Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!umich!samsung!brutus.cs.uiuc.edu!psuvax1!psuvm!auvm!ECNCDC!UUCJEFF From: UUCJEFF@ECNCDC.BITNET (jeff beer) Newsgroups: bit.listserv.allmusic Subject: Re: Time in music and others.. Message-ID: Date: 6 Feb 90 14:32:00 GMT Sender: Discussions on all forms of Music Reply-To: Discussions on all forms of Music Lines: 47 Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM Gateway > > An interesting experiment perhaps? Try to make music that has no >relation to time at all. In other words no time signatures, etc... It would >have to be something just improvised, and recorded then learned without >applying any sort of timing to it... I think this would be very difficult >to do, but then again, who knows? Anyone know of some band who has tried it? >King Crimson would be my best guess, if anyone at all... > > H.C.E. KC? good joke. Just having no time signature would not make it time independent. But you can have an ambiguous relationship with meter, and perception of time can be mutable. I once was studying with Don Cherry, and he taught us some Ornette Coleman tunes. They have no time signatures, you only have a series of phrases. In practicle terms, this means there is no fixed relationship with the rhythm section. They can be turned around. ( and often are ) As for his rythm section, if you look at his work "Free Jazz", it is scored for a double quartet with 2 basses and 2 drums. Each take pains at establishing a different meter and tempo. Coltrane's Interstellar space is another example of an autonomous relationship between each player's time feel. Later musicians of jazz, such as with Anthony Braxton and Sam Rivers have different concept of time, in which they use space as a determination of how they perceive time. (Listen to "Four Winds" on "Conference of the Birds", under Dave Holland's name. They create doppler effects with the time) In the 20 century European tradition, there are also a variety of non-linear concepts of time. Stockhausen has many pieces where time is the most important concept. And Xennakis has written of the concept of "outside time" in his book "Formalized Music". I am only slightly familiar with these people, I cannot necessarily hear their concept in their works, but I have not studied them that much. I used to work with Alan Silva in a big band he called "Celestrial Communication Orchestra". He had a fascinating concept that was based in parallel harmony, and a time and melody concept based on the phrase. (i.e. the phrase had no reference to meter, even though other parts of the piece may have had metered information) To give you an example of how he conceived it, a friend of mine read a passage from some cosmological tract, saying "Not only can time move forwards and backwards, but it can move sideways interdimensionally". To that Alan got real excited and said, "Yah, that is just what I wanted you cats to play in the last rehearsal, but you couldn't hear it. I wanted to make time move sideways" Jeff Beer. "Hollywood finally is making films about us. Hollywood's Hollywood's finally put us on their budget" (Alan Silva after seeing Altered States)