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The Music of the Future

futuresymphony.org

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Re: The Music of the Future

#41

Post by kevinwang »

beat wrote: post #22
rpearl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is lots of experimentation in electronic music. "Dubstep" and "Eurodance" are not the only instantiations of electronically composed music. I'd link you to some but I don't really care about convincing someone with unknown tastes. Synths and sequences are tools, and are no more limiting than fingers or strings. Throwing away every musical convention might be interesting, but so is experimenting to see why t…

Oh, if you have good examples of modern electronic music that's really experimental, please share! I try to keep my ears open to new things. That said, I've used the tools of electronic music. I've composed with sequences and samples. I find physical instruments to be more directly expressive (I play guitar and drums myself, but I get the same vibe from keyboard, horn, and string players). More importantly, though, I…

I find it interesting that your comment mentions that restriction in sound leads to better musical creation, and the comment you're replying to remarks that the best electronic performance they saw was one where all the music was composed of one sample

Re: The Music of the Future

#42

Post by cannam »

beat wrote: post #20
alexssung wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen recently released software synths? They are much different from traditional analog synths and are capable of way more possibilities of sound. Definitely modern. I don't get why "traditional" musicians tend to dismiss electronic music. Electronic music is not just dubstep or Eurodance. There are modern genres such as future bass that incorporate more advanced musical composition and implement it with new…

I hope I'm not coming off as dismissive of electronic music in general... just the idea that "computers and synthesizers and sequencers" represent the future of music. They are, at best, merely instruments. If anything, they're pretty strongly wedded to some very narrow musical conventions, such as 12 tone equal temperament and basic time signatures like 4/4 and 3/4. Getting past those limitations is doable, but diff…

I like the theory (which I think I associate with Ambrose Field) that we recently came out of a period in which invention in music was tightly associated with technological capability.

Most apparent in pop where, for example, each new wave of chart hits in the 80s was driven by the sounds available on some newly-released synth, but the same thing goes on with electro-acoustic music (timbrally, spatially) and modern classical music (in terms of organisation and programme content).

The theory is that this period has ended because we can pretty much synthesise anything now. (Or can we?)

If so, we no longer have the same motivating impulse. Where next?

Re: The Music of the Future

#43

Post by hellofunk »

ciconia wrote: post #39

Not really surprising considering the venue and the audience in front of which this talk was given, but still, a complete disregard for the greatest musical phenomenon of the 20th century _in classical music_, that is John Cage and the profound revolution he has brought to musical thinking is more than enough reason to reject this as nonsense. It just goes to show how the so-called "avant garde" in classical music is…

You think John Cage was the most profound revolution in 20th century classical music?

Re: The Music of the Future

#44

Post by iamatworknow »

iammyIP wrote: post #32
rudolf0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure exactly what theories they're referring to here, but if you listen to an avant-garde musician like Stockhausen, you can still hear incredibly beautiful melodies and progressions and rhythms. They're just very different from the norm.

These melodies, progressions and rythms you hear are not there, especially with stockhausen, as he made that absence his main point. It's the same if you talk about seeing structures in old terrestrial tv noise patterns.

Even if the only person who can predict the melodies, progressions, and rhythm is the composer, doesn't that inherently make the composition less random than completely unpredictable and truly random TV noise?

Re: The Music of the Future

#45

Post by [deleted] »

iammyIP wrote: post #30
cousin_it wrote: post #2

I think a lot of art is about charming people with your point of view. A big part of it is moving on from points of view that were charming once, but aren't anymore. A century ago, avant-garde art's point of view was new and exciting, and deserved its time in the sun. But now we know that all those manifestos didn't bear as much fruit as everyone hoped, and the time has come full circle. I don't know what a new and c…

I disagree - instead of calling it 'charming' i would extrapolate it to: 'a lot of art is about sexually rooted behaviour - music is made to find a mate'. I don't think that's true, because, and thats one of the main points here; serial music was never regarded as resembling anything in the vicinity of 'charming'. serial music is more like pandoras box for music, and it happened at the same time as computers where in…

[deleted]

Re: The Music of the Future

#47

Post by scribu »

sublimeloge wrote: post #12

I expect that this article's title will give some Hacker News readers an incorrect impression of what it's about. As the article mentions, this talk was given at the Donaueschingen Festival, so the audience almost certainly consisted mostly of fans of avant-garde contemporary classical music. If the author only mentions jazz or rock, or electronics only in passing, it's because he's primarily talking about the future…

Besides the overview of philosophical trends in "serious" music, it also attempts to explain the sociological mechanism through which the avant-garde movement still survives (what he calls The Dictatorship of Difficult Music). I found that very interesting and I wouldn't be surprised if it extended to other art forms too.

Re: The Music of the Future

#48

Post by rhizome »

beat wrote: post #22
rpearl wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there is lots of experimentation in electronic music. "Dubstep" and "Eurodance" are not the only instantiations of electronically composed music. I'd link you to some but I don't really care about convincing someone with unknown tastes. Synths and sequences are tools, and are no more limiting than fingers or strings. Throwing away every musical convention might be interesting, but so is experimenting to see why t…

Oh, if you have good examples of modern electronic music that's really experimental, please share! I try to keep my ears open to new things. That said, I've used the tools of electronic music. I've composed with sequences and samples. I find physical instruments to be more directly expressive (I play guitar and drums myself, but I get the same vibe from keyboard, horn, and string players). More importantly, though, I…

There are conventions in improvisation.

Re: The Music of the Future

#49

Post by steamer25 »

beat wrote: post #7

Not really to the article's point at all, but when I think of "the music of the future", I think of the extended funk experiments of the 1970s. 40 years ago, Miles Davis' band sounded like music from 40 years in the future. It still sounds like music from 40 years in the future. And he wasn't alone... Parliament/Funkadelic, Fela Kuti, and others were working with these deep, deep funk grooves that ran forever and sou…

Here's a pretty recent piece... The first time I heard it, my exact thought was that it's future music. It's unorthodox but still quite approachable and tasteful : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rHO7NW-zH8

Re: The Music of the Future

#50

Post by iammyIP »

iamatworknow wrote: post #44
iammyIP wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These melodies, progressions and rythms you hear are not there, especially with stockhausen, as he made that absence his main point. It's the same if you talk about seeing structures in old terrestrial tv noise patterns.

Even if the only person who can predict the melodies, progressions, and rhythm is the composer, doesn't that inherently make the composition less random than completely unpredictable and truly random TV noise?

In historical serial music there is certainly a leftover of human interaction with the compositional rule system, so in practice it resembles more to a chaotic attractor than complete noise, i agree. The core conceptual idea of serial music is however the inevitable disembodyment of historic human music into pure structural sound patterns beyond history and beyond (historic) emotions.
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