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From: mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.synth
Subject: Re: Drum Machines - A Flame
Message-ID: <332@mhuxr.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 1-Jun-85 10:00:55 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxr.332
Posted: Sat Jun  1 10:00:55 1985
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> Your Max Roach example shows how humans produce "alive" (by YOUR standards)
> music.  They fail to show WHY drum machines ipso facto produce "dead music".
> Your standards of "aliveness" seem based on notions of jazz improvisation
> being the prime factor in "aliveness" of music.  Does this mean that
> classical (sic) music, with all its notes written out in advance, is
> necessarily dead?
> -- 
> 					Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr

Wrong on all counts. I used a jazz example because jazz is a medium I am
familiar with. Rhythm is at the core of all music. I posted an article
on the Kronos Quartet doing interpretations of  Thelonious Monk. No
improvisation whatsoever, yet the Quartet captures the essence of Monk's
music. How? They grasp his sense of rhythm and it colors their reading
of his music. The key is interpretation. Classical music gives its
practitioners less leeway in remaking a piece in the player's image than jazz.
As a result, interpretation is everything. Since you can't change the
notes, you must really dig into the ones that are there and render
your understanding of them, and of the piece as a whole. The subtle
shadings and shifts of emphasis that are the interpretive devices of
classical musicians are rhythmic in nature.

The core of any successful composition, classical or otherwise, is
rhythmic. Listen to the four note theme that begins Beethoven's Fifth.
The dramatic impact ("thus fate knocks at our door") of the motif
is due to its rhythmic, rather than harmonic content. Listen to
Mozart's last two symphonies, his most personal. Listen to how
agitated the themes and their developments are. Where is the source
of the agitation? Surely not in the notes themselves, but in their
presentation, which ones are emphasized and which ones are glossed over;
in other words, by the rhythmic content of Mozart's writing.

Going further afield, listen to the forceful breathing dynamics that form
the principal characteristics of Japanese shakuhachi music. Surely
they are not an intrinsic part of the instrument. No, they are rhythmic
devices.

I could go on, but I am sure you get the picture. Rhythm is at the core
of any successful music. Rhythm is the essential part of performance
because it is the only tool available across all types of musical
performance. The sound of a drum machine, being the result of prior
programming, can't participate in the subtle (and not so subtle)
interplay of rhythmic variations that give a performance its tension
and crackle. Conclusion: drum machines have no place in the performing
process.

Try one last experiment: listen to some piece of music that you DON'T like.
Any piece, it does not matter. Concentrate on the rhythm. Is it interesting,
lively? Does it grab you irresistibly, and pull you along? Does
the piece get from here to there? I am willing to bet that the answer to
all these questions is no.

Marcel Simon

P.S. The essence of jazz is NOT improvisation. One only has to listen
to Duke Ellington to disprove that (he often wrote his sidemen's solos).
The essence of jazz is another discussion entirely, one that I will not start
in this already too lengthy article.

"What good is melody, what good is music
When it's not possessing of something sweet
Well it ain't the melody, and it ain't the music
There's something else that makes this tune complete
It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that swing"

Duke Ellington