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The Music of the Future

futuresymphony.org

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Re: The Music of the Future

#71

Post by pacomerh »

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…

I have the same feeling you have about these guys making music that was ahead of their time. To me specifically sounded like space jazz from the future. By the way, I think it's worth mentioning that the band 'Shobaleader' (by artist 'squarepusher') has been playing electronic jazz that is very much influenced by these classics you mentioned https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kX9QE6OBvoY

Re: The Music of the Future

#72

Post by zodiac »

21 wrote: post #18
roymurdock wrote: post #8

Interesting ideas wrapped up in painfully obfuscated academic references (obviously not intended for this audience). THE FOURTH DEVELOPMENT [of new music], which is in many ways the most interesting, [is] namely the replacement of tones by sounds, and musical by acoustical hearing. Varèse, Pierre Schaeffer and their immediate successors awoke composers and audiences to the many new sounds, some of them produced elect…

FWIW, one of my beefs with classical music is the extreme lack of diversity in tones (ie: piano, violin, ...) as opposed to popular music (synthesizer) When you listen popular music on a timeline (70s, 80s, ...), you can at the same time see to the evolution of synthesizers and music production software.

It has been changing slowly and slightly though, I often hear electric guitars in contemporary "orchestral" pieces (film scores like by Hans Zimmer, musical theatre like POTO)

Re: The Music of the Future

#73

Post by dizzyfingers »

Is anyone else here familiar with the work of Christopher Alexander? I'm specifically thinking of his 4 volume 'The Nature of Order.' Feels like low hanging fruit for all of us musicians who grasp for existential clarity as to the nature of our order.

https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Order-Phenomenon-Environmental...

Re: The Music of the Future

#74

Post by shams93 »

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…

Its not the music of the future as we think of it, he's really speaking about a particular era in Western Classical music from around 1849-1869. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_Future

Re: The Music of the Future

#75

Post by rifung »

21 wrote: post #18
roymurdock wrote: post #8

Interesting ideas wrapped up in painfully obfuscated academic references (obviously not intended for this audience). THE FOURTH DEVELOPMENT [of new music], which is in many ways the most interesting, [is] namely the replacement of tones by sounds, and musical by acoustical hearing. Varèse, Pierre Schaeffer and their immediate successors awoke composers and audiences to the many new sounds, some of them produced elect…

FWIW, one of my beefs with classical music is the extreme lack of diversity in tones (ie: piano, violin, ...) as opposed to popular music (synthesizer) When you listen popular music on a timeline (70s, 80s, ...), you can at the same time see to the evolution of synthesizers and music production software.

> When you listen popular music on a timeline (70s, 80s, ...), you can at the same time see to the evolution of synthesizers and music production software.

I wonder how much of this is just due to taste or lack of familiarity? Not that you're wrong but for whatever reason I actually feel like classical music has a much greater variation of sound than pop music.

I'm curious whether you feel like there's a lack of diversity among these pieces (which happen to be a few of my favorites =)

Scriabin Etude Op42 No5: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwqaOGikyNs Schubert Impromptu Op90 No3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxhbAGwEYGQ Prokofiev Piano Concerto 3 Mvmt 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AdBi5IBrto Shostakovich Piano Concerto 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCTEx3w2_jU

I admit though that I probably am biased, because frankly I enjoy the sounds of the instruments very much. If anything I suspect that having people listen to recorded music probably makes them less likely to appreciate classical music.

Re: The Music of the Future

#76

Post by beat »

rpearl wrote: post #57
kevinwang wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I find it more interesting that the original comment ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13231557 ) found computers "generally very restrictive" and therefore uninteresting for experimentation... And their reply to mine found computers "unrestrictive" and that they "find restriction to be essential to playing interesting music"

There are good restrictions, and bad restrictions. For example, you might want to program in a strictly typed language, because the restrictions solve other problems. But you might not want to program in FORTRAN, because its restrictions are mostly just painful.

To be more clear, though, I think I should have used the word "expressive" rather than "restrictive". I find it difficult to be expressive with computer-based music. And this is personal - I'm typing this while listening to a friend play an amazing live show with nothing but a Roland MC-808 beat box.

Given a guitar, I can do a lot with just one note, by modulating the timing and tone of that note. But I'm dependent on the direct physical feedback. The indirectness of computer interfaces dismays me. This isn't to say all computers are bad... certainly, I play with digital effects in my chain. My sound passes through computers and still sounds like me. But hopefully you see the point here.

Re: The Music of the Future

#77

Post by 21 »

rifung wrote: post #75
21 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, one of my beefs with classical music is the extreme lack of diversity in tones (ie: piano, violin, ...) as opposed to popular music (synthesizer) When you listen popular music on a timeline (70s, 80s, ...), you can at the same time see to the evolution of synthesizers and music production software.

> When you listen popular music on a timeline (70s, 80s, ...), you can at the same time see to the evolution of synthesizers and music production software. I wonder how much of this is just due to taste or lack of familiarity? Not that you're wrong but for whatever reason I actually feel like classical music has a much greater variation of sound than pop music. I'm curious whether you feel like there's a lack of dive…

I think we are talking about different kinds of diversities.

To say it another way, no matter how you bang at a piano, it still sounds like a piano.

I was talking about diversity in what is technically known as "timbre". For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1T-za0WH4Y You can say that these are toy sounds, that they don't sound like real instruments, I can then say that they are purer sounds. But I think we can agree that a classical orchestra cannot make these sounds, so in way it's less expressive.

Re: The Music of the Future

#78

Post by beat »

rhizome wrote: post #48
beat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Free improvisation" is kind of a misnomer. A lot of improvisation is done within very strict structures - limitations, to use phrasing I used elsewhere. For example, most traditional jazz music is in 4/4 time, with circle of fifths western harmony. You can noodle over ii-V-I changes with a swing beat until the cows come home. Because you're settled in this warm bed of familiar grooves, chords, and tunes, everyone has a common language. Any random group of jazz musicians can get together, open up the Real Book, and perform group improvisation. And the audience, also accustomed to the conventions of jazz, can make value judgments and enjoy the performance, unencumbered by needing to figure out a 17/8 ostinato or the sound of just intonation.

I played for years in a free improvisation duo. One of the constraints we used (only for gigs) was "set lists". We would write titles for "songs", and interpret the titles. This helped us have beginnings and ends and moods.

If you're interested in this stuff for serious, seek out the book "Improvisation", by Derek Bailey. He was a famed improviser himself, and wrote a moderately academic book on musical improvisation in a wide variety of different contexts around the world.

Re: The Music of the Future

#79

Post by beat »

cannam wrote: post #42
beat wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Why not traditions? Why do we have to make progress? There are musical traditions that started in the second half of the 20th century, along with recording and radios, that I think will last for centuries. I wouldn't be shocked to hear electric blues, bluegrass, or thrash metal 300 years from now.

Re: The Music of the Future

#80

Post by rifung »

21 wrote: post #77
rifung wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When you listen popular music on a timeline (70s, 80s, ...), you can at the same time see to the evolution of synthesizers and music production software. I wonder how much of this is just due to taste or lack of familiarity? Not that you're wrong but for whatever reason I actually feel like classical music has a much greater variation of sound than pop music. I'm curious whether you feel like there's a lack of dive…

I think we are talking about different kinds of diversities. To say it another way, no matter how you bang at a piano, it still sounds like a piano. I was talking about diversity in what is technically known as "timbre". For example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1T-za0WH4Y You can say that these are toy sounds, that they don't sound like real instruments, I can then say that they are purer sounds. But I think we c…

> I think we are talking about different kinds of diversities.

I don't think we are actually because I was also referring to timbre. But yes I suppose I would agree that by the nature of being limited to certain instruments, you are limited in what you can express. I suppose I just feel like each of those instruments can be played to produce a very wide variety of colors as well, but I do of course see what you are saying.

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