0
And it is, once again, filter sweeps of the traditional harmonic series.
I don't see a middle ground - just combinations of varying degreess are possible...
So I give up because I don't understand what you are saying....
Well, this conversation, ending up in mist, strengthen me in my conviction that working with electronic sound is another perspective than composing a mozart-thing, or a rock-song. A concept I once called MUX.
It's nice here, that Clones mentions a difference between pitch based things and noise.
Another element which is not present in the classical music-way : the language of the modulation signal.
So sometimes Jimi Hendrix didn't so much spoke through his guitar notes, but by the excellent use of his wah-pedal.
Quote from: "Sam_Zen"
Another element which is not present in the classical music-way : the language of the modulation signal.
So sometimes Jimi Hendrix didn't so much spoke through his guitar notes, but by the excellent use of his wah-pedal.
You are right - classical music didn't really start that exploration until the Advant Guarde instrument explorations.
I think that evolved because recording was not possible so all performers strove for an "ideal" that every composer could count on when their piece committed to paper was performed.
Sam correct me if I am wrong - my view of MUX is that any sound source can be manipulated in any way via the new electronic sound environment that has evolved - once trapped in a music studio - now it can be in our computers. Performance is no longer a limitation and not even desirable in all cases.
You don't understand what I am saying because the concept of sound music is something I haven't talked about at all and I think this topic is one of the first times I mentioned it in public. What I did not mention was what I mean by that, so not wishing to talk in riddles I'll just postpone this topic for further discussion, when I will explain my vision. It is very clear and you will instantly see why I said that sound music is a more general concept that music concrete or ambient or whatever.
kind of an odd place to leave things...
"I have a brilliant idea which I'm not going to discuss - but trust me it is brilliant."
Which is why I said I gave up a few replies ago.
Sorry for that. I am not able to tell you about my "brilliant" idea now because I have to formulate it carefully and writing hastily while I am at work is not very good. I promise to present it soon.
Quote from: "uncloned"..once trapped in a music studio - now it can be in our computers. Performance is no longer a limitation and not even desirable in all cases.
Right, but I'm not sure. I can imagine situations where only a live performance would be desirable.
And the way things are evolved now, leads to the idea, that doing the work in a studio is a different art, than doing the work to perform things on a stage, etc.
Manipulation is not new, by the way. Why having 20 violists playing the same notes in a symphony orchestra ?
Because there weren't any electric amplifiers, so just to add up the power.
And the typical sound by interference because no player of the 20 does exactly the same in sync.
Why having an organ in a church ? Because it's extra impressive caused by the wide reverberation.
With electronics it's not only possible to manipulate sound, but to do it in a very precise way, microscopic.
But let's go back to the drone issue, before this discussion becomes a drone.. :)
If there is anything left to discuss, really. This topic is about an interesting article on the history of drone music on which Chris asked why limit oneself to one style. I argued that drone is not style and I think we've explored that enough. If anyone has got anything to add or ask/say something else about drone music, I would be glad to discuss it.