Glenn McDonald's The War on Silence currently has up a review of Bob Mould's new album Modulate.

The further Mould gets away from his Husker Du days, the less interested I get, but the review is interesting because it presents the dark flipside of Kevin Kelly's vision of new technological tools engendering a flowering of amateur music.

"Samples, drum loops, sequences, factory presets, combs, performance controllers -- on the best of the new equipment you can punch a few more buttons and twist knobs and change the noises without ever having to learn a grammar at all. Spend ten minutes with a Karma and you can have two club anthems and a car commercial. Give the Media Lab a couple more years and it won't even be that hard. Gesture, and you perform. Think, and you compose. You have music inside you, the promise goes; machines will remove the barriers that keep it from getting out. And as entertainment, this may be extremely engaging. But it isn't art. Or, more precisely, it isn't your art."

I don't know if I agree with all of McDonald's points, although he picks on them better than I can here, spending a formidable amount of time thoughtfully listing "clauses and clarifications and exceptions" to his own arguments.

Douglas Wolk, over at Lacunae, responds to McDonald's essay, by writing: "as much fun as [shortcuts] are to take ... having some kind of understanding of how musical theory actually works is what really lets you do worthwhile things." I might argue that theory (with the possible exception of Michael Nyman's text Experimental Music) doesn't always account well for conceptual music, a category which includes a great deal of the music generated by technological shortcuts. But, that said, I see Wolk's point, and my only qualification might be that the technology that makes it easier for amateurs to make something musical may be a gateway to the theory, not simply a replacement for it. I would never have linked to that page on polyrhythms if I hadn't spent a few months playing around with the drum machine in AudioMulch.

At the end of McDonald's review, he forgives Mould's digitalia experiments by writing "Some aspect of the new technology will let Bob Mould do something that nobody else could have, and how is he going to figure out what it is without trying all the buttons?" I would simply suggest that that statement has the potential to be true, not just for Mould, but for everyone.

Labels: amateurism, creative_process, music_commentary, technology

Wednesday, March 27, 2002
3:15 PM
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In response to my lament about being unable to locate Edward Weston's out-of-print daybooks, Jeff Ward, of Visible Darkness, posted an Edward Weston daybook entry in his weblog.

The Weston entry is concerned with writing and amateurism:

"[J]ust this one thought—if my technique in writing was as strong as my technique in photography could I not write despite confusion?—for I am usually surrounded by near or distant confusion while photographing. I lack technique in writing, hence weak or incomplete expression. I have to think—and one must not think—have no need to while creating. Yet I go stumbling along, and someday may arrive."

Check out Jeff's blog, it's good.

Labels: amateurism, art, creative_process, writing

Tuesday, January 22, 2002
11:30 PM
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amateurism

Friday's Imaginary Year entry is about amateurism.

One thing that I am an amateur about is playing the guitar.

Here are some pointers on how to tune a guitar, and here are seven beginning chords.

If I lived in Canada, maybe I could get a grant, because Canada has a registered charity (CAMMAC) devoted to creating opportunities for amateur musicians "to make music together in a relaxed, non-competitive atmosphere." Some articles from their journal, The Amateur Musician, are online.

Labels: amateurism, how_to, music

Saturday, January 19, 2002
12:13 PM
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faking it

It's Tuesday, so tonight Chris and I got together to play music. Still riding high on the success of last week's session, tonight we stretched our wings a little bit, and mostly we fell on our faces. But I still think that we managed to expand the sphere of operations that we're capable of.

Towards the end of the session, we were feeling aimless, so we drew an Oblique Strategy which suggested "try faking it." As a result, we attempted to improvise a folk ballad, giving it the title "Death Be My Bride."

The result was, shall we say, not very convincing, but it was good to at least attempt to create something resembling a traditional song, and it pointed out directions for further exploration, which I think may be the point of the Oblique Strategies.

Labels: amateurism, number_none

Tuesday, January 15, 2002
11:56 PM
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musical amateur night

Chris and I have been getting together to play more frequently lately, exploring the musical ideas we cooked up in our old Musical Amateur Night sessions. Tonight we improvised six songs. They aren't named yet, but the instruments we used were as follows:

1: 2 wineglasses & the Octave Cat
2: 4 wineglasses & the Octave Cat
3: gong & welding metal
4: taped percussion, turntable, tin whistle, 2 wineglasses & hand bells
5: plastic recorder & thumb piano
6: drum & acoustic guitar

It was fun to play with Chris, as always. I ended up feeling like we are no longer quite as amateur as we once were; like we are coming closer to producing the kind of music we enjoy as listeners.

We will name these songs next week, probably using our usual stichomantic methods.

We also need a name for the band, as the novelty of changing names every week has worn off. If you have any old band names saved up, feel free to send them my way.

Labels: amateurism, number_none, personal, projects

Wednesday, January 09, 2002
12:01 AM
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