 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: John J. Moses
Date: 2010-12-20 20:42
Hi:
Here is a fascinating article by a fellow NYC double, Scott Robinson. I thought you all might like to read Scott's remarks. He's a brilliant fellow and this Journal is not readily available.
Hello everyone,
Here is the article published in this month's All About Jazz New York... something to read over the holidays (I've restored a few details that were lost in the printed version). This was one of the topics addressed in my ScienSonic lecture last week in NYC; many thanks to those of you who attended, and to John Zorn for asking me to present what was the 50th seminar at the Stone.
I welcome your comments. Best New Year wishes to everybody,
Scott
http://www.aaj-ny.com/issues/aaj_ny_201012.pdf
Sameness is the Enemy
by Scott Robinson
You know the feeling: you're just arriving in a part of the US you've never visited before, and looking forward to seeing what it has to offer. The moment your plane touches down, the cabin suddenly fills with dreadful Muzak that you must endure until you can make it to the exit. In the airport, the insipid music (or another version of it) is again your unwanted companion, following you everywhere, even into the bathroom. You wend your way past the same Chili's Express, Cinnabon and Miller Brewhouse you saw in the airport you departed from 2,000 miles ago, and pick up your car keys at the rental desk. Out in the lot, the music continues to follow you as you make your way to your car, through speakers mounted every five feet in the canopy overhead.
You hit the road, looking forward to the local scenery on the way to your hotel. You're on a highway, and it looks disturbingly like a lot of other highways in a lot of other places you've been, nowhere near this one. You pass shopping centers, malls and large swaths of housing developments just like the ones back home. These bear evocative names that recall whatever was destroyed in order to put them there: Fox Run Woods, Turkey Glen Estates. Nervously you turn on the radio, thinking, "maybe I'll catch some local music." But up and down the dial is a seemingly endless supply of the same pop/rock you were subjected to back at the airport, along with a hefty dose of right-wing talk and a smattering of news.
Near a big intersection you find your hotel, one of a giant chain (aren't they all nowadays?). Your spirits fall as you look around and realize that this highway interchange is indistinguishable from all the others you've seen all across this continent. Wal-Mart, Wendy's, Home Depot... you are in the center of a giant ocean of unrecognizable conformity. Where Indians once hunted bison is now no different than where steamy Floridian jungle once stood. Those worlds have been removed and replaced with... this.
You step into the hotel lobby (yes, the pop music is playing there, too) and make your way to the check-in desk, passing by the hotel bar. Maybe you'll drop in later for a good local beer! Quickly you scan the taps: Bud, Bud Light, Coors, Coors Light... no luck there. As the perky young gal at the desk hands you your key, you ask, "Where can I get some good local chow?" "Well, there's a Denny's next door," she answers cheerfully, "and an Applebee's just across the highway. I like Applebee's, 'cause you know what you're gonna get - it's always the same!"
This scourge of sameness has somehow permeated nearly every part of our landscape and every aspect of our culture. And it isn't just here at home. Thanks to globalization, multinational corporate behemoths now bring us Kraft cheese in France, Coca-Cola in Chad, McDonald's in Moscow and Starbucks in Beijing's Forbidden City. Where America's jazz once fired the imagination of the world, now her bland, pitch-corrected pop has stultified the cultures of other nations, driving out their indigenous music like an invasive species. In cafés from Kowloon to Cameroon, I've had to endure the same stuff that I would in my local New Jersey bar. What's disturbing is the tyranny of it, the ubiquity. We are not allowed to escape it - it is required listening wherever we go.
The forces of sameness are at work in education, too, where the push is toward ever more standardization, and away from innovation in teaching. Even the world of jazz, supposed bastion of unfettered imagination, is susceptible (theme-solos-theme formats, formulaic endings, the dreaded "everybody wear all black"). And thanks to deregulation and corporate greed, jazz has virtually disappeared from radio along with almost anything that isn't pop or talk. Radio stations once had live orchestras; now many of them don't even have local DJs, as programming is prerecorded from a prescribed playlist and piped in from corporate headquarters. This t rend began in the '90s with test marketing: test groups determine playability based on just 10 seconds of music. Playlists shrink, songwriters start "writing to the test" and sameness wins the day. Today, any sort of DJ autonomy has vanished from most radio, as corporations decide what gets played. There's big money in sameness!
What about the internet? There's been much to be thankful for, with independent musicians finally out from under the yoke of record labels and distributors who decide which music is worthy of release. But I see an ominous new trend coming: subscription services, which many say will soon replace downloads. For a monthly fee, listeners can access an entire library of music... but only whatever music the company chooses to provide. Even more unsettling are the new "acoustic personalization" services, which provide listeners with music matching the acoustical profile of whatever they listened to last - a virtual recipe for sameness! How would someone listening to Coltrane discover, say, Art Tatum by such a method, let alone Bartók's string quartets? The joy of discovering new sounds will be forever lost if we start allowing our listening choices to be made by a computer program whose sole criterion is that the next piece must sound the same, or nearly the same, as the last.
Why does uniformity have such a hold over us? Why do humans, those most creative of animals (in America, that most creative of nations), seem so eager to prostrate themselves before the altar of sameness? I have a theory: perhaps, like brute physical strength, creativity is becoming less critical for day-to-day survival. Where early humans had to use brawn and brains to find a way to stay alive, now most (in the developed world, at least) can simply pick up a pizza or buy groceries. Could we be in danger of losing our creative edge?
Certain species of birds have, through the centuries, lost the ability to fly. Consider the ostrich: does not such a flightless bird seem somehow less a bird, absent such a distinguishing characteristic? And would not a diminishment of our own creative powers make us, in some immeasurable but crucial way, less human?
If there is an answer to this dilemma, at least for musicians, perhaps it cannot be stated more simply or more passionately than what Mr. Anthony Braxton said to me years ago: "We have to keep playing music like our life depends on it - which it does!" He was speaking, of course, of creative, far-reaching music, music that elevates the imagination and transforms the listener. We musicians are often told that we must "give the audience what it wants"... but an audience can only want what it already knows. I believe that part of an artist's job is to find that which the audience never knew it wanted, that which it was not even equipped to imagine. This way, the music is allowed to evolve and grow, and perhaps take us humans along with it. Indeed, creativity - and creative music in particular - may be the most powerful weapon we have against the creeping tide of sameness and uniformity. Let us wield it often, and well.
For more information, visit mysite.verizon.net/smoulden/ scott.html. Robinson is at Brooklyn Lyceum Dec. 8th, gives a seminar at The Stone Dec. 13th and is at Littlefield Dec. 15th with Ron Horton/Tim Horner. See Calendar. Multi-instrumentalist/composer Scott Robinson has been a highly-active presence on the New York-based jazz scene for more than 25 years, appearing on some 200 CDs. He has been heard with Frank Wess, Bob Brookmeyer, Maria Schneider, Anthony Braxton, Hank Jones and more, and toured 11 African nations in 2001 as a US Jazz Ambassador. This year, Robinson's ScienSonic label has released its first two CDs of "worlds of tomorrow through sound".
JJM
Légère Artist
Clark W. Fobes Artist
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-12-20 23:46
I've never seen a Chili's Express.....
Great article. Expanding upon it, there seems to be a growing trend of suspicion and paranoia toward anything different, unexpected, unusual, strange. Makes it uncomfortable to be an artist-type, and at the same time all the more crucial.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: DougR
Date: 2010-12-21 01:43
Great article, thanks for posting it, John!
Further to celebrating the truly different, Scott's website is worth a visit any old time, but especially now that he's posted a little article on the making of "Live at Space Farms," a recent recording project of his. It's a glorious, geeky, enthusiastic, funny, very wise chronicle of exploration, of NON-"sameness" as practiced by a real exemplar of following where creativity leads.
Here's the link, sorry, you'll have to copy & paste, but it's worth it:
http://home.earthlink.net/~smoulden/scott/lasf.html
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2010-12-21 01:47
Worse: current Pop music uses a teeny, tiny subset of music theory; and it is all alike.
Real artistry is based upon a strong, established set of conventions cleverly warped to bring something new to the listener --not a reprise of all the other crap that permeates our culture.
How many time have you changed radio stations (when you didn't dodge or run into a commercial) to find that the new station's noise is in the same key, has the same harmonic cadence and never misses the original performance's beat?
While we desperately try to accumulate Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours of relevant practice to gain proficiency on our instrument, millions of people are listening to stuff that might take a couple of months to learn.
Can you find a public place where one might find a WW5 playing some Beethoven?
I'm unable to withstand the onslaught of vocals that sound as though the singer were struggling at stool.
I have taken to carrying a couple of favored CDs with me as an alternative to being inundated with SOS.
Bob Phillips
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-12-21 03:42
"How many time have you changed radio stations (when you didn't dodge or run into a commercial) to find that the new station's noise is in the same key, has the same harmonic cadence and never misses the original performance's beat?"
Quite often in Los Angeles. Usually they also share the same synthesized oom-pa tuba and blatty trumpet samples. :P
The radio is pretty much worthless these days, sadly. Corporate control destroyed that medium, and my friends and I lament the lack of pretty much anything cool. There are a couple stations that rank as "listenable" (including the classical station, sometimes) but nothing particularly awesome.
Because I already know what's coming and there's no exploration involved (as described in the article), half the time, I'll drive with the radio off.
As for public Beethoven, I'd say that's our fault as musicians for not taking to the streets. When was the last time YOU took a chamber group to a public park or a Starbucks?
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: David Spiegelthal ★2017
Date: 2010-12-21 03:51
And every classical station is playing the same Mozart symphony, and every clarinetist sounds like the same R-13 player. So what's new?
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Author: salzo
Date: 2010-12-21 14:55
Bob wrote:
"Worse: current Pop music uses a teeny, tiny subset of music theory; and it is all alike.
Real artistry is based upon a strong, established set of conventions cleverly warped to bring something new to the listener --not a reprise of all the other crap that permeates our culture.
How many time have you changed radio stations (when you didn't dodge or run into a commercial) to find that the new station's noise is in the same key, has the same harmonic cadence and never misses the original performance's beat?
While we desperately try to accumulate Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours of relevant practice to gain proficiency on our instrument, millions of people are listening to stuff that might take a couple of months to learn."
That is interesting. Personally, I find the same can be said about classical musicians.
One thing (of many) that I find completely missing in pop music, and classical music is a sense of shape and phrasing. It does not exist. And timing and meter sense is completely absent. Beat one of a measure should sound different, and have a different weight than beat 4-but it doesnt. JUst straight lines. THis is true for both pop and classical.
WHich makes me think their might be a connection to the lack of phrasing and time structure in classical musicians, and the pop music of today.
Just about EVERYONE listens, or at a least "hears" pop music.
In the "old days", young aspiring classical musicians heard Goodman, Shaw, Dorsey, and a host of other popular bands- these big bands had musicians with nice tones, and the musicians actually played pretty. They knew how to play a melody, and they knew how to spin a phrase. I cant help but think that had some influence on classical musicians.
Today, in pop music their really is no such thing as phrasing, tone, etc- and I cant help but think that contributes to the straight line playing of classical musicians of today.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2010-12-21 17:44
Alex, you're right. It's been two years since we did a (gratis) little gig at the local Starbucks*.
Salzo, as an 8500** hour (roughly) beginner, I'm now fighting the battle between the soulful and the midi. My teacher is certain that I'm short of rhythmic discipline. I've been fighting too hard against being midi-replaceable and gotten too careless with my meter. SIGH. I'm learning to notice how subtlety in a tenuto here, an early release there, ... can make a huge difference.
*Actually, this is (sort of) the Northwest , and our town of 4800 has TOW Starbucks.
**with ~1500 hours to go to the magic 10,000; I'm beginning to doubt that a few months is going to make virtuosic, (or even virtuous).
SIGH
Bob Phillips
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-12-21 19:32
Don't be too hard on yourself, Bob. The 10,000 hour thing is largely anecdotal and self-referential. Makes for a nice concept in a book, but is heavily flawed.
salzo: I find your theory crazy insightful. I don't know if pop music is the root of the problem, but I definitely see a lack of phrasing in most music these days. Lots of music seems very "this happens, then this happens, then this happens," very micro-focused on individual notes and accuracy and alignment, without ever really SAYING anything. A subtle distinction to make, but one that makes a HUGE difference.
I've been taking tabla classes, and something that's fundamental to the instrument is the connection between the physical production of sound and the corresponding linguistics of phrasing (e.g. Dha terekite dha ge na, terekitetaka dha ge na, dha terekite dha ge na, dha ge dhi na ge na). You can really ONLY play it if you have some macro-understanding of where the phrase is going. After an hour of tabla practice, I sometimes find myself lost in the clarinet practice room, struggling to find an equivalent.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: salzo
Date: 2010-12-21 20:18
EEbaum wrote:
" Lots of music seems very "this happens, then this happens, then this happens," very micro-focused on individual notes and accuracy and alignment, without ever really SAYING anything. A subtle distinction to make, but one that makes a HUGE difference."
That really sums it up.
Most musicians that I hear today leave me thinking "What did he/she say??
I recently went to a fiddle recital and the violinist played a theme and variations. Very technical, of course the technique was there, very accurate, very aligned. Afterwards we were talking about it, and most just raved about the performance. Someone remarked how wonderful it was, I asked "why did you like it"? They went on about the technicaL PROFICIENCY. I asked the person if they could sing the theme of the theme and variations-they couldnt, and neither could I. Something isnt quite right about hearing a theme with twenty something variations, and being unable to hum the tune after the concert.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-12-21 21:47
What's wrong with 'The same old Beethoven Symphony',
...isn't that it's:
'That Beethoven Symphony' again,
...it's that it isn't 'being newly created'.
And its creation doesn't necessarily have to be 'different from what has gone before' in order to be 'newly created'.
I wrote a bit about that in:
http://test.woodwind.org/Databases/lookup.php/Klarinet/1999/03/001463.txt
Notice that 'BEING DIFFERENT' from what has gone before can be equally boring.
Especially TRYING to be different from what has gone before.
Tony
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Author: ned
Date: 2010-12-22 07:45
Tony Pay writes: ''So everything could be very different in the next performance -- but
equally, everything could be almost exactly the same.
The question is, where are you looking, when you play?
If you are looking simply at the details of what you already decided to
do, and reproducing those, then your performance will probably seem
mechanical -- as when you concentrate just on saying the right words
when you are speaking.
But if you are sensitive to higher level things, like atmosphere,
meaning and phrase-structure, and looking at those, either in music or
when you are speaking, then what you say will probably be more
convincing. (Because it will be alive, and we are very sensitive to
aliveness.)''
*****************************************************
Having been immersed in the jazz idiom all of my playing life, I have always found it difficult to detect much (if any) variation in classical performances. It's not that I don't think variations happen, it's just that I (unashamedly) largely don't know what to look for.
Last night I came across a TV programme called (I think) The Art of The Piano.
It opened up my eyes to variation and as I was endeavouring to comprehend the subtle nuances of famous pianists of the 30s, 40s and 50s it was all over too soon, unfortunately.
I have always figured that classical performances were MEANT to be fairly identical, given that the performers are ''merely'' playing the dots. The reality, according to the abovementioned programme, is that they are anything but identical.
*****************************************************
''like atmosphere, meaning and phrase-structure, ''
These of course exist in the jazz world.
With regard to atmosphere - and I am assuming that the ambience of the venue and the mood of the assembled audience is what is meant? I have to say that it most certainly is an influence, all things considered. Who has not played in trying conditions or in poor surroundings and to the occasional non-responsive audience?
Phrase structure varies (with me anyway) according to what I will remember to play in that instant before it actually happens. Personal practice in the lead up time to a performance is very influential too - it may happen that I have practiced the number ''only yesterday'' and the band leader calls it on the next job - and as a result I probably play the number ''better''.......................I'd hope so anyway.
*****************************************************
''So everything could be very different in the next performance''
With the jazz player, hopefully it IS.
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Author: Brenda ★2017
Date: 2010-12-22 12:47
I have to say that a refreshing change is to listen to CBC 2 http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/playlists.html. I enjoy Judy Nesralla's show, TEMPO between 9:00 and 1:00, Tom Allen's show, SHIFT between 1 and 3:30, and Rich Terfry's show RADIO TWO DRIVE between 3:30 and 7:00. It's the only radio station I can bear listening to in my office at work. While in Central America we enjoyed the live streaming over the internet to keep in touch with Toronto.
The hosts are experienced musicians with careers of their own and knowlegeable about the pieces they play. The music that's played is often out of the ordinary. Sometimes it's too out of the ordinary for my taste, but at least it's not the same drab that we get on the Smooth Jazz station. But of course this is a publicly funded station. They couldn't get away with this on a commercial station.
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Author: salzo
Date: 2010-12-22 12:54
Ned wrote:
"I have always figured that classical performances were MEANT to be fairly identical, given that the performers are ''merely'' playing the dots. The reality, according to the abovementioned programme, is that they are anything but identical."
IMHO, classical music has more "rules" and "boundaries" and traditional considerations than other genres. And personally, I think the rules are to be followed. But playing within the rules, there is an infinite amount of room for individuality, creativity, and expression.
The academic stuff I equate more with athletic proficiency- the true art is what happens beyond the athleticism.
With the players that I like, they always play by the rules, but they do not at all sound the same. They all play what is on the page, that is a given. But what makes the player special, and different from the other players, is what they do that cant be heard or seen just by looking at the score.
I listen to most classical musicians of today, and I just cant hear anything artistic going on. THe art of music has been replaced by academics and athleticism- more accurately the athletics and academics were there before, but today that is all there is to classical music. Todays musicians leave out the most important parts.
I think Neds statement really DOES sum up what classical music is-today at least.
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Author: Bob Phillips
Date: 2010-12-22 15:37
One of the few civilized things about Detroit is the leakage of CBC2 radio across the river. (Another is CBC's Olympic game coverage.)
Unfortunately, the "sameness disease" has invaded CBC2, squeezing the classical programming down into a thin layer. What remains is wonderful, though --and the disk jockies there really know their Ps and Q's (and PDQ, too).
I'll go now and see if I can stream their broadcasts over the internet.
thanks
Bob Phillips
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-12-22 22:17
Ned wrote:
>> Tony Pay wrote:
"So everything could be very different in the next performance."
With the jazz player, hopefully it IS.>>
I think your 'hopefully' here encapsulates what I was trying to draw attention to. I still say that making 'being different' unqualifiedly a GOOD THING, in and of itself, misses the mark, in either jazz or classical music.
I am not a jazz player myself, so I'll leave that aside; except to say that as I understand it, even in jazz, innovation in the sense of 'playing something different' may be less important to the performer than it seems to the listener. Here's a jazz friend of mine writing to me about the issue a few years ago:
"An improviser's whole training is based on the memorisation of hundreds of motifs over the course of many years, from which s/he rarely departs to create a truly new motif 'on the fly'. The latter does happen, perhaps several times on a good night: what? – one motif in several hundred?"
With regard to classical performance, you write:
>> I have always found it difficult to detect much (if any) variation in classical performances. It's not that I don't think variations happen, it's just that I (unashamedly) largely don't know what to look for.>>
Well, I don't know what work 'unashamedly' is doing here. But perhaps as a listener you shouldn't necessarily be knowing where to look. Remember, I'm maintaining that variation -- and from what you then write, you mean, variation BETWEEN performances -- variation AS SUCH isn't the criterion by which we should be judging excellence.
An extreme of that -- that is, of 'being different' NOT being the most important thing -- might be what PDF Schubart wrote about the harpsichord playing of CPE Bach: "One is aware of witchcraft without noticing a single magical gesture." But even in more normal situations, it's quite common for a sensitive listener to understand that a rendition is masterly without being able to analyse quite why that's so, and what sets it apart from other renditions. (As a professional classical musician, I am of course interested in what makes a particular rendition tick. But that's because I want to steal the secrets for my own use.)
For me, the best renditions are the ones that seem to put me in touch with the music directly, without my being particularly conscious of the performer. That's why in another thread I said that Franz Bruggen's 'wind playing worth considering', in a way 'wasn't a performance'. People are too concerned about Legend X's Beethoven, Maestro Y's Mahler and so on. Rather, performances should be LESS individual, in that way, and MORE connected to the miracle of the experience of something being brought to life that a great collaboration between an audience and performers can be.
So 'sameness' isn't the enemy. What is the enemy is 'lack of life', which can live just as easily in 'trying to be different'.
I said, 'collaboration with the audience'. One of my most powerful recent experiences was seeing 'War Horse', which is a UK National Theatre production about the 1914-18 War, in which groups of puppeteers succeed in creating the illusion of life-size horses onstage in a two and three quarter hour story of their role in the battles. What is moving is the way in which WE and the puppeteers are able to collude in making the horses real and the puppeteers very quickly invisible.
It made me realise that I think of myself as rather like one of those puppeteers when I play music. Because, I want to serve the magic.
What many people on this list seem to be committed to is a rather tawdry view of performers as more or less successful 'celebrities', performing more or less well regardless of the musical context. And when they assess performers in that way, they both demean the possible role of those performers, AND encourage them to sell themselves more vigorously.
In other words, they complain about what they call the 'sameness' of what they get, whilst encouraging the salesmanship that gives rise to it.
It's true, most classical playing stinks. But that's at least partly because of YOU.
It makes me sick.
Tony
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Author: Brenda ★2017
Date: 2010-12-23 20:00
"Sigh"... I guess it's up to us to play the different stuff.
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-12-23 20:58
Brenda wrote:
>> "Sigh"... I guess it's up to us to play the different stuff.>>
Mm, go to it.
Just remember that a particular cat, always itself, is interestingly alive.
A collection of stuffed animals, no matter how varied, doesn't compare.
Tony
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-12-23 21:30
...and that would be true even if they were ANIMATED stuffed animals:-)
Tony
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2010-12-23 22:27
EEBaum- I hope you're reading Tony's posts. It's what I've been wanting to say to you for some time, but couldn't put into words.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-12-24 02:17
Indeed. And I completely agree.
Music is about making something happen in the moment. If it's really well done, it probably won't even cross my mind who's playing it.
Doing something different is awesome, but only if the person doing it has some reason to do something different. I've tried different things because I had a really cool idea, and I've tried different things because "I want to do something different." Without fail in my experience, the former is a musical success, and the latter leaves the audience confused and me feeling like an idiot. So I've become very careful to make sure that something I'm trying has potential, and I ask myself what I would think about it if I was in the audience... I see a lot of people, both composers and performers, become very much enamored with their own ideas, with a sort of "it's my idea/performance, therefore it's an AWESOME idea/performance," and that very often leads to mediocrity and stagnation.
I'll complain just as much, though, about people who don't even TRY something different. It's very limiting. Maybe the different way you take something will end up being some awesome music, or maybe it won't make it out of the practice room. But until you even TRY taking something in an unfamiliar or unconventional way, you haven't explored your realm of possibilities, and you haven't determined your own boundaries. Often, trying something different helps you figure out WHY to play it the same, as opposed to "because that's how everyone else plays it." At that point, you may as well just mime to someone else's recording.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: ned
Date: 2010-12-24 03:02
Alex writes: ''So I've become very careful to make sure that something I'm trying has potential, and I ask myself what I would think about it if I was in the audience.''
I generally don't think all that much about audience reaction. It's nice if they react positively, but if they don't, and even if I think I have played to MY expectations, it does not worry me too much. I reckon it's in instances such as this, where the audiences just don't get it or (more likely) don't have the same records as me, and it happens frequently with me.
On the other side of the coin, there's the positive audience reaction to my perceived 'ordinary' playing, which seems to balance the lack of reaction to my perceived 'good' playing. You can spend your life trying to second-guess an audience, so you may as well just 'play your stuff' and see what happens.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-12-24 03:17
There's a bit more subtlety in my question. I'm not asking myself what the audience will think. That leads to loads of second-guessing, dumbing-down, and pandering, as you'd suggest. I'm asking myself what *I* would think if I were in the audience. I try to put myself in a place of me sitting in the audience with someone else playing it, where I have no personal connection in composing or performing it. Essentially, "if someone ELSE had come up with this, would I consider it a good idea?"
More often than I'd expect, I come to the conclusion that the person on stage (i.e. me) has a lame idea or weak interpretation that I'd barely give a sympathy clap to.
A lot of people never put themselves in that place, though, and continue to write and play music that, I'd wager big money, they'd find very mediocre and talk trash about if they weren't the one responsible for it.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: ned
Date: 2010-12-24 04:26
''I'm asking myself what *I* would think if I were in the audience. I try to put myself in a place of me sitting in the audience with someone else playing it,.................More often than I'd expect, I come to the conclusion that the person on stage (i.e. me) has a lame idea or weak interpretation that I'd barely give a sympathy clap to.''
Alex, you seem to have, more often than not, a poor opinion of your own playing. Am I correct in assuming this?
I used to think this about my own musical offerings at one stage. I guess these days I'd say that MY playing is sometimes awful, mostly adequate and sometimes quite good.
If I did some arithmetic on the subject, I suppose the sums would equate to the fact that overall, I'm just average.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-12-24 04:55
Usually it's a matter of "with all the great stuff you could've done, you picked THAT?" At which point I'll sometimes realize that I didn't actually choose that, but rather had gone into autopilot for a while. Missed opportunity rather than shoddy performance, though as far as I'm concerned, missed opportunities usually lead to shoddy performances.
Trying things that I genuinely decide to declare crap interpretations happens more while practicing than while performing. Assuming I'm adequately prepared for a performance, I've hopefully trial-and-errored a lot of what I'd consider lousy ideas out of my toolbox for that piece.
I'll declare a lot of performances "that went all right, pretty decent, but there was a lot of missed opportunity." An ideal performance for me is "there were a lot of ways I wish I could've taken that, but the one I actually did take was pretty awesome too."
So I really don't look at my performances as good vs. bad (as long as I don't thoroughly botch something). Rather, I look to see whether I made a thorough attempt to actively do something meaningful with the music at every opportunity, and to see how well each of those attempts worked.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Tony Pay ★2017
Date: 2010-12-24 11:00
I remember Harry Birtwistle saying: "Jackson Pollock didn't throw paint at his canvas in order to be different; he did it because he HAD to."
These questions are better dealt with using different words, really. (Robert Pirsig made some good formulations in his 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Enquiry into Values' -- I recommend it strongly.)
But it's right that an idea like 'sameness' gets unpicked, and its opposite (variety for its own sake) be shown to be a false god, every now and again -- no matter how crudely done.
Tony
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Author: Tony M
Date: 2010-12-24 16:19
I think that there might be another aspect to 'sameness' in this discussion that is getting lost. The general thrust so far has been about the vivacity of performance. There seems to be a consensus that it is a good thing to perform with a vitality that goes beyond just playing the dots. I don't disagree with that, in fact I am hard put to think of anyone that would disagree with that. But there is more to sameness than how something is performed.
I have a sympathy with the 'perky young gal' in the original post (did he really say 'perky young gal'? I hope he doesn't meet some of the perky young gals that I know.). I like a certain standard to be achieved in in the food I eat. Uniformity, we all know, does not ensure appropriate quality but if you like a Big Mac then your culinary standards are going to be available wherever you go. To get back to music: standards have been set and enforced since around the time that Patti Page released 'Tennessee Waltz'. I pick that recording because that is roughly when sales of discs overtook sheet music. And that meant that more people were listening to a fixed recording/performance/arrangement than were listening to either professional live musicians or playing the music in the home from the sheet.
It changed what music means to people and I don't think that it necessarily lowered expectations. I have lived in provincial cities for the most of my 55 years and the majority of live music that I have heard has been garbage. And I have been actively interested in and sought to know more about music since about age 7. If it wasn't for recordings I would never have heard the brilliance that I have in my memory. But that isn't to say that all recordings are brilliant. The majority of recordings are like Big Macs but that is an industrial issue rather than a musical one. But that industrial issue is central to how people have come to think about music. People used to buy it for next to nothing and now they don't really pay anything at all for it.
Music might once have been about listening to individuals play instruments with skill and liveliness but for most people it is just about sound now and not the performing of that sound. If things are not recorded properly then they don't sound like music to people, irrespective of what is being played. I have always been fascinated by the fact that I have generally enjoyed listening to folk music live for decades now but it never seems to do it for me on record. It doesn't sound like folk music when I play the disc. I suspect that this will increase as more people listen through ear plugs rather than to sound in a room.
I don't think that we have a particularly subtle understanding of the attractions of sameness but if we, as a society, have convinced ourselves to eat the same junk, drive the same polluting vehicles, wear the same cotton clothing, watch the same dumb TV and drink the same chemicals then it must have something going for it. Joking aside, those things are clearly the downside of sameness. The upside would be the engineering standards that allowed Mr. Robinson to fly into wherever and diss the perky young gal and the mechanisms of production that allow people like me to play very fine clarinets (what did you complain about last, your reed - unregulated difference - or your clarinet's bore - boring sameness?).
I don't think sameness is the enemy. I think it is probably our new friend. The majority of people who listen to music seem to like it. I don't want everyone in the world to sound like Taylor Swift, I don't even want Taylor Swift to sound like Taylor Swift, but the culture of excellence is as much a culture of hyperbole as a culture of excitement.
Sorry to go on for so long but these standardized keyboards really allow you to type fast.
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Author: Brenda ★2017
Date: 2010-12-24 19:14
Tony, this is what I'm hearing in your words... and if so, YAY! because I agree with much of what you're saying.
Pictures of sunsets: they're all over our magazines and calendars. But when we're the ones caught outside at sunset it's mezmerizing - and constantly changing. Pictures of the Grand Canyon - it's impossible to do justice to it in a picture or even a video. You're there and you just feel the vastness. It's a feeling, not only a visual experience.
Recordings of fabulous music: Perhaps it's the recording process that takes away the magic. I attended a performance of Brahms Violin Concerto (I think it was the D major op 77) played by a young woman who had been entrusted with the care of a $3 million violin. My heart lept and the tears came. This happened before knowing about the violin that she was playing, but before she and her 250 lb. bodyguard fled into the night with the instrument. There was something unknown that came through the theatre that night to my seat, probably a combination of the heart that played the music and the special tones produced by that instrument.
Valerie Tryon's performance of the Grieg Piano Concerto: In her career she has nothing more to prove, so didn't rush the Adagio but allowed the notes to have their delicious space before presenting the next note. One member of the orchestra's Board of Directors told me that he was going home at intermission and would open his bottle of cognac. He didn't want to spoil the performance with the second half of the program. Did Valerie record her interpretation of this Grieg Piano Concerto? Not to date. I have yet to hear one like it.
There was only one time that I heard the Chopin's 2nd Piano Concerto played that way, stunningly and deliciously! Fortunately my brother was listening to CBC 2 with me that day and we delayed getting out of the car until it was well over. Usually the Adagio is rushed that little bit (Just play the notes and get the job done, why don't you?) that my nerves aren't given permission to settle.
I've been very fortunate to have been asked to sing at several recent events. In preparing the music there were a couple of pieces, especially one, that I had to practice many, many times in order to be so familiar with it to the point of losing some emotional impact. Tears would stream down my face by the end of the first verse every time. During performance I allowed myself to feel the pain in the Spanish verse only enough so that the heart would feel it but not allow the feeling to rise to my throat. My daughter in law, who doesn't understand Spanish, was one of many who cried when it was performed.
Perhaps this is why some music can only be meaningfully performed by those who've experienced some very deep emotions in their lives and who can bring that emotion into their interpretation of the music.
So here's illustrated the combination of the skill of the musician/artist vs. the mechanization of recording/photography.
And then, as Tony says, if we tire of listening to certain music, move to another country or location and listen to the locals play their own style of music. Now that's a stimulating change - or not. This world has way too much music in it to bumble on about how we don't like this or that... unless of course we've just paid big bucks for our event ticket!
Perhaps, Tony, you had more in mind. But this is what I understood.
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Author: ginny
Date: 2010-12-25 01:26
Classical music tends to the sameness since very little that isn't very old is listened too.
I listen to internet radio for variety and lots of folk traditional music and some modern ethnic pop.
http://delicast.com/radio has over 300 classical stations listed.
I've eaten at McDonald's in Zagreb, partly to fail to conform to the pressure to be 'unique' in the San Francisco Bay Area where I hail from, but mostly because I wanted a late snack.
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2010-12-25 07:39
>> I am not a jazz player myself, so I'll leave that aside; except to say that as I understand it, even in jazz, innovation in the sense of 'playing something different' may be less important to the performer than it seems to the listener. <<
Usually with a good jazz player, or someone who plays any type of improvised music, they are not trying to be different. They are just doing what they want to do, it is usually just their passion to play whatever they are playing. Many times it is different from anything else, but it just happens to be because it's them.
>> Here's a jazz friend of mine writing to me about the issue a few years ago:
"An improviser's whole training is based on the memorisation of hundreds of motifs over the course of many years, from which s/he rarely departs to create a truly new motif 'on the fly'. The latter does happen, perhaps several times on a good night: what? – one motif in several hundred?" <<
This is true sometimes but definitely not always. Also depends on the type of improvised music, it's very common in some but very different in other types. For example with the type of music I usually play, even if I play with the same players and use a similar idea, most of what I play would still be very different, but not because we try, it just goes to that direction organically. But this isn't necessarily important to whether it's "good" or not.
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The Clarinet Pages
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