Thoughts, Conflicts and a Contemplation or Two

Albert Einstein: "It has become appallingly clear that our technology has surpassed our humanity."

November 22, 2006

Two words that have become almost obscene to the music world.

 "I long for instruments obedient to my thought and whim, with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, which will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm." Edgar Varese, June, 1917.  

The concert/“classical” music world was the first to experiment with electronics to produce musical compositions. And French composer Edgar Varese (1883-1965) was the one of the first to produce a piece of purely electronic music, Poeme Electronique, commissioned for the Philips Radio Corporation pavilion at the Brussels Exposition in 1958. The production required 450 speakers for playback and was only 8 minutes in length. It was an unexpected success.  

Electronic music leaped forward with each increase in the underlying technologies, culminating with the commercial and artistic successes of Wendy Carlos’ Switched-on Brandenburgs (1979) album and Tomita’s The Firebird (1975) album.  

But it would be the commercial music world that would push the technological advances in electronic music, replacing pianos and organs with keyboard synthesizers in pop and rock groups. The so-called serious music world dropped the ‘ball’.  

In 1981, two individuals working for Sequential Circuits (maker of keyboard synthesizers) devised a standard digital interface that would allow any synthesizer to interact with any other synthesizer. Until that time, each synthesizer company had its own interface that was only operational with its own equipment. Thus was born the MIDI standard. MIDI stands for “musical instrument digital interface”. This standard allowed for a digital instrument to interact with any other digital instrument – and eventually with computers – to produce music.  

It would be that MIDI standard that gave a re-birth of interest for concert music composers to look at and work with electronic instruments and sounds once again. The MIDI standard covered not only the rock and pop sounds of the commercial world but it also contained the instruments of a standard symphonic orchestra.  

As computers became more plentiful and affordable to the average musician, the available sounds also became more sophisticated. Now, MIDI has become universally synonymous with music sequencing programs and both hardware- and software-based music synthesizers and samplers.

But once again, it appears that the serious music world is about to drop the ball, not because they are not keeping up with the technology, but from pure snobbery, ignorance, and arrogance. "It cannot be 'music' if it has been created using MIDI ."

If I may use a word from my Oklahoma upbringing: hogwash!

In the past several months, I have encountered extreme resistance from various record labels, publishers, and 'serious' musicians for the acceptance of a performance of a musical work that was produced using computers -- a 'MIDI realization'. They only want to hear a live performance. One website that offers composers a platform for the podcasting of their music to world refuses to accept any MIDI realizations. Don't bother applying. It is in the rules.

However, they will listen to and consider 'electronic music', i.e. music produced by synthesizers using computers. But the sounds must not replicate known orchestral instruments. They seem to want to accept older sounds from the mid-20th century -- bleeps, swooshes, noise generators, etc. So-called transcriptions of an orchestral work using software sounds and sequencers to produce the music are unacceptable. I have not been able to present a work for publication or for CD distribution if the music was written for orchestra and produced using computers. One CD label went so far as to say that “the critics would kill us” if we issued any such recording.

 Therefore, any recording or performance or Bach’s keyboard music should be rejected unless it has been ‘realized’ on a harpsichord; Bach did not write for piano and did not like the 2 or 3 that he encountered during his life. Beethoven was upset that much of his keyboard music could not be played on the new pianos of his day because the ‘strength’ of his writing was damaging these ‘weak’ instruments; he was writing for 'future' pianos. And finally, please verify that the instruments in any orchestra performing Wagner’s music include Wagnerian tubas and horns.

 (Perhaps we should even get rid of Liszt's piano transcriptions of Wagner's music, only because it is Liszt!)

The problem as I see it -- and as it came up in a conversation with a friend who teaches MIDI in a well-known university -- is that there is a plethora of downright crap being produced and distributed on the internet. It seems that every want-to-be Mozart out there thinks he knows music and has placed some of the worst material -- both in musicality and production -- out there for the world. This is a major problem for all of the new technologies that have become financially available to the general public.

 Many argued back in the 1970's that placing home video recorders, affordable cameras, and later, computer editing programs into the hands of the public would, in the end, produce an explosion of product that was artistically lacking. And it did. But this also lead to changes in the art of filmmaking itself as more and more creative people were able to experiment with what had been an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. Of course there are hundreds of really bad films and videos being produced.

The word now is that "well, it's okay for film/video, but don't try it with music. Musical performance requires a human touch".

The arts -- any of them -- require an educational background of some sort in order to understand what makes one painting or musical composition good. Re-hashing the music of composers who have been dead for decades does not produce anything really original. And originality is what produces great art. That, plus the use of new ideas and technologies.

MIDI realizations can and do produce good, sometimes great, 'music'. You hear it every day on television. Over 90% of the music heard in commercials and TV shows is produced using MIDI and computers. Rarely is a live musician used except in exceptional circumstances.

Therefore, it is time to stop referring to the phrase “ MIDI realization” and start referring to a computer that is used to produce music as a musical instrument. It is not the method of performance that is important. It is the music of the performance that is important. It is time for composers and musicians to stop apologizing for using computers to generate music.

I would think that a record company or a publisher would relish the idea of having any recording of a piece of music available to decide the music’s worth, artistically and financially. Would they prefer to hear a 40-year old mono recording containing hiss, RF interference, and a poor performance? Or would they rather hear a clean, computer generated performance?

Many, many years ago, there was fear that the pipe organ would eventually replace small ensembles. It did not happen. There was fear that electronic organs (Hammond, etc.) would replace pipe organs. It never happened. There is currently fear among musicians that computers will replace live musicians. It will never happen. But there will be circumstances where computer-generated music will be used and accepted in place of live musicians. And those working musicians out there today will be 'weeded out', leaving the best among them to continue working.

Music produced through computers and sequencers can be artistically fulfilling. It can -- and does -- allow composers to have the ability to hear their music without the expense of hiring an orchestra or without having the need to go take teaching jobs where ensembles are available. And it allows them to push the traditional orchestral sound (virtually unchanged in 100 years) into new areas of creativity, even allowing composers to write music that 'live' musicians cannot physically play.

Bank on it: the use of MIDI , computers, and software will eventually become its own art form for the production of music. The creators of this music will get better and better as the programming of the underlying technologies gets better and better. And the world of music -- commercially and seriously -- will be better for it.

Reply to Richard Audd

From other various dates and times:

On Mediocrity:

Composer David Raksin died recently. A letter in praise of Raksin was printed in the LA Times shortly after his death:

“One of his (David’s) most endearing attributes was his irrepressible delivery of zingers and one-liners regarding everything and everyone he considered qualitatively awful, either aesthetically or morally. I remember once at the Ojai Music Festival when he asked me if I was going to attend a concert that afternoon of John Cage's music, which featured performances by our mutual friend, the brilliant pianist Gloria Cheng. I replied that I hadn't gotten tickets because I simply considered John Cage to have opened the door to an entire generation of talentless ‘composers’ who relied on conceptual gimmickry rather than actual musical chops. David immediately replied: ‘Yeah, Cage opened the door and Andrew Lloyd Webber walked in!’.” (Carlos Rodriguez)

Rodriguez was being kind by referring to composers since Cage as being ‘talentless’. Some would probably even refer to me as one of those composers. The problem is that Cage and others of his generation demonstrated to us that music is all sound, from silence to cacophony, from iron pots to chopsticks. Anything that could produce a sound and be incorporated into an intelligently communicated emotion or passion was music. Chaos reigned.

But it was killed off quickly. The music academies of the world could not break this kind of music down into rules for writing it, thus depriving music teachers of something to teach. And the rapid changes in technology precluded any passionate push into experimentation. Suddenly, people could listen to whatever they wanted to hear at the push of button on a computer or home stereo. And all of those want-to-be ‘classical’ composers jumped on their computers and starting producing some of the most mediocre music ever heard. Oh, the John Adams of the world have produced some interesting pieces. But if you listen to the most recent winners and runner-ups in the Masterprize contest, you wonder what century you are living in. Move to the commercial side of music and there is nothing to listen to that hasn’t already be written and copied at least 4 times over. Those circles of fifths are completely worn out. And anyone can chant some gangsta rap to a rhythm loop.

During the short life span of mp3.com, I had some of my music listed for listening. Occasionally, I would peruse the classical listings in search of hope, only to find John Tesh sound-a-likes and Brahms want-to-bes. It was depressing. There was one ‘musician’ from Burbank, California who made several thousand dollars imitating himself imitating John Tesh. Real depressing.

Music as we know it, based on those 7 precious notes and their 5 other related tones, is dying. There is little more we can do with the sounds of the current instruments. And no one wants to experiment with other sounds sources as we once did in the 60’s and 70’s. I am so afraid of trying to write any more music because every attempt starts to feel like a derivative of something or someone else. And when I do start writing something new, I fear that it has already been said and I have to inquire of myself whether or not I have the ability to say it any better.

If the record companies bemoan their dropping sales, they have only to look at the mediocre products, not the constant illegal downloading and file sharing of their products. The music these companies produce is mediocre and bland and derivative. Not even new, dynamic voices can raise the level of the shit that they sing.

Reply to Richard Audd

ON RELIGION:

On gods:  

There are no gods. There never have been and never will be. Sorry, I am wrong. There are only the gods that men have created as needed for themselves. And those needs are always draped around the desire for control. The greatest event in the current history of man was the invention of the printing press. The greatest fear of the world’s religions at that time was the invention of the printing press. Education is the largest and most constant threat to organized religions.

As author, Arthur C. Clarke once said, “Religion is the most malevolent and persistent of all mind viruses. We should get rid of it as quick as we can.”

No one has ever given me a reason for there to be a god.

Every major war has been a result of people arguing over whose religion or god was better. More people have been killed, cultures destroyed and wars fought over a religious disagreement. And it is even truer today. I refuse to acknowledge St. Patrick’s Day as I refuse to acknowledge a nation at war with itself over religion. I refuse to acknowledge the great feat of Columbus because he was not the first to arrive in the North America but he was the one that started the near annihilation of thousands of innocent people.

Observation:

If the god that so many western religions believe in is what they say he is – omnipotent, perfect, infinite, creator of all that it is in the universe – then they must accept the fact that he created evil.

Reply to Richard Audd

On Music Schools:

They lie.

When I was taking piano lessons back in the early 1960’s, my teacher not only taught me piano playing but music theory as well. When I entered my senior year in high school, I had to take music theory in order that I might graduate with a music emphasis. When I entered college, I was excused from first year music theory because of my piano teacher and high school theory teacher.

Since then, I have forgotten most of what I was taught then and later in graduate school.

Why?

On the first day of high school music theory class, the teacher, an older lady with good intentions, delivered the following line: “There are rules for writing all music.” Since I was already writing music, I raised my hand and said, there are no rules for writing music. She retorted by saying that in her class, there were rules for writing music and there would be no more discussion on the matter. I shut up and got an A in the course.

After 6 years of undergraduate and graduate music courses and 35 years experience outside the hollowed walls of academia, I can truthfully and honestly say that there are no rules for writing music. There never have been and never will be. Music theory as taught in the public and private educational system is nothing but a set of generalities disguised as rules to explain how some ancient music is constructed. And for every rule, hundreds of exceptions can be found.

There have been dozens of attempts to explain, with words and symbols, what a piece of music sounds like. They all fail. I remember one graduate level class at Eastman that taught the Hanson method of detailing the sound of chords. It was the most outlandish idea I had ever seen but was taught only because the school’s chancellor had thought it up.

But music schools must teach something because they cannot teach talent. Music history is useful as long as it is correct, up to date and in perspective. As a junior in college, I was taking the required music history course. Toward the end of the year, we started learning about the 20^th century. The teacher stated that Shostakovich had written 9 symphonies. In a moment of exuberance, I raised my hand and pointed out that we had listened to Shostakovich’s 13^th Symphony the night before in the dorm. The teacher looked at me and the rest of the class and said that Shostakovich had only written 9 symphonies and any other answer on a test would be graded as wrong. The ingrate!

Music schools lie. They are required to. If they didn’t, then they would have very few students and would go out of business. And there would be nothing for all of those people who graduated from their schools to do since most of them go on to teach as well -- or drive UPS trucks.

Music – like all of the arts –is a passion. And it cannot be broken down into a set of dated rules. No originality has ever come from rules. Originality comes from breaking the rules. It makes no difference whether we are discussing music performance, music education, music composition, etc. Bach broke the ‘rules’. Beethoven broke the ‘rules’. Mozart broke the ‘rules’. Stravinsky, Wagner, Lutoslawski, Cage. All of them broke the ‘rules’.

A little theory, as long as it is presented as theory, not law, gives perspective. But music is an aural experience. You listen to music. You do not write words about it despite the critics who abound in this world. That is another subject in itself. Music composition cannot be taught. It can be guided and pushed but the teacher’s ideas are always going to be subjective, just like any other listener.

Reply to Richard Audd

On Fathers and Sons:  

When people find out that my father was a Southern Baptist minister and that I am an atheist (god, I hate that word!), they invariably ask what went wrong? Nothing, you moron. I am not my father. It seems that there is this idea that a son should be like his father and do what his father did. If this was true in the history of man, then there would be no Einsteins, or Edisons, or Jesuses, or Lincolns or Fords or Gates or Washingtons, or Buddhas, no curiosity, no questions, no advancements, no cures, no ideas. And we would all still be living in caves, without fire, with a lifespan of less than 30 years. Dads, deal with it. Your sons and daughters are not you. And to expect otherwise will take you down a road of anger and frustration from which you will not recover.

On growing up:

There is no separation of Church and State in a minister’s home. The Constitution is suspended.

Reply to Richard Audd

On Religion:  

There is no difference between true communism and organized religion. Both require everyone to act, look, think, and speak the same.

A trick question:

The scene is two men in a park. The first man has been walking around, reading a Bible. The second man is sitting at a table, reading a newspaper. The first man approaches the second saying, “God has spoken to me and told me to tell you about the word of God.” The second man looks up in surprising, saying, “During my morning prayers, God told me to be cautious of men in the park claiming to speak in his name.” Who is telling the truth?

Reply to Richard Audd

9/1/04, evening:  

After arriving at work tonight, I had a bombshell dropped on me. I edit all of the interstitial material between movies for the Fox Movie Channel, a division of the Fox Television. This interstitial material contains the previews and teases for movies on the network, movie trailers for coming theatrical films, and various other movie moments and interviews. Tonight, I received a phone call from the network saying that they were going to remove all movies from their broadcasts that contained the word “fuck”. “Shit” is sure to follow. The powers-that-be at FMC are worried about the FCC’s new rulings and fines for television content deemed to be indecent. Their problem is that in some markets, they are a free channel (since when is any cable or satellite station ‘free’). In other markets, customers pay extra. It is in those ‘free’ markets that they fear the wrath of people who do not want to hear the seven filthy words. This means that great films such as "The French Connection" cannot be shown. (It also means that mentally deficient films such as "Capone" will not be shown – no loss there).

The powers that run FMC are cowards. Are we going to face going before the Supreme Court one more time to have them decide that they have already decided what is indecent or obscene? Not unless someone or some company decides to challenge the state of siege that the Bush/Ashcroft administration has made on media and art. A large segment of the American population has decided that it is the Federal Government’s responsibility to protect them and their families from licentious fare, unable to take responsibility for their own lives. They can watch the movie trailers and movie ratings and decide what films they will see or allow their children to see. They can read reviews and book covers to decide what they will read or allow their children to read. But when it comes to television, they refuse to take responsibility. They are just plain lazy.

And so the Fox Movie Channel has decided to hide from a very necessary fight and just not allow people to think for themselves and act on their own, thus depriving the rest of us the choice to watch or not. And this is not the first time that they have bowed to public pressure.

Once again, a ‘statue’ has been covered because her breasts were showing.

Reply to Richard Audd