Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site scgvaxd.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ittvax!dcdwest!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!scgvaxd!chris From: chris@scgvaxd.UUCP (Chris Yoder) Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.synth Subject: Re: Drum Machines - A Flame Message-ID: <342@scgvaxd.UUCP> Date: Fri, 7-Jun-85 11:48:38 EDT Article-I.D.: scgvaxd.342 Posted: Fri Jun 7 11:48:38 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 10-Jun-85 20:27:13 EDT References: <317@mhuxr.UUCP> <979@pyuxd.UUCP> <320@mhuxr.UUCP> Reply-To: chris@scgvaxd.UUCP (Chris Yoder) Organization: Hughes Aircraft Co., El Segundo, CA Lines: 67 Xref: linus net.music:6683 net.music.synth:312 Summary: [bug poison] I feel that Marcel Simon has made some very good points about rhythm being the core of most music. Actually, he has been claiming that all music has at it's core rhythm, but I have to take some exception to that statement. I will agree that all rhythm *should* be under human control in a performace situation but I can think of two "art music" (some, mistakenly, call it "Clasical music") pieces that I have either performed in or listened to (live) where one of the instruments was essentially a recording of a steady, driving beat. I believe that one of these was called "time" and in it there was this steady, pulsing beat that was recorded on a tape and played back during the performance, that started out relatively slowly, and then (in quantam leaps) got steadily faster through the peice. The orchestra (as I remember) played in what seemed to be a random manner around this beat. The point of the piece was to experiment with one's notion of time. At first, things seemed to move slowly, and then they moved more and more quickly but all of a sudden, it seemed that things slowed down, even though the driving rhythm was by this time pulsing more rapidly than at any other time (sort of like a spoked wheel that seems to go backwards once it's moving quickly enough). All this was to show that drum machines (or "steady rhythm machines") *can* be used very efectivly in a concert enviornment. In art music, the more far out composers are actually playing with the fringes of rhythmic notions as well as harmonic ones. I have been in a choir that performed some very interesting modern art music pieces where the rhythm wasn't even under the control of the director!!! Instead the director would cue a section and then at some random interval after that people w/i the section would come in. It was a lot of fun, and *very* difficult! I think that what I'm trying to say is that in different pieces rhythm means different things. Some use a steady pulsing beat to great advantage and some require that the piece flow with the current mood of the performance, and what the conductor (or leader, or performer) slide the rhythm about for a truely interesting performance. Marcel Simon suggests: > 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. There are many pieces that I can't stand intellectually but that I find myself singing along with and be-bobing to the beat with. These pieces invariably have a lively rhythm that is actually quite boring at it's base level (Disco is a clasic example). These pieces invariably pull me along and grab me irresistibly, but I still can't stand them (usually because they don't hold the intellectual side of me interested). NOTE: This rhythm is (to me) very boring, yet very lively. Interestingly enough, when I started this artical I was going to flame on rhythm machines wholeheartedly, but once I got into it I realized that they do, indead, have thier uses, mostly in music that I don't like, sometimes in music that I do like. Please, don't flame me for my taste in music, I won't flame you for yours. -- -- Chris Yoder UUCP --- {allegra|ihnp4}!scgvaxd!engvax!chris { The opinions here are representative of Huge Aircrash, not me and *especially* not of my poor little keyboard. 8-)= }