Gordon Monro 16 March

Gordon came across as a delightful Dilbert-esque Mathematician, who veered into composition and not surprisingly found "the computer was a natural medium". 1

Gordon's lecture began with a definition of generative. This seems to involve finding systems (outside of music's own weary lexicon) to act as scaffolding for the compositional process, allowing compositions to unfold with some autonomy from the tyranny of the composer.
I had a sense of deja vu as once again we were shown slides of the effects of playing different frequencies together.

Like Warren, I thought Gordon was blurring the boundary between process and product in composition. For Gordon the product is the process, his pieces were products of a compositional focus on how the music was made - process and not what the music actually sounded like as a result of the process - product. I know it's the 21st century and all, but I'm uneasy with this, and prefer the old fashioned approach where process is subservient to product.

The first piece Gordon presented was Evochord. This generative piece uses as its system a genetic algorithm that evolves a harmonious chord over a span of some time. Within this genetic paradigm, the piece incorporates generations, sexual recombination, fitness selection and mutation. Many chords live and die within the sonic environment. We witness their brief lives, as they strut and frett their hour upon the stage and then are heard no more, until at some time the most harmonious chord emerges victoriously from the post-tonal swamp. Guess what? It turns out that the chord with the least dissonance in terms of minimal beating (the parameter originally specified by Gordon) is comprised of unisons. This is music on the cutting edge.

The total piece is this musical evolutionary journey towards a simple, most harmonious chord. Interesting process and yet I didn't think the piece would stand on its own, without an explanation of the process: this evolutionary model. Maybe that doesn't matter. Oh and there were pretty pictures.

Gordon presented several other pieces. Amongst them Red Grains.

To create Red Grains, Gordon invested time, energy and obviously mighty brain power into devising his movable lego and box installation. The process was firstly designing and constructing this and then playing it - moving and recording the mechanical lego . This was all interesting and cool. The resulting music wasn't. But then maybe I am missing the point.

It seems that if composers use this generative approach, with a focus on process, then they are accountable only for using an interesting system for creation, and it's passe to judge them on the work they produce. It's as if the musical result (what the piece sounds like) is a mildly interesting but irrelevant by-product of the much more important process. And this, I just don't understand.

Hearing these two composers - Warren and Gordon - has left me wondering if I'm completely out of touch. "Concern for product is sooo last October. Didn't you know? You're not still dictating to your pieces how they should sound are you? How out of touch."

In a most informal, non rigorous way I've surveyed several people who in different ways, make their living from music. The consensus is that this approach to composition is a product of post modernism, has limited appeal, application and life expectancy. Although everyone surveyed finds something exotically appealing about the approach, and there is a shared sense that "it's good someone is doing this."

In talking about Red Grains, Gordon said he was inspired by how a waterfall has no intent - it doesn't try to manipulate people experiencing it. When did music become something without intent - without concern for the experience of the listener? In his razor sharp criticism of contemporary arts, Steven Pinker reminds us
Ultimately what draws us to a work of art is not just the sensory experience of the medium but its emotional content and insight into the human condition. 2

1. Gordon Monro. Generative Artwork Lecture presented at University of Adelaide, 16 March 2006.

2. Pinker, S. 2002 The Blank Slate London: Penguin

Warren Burt

After Warren's lecture, I bumped into him at a pedestrian crossing. He said he shared a similar compositional outlook with Robin Minard. Before he could explain this statement, we crossed the road and our paths diverged.

These composers are both here for the Adelaide Festival, and at this stage are our only forum presenters, so perhaps a comparison is warranted - but I was struck by their differences, not their similarities.

There are some similarities. They have both been composing for decades. Warren trained in USA and Robin next door in Canada, their musical development has been both shaped by and contributed to the maturation of electronic music technology. In their careers, both displayed a pioneering spirit - harnessing whatever technology they had available, in the early days tools which now seem extraordinarily archaic and cumbersome. Musically Warren and Robin both include random elements and what Robin calls "non-narrative composition".

One difference that struck me was the breadth of scope that lay behind the composer's musical thinking; the various elements the composers drew on to inform their work (at least that they shared with us!). Robin's focus in his early work, was on the relationship between frequencies, and later, like a sculptor who worked with found objects, he worked with found sounds. Robin considered the changing environment in the spaces for his work, and the different ways his music could have a relationship with its environment.

Warren's scope was overwhelming, his influences and considerations seemed to encompass an alarming array of human endeavour, from ancient Greek religion to Russian communism to Mafia bookies to 19th century armchairs to Fibonacci numbers. 1 So wide was this scope, and so fast Warren's delivery (presumably in an attempt to include as many as possible), it was hard to keep up. I felt that while Robin deliberately narrowed his scope, Warren was proudly expansive.

Another difference I perceived between the two men, was their intent - what they composed music for. Although both of them talked extensively about this, neither addressed it directly. Robin's compositions, although not concert music, were written for what used to be called an audience back in the simpler days of auditoriums. 2 He was concerned with the listener's experience of his music. Whilst clearly contemporary, I don't think Robin considers his music to be anti establishment - more pro listener.

Warren however, spoke little about the experience of his audience, excepting his discussion of the 1988 Brisbane installation. Sometimes his intent seemed to be expressing a you're not the boss of me so ner anti authoritarianism. He would create unusual music, because that wasn't the way music was normally done.

To this end, Warren has explored both randomness and unusual tunings. 1 There was some naughty appeal in the way he "hit things with hammers" to reduce predictability in his electronic music.

One recurring thread for Warren was self reference, where his musical performances are created by themselves. For example he had one piece where his arm movements imitated a live dancer who was part of the piece. These arm movements played the electronic instrument, which produced the music the dancer moved to. 1 I found this both appealing and mildly disturbing. The self referential creation and performance of his music presented as a closed loop that traveled between Warren, his instruments and the dancers or musicians he was collaborating with but did not extend to the audience.

In his talk, Warren didn't focus on how his audience shaped his decisions during the planning or presentation of a work, focusing more on what process he had undertaken to develop his instrument including his wide scope of influences and how his piece would incorporate randomness and self re-creation. Exploring these issues seemed to be the intent of Warren's music. Unlike Robin, it struck me that on the whole, Warren wasn't focused on the listener, either during design or execution.

Although this could lead to a problematic relationship with one's audience, this very difficulty might hold immense appeal for Warren. I suspect the world needs composers like Warren. In these mass produced commercial days, maybe it's important to remember to thumb one's nose at authority and write music simply because it's crazy or fun or it's never been done before.

1. Warren Burt . Lecture presented at University of Adelaide, 8 March 2006.

2. Robin Minard . Lecture presented at University of Adelaide, 2 March 2006.

Robin Minard - 2 March

Robin was our first guest for forum - a Canadian born German Composer who has been creating sound installations in public (or shared) spaces, for over twenty years.

In the forum, Robin explained how he developed his compositional approach in response to the muzak piped throughout the extensive Montreal subway. He described how this muzak (more about social control than about music) made him angry for a number of years until he realised that as a trained composer he could do something about it.1

This epiphany led Robin to explore the relationship between music and space. Like a sonic interior designer, Robin described how he explored colouring space with sound.1

Robin's music is not designed for performance, he emphasized the difference between his work and "concert" or "narrative" music.1 To create a form appropriate for his needs, Robin began composing by exploring the relationship between frequencies. Although Robin showed us some slides of his workings on this, my ignorance of how sound works, combined with the brevity of his talk, meant that I didn't fully understand his compositional process.

Ironically, after discussing how the music was not designed for concert, Robin played a recording of his 1984 work Music for Quiet Spaces, and we sat quietly and listened as we would in a concert. Despite this odd presentation, my experience of the music was as Robin described. It was architectural music. Musically, it described to me a space incredibly clean with glass and marble and steel and water - imagine Mies van der Rohe's Barcelona Pavilion.

Robin also played an excerpt from a piece commissioned for a Horticulture Show. The musical elements were recordings drawn from the environment of the show - his music mirrored and magnified the show's 'natural' sounds, and drew the listener's attention to the show.

The slides of this show were of the speakers, arranged to look like flowers, and presented in clear boxes, with grass growing around them.

Through these, and other slides it was clear that the presentation of the speakers is an integral part of Robin's work, how the speakers are arranged is both part of the musical experience (another layer to Robin's exploration of space) and visually stunning sculpture.

The brief overview that Robin presented took us from his first, 1984 architectural music to his current work of soundsculpturespeakerswires flowers, where the flowers responded - among other things - to sunlight. I don't know how serious he was when he said that the next thing to consider was how the flowers could respond to other elements such as temperature and humidity.1

The organic sense of this work struck me as divergent from the early, architectural music, and I wondered if Robin saw his work evolving from built environments, to an exploration of more organic sculpture and sound.

Through the slides, I realised these stunning installations must require serious undertaking in design and set up. Robin only alluded to this in response to a question, and I remained curious about the amount of work involved in his pieces.

Robin spoke of how his music helps people listen. After listening to some excerpts of his music, my ears were indeed opened and I became acutely aurally aware. As I sat in my next class, the soundtrack of chairs, chatting, books opening and closing, pens on tables and so on was almost overwhelming!

1. Robin Minard. Lecture presented at University of Adelaide, 2 March 2006.

An Awful Lot of Us - Quote from Douglas Adams

"One of the most important things you learn from the internet is that there is no them out there. It's just an awful lot of us."
said Douglas Adams in 1999. 1
It's a tribute to his genius that he wrote about the internet so beautifully back in the ebronze age (7 years ago).

This blog forms part of my study for Certificate IV in music technology at Adelaide University's Electronic Music Unit. Each week we have a forum - usually incorporating a presentation from an interesting guest. My commentary on these forums and guests will form the body of this blog. Welcome.

Yesterday a lecturer posed the questions of whether technology is allowing non musicians the ability to create music, and whether this is a good or a bad thing. I don't know that these questions are unique to our time. If you read Douglas Adam's article he postulates that the internet allows us to recover from a brief period (circa 100 years) where the majority of people are passive consumers of art and return to a more universally creative and active artistic experience. This reminds me of folk festivals, where away from the bright lights of superstar performances, the pubs are filled with circles of crusty, bearded folkies strumming away earnestly, "jamming". The circles are open to anyone who cares to join. At any time you can join in or fade out and just listen, so that everyone can be equally performer and audience member. There is a self editing requirement, if you can't play the piece it is polite to face this fact and not play it badly! I like to imagine that this is what life was like before mass music distribution. If we wanted to hear music, we made it ourselves. There was no them and us in music...just an awful lot of us.

We can consider the lecturer's question by looking to a pre mass distribution time and considering the quality of the music then. Was Beethoven's music compromised by the general population creating their own music rather than having it created for them by commercial music interests? I honestly can't see how.

If you are looking for reassurance that normal folk are up to the challenge of actively engaging with music, and contributing to the human musical experience, consider the exuberance of the numa numa guy. . 2
His unbridled and highly contagious joy is surely testament to the human need for ACTIVE musical expression. I challenge you to watch this guy and not feel his delight!


1. This piece first appeared in the News Review section of The Sunday Times on August 29th 1999 from http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/19990901-00-a.html

2. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/206373