thirdform

pass the sick bucket
i think woops is some kind of musical abstract expressionist. he's aware of evocative/representative qualities but he's just decided they're utterly banal, that they're not what really matters. it's a very radical stance and is like the exact inversion of my and luka's perspective. which makes it very weird that we all tend to be such kindred spirits aesthetically.

aren't they banal though according to the criterion of musique concrete and Schefferian acousmatics that you invoke?

Surely the whole point is that the sounds do not have an immediate correlation to evocative or representative states? That what is needed is immersion? In that case ambient is a bit of a contradiction in terms according to your criteria, and you could just as well do with gabber, harshnoise, etc.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
it's like conversing with a snotty nosed child who has remained eternally bitter that he couldn't be let into ilx and shag a new york upper class jewish socialite at an oh I dunno, a fucking Belle and cunting Sebastian gig or wherever.

All music can offer is pleasure. There is not real terror, no isolation, no alienation, no driness in craners taste. even when it's dark hardcore, it's only really the prelude to 94 jungle. never the language in itself.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
But I like Amber and I have snagged a New York Jewish socialite!

anyway I'd respect your opinion if you could be a bit more like woebot and be like fuck Autechre, Xenakis is the real deal. But you can't. It's like you wanted them to remain in that more simple phase just to stroke your pretentious ego.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
aren't they banal though according to the criterion of musique concrete and Schefferian acousmatics that you invoke?
(well as you know i'm no scholar, if i borrow terms from that school i'm invoking them in a loose sense, as approximate placeholders blah blah blah)

BUT from what i understand schaeffer and his followers had a unified approach insofar as they wanted their music to be heard through a "Pythagorean veil". they didn't want people to focus on what the performers were doing, just on the sound itself. but whereas schaeffer favored a "reduced listening" entirely focused on sound's physical characteristics with no additional sensory associations—his successors like bayle and michel chion were very in favor of people making these associations, hence their use of terms like image-sound and cinema for the ear.

so my understanding is that, basically schaeffer wants you to hear a dog bark and appreciate its tessitura etc. whereas bayle wants you to hear the same dog bark and appreciate it's tessitura etc. AND think "oh it's a dog". but neither of them want you to think about the person pressing buttons on a sampler who's literally responsible for you hearing the sound.
 

droid

Well-known member
I thought I should probably elaborate.

The Ashram and the Academy

Music from The Ashram superficially aligns with Eno's 'ignorable as it is interesting' maxim in sonic terms, but which also seeks 'to induce, evoke or complement certain responses in the listener, 'encouraging states of reverie or receptivity' (Toop), particularly relaxation well being & reverence, through active or background listening. Almost never dissonant, noisy, chaotic or abrupt, generally devoid of tension, drama or narrative, music as an 'empty landscape'. Essentially functional. Douglas McGowan, when asked for a definition says of New Age that 'it boils down to the intention of the artist'... it 'has some sort of utility'. This also fits with the philosophy of New Age and devotional music - the overarching socio-political goal ostensibly being an attempt to bring peace and serenity to society through music whilst also attempting to enhance a personal/spiritual experience.

Examples: Devotional Music, New age, Meditation, Healing tones, Space synths & Planetarium music, 90's chill out, Prog burnouts, Kosmische (the hippie end), Environmental & field recordings, Alpha wave music.

Music from The Academy is ambient music from the classical tradition of performance with an emphasis on experimentation (particularly through technology) and the exploration of new techniques and instrumentation, but which seeks no specific response for the listener. Can be dissonant, noisy, chaotic, abrupt, provocative, dark or dramatic. Generally demands the listener's attention but is essentially non-functional, or at least has no specific function other than to be performed, or to simply be. No grand philosophy other than that of radical modernist impulses to deconstruct and experiment. Austere or mischievous in edifice, degenerate or pious in style, but above all else; serious.

Examples: The Avant Garde - Concrète, Aleatoric Music, Electro-acoustic, Minimalism, Serialism, Tape music, Drone, Experimental electronic, Noise, Post-punk & Industrial experimentalism, Modern classical, Isolationism, Computer music, Glitch, Ambient post rock, Metal drone, 'Power' ambient/manbient.

The important distinction here is in the intended function of the music (or the lack thereof) or the motivation of the artist and the influence this has on the sonic form - not necessarily on the background of the artist in question. So Harold Budd, or Eno, or the likes of Ashra or Tangerine Dream could all be said to have produced work from the Ashram, whereas the likes of Steve Roach, Laaraji, Robert Rich or Ariel Kalma have all put out stuff that arguably fits with the Academy.

When we hit the mid 70's and Eno we see something new. His innovation was not in the form or structure of the music itself, but in the combination of these two traditions. Combining techniques and the experimental approach from the academy with the atmospheric & functional approach of the Ashram, subverting both the performance aspect of the former and the ostensible function of the latter. Eno's ambient 'tint(s) the environment (to) ...modify our moods in almost subliminal ways' (Eno) in a similar fashion to the Ashram, but it does so without the constrictions of the necessity of evoking a sense of well being or relaxation, and can contain dark, dissonant or unsettling elements. 'Music for Airports' is a good example of this fusion - essentially slowed down serialism with loads of reverb, like Aphex's analogue Bubblebaths and their softening of rave and hardcore tropes.

The counter argument there is that Eno simply rebranded New Age (I read an interview with a NA luminary who accused him of this) and there's a fair few quotes from Eno regarding Ambient's 'psychological' benefits to back this up, even parallels between Eno's ambient as 'empty' landscape and Stephen Hill's (Founder of the hearts of space radio show) 'space' (as in mental or contemplative, rather than cosmic) music. Eno is after all a salesman as much as anything else but I think the most convincing rejoinder to this is 'On Land' and its (at times) unsettling and tension filled vignettes, certainly not music to induce bliss or a meditative state. Regardless of the originality of his approach, by creating a definition and coining a genre Eno also created a conceptual space - so you now have these two streams redirected to flow into a lake called ambient - a confluence which creates a huge (and no doubt tranquil) basin where these two core traditions meet and bleed into each other.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
(well as you know i'm no scholar, if i borrow terms from that school i'm invoking them in a loose sense, as approximate placeholders blah blah blah)

BUT from what i understand schaeffer and his followers had a unified approach insofar as they wanted their music to be heard through a "Pythagorean veil". they didn't want people to focus on what the performers were doing, just on the sound itself. but whereas schaeffer favored a "reduced listening" entirely focused on sound's physical characteristics with no additional sensory associations—his successors like bayle and michel chion were very in favor of people making these associations, hence their use of terms like image-sound and cinema for the ear.

so my understanding is that, basically schaeffer wants you to hear a dog bark and appreciate its tessitura etc. whereas bayle wants you to hear the same dog bark and appreciate it's tessitura etc. AND think "oh it's a dog". but neither of them want you to think about the person pressing buttons on a sampler who's literally responsible for you hearing the sound.

ok but then you do not say this is a clarinet when you hear Wings of the Delirious demon from Mimaroglu.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
ok but then you do not say this is a clarinet when you hear Wings of the Delirious demon from Mimaroglu.

you especially don't say this is a clarinet when you learn that it is tape loops of transformed clarinet sounds. Because by that point it is not, yet the sounds are just as arresting and physical as concrete instrument playing. Just this time you have the use of oscillators, ring modulators and edits to differentiate the source material.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
we are talking here of a quantitative to qualitative transformation. If you have padlocks on your bike, you don't say they are metal, (in their raw state, in which case they couldn't be padlocks) you say they are metal padlocks as a form.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
we are talking here of a quantitative to qualitative transformation. If you have padlocks on your bike, you don't say they are metal, (in their raw state, in which case they couldn't be padlocks) you say they are metal padlocks as a form.
i would never claim this stuff is an exact, fully settled science. for example, even though they're friends and on the same "side" in a sense, michel chion objects to bayle's concept of the i-sound:
I don't know if I'd call them images, as much as representations. There's rise and fall, things that are slow, quick.. People tell me there are images in my music. They hear a dog barking, and say it's an image. To which I'd say, if a dog barking is an image, tell me what kind of dog it is. A big dog, or a poodle or what? That word "image" mixes up many things.
 

mvuent

Void Dweller
I thought I should probably elaborate.

The Ashram and the Academy

Music from The Ashram superficially aligns with Eno's 'ignorable as it is interesting' maxim in sonic terms, but which also seeks 'to induce, evoke or complement certain responses in the listener, 'encouraging states of reverie or receptivity' (Toop), particularly relaxation well being & reverence, through active or background listening. Almost never dissonant, noisy, chaotic or abrupt, generally devoid of tension, drama or narrative, music as an 'empty landscape'. Essentially functional. Douglas McGowan, when asked for a definition says of New Age that 'it boils down to the intention of the artist'... it 'has some sort of utility'. This also fits with the philosophy of New Age and devotional music - the overarching socio-political goal ostensibly being an attempt to bring peace and serenity to society through music whilst also attempting to enhance a personal/spiritual experience.

Examples: Devotional Music, New age, Meditation, Healing tones, Space synths & Planetarium music, 90's chill out, Prog burnouts, Kosmische (the hippie end), Environmental & field recordings, Alpha wave music.

Music from The Academy is ambient music from the classical tradition of performance with an emphasis on experimentation (particularly through technology) and the exploration of new techniques and instrumentation, but which seeks no specific response for the listener. Can be dissonant, noisy, chaotic, abrupt, provocative, dark or dramatic. Generally demands the listener's attention but is essentially non-functional, or at least has no specific function other than to be performed, or to simply be. No grand philosophy other than that of radical modernist impulses to deconstruct and experiment. Austere or mischievous in edifice, degenerate or pious in style, but above all else; serious.

Examples: The Avant Garde - Concrète, Aleatoric Music, Electro-acoustic, Minimalism, Serialism, Tape music, Drone, Experimental electronic, Noise, Post-punk & Industrial experimentalism, Modern classical, Isolationism, Computer music, Glitch, Ambient post rock, Metal drone, 'Power' ambient/manbient.

The important distinction here is in the intended function of the music (or the lack thereof) or the motivation of the artist and the influence this has on the sonic form - not necessarily on the background of the artist in question. So Harold Budd, or Eno, or the likes of Ashra or Tangerine Dream could all be said to have produced work from the Ashram, whereas the likes of Steve Roach, Laaraji, Robert Rich or Ariel Kalma have all put out stuff that arguably fits with the Academy.

When we hit the mid 70's and Eno we see something new. His innovation was not in the form or structure of the music itself, but in the combination of these two traditions. Combining techniques and the experimental approach from the academy with the atmospheric & functional approach of the Ashram, subverting both the performance aspect of the former and the ostensible function of the latter. Eno's ambient 'tint(s) the environment (to) ...modify our moods in almost subliminal ways' (Eno) in a similar fashion to the Ashram, but it does so without the constrictions of the necessity of evoking a sense of well being or relaxation, and can contain dark, dissonant or unsettling elements. 'Music for Airports' is a good example of this fusion - essentially slowed down serialism with loads of reverb, like Aphex's analogue Bubblebaths and their softening of rave and hardcore tropes.

The counter argument there is that Eno simply rebranded New Age (I read an interview with a NA luminary who accused him of this) and there's a fair few quotes from Eno regarding Ambient's 'psychological' benefits to back this up, even parallels between Eno's ambient as 'empty' landscape and Stephen Hill's (Founder of the hearts of space radio show) 'space' (as in mental or contemplative, rather than cosmic) music. Eno is after all a salesman as much as anything else but I think the most convincing rejoinder to this is 'On Land' and its (at times) unsettling and tension filled vignettes, certainly not music to induce bliss or a meditative state. Regardless of the originality of his approach, by creating a definition and coining a genre Eno also created a conceptual space - so you now have these two streams redirected to flow into a lake called ambient - a confluence which creates a huge (and no doubt tranquil) basin where these two core traditions meet and bleed into each other.
this is the orthodox way of looking at things. 90s wisdom.
 
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