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Summer Reading - The rest is noise
StoreTags: summer, balls, fundamental, reading
Author: Roshi on July 02 2008 Viewed 2078 times. 25 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
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Hooray for summer! And hooray for reading what you want to read, instead of biochem textbooks!
Right now I'm reading "The Rest is Noise" by Alex Ross. It's a well written survey of a large swath of 20th century composers, including Bartok, Shoenberg, Duke Ellington, Richard Strauss, Debussy, Xenakis, Partch, Schnittke, and mentions of Velvet Underground, Radiohead, IRCAM, and much much more.
For people like me who have large gaps in their knowledge of 20th century composers, it's invaluable, and a great read - Ross manages to give you the historical background, biography, and impact of each composer in a way that's snappy, dishy and eminently readable. At the same time, his descriptive writing about the musical pieces is vivid and illuminating about the theoretical idiosyncrasies of each piece. His writing on the gestation and impact of Stravinsky's 'Rite of Spring' alone makes it worth reading. I highly recommend it.
Also, right now I'm working on Bartok's 44 duos with my teacher, which is a set of 44 duets based on folksongs that seem simple on the page, but which are harmonically really strange and wacky. For example, one of the duets I'm playing in G major (1 sharp) and he is playing in Eb major (2 flats). They were written for beginning violinists, but they get rapidly stranger and stranger and harder and harder as they go on.
I'm finding them really inspiring, composition-wise, and it makes me want to write ensemble pieces of beginning musicians, who don't really have a lot of interesting pieces to play. | |
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07/03/08
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Roshi
I should probably stop using that as my example of a bitter person who knows too much about music.
Anyone have any new stereotypes?
07/03/08
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eyesnine
Roshi said: " oxymoron said: "Has anybody been able to reclaim that? Any tips?"
Robotussin
Doob
drank
Or, just play with legos awhile and reclaim your sense of child like wonder"
LOL! thats what i was gonna say! minus the robo, drank and legos. plus zoomy shrooms.
but seriously, you need to put yourself in a different frame of mind. i'm sure there are other ways, like possibly a near death experience... or other life changing experiences of some sort. to get that zen approach. maybe just practice clearing your head and not letting your inner critic out.
i read a book called This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel J Levitin recently. its like a neuroscientist's approach to music. really interesting! makes a lot more sense than a physicist's approach, imo. covers some really cool topics, keeps the musical theory down to a minimum, but addresses the most basic components of music really well, and how your brain reacts to them.
07/03/08
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eyesnine
i always think of a music school grad as someone who wears a brimmed hat and smokes an exotic brand of cigarette. maybe thats just me.
07/04/08
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ricemutt
haha, eyesnine, I thiink most people who went to school for music are huge nerds, not hipsters, actually
07/04/08
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eyesnine
and wears a scarf. and knows a guy who plays 90 minute sets bowing a cello with a viola while overtone singing and sitting in a wading pool filled with pears in syrup and underwater mics to pick up the resonance of the preserved fruit and is REALLY amazing, and you should really go see him, and its too bad people don't recognize stuff thats really creative.
07/04/08
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Roshi
Well, this isn't conservatory - Berklee people are supposed to be the people who find jobs in the "real world" - i.e., recording artists, touring bassist.
Knowledge is fine, as long as you don't lord it over people. It doesn't make your music automatically superior because you've analyzed the Giant Steps cycle, or can play Eruption backwards. It's what you do with that knowledge that ultimately makes your music interesting.
It reminds me of my friend who said "I think artists should have aesthetic theories. But they shouldn't actually share them."
Also, "resonance of preserved fruit" strikes me as very funny.
07/04/08
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eyesnine
what i said was satirical, but the point i was trying to make is, it seems to me that people who study music too closely often lose sight of the big picture. that is, the answer to the big questions. what function does my music have in the world? is it enjoyable? and how do the people that find it enjoyable facilitate my making more of it? sort of like an english major that knows olde english but can't write a short story that more than a dozen people understand.
i believe that all great artists are contemporary people and really speak to the people around them through their medium. to debunk a couple of popular counter examples:
-mozart was appreciated in his day. if he wasn't, he never could have staged a production as huge as an opera. wasn't he the royal composer for austria at one point? but he made his enemies, and they ruined him.
-van gogh had his admirers and was in contact with some major impressionist artists who really liked his work. but, he went completely insane. some say thats part of what made him great... possibly, but he still had fans.
i don't buy that unappreciated artist nonsense for a second.
its why i gave up on my microtuned synthesis technique. because you can write a great novel in aramaic, or you can write it in english, but which one would more people appreciate? also, considering that greatness is really relative, which one is actually more challenging?
i agree with you, that knowledge is a fine thing to have. but its what you do with it that counts. i think i understand your quote: "I think artists should have aesthetic theories. But they shouldn't actually share them.", its something i've thought but in different terms. although i think that creativity is mostly a mechanical process, i think that most people really enjoy to believe the opposite, that artists have god given abilities, that there is real magic in music. i think part of what makes a musician appreciated is their ability as an illusionist. that is, to conceal their technique but not its effects.
thats my long post for the day. good night!
07/05/08
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Roshi
Sorry, I didn't mean to sound scolding or anything. If anything, it was a reminder to myself to not be condescending, and to continue to study and learn as much as I can.
One of the enduring lessons of this book (the rest of noise) that is emphasized time and time again:
Some artists are of their time, but are soon forgotten.
Some artists are so ahead, it takes a lifetime for them to be discovered.
Most of us, sadly, will not get the recognition our hard work deserves. That is reality.
But we can have fun along the way at least.
07/05/08
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eyesnine
you didn't sound scolding!
i guess i thought something like that might be there because of the reference to giant steps... i posted that in a forum topic. i did that because i thought i could give some advice to people that already had a good understanding of theory, it was definitely not targeted at the people who didn't. i added some other stuff for beginners afterwards, like don't think about chords think about progression, and some basics on how to figure out how progression works. sometimes i feel that the forum topics are a little too beginner centric, especially considering the knowledge base that's posting regularly. i haven't formally done any music theory since i was 12, and i think there's probably a whole lot of stuff you guys aren't telling me!
my summer reading is "gravity's rainbow" by thomas pynchon. i read his new one: "against the day" in january/february. it was an incredible book, if you're into that english major stuff (i used to be one).
i think i'm gonna release some microtune stuff...
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