on laptops, controllers, musicianship, post-musicianship

22 June 2008

Sam Pluta published an article about computer based music, information theory and human control:
and then we discussed it and I posted the following to the list, so I wanted to preserve it here because it collects some of my long-standing thoughts and experiences about controllers and live computer based music. sometimes I've gotten a bunch of controllers (a few too many) and then found that it was distracting to the music. instead of it being about music it became about controllers. when I had a WX7 sax controller everybody came up and asked about it and I felt like nobody noticed the music. there is a fine art here to applying them correctly (and as sam mentions — see edward tufte). there is the "spectacle" of the interface that needs to be strongly considered. I think that the really interesting thing about electronic dance music (meaning: early digi reggae and dancehall, electronic afro-beat, techno, electro, prince era sequenced funk, rave, house, garage, grime, dubstep, hip hop etc.) is that the physical action of the performer changed : instead of doing something (like playing a melody, turning a knob) we became channel operators who expressed themselves by dub, controlling the machines, directing the energy, interrupting the flow (knob tweakers), hooking up the machines to generate a new energy ... and then the physical attention turns to the dancefloor where the audience becomes the new performer. that was the whole point. the performer became a selector and the audience became the center of attention. the music is the body and it happens inside you the listener. electronic music is a direct extension of the central nervous system. musicians are distracting because they are a separate entity that we have to watch : something that is obviously not in your central nervous system. the solution that most pop music found (which means non-music-head gear-head boffins) is to do more with culture and image and energy rather than technical performances. most of the expression is done with style signifiers, tropes (which the non-believers think are cliches), expressions that are relative statements — relative to the last hit/riddim/sound. its not about technical or musician stuff. its about pushing buttons and triggering learned responses and creating new learned responses.

getting rid of the musicians just made the message much clearer and allowed producers to focus on the music. cf. KLF's manual of how to have a top 10 hit where they say that the first thing to do is to fire all the musicians. hooking up more controllers generally leads to being a musician; which is fine. I like the breath (I went to Eastman as a saxophone major), I like the full responsibility of being a musician. but the new world of meta-controller and selector is also huge and something that could be explored much more in "new music". or you could just do all of the above:


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