Wednesday, March 02, 2005
Still waiting for a conclusion (or, On jazz, and the reason I dislike techno)*
The music I was downloading the night my computer nearly died was among other things, an album by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. These guys do a sort of fusion jazz thing, which I am understanding to be a sort of bizarre lovechild between jazz and rock. In English, that translates to "just barely to the lee of recognizable". The album is on average not bad - it starts out somewhat inaccessible, but I like the later tracks. The reason I was downloading this album, essentially because of Sam Logan.
Seems that the creator of Sam and Fuzzy has a pretty good taste in music, which I first picked up in hearing The Futureheads. They were recommended by Allmusic.com as being similar to Franz Ferdinand, lauded by QC's Jeph as being pretty awesome, and Sam agreed. That many positive reviews made it a cinch to pick up, and lo, it was good. Sam also recommended The Pillows and a few other bands that I also like, so I thought I could probably get a few other successes by following his advice, which led me to Medeski, Martin and Wood. These guys also do a fusion/post-bop/jazz-funk/jam band thing, and the reason you shouldn't worry about what all those mean is that a) I probably don't know either (aside from the previously-mentioned fusion, of course) and b) it doesn't matter. Regardless, their album End Of The World Party (Just In Case) is simply great. In an effort to get more greatness, I consulted the Oracle of Allmusic for more similar artists, and that led me to Mahavishnu and jazz, and that in turn has a little to do with oceans.
I posit that music has a lot in common with the ocean. Everybody knows the basics of it, even if they've never seen it; it spans the whole world; there are lots of different things within it; it has a wide range of emotional responses; the list goes on. Like the ocean, some bits of music are much deeper than others. For example, pop and country are pretty shallow - I dare you to find much meaning in "Sk8ter Boi" or "That's What I Like About Sunday". Rap, as another example, is deceptively shallow - it seems trite until you start to understand some of the dynamics of it and how tricky it is just to talk that way and sound good. Rock is both deep and wide, bleeding into just about everything from pop to blues to strange, obscure microcosmic inventions operating independently of and drawing inspiration from yet other parts internal to the beast (like Goth Metal or Emo). There are deep parts (progressive) and shallow (punk), and it's pretty accessible to all. Contrasting this, in my mind, two types of music really stand out as being deeper than the rest, and yet remain squirreled away down in the unreachable depths of the Marianas Trench.
Compared to some of the rest, jazz and techno are fish of different colors. First, when I say techno, I mean most electronic music. The distinction is important, and not just because it takes more effort to type the latter than the former. Techno is just one type of electro-tune, and is but one of a myriad of genres, each fractally expansive in and of themselves, and covering every conceivable way that music can be generated digitally. You can get an idea of just how ridiculous the genres of techno get by checking this app out. It's not 100% correct, and subject to debate, but it's not a bad primer. (I am speaking, of course, right out of my ass. As will soon be evident, I am not really into electronic music.) If you do check out what Ishkar has to offer, you may immediately pick up on my beef with techno, which is that it mostly sounds the same. I want to be clear here: I am not saying that goa-trance sounds the same as tribal, although I wouldn't be able to pick them out of a line up if my life depended on it. I am sure all those genres, sub-genres and sub-sub-genres have been divided thus for a reason, just as I am equally sure I have not the experience with the field to be able to hear those distinctions. When I say it mostly sounds the same, I mean that the same quality pervades it: dead sterility.
Techno music obviously comes from a computer. Well duh, that's the point, says you. Exactly, says I. When you play an instrument, and you hit a snare or plink an E-string, it sounds just like you hit/plinked it. Hit it with angry rage, and an angerful, raging chord is let out. Stroke it like you would a kitten, and a soft, playful mewling might emerge. Contrast this to techno: a click is a click, a keypress is a keypress. When making techno music, there is less a "communicate through the instrument" vibe, and more of a "communicate with the instrument" vibe, since the computer you're using is filling he same role as the drums, or piano, or guitar (and sometimes all three at once). The difference between a piano and computer is that the piano is a rather thin membrane between you and the sound, whereas a computer needs to interpret what you say though software, and devise a way to reproduce it aurally. The fundamental analog to digital translation necessary to create the music in the first place is why it sounds dead. The divide between musician and music is enough to remove the soul from the music, to use a nicely trite cliche. This is precisely why I tend not to listen to techno, and also likely why people who do, do.
Call it a fundamental lack of understanding. This sort of wall can be found just about everywhere if you look at interpersonal dynamics - the very qualities causing displeasure in one cause pleasure in another and vice versa. Maybe I just lack the right gene to let me drop into a sort of trance filled with the right "doof-doof-doof" of the bass to enjoy it. Maybe I don't have the appreciation of hearing the subtle interplay in the remixing of a dozen of your favorite songs into something new. Maybe it has to do with the whole "scene" thing. I don't know. I'm just saying what I think. I said mostly up there, since can stand some techno, in limited quantities. I like a fair bit of what Orbital does, and I like synth-pop (which could arguably be considered borderline techno), and there are scattered tracks that I quite like. I can even tune into Digitally Imported for twenty minutes or so, but I can't listen to it for hours on end. Whatever I lack, I don't have any real personal attachment to the art form. I'm not above trying new things however, although I attempted techno and didn't get anywhere. To this end, and to get back to where I started from, I have now got my sights on jazz. Jazz is also kind of like techno, as wide as it is deep and having a similar fractal genrefication. Jazz doesn't have the same lack of feeling that techno has, however, and I'm facing a much bigger obstacle in getting into it than I did with techno.
Rock is 4:4 time. Three chords and the Truth are about all you need to make rock, and it is very rare that you find something in a different measure - the only example I can think of off the top of my head is In The Flesh by Pink Floyd (3:4 time, which could classify it as a waltz) although I am sure there are others. Techno, while not exactly 4:4, at least has the same regular beat patterns. That "doof-doof-doof" that creates that hypnotic zoned out feeling has more in common with 4:4 time than with others. This is important, because a lot of what we like is based on pattern recognition. By being able to break the time of the music based on other stuff we like, our brains "figure out" the song and that's a good thing because everyone likes figuring things out. Jazz is an entirely different animal. It's not uncommon for jazz songs to change time several times in the middle of a song, and as far as I can tell, the musical style itself was based on the concept of artists just going off and playing stuff off the top of their heads. This is what makes it good listening, or at least so I'm told.
I have yet to figure it out, but I'm trying. I have some Herbie Hancock coming down the pipe, and possibly some Miles Davis. Allmusic has them pegged as being more proponents of fusion jazz, and it's not usually wrong. I am hoping that by going with a rock-jazz mix like fusion, I can ease into some of the more foreign sounds that some of the more "true" jazz has, if there is such a genre. Still, regardless of how it ends up, I'll end up at least listening to some new music, and that's never a bad thing.
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* Are all my entries going to start this way? Eight-ball says it's probably just a phase, basically just like the rest of this site. I'm normal, really. ¶ 11:10 a.m.
The music I was downloading the night my computer nearly died was among other things, an album by the Mahavishnu Orchestra. These guys do a sort of fusion jazz thing, which I am understanding to be a sort of bizarre lovechild between jazz and rock. In English, that translates to "just barely to the lee of recognizable". The album is on average not bad - it starts out somewhat inaccessible, but I like the later tracks. The reason I was downloading this album, essentially because of Sam Logan.
Seems that the creator of Sam and Fuzzy has a pretty good taste in music, which I first picked up in hearing The Futureheads. They were recommended by Allmusic.com as being similar to Franz Ferdinand, lauded by QC's Jeph as being pretty awesome, and Sam agreed. That many positive reviews made it a cinch to pick up, and lo, it was good. Sam also recommended The Pillows and a few other bands that I also like, so I thought I could probably get a few other successes by following his advice, which led me to Medeski, Martin and Wood. These guys also do a fusion/post-bop/jazz-funk/jam band thing, and the reason you shouldn't worry about what all those mean is that a) I probably don't know either (aside from the previously-mentioned fusion, of course) and b) it doesn't matter. Regardless, their album End Of The World Party (Just In Case) is simply great. In an effort to get more greatness, I consulted the Oracle of Allmusic for more similar artists, and that led me to Mahavishnu and jazz, and that in turn has a little to do with oceans.
I posit that music has a lot in common with the ocean. Everybody knows the basics of it, even if they've never seen it; it spans the whole world; there are lots of different things within it; it has a wide range of emotional responses; the list goes on. Like the ocean, some bits of music are much deeper than others. For example, pop and country are pretty shallow - I dare you to find much meaning in "Sk8ter Boi" or "That's What I Like About Sunday". Rap, as another example, is deceptively shallow - it seems trite until you start to understand some of the dynamics of it and how tricky it is just to talk that way and sound good. Rock is both deep and wide, bleeding into just about everything from pop to blues to strange, obscure microcosmic inventions operating independently of and drawing inspiration from yet other parts internal to the beast (like Goth Metal or Emo). There are deep parts (progressive) and shallow (punk), and it's pretty accessible to all. Contrasting this, in my mind, two types of music really stand out as being deeper than the rest, and yet remain squirreled away down in the unreachable depths of the Marianas Trench.
Compared to some of the rest, jazz and techno are fish of different colors. First, when I say techno, I mean most electronic music. The distinction is important, and not just because it takes more effort to type the latter than the former. Techno is just one type of electro-tune, and is but one of a myriad of genres, each fractally expansive in and of themselves, and covering every conceivable way that music can be generated digitally. You can get an idea of just how ridiculous the genres of techno get by checking this app out. It's not 100% correct, and subject to debate, but it's not a bad primer. (I am speaking, of course, right out of my ass. As will soon be evident, I am not really into electronic music.) If you do check out what Ishkar has to offer, you may immediately pick up on my beef with techno, which is that it mostly sounds the same. I want to be clear here: I am not saying that goa-trance sounds the same as tribal, although I wouldn't be able to pick them out of a line up if my life depended on it. I am sure all those genres, sub-genres and sub-sub-genres have been divided thus for a reason, just as I am equally sure I have not the experience with the field to be able to hear those distinctions. When I say it mostly sounds the same, I mean that the same quality pervades it: dead sterility.
Techno music obviously comes from a computer. Well duh, that's the point, says you. Exactly, says I. When you play an instrument, and you hit a snare or plink an E-string, it sounds just like you hit/plinked it. Hit it with angry rage, and an angerful, raging chord is let out. Stroke it like you would a kitten, and a soft, playful mewling might emerge. Contrast this to techno: a click is a click, a keypress is a keypress. When making techno music, there is less a "communicate through the instrument" vibe, and more of a "communicate with the instrument" vibe, since the computer you're using is filling he same role as the drums, or piano, or guitar (and sometimes all three at once). The difference between a piano and computer is that the piano is a rather thin membrane between you and the sound, whereas a computer needs to interpret what you say though software, and devise a way to reproduce it aurally. The fundamental analog to digital translation necessary to create the music in the first place is why it sounds dead. The divide between musician and music is enough to remove the soul from the music, to use a nicely trite cliche. This is precisely why I tend not to listen to techno, and also likely why people who do, do.
Call it a fundamental lack of understanding. This sort of wall can be found just about everywhere if you look at interpersonal dynamics - the very qualities causing displeasure in one cause pleasure in another and vice versa. Maybe I just lack the right gene to let me drop into a sort of trance filled with the right "doof-doof-doof" of the bass to enjoy it. Maybe I don't have the appreciation of hearing the subtle interplay in the remixing of a dozen of your favorite songs into something new. Maybe it has to do with the whole "scene" thing. I don't know. I'm just saying what I think. I said mostly up there, since can stand some techno, in limited quantities. I like a fair bit of what Orbital does, and I like synth-pop (which could arguably be considered borderline techno), and there are scattered tracks that I quite like. I can even tune into Digitally Imported for twenty minutes or so, but I can't listen to it for hours on end. Whatever I lack, I don't have any real personal attachment to the art form. I'm not above trying new things however, although I attempted techno and didn't get anywhere. To this end, and to get back to where I started from, I have now got my sights on jazz. Jazz is also kind of like techno, as wide as it is deep and having a similar fractal genrefication. Jazz doesn't have the same lack of feeling that techno has, however, and I'm facing a much bigger obstacle in getting into it than I did with techno.
Rock is 4:4 time. Three chords and the Truth are about all you need to make rock, and it is very rare that you find something in a different measure - the only example I can think of off the top of my head is In The Flesh by Pink Floyd (3:4 time, which could classify it as a waltz) although I am sure there are others. Techno, while not exactly 4:4, at least has the same regular beat patterns. That "doof-doof-doof" that creates that hypnotic zoned out feeling has more in common with 4:4 time than with others. This is important, because a lot of what we like is based on pattern recognition. By being able to break the time of the music based on other stuff we like, our brains "figure out" the song and that's a good thing because everyone likes figuring things out. Jazz is an entirely different animal. It's not uncommon for jazz songs to change time several times in the middle of a song, and as far as I can tell, the musical style itself was based on the concept of artists just going off and playing stuff off the top of their heads. This is what makes it good listening, or at least so I'm told.
I have yet to figure it out, but I'm trying. I have some Herbie Hancock coming down the pipe, and possibly some Miles Davis. Allmusic has them pegged as being more proponents of fusion jazz, and it's not usually wrong. I am hoping that by going with a rock-jazz mix like fusion, I can ease into some of the more foreign sounds that some of the more "true" jazz has, if there is such a genre. Still, regardless of how it ends up, I'll end up at least listening to some new music, and that's never a bad thing.
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* Are all my entries going to start this way? Eight-ball says it's probably just a phase, basically just like the rest of this site. I'm normal, really. ¶ 11:10 a.m.
