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From: td@alice.UUCP (Tom Duff)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.synth
Subject: Re: Drum Machines - A Flame
Message-ID: <3817@alice.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Jun-85 00:24:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: alice.3817
Posted: Wed Jun  5 00:24:58 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Jun-85 04:19:29 EDT
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Organization: Bell Labs, Murray Hill
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I have followed this argument with some amusement, since both sides seem to
have such bad cases of head-wedge.  Specifically, mhuxr!mfs
claims the following:

> Rhythm, on the other hand [as opposed to harmony], pervades all music.
> There can be aharmonic
> and amelodic music, but there is no such thing as arrhythmic music.
> ...
> These are *not* value judgements. I listen to a pretty wide range
> of music, and these are the conclusions I reach. You disagree. Fine;
> state your assumptions, observations and conclusions. Let us talk.
> Save the value judgments on my assumptions, OK?

Since the first two sentences are demonstrably untrue, so must be the third.
As an example that most people might have heard,
consider the Ligeti space-music used as sound-track in 2001.  This stuff
is strictly arrhythmic, consisting almost entirely of sliding clusters of
held notes.  It has no discernable meter or rhythm.  Most middle-period
Stockhausen has similar temporal structure (e.g. Mixtur, Gruppen, Kontakte.)
(In fact, Stockhausen claims that Ligeti's and Penderecki's entire catalogs
are ripped-off bits of Mixtur.  But, I digress.)  Since there is demonstrably
arrhythmic music, it must be the case that any statement to the contrary
is either a falsehood or a value judgement of the form ``That stuff's not
music, because it hasn't got any rhythm.''  This calls into question the
fourth and following sentences in the above quote.  Apparently, mfs doesn't
listen to a particularly wide range of music, or he thinks that Mozart,
Johnny Cash, The Rolling Stones and Oscar Peterson circumscribe the range
of `real' music.

As for the general arguments, both for and against modern Drum Machines,
they are all disposed of in `...Who Needs Enemies', an album by Henry
Kaiser and Fred Frith.  Kaiser composed all the drum tracks on this
album on a LinnDrum.  They are (at times) intensely arrythmic, extremely
unrigid and unmetrical, original, exciting, (append adjectives ad nauseum.)
When I talked to him about it, Henry said that the folks a Linn were
`astounded' at the things he got the machine to do.  It is hard to come
up with objective statements describing the LinnDrum's musical (as
opposed to technical) limitations.  ``It isn't easy to play in real
time'' is about as far as I would be willing to go.  Those who value
the real-time aspects of performance (particularly improvisers) will
see this as crucial.  Some of the rest of us may not.  (Note that
Frith and Kaiser, mentioned above, are free improvisers.)
above, are free improvisers.)

mfs's statements on the role of harmony in music and the function of
performers also seem pretty narrow.  As a composer, I think of performers
as a necessary evil.  Performers stand between the composer and his
audience, and necessarily dilute the composer's ideas when they introduce
their own.  Performers call this `interpretation' and elevate it to a
virtue.  Fortunately, as technology matures composers can more and
more afford to view performers as an optional component of the music,
and need not delegate to them any aesthetic decisions they wish to
arrogate to themselves.