Members Bucksstudent Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 The Beach Boys became even more of an experimental band after Brian fell from grace. Dennis and Carl, in particular, rose to the occasion and made different music without the confines of their original sound. The Beatles... I think The White Album is a testament to experimental music. There is no "experimental sound," really. Experimentation in music is experimentation. You can usually tell when an artist is trying something different, like Lindsay Buckingham on Tusk. They wander in all directions instead of making an effort to keep the band or the original genre together. The Beatles did this very well on their last five albums. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zoink Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Originally Posted by Bucksstudent The Beach Boys became even more of an experimental band after Brian fell from grace. Dennis and Carl, in particular, rose to the occasion and made different music without the confines of their original sound. The Beatles... I think The White Album is a testament to experimental music. There is no "experimental sound," really. Experimentation in music is experimentation. You can usually tell when an artist is trying something different, like Lindsay Buckingham on Tusk. They wander in all directions instead of making an effort to keep the band or the original genre together. The Beatles did this very well on their last five albums. Yup. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members droolmaster0 Posted October 10, 2012 Author Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Well, I suppose that this thread is a failed experiment. It wasn't intended to talk about pop music. It's fine that you think that this stuff is what is meant by the term. But I'm just not interested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zoink Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Originally Posted by droolmaster0 Well, I suppose that this thread is a failed experiment. It wasn't intended to talk about pop music. It's fine that you think that this stuff is what is meant by the term. But I'm just not interested. lol I never brought pop music into this conversation. I'm just making the point that Wilson's "Smile" fits the designation of experimental music, since you're so adamant about discounting it (for reasons I can't quite tell). But if you want to talk about a *certain kind* of experimental music, or NOT talk about a certain kind of experimental music, then by all means, go ahead. You're making more of this than it is. "Do You Like Worms?" is not a pop song, but that doesn't mean we have to talk about it. Why don't you specify the particular kind of experimental music you're into, and go from there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zoink Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Originally Posted by droolmaster0 how is something experimental if it conforms to a very narrow sub genre? Okay, let's try again. We'll assume nobody ever mentioned the Beach Boys. lol To answer the quote above from your very first post, music can be experimental while conforming to a very narrow sub genre because of the word "narrow." It's experimental because it hasn't been fully explored or mapped out. "Narrow sub genres" are so named because few people (maybe just one person) have done anything like it. Narrow sub genres are very specific. Specific, if original, implies unique. It is a venturing out. We're then left with the question of whether 'unique' is in some way equivalent to 'experimental' when talking about music. Experiments are probing in nature. They seek -- at least in science -- to prove or demonstrate something. I wonder then if the same is true of 'experiment' in music. If music can be 'experimental', then what is its aim? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members zoink Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 To follow up, if 'experimental music' has no aim, then what is the experiment? Is it merely to inch further and further toward chaos and see if we still like what we hear?If that's the case, then a LOT OF THINGS can be 'experimental music.' But a heading that subsumes too much ends up describing (and meaning) nothing.Is its aim to eventually force us to *not* like what we hear, and say, "There. I did it. I finally found what you truly hate." Or, "This is it!! The center point of the audience's indifference. I finally have the sound that evokes NO response or feeling in the listener." Is that a victory?And here's another wrinkle. Lodovico Giustini's Sonate da cimbalo di piano was 'experimental music' by any definition of the word, as it was the first to employ the then-new instrument, the piano (well, the fortepiano) in the 1730s. Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy was an experimental piece as well, as it debuted the celesta. Truly different and experimental, even risky, as careers go. But by modern standards (thanks to waves of atonal and arhythmic compositions that dominated the mid 20th century) Giustini and Tchaikovsky did not go nearly far enough. Musically, their scandalous "experiments" were equivalent to wearing a bathing suit that reveals the ankles. Ultimately we're forced to accept a broad definition of what is 'experimental' in music. It's just that some experiments are bolder than others. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members suitandtieguy Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 i think it implies the experiment was a failure.i prefer the term "exploratory music." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Plink Floyd Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Why are you all still posting? Originally Posted by droolmaster0 Well, I suppose that this thread is a failed experiment. It wasn't intended to talk about pop music. It's fine that you think that this stuff is what is meant by the term. But I'm just not interested. I'm sorry this disappoints you. The fact that we have to share the planet with other people guarantees that there will always be currents in the conversation that aren't taking the boat where we might want it to go. Threads are like kids; you give birth to them, guide them, start them off with Solomonic wisdom that can't possibly result in them becoming anything less than epic successes. Then along comes other people to muck them up. You can either try to accept as inevitable what the boneheads are filling up your child with, or you can start a blog, with comments disabled. I admit that I haven't cared much for most exp music I've heard, but I've learned something from this thread and I'm going to listen to some of the artists mentioned here with which I'm not familiar. And I promise not to do this again, but I think that if George Martin had worked with The Beach Boys instead of The Beatles, things would have been mighty different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Mooginator Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Experimental 40 years ago means something entirely different today. IMO, I strongly feel one must be in command of theory and compositions skills before they attempt to qualify their music as experimental. There is a difference between experimental and experimentation. But it also should be noted it depends what your base of reference is to begin with. In other words, Debie Gibson's experimenting with her approach to music is going to be radically different than John Cage's approach. By a pop-minded person, Cage may already seem experimental, but by his standards, experimental may be actually trying to create a pop sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Meatball Fulton Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 As the Wikipedia article makes perfectly clear, the term "experimental music" is just too ambiguous. When words mean different things to everyone they become useless. Example: I once had a huge argument with an atheist friend who claimed he was a Christian His defense was the word "Christian" did not imply to him belief in God. My counterargument was he was just abusing the word because to everyone else in the world it does imply belief in God. At some point semantics are important in order to communicate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Metrosonus Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Well to be honest, the beach boys and the Beatles sort of culled from the experimental techniques and founders that had existed previously to them. In fact, I took several electronic music classes in college and I had one professor that positively drooled over the beach boys use of a thermin, despite the fact that it was invented in the late 20's and it was (in my opinion) thrown in as an anachronistic and intrinsic element in the music. All in all, there's nothing wrong with any of that and I think it's great if it gets people to recognize some of the aspects and history of experimental music. But it goes back to what I was saying about genre clashing or mixing up. The fact that they're using experimental techniques in their pop music, doesn't make it experimental. I can sympathize with drool on this point. Remember when Metallica used an orchestra in their music? Does that make them classical music? No.. But I remember a lot of people at the time thought it was so ground breaking and experimental and so on and so forth. I guess what I (or maybe we to an extent) are trying to say here is that experimental music is it's own genre, that I like to define by my own working definition. So, ergo, people like the beatles and the beach boys were clashing genres and not being experimental in and of them selves. Let's take being for the benefit of mr. kite. That's probably the only truly experimental song I think they have done to date. The technique they used is called (or was related to) dadaism. They didn't invent the technique, but they probably lay claim to the most famous example of it. And mostly because they were already famous before doing it and most of the people that heard it from them hadn't heard it before, so they probably think they invented it, which is a whole other discussion and now you can understand why people are mad at skirllex. But anyway, the tape loops the beatles used were actually pioneered in the late 1800's by the futurist movement. And again they didn't invent the technique, but they introduced it to the world of pop music. But there's both good and bad in that.. and now we're sitting here discussing the history of experimental music.. which I don't think is such a bad thing.. Experimental 40 years ago means something entirely different today. What it sounds like yes, but I think we should still be able to define the qualities of that sound with the same terms and definitions regardless of the intrinsic sound though. Experimental music is also what some would define as "process" music, in that it's actually more about the way you do it than what it sounds like. I don't think you can define the sound, but you can define the process, or at least, in my opinion, the core aspects of it. But for most people into experimental music, I think it's about both the process and the resulting sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members wesg Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 They had tape loops in the 1800s? What did they play them on?One of my profs eons ago was involved in what I would consider experimental music. At school they called it "electroacoustic composition". This was some pretty cool {censored}, especially given that it was mid-90s. She did stuff where a computer+camera would interpret the movements of dancers and dynamically compose music to suit. Or, she placed a bajillion speakers around a conservation area and had the computer compose music to go along with the swaying of the trees. Talk about awesome.I just googled her (Kristi Allik) and found a YouTube video of what appears to be an updated version of the one from the conservation area -- Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Metrosonus Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 They had tape loops in the 1800s? What did they play them on? records and wax cylinders. no {censored}. they had concerts that consisted of several men on stage, each with their own record player. the record or cylinder had one continuous groove with one sound on it, per person. they had a conductor at the front of the "band" who would then point to each person, who then either raise or lower the needle to the groove (put the needle on the groove wakka wakka wakka). this in effect served the same function as using looped tape on several reel to reels and then running them into a mixer and playing on the faders. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members pogo97 Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 I keep meaning to post here but my mind goes blank and my lips keep chanting: "vacuum cleaner, vacuum cleaner." records and wax cylinders. no {censored}. they had concerts that consisted of several men on stage, each with their own record player. the record or cylinder had one continuous groove with one sound on it, per person. they had a conductor at the front of the "band" who would then point to each person, who then either raise or lower the needle to the groove (put the needle on the groove wakka wakka wakka). My composition teacher (James Tenney) was a student of Cage's. He brought him in a couple of times. One piece had a bunch of ex-pat Americans reading random pieces of, IIRC, Walden. Another had a bunch of people with radios tuning them in to random frequencies. Memorable concepts and thought provoking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members droolmaster0 Posted October 10, 2012 Author Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Excellent. I woke up this morning and this was here, saying much of what I would have said. Words are used differently in different contexts, and just because a musician or band experiments to some degree does not mean that their music is what is referred to by the term 'experimental music'. Originally Posted by Metrosonus Well to be honest, the beach boys and the Beatles sort of culled from the experimental techniques and founders that had existed previously to them. In fact, I took several electronic music classes in college and I had one professor that positively drooled over the beach boys use of a thermin, despite the fact that it was invented in the late 20's and it was (in my opinion) thrown in as an anachronistic and intrinsic element in the music. All in all, there's nothing wrong with any of that and I think it's great if it gets people to recognize some of the aspects and history of experimental music. But it goes back to what I was saying about genre clashing or mixing up. The fact that they're using experimental techniques in their pop music, doesn't make it experimental. I can sympathize with drool on this point. Remember when Metallica used an orchestra in their music? Does that make them classical music? No.. But I remember a lot of people at the time thought it was so ground breaking and experimental and so on and so forth. I guess what I (or maybe we to an extent) are trying to say here is that experimental music is it's own genre, that I like to define by my own working definition. So, ergo, people like the beatles and the beach boys were clashing genres and not being experimental in and of them selves. Let's take being for the benefit of mr. kite. That's probably the only truly experimental song I think they have done to date. The technique they used is called (or was related to) dadaism. They didn't invent the technique, but they probably lay claim to the most famous example of it. And mostly because they were already famous before doing it and most of the people that heard it from them hadn't heard it before, so they probably think they invented it, which is a whole other discussion and now you can understand why people are mad at skirllex. But anyway, the tape loops the beatles used were actually pioneered in the late 1800's by the futurist movement. And again they didn't invent the technique, but they introduced it to the world of pop music. But there's both good and bad in that.. and now we're sitting here discussing the history of experimental music.. which I don't think is such a bad thing.. What it sounds like yes, but I think we should still be able to define the qualities of that sound with the same terms and definitions regardless of the intrinsic sound though. Experimental music is also what some would define as "process" music, in that it's actually more about the way you do it than what it sounds like. I don't think you can define the sound, but you can define the process, or at least, in my opinion, the core aspects of it. But for most people into experimental music, I think it's about both the process and the resulting sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members soundwave106 Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 For me, throwing Beach Boys and Shuggie Otis in the "experimental" category seems odd. The Beach Boys did some brilliant things in the technical department, but those "experimental" harmonies are entirely in the domain of Western music. In the late 1960s rock music actually seemed to notice the classical world and even borrow some new techniques from it (this includes the Beatles musique concrete sections), but at best I call it an application of experimental, not experimental music in itself.I tend to have two types of music marked in my playlists as "experimental". The first, and the one I think fits best, is those whose work is almost entirely an exploration of a process. This fits, for instance, Laurie Spiegel who heavily worked with algorithmic music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKDsfARXMc Or really obscure artists like Maryanne Amacher who wrote pieces to explore otoacoustic emission. Generally speaking, it is process oriented. Some avant-garde also fall in this category. The unfortunate downside is that in many cases the result is not particularly aesthetically pleasing. Pop can sometimes borrow results from the experiments and make it pleasing. Radiohead took an experimental computer music piece by Paul Lansky and sampled it into "Idioteque" for a nice result. The original piece is a little more difficult to listen to.The other type of music I have tagged as "experimental" is what is probably best called "outsider music", music that is a bit of a what the {censored} is this type of thing. I tend to tag artists as experimental when they know what they are doing vs. the Wesley Willis type that are outsider because they don't know what they are doing. I mean, the guy who made the below piece is a bassist in a couple of Portland metal bands, and then this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members droolmaster0 Posted October 10, 2012 Author Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 I'm not sure that I understand why you find this implication, on the one hand. If someone does a scientific experiment, for instance, there is not an implication that it was a failure. What would a 'failure' be in this context, exactly? Not liking the result? I don't think that there is any implication that one won't like the result in the term 'experimental music'. And then there is the fact that while perhaps the result of a 'musical experiment' may not result in a piece that one likes, it may result in one having learned something, which is worthwhile. Originally Posted by Suit & Tie Guy i think it implies the experiment was a failure. i prefer the term "exploratory music." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members droolmaster0 Posted October 10, 2012 Author Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 I couldn't disagree more strongly that one must be thoroughly versed in theory and composition in order to call one's music experimental. To some degree, one might say that there are 2 basic elements in the characterization - one must embody the spirit of experimentation deeply in one's own approach, and then I suppose it must also be evident in the final work. In some sense, it's really none of the listener's business what background the composer has - listen to the music and react to it on its own. The cliche that one must know the rules in order to break them is pretty silly. If one is making 'noise music' for instance, one does not need to study harmony first. And in fact, I think that it's often true that when one studies a discipline, it 'brainwashes' them from ever being able to truly let that theory go. As a violin player, I'm sometimes amused by hearing the attempts of great classical players to play non classical music. It's usually horribly, horribly stiff..... Originally Posted by Mooginator Experimental 40 years ago means something entirely different today. IMO, I strongly feel one must be in command of theory and compositions skills before they attempt to qualify their music as experimental. There is a difference between experimental and experimentation. But it also should be noted it depends what your base of reference is to begin with. In other words, Debie Gibson's experimenting with her approach to music is going to be radically different than John Cage's approach. By a pop-minded person, Cage may already seem experimental, but by his standards, experimental may be actually trying to create a pop sound. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Suilebhain Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 This is experimental in any era: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyzmk0qio5E So is this: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members droolmaster0 Posted October 10, 2012 Author Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 This is just my own personal reaction to something that you say, and not meant as an objective commentary on all of this.... I think that for some 'experimental musicians' the experimentation with the process leaves out the aesthetic result to too great a degree. Perhaps its analogous to long gear lists posted with tracks in a way...I might be curious, upon listening to a piece of music, how the sounds were made. This is kind of a professional interest - but if the gear is too much of an emphasis, you often get stuff that sounds like a 'demo'. The kind of thing that lots of people complain about on various forums, etc. I find that there is always a give and take between the process and the result. Maybe some of the experimentation (in my own 'work') is working on this relationship and how to think about it. I precisely DON'T want to make music in which I know the outcome, and I want the result to diverge as much as possible from my expectation. I want to be surprised by what I'm getting. The technique, for me, involves many things - knowing the gear well enough to hold on for dear life and find things that surprise and delight me, learning to unlearn certain presuppositions about playing the violin, trying to improvise in new ways, etc - but always with the notion that the end result must please me. At the same time, I don't think that the methods that I used on some particular day are important in themselves, and I don't think (unless it's purely for professional interest) that the listener should really care about them. I suppose another analogy that comes to mind is people who let ideology trump what they see right in front of them. I think that some terms are kind of loaded, and not helpful, but (feeling inarticulate right now) I'm not quite thinking of another way of saying it. While I think that any assemblage of sound can be music, at the same time, if the person is simply an idealogue about process, with no taste, they can still produce crap, a statement that is of course further complicated by the fact that the quality of the result is subjective. Originally Posted by soundwave106 For me, throwing Beach Boys and Shuggie Otis in the "experimental" category seems odd. The Beach Boys did some brilliant things in the technical department, but those "experimental" harmonies are entirely in the domain of Western music. In the late 1960s rock music actually seemed to notice the classical world and even borrow some new techniques from it (this includes the Beatles musique concrete sections), but at best I call it an application of experimental, not experimental music in itself. I tend to have two types of music marked in my playlists as "experimental". The first, and the one I think fits best, is those whose work is almost entirely an exploration of a process. This fits, for instance, Laurie Spiegel who heavily worked with algorithmic music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWKDsfARXMc Or really obscure artists like Maryanne Amacher who wrote pieces to explore otoacoustic emission. Generally speaking, it is process oriented. Some avant-garde also fall in this category. The unfortunate downside is that in many cases the result is not particularly aesthetically pleasing. Pop can sometimes borrow results from the experiments and make it pleasing. Radiohead took an experimental computer music piece by Paul Lansky and sampled it into "Idioteque" for a nice result. The original piece is a little more difficult to listen to. The other type of music I have tagged as "experimental" is what is probably best called "outsider music", music that is a bit of a what the {censored} is this type of thing. I tend to tag artists as experimental when they know what they are doing vs. the Wesley Willis type that are outsider because they don't know what they are doing. I mean, the guy who made the below piece is a bassist in a couple of Portland metal bands, and then this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Originally Posted by droolmaster0 I couldn't disagree more strongly that one must be thoroughly versed in theory and composition in order to call one's music experimental. To some degree, one might say that there are 2 basic elements in the characterization - one must embody the spirit of experimentation deeply in one's own approach, and then I suppose it must also be evident in the final work. In some sense, it's really none of the listener's business what background the composer has - listen to the music and react to it on its own. The cliche that one must know the rules in order to break them is pretty silly. If one is making 'noise music' for instance, one does not need to study harmony first. And in fact, I think that it's often true that when one studies a discipline, it 'brainwashes' them from ever being able to truly let that theory go. As a violin player, I'm sometimes amused by hearing the attempts of great classical players to play non classical music. It's usually horribly, horribly stiff..... You could buy a Casio workstation and just start trying stuff. It's too easy though to do random soundage under the pretense of experimentation. There has to be - a hypothesis? And verifiable results. (?) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members droolmaster0 Posted October 10, 2012 Author Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Originally Posted by 1001gear You could buy a Casio workstation and just start trying stuff. It's too easy though to do random soundage under the pretense of experimentation. There has to be - a hypothesis? And verifiable results. (?) Because some skill is required doesn't imply that one most know harmony, for instance, in order to do music that has nothing to do with harmony. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members 1001gear Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 Fair enough. Still One must know 'music' and what passes as such. Just trying to eliminate the charlatans - and how would you know? Guy can do crappy ugly nonsense supposedly expressing the frustation and angst of some mythical niche of living for instance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Metrosonus Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 call me a maverick, opinionated, a curator a gatekeeper (albeit a highly educated one if I can toot my own horn) but what I would consider "good" music or art, has an intangible, emergent property that can't be found by breaking the work down into it's constituent pieces. This "quality" is something that can be earned through innate talent, effort and practice. It can also be appreciated through the same means. If you really, really sat down and listened to someone on a casio, you'd be able to tell if they put effort into their work or not. they should be able to describe to you their process, their ideas and how they realized those ideas. In most cases, I respect effort more than I do the musical output simply because so many people seem incapable of being concerned about it. Most people seem to think that being born with a vagina or making something that already exists "star wars" begets an entitlement. I beg to differ. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members Re-Member Posted October 10, 2012 Members Share Posted October 10, 2012 So if pop structured music can be written off as not being experimental even if it's using experimental elements, does the same rule apply to experimental music attempting to mix in pop structured elements?Furthermore, if experimental music tries to adhere only to experimental techinques, but all of these techniques have already been done a million times over, should it really be considered experimental? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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