DISCLAIMER/ Request

You must ignore the pseudointellectualism pervading the title of this post. Stanford campus rubbed off on me in a bad way. Forgive me, ahead of time.

Bits and bytes galore in this world, man once upon a time, decided to add music to the digital madness.

Electronic music has been around for a while, and I’d say for almost 20-25 years now, it’s been safe to declare in public that you’re into electronic music without getting a ‘What a weirdo” look from the person holding the cheese on a cracker across you at that party you’re trying so hard to be social at.

Last night, a friend of mine invited me to a musical performance/ concert at Stanford University’s CCRMA – Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (pronounced ‘Karma’, as I overheard). Andrew used to work at Cypress Semiconductor with me, but left to pursue his MSEE at Stanford, focusing on music and audio technology. So between the two of us, I think we’re interested in discovering new music. We left the concert still waiting for that smack in the face- the one that says

“I AM NEW MUSIC. I WILL KEEP YOU UP TONIGHT, MAYBE TOMORROW AND THEREAFTER, YOU SHALL SPEND A GOOD PORTION OF THE NEXT FEW MONTHS SEEKING ME OUT.”

This is where it gets tricky. I’m not a musician, or a music reporter or journalist. All I know is that I’d always like to see what else is out there. You know, electronica seems to have come a really long way since…well, I don’t really care. Let’s say since when I grew aware of synthesized music. Yes. Let’s put the marker at 1985- when my dad was playing Oxygene on the hi-fi. At that time, he kept telling me “Imagine! One man is playing all this!”

With a plastic gun in my hand and my foot atop a red Tonka pickup truck, I found nothing exciting about one man making a bunch of music all together. For all I knew at that age, that was how all music was made.

Oxygene was actually released in 1976, so we all know electronic, one-man shows are nothing new. It’s also no secret that software audio composition has become so accessible, that it’s now bundled with your computer (Mac OS at least with GarageBand- Vista can’t be too far behind). The era of the laptop DJ has been upon us for quite some time.

No problem.

It’s okay to make music with your laptop. Just like the vinyl jockeys got over people moving to Pioneer CDJs, so will all ‘acousticians’, people who make only acoustic, natural music. Actually, a lot of beauty comes from an acoustician, someone from the purely analog domain, tinkering with elements of the digital domain; i.e. software.

Actually, let me back up, and create this little chart:

So, let’s take a look. On the left are the purest of the pure- acousticians, playing acoustic music. The best way to describe this craft, is that if power lines went out across the world (and let’s add 24 hours for all uninterruptible power supplies and monster laptop batteries to die out and be unable to recharge) these guys and gals would still be able to entertain us over a campfire. No electricity needed. No electronics required. Moore’s law has jackshit of an impact on their craft. Now that’s powerful.

Moving to the right, we have the analog and digital folks. Now, I think my analysis here is probably shortsighted. Drop me a note or email me if you think I’ve done this wrong, but I’m lumping these two together in this way, because both crafts need electricity to be worthy.

Analog electronic music is stuff that still needs you to well, play an instrument of sorts. I can’t think of a better example than the synthesizer. Moogs, Kurzweils, and assorted other synths are pretty analog, even though the music they end up making is through modularly arranged electronic circuits. You end up changing sounds by tweaking knobs, hitting keys- you get the point. Andrew described it as follows: “When I’m listening to the Moog on headphones, it’s like my head hurts. You know…you know there’s just something else going on in there…”

Purely digital composition, I have to say, is something you can get away with, using just a laptop. Today, lots of tools, such as Logic, Sonar, Reason and even Operator from Ableton allow you to come up with sounds, purely using your laptop. There are MIDI interfaces you can use to make your life easier; and those emulate analog interfaces, but in the end, everything that your ears hear is generated by the computer.

++++++++PISS BREAK: THIS POST IS GETTING OFF TOPIC AND THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A PISS TO RECTIFY STRAY THOUGHTS++++++++

Back.

So, all of this started with the concert at Stanford. The CCRMA routinely holds events free and open to the public- the beauty of endowments and academics (thank you).

As a research center, you’re naturally going to invite those who push the envelope. Something is only worth researching at the graduate level, and even more so, at elite institutions like Stanford, if it’s pushing the envelope, in whichever discipline we’re talking about.

Last night, the invited members were from SARC (Sonic Arts Research Center) in Belfast, Ireland. I think anyone invited to the majestic Knoll mansion at Stanford has to be pushing an envelope of some kind. In a mean and evil cut to the chase, I have to say I couldn’t tell what envelope was being pushed in this case.

Neither could Andrew.

Here’s the program we received:

On the program:
Fragmentos for Soprano Sax and Live-Electronics by Pedro Rebelo with Franziska Schroeder

Net vs Net by Alain Renaud and Juan Pablo Caceres

Netrooms by Pedro Rebelo

Pixel Parasites by Brian Cullen

Instrument of Dissection by Pedro Rebelo

Over Hear by l a u t.

I’d like to make very clear here, that when I say I was disappointed, this is in no way, a personal attack on the performers, or research being performed at SARC for that matter.

A lot of the music was abstract, and a lot of the performances were very experimental. Experimental music is experimental. Just as the majority of experiments run in research labs come up with no results, and the scientist goes back to the books and comes revises the hypothesis, so should experimental music.

The buck stops here though. Experimentation in art of any sort can never have a deliverable. To request ‘results’ from PhD programs in music, arts, etc, is already difficult enough. Yet there needs to be a bar; a standard by which you judge the quality of the research, work or in this case, performance.

The performances were improvisational for the most part, and were enjoyable to listen to and be a part of. There was an interesting piece where 3 different artists in different places in the world, were broadcasting sounds from microphones plugged into their laptops. To add to this, all were live at the same time, and all were in a very interesting and vicious feedback loop. The trouble is- it got repetitive, and to be shockingly honest, this was not the first time people in different parts of the world had collaborate in real time together. Here’s an interesting article from Wired’s blog, back in January 2007 about real time, online collaboration. Or you could just check out e-Jamming itself.

I do however, wonder if were hearing the best work of the respective performers. Then again, they weren’t here to put their best foot forward. Or should they have…?

Someone once said “I don’t believe in art for art’s sake”. Neither do I- but that’s a personality thing. Coming back to what defines cutting edge performance, or research however, I initially started with someone having to push the envelope to qualify. Let me try and describe why I didn’t think anything new was offered last night.

If you’ve ever heard Aphex Twin, especially the Drukgs album, there’s an intense lack of tempo, which in my opinion, defined the music we heard last night. Random hits, random notes, at random times. People say this avant garde, but I say, that was avant garde 10 years ago. I bought that Aphex Twin album ages ago. And think about it- I bought it in a record store in West Lafayette, Indiana (of all places, yes…I know). If it was commercial music, then it was…say it with me…not underground. And that implies it that it wasn’t extremely cutting edge.

Innovation comes from (but is not limited to) essentially two places:

The streets: home to urban settings where people must adapt to their surroundings with minimal resources. The freshest art and music usually comes from the streets.

The mansions: home to people well off enough to not worry about putting food on their table. With the distractions of survival removed, a creative mind tends to be extremely constructive and innovative. Also, even if theses comfortable folk are unable to put their mind into creative mode, they are in a place where they can influence creative, but poorer minds, and fund them.

As I sat in this fantastically maintained mansion, the Knoll, atop a hill on Stanford’s sprawling campus, this was the disappointment I felt- here was the perfect combination of the two ends I just described above, not bringing anything shockingly new to people who were dying to have their aural senses provoked.

This was digital music played in an overtly analog manner- no rhythm, no tempo. this is beautiful in its own right, but my main observation here is that we were sitting at the CCRMA – the center for computer research on music and audio. Computers are inherently digital, inherently electronic. Then why are we still doing something thats begging to be analog- namely the kind of music performed last night?

Maybe I’m just a grump. Maybe things are just heading full circle. Man came from acoustic, moved to analog then digital, and is now reverting back to the first element – acoustic.

I guess this has all been a long-winded way of saying:

1. Electronic music is alive and well (duh).
2. Stanford’s CCRMA is housed in a fucking amazing building.
3. Andrew and I left with our socks still on (i.e. nobody knocked our socks off).
4. Ambient Electronica needs to do some serious soul searching. Maybe if we could make it an entity of some sort…like a human manifestation, we could it put on a bicylce and send it to Burning Man or something. That would sort it out, I think.
5. The musicians we saw last night are talented, but I’m sure they have more in them. Maybe jet lag was not helping.
6. Online music collaboration is headed for [YOUR GUESS HERE]
7. I should have spent my Saturday making music rather than bitching about it.
8. One song has been on repeat the whole time – Hurricanes, by Synthar. Click here for the band’s Myspace page.
9. This post has been written at the three different coffee shops marked on this map:View Larger Map
   First place, the wireless went out. Second place, I ran out of fucking change for the meter because the coffee refill robbed me of the last 50 cents in my pocket, so I had to leave. The last place, well, it’s the closest place to Amoeba Music, which is responsible for me still driving a ’92 Toyota Camry instead of a snazzy new European import. But hey, it gives me 23 MPG, still.

Peace and love.

-K