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While I was searching for his breezeblock live set, I stumbled on Squarepusher's essay about collaboration with machines. Pretty interesting... I've read interviews of Autechre where they say the ultimte origin of creativity is them, not their algorithims and random elements, saying that claiming otherwise is like calling pyramids clever. Squarepusher's essay seems to be a direct attack against this position. For those here who make music, does your expreience agree with what he's saying? I guess this is also a question to code programers as well... |
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this had no posts yet so i thought i'd post and see what happens.... |
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I have vowed to never, EVER read anything SP wrote again. |
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i agree with squarepusher - altho hes a bit of a cock the machines you use change your sound of course its still you turning the knobs, but you cant sing a synth line by yerself... |
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if what Mertens writes is correct, you are agreeing with autechre. |
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I read both of Squarepusher's essays. They are nothing but pretentious drivel. The good writer can communicate her thoughts clearly without the need for complicated phrases. His essays read like "look at me and the big words I chose". Nonsense. |
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Ok then. After trimming the fat and looking past the pretentiousness, do you see any truth to what he's saying? |
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i see the truth in what he's playing. but autechre seem to say it straight in their views on music production - "it just sounds interesting" etc. I think squarepusher says thesame but spews out crap for his own amusement, as if to say that nothing he says has anything to do with the tunes, and he's right..... if i'm right |
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Ae = agree totally Squarepusher = sort of agree |
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Yeah, there's truth to what he's saying. Basically, as a musician, you can either choose to be or not be aware of the fact that electronic equipment is architected with a certain design in mind. The design is usually biased in favor of the things that the equipment is being marketed for. To just "assume" a state of objectivity by thinking of the instrument as a conceptual "clean slate," you run the risk of unwittingly using the instrument to serve the purpose of the designer. In short, he's really just saying "think outside the box"... it's just that he tends to be verbose with these things. People have been applying this same spirit to computers for decades, and to mathematics for centuries. It only makes sense that some musicians will follow suit. |
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I've always wanted to know why something sounds interesting to me and why other things don't. I want to understand my emotional connection to what I’m hearing. The responses to a certain sound within a certain context... the feeling I get from a section of a track's rhythm. Yet, I’m still completely clueless. I don't even know where this sentence is coming from. There's got to be more than chance and necessity |
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Hi Tom Twin or Tom, whichever you be. |
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aesthetic values are crazy. why do we like certain paintings, or why are we attracted to certain facial features? partially hereditary, partially cultural, partially complete randomness... and they change as we grow older. even changing from day to day. you read an article praising certain aspects of an artist who you haven't liked previously, so you decide to revisit it and you find new value in their work. or someone says something that completely turns you off and you no longer find them physically attractive. aesthetics are so connected to emotions i'm not sure we can ever use logic to understand them beyond recognising their strangeness. they seem to be some of the most illogical things i can imagine. |
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a machine will only do as its told, if it doesnt it wouldnt be used. ie its the musician thats creative not the friggin machine. although they can be relied on too much and thus kinda blind u into using a certain pattern or sound that may not sound as good as using a different machine. i think. |
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That may be the essence of what both Tom and AE were saying about music. How it's not logically understandable and not a code that needs to be decrypted. It's like language. The symbols themselves are meaningless and arbitrary but their relationships between each other is the stuff that carries the thought and meaning. |
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you scared him you idiot !!!!!! |
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but what are you saying? that the bias of electronic equipment is not present in say a piano or a violin? i'd agree with the equipment or instruments have a bias towards certain types of music comment, but i differ on the part of arguing that electronic equipment being more biased than other types of instruments. that said, i'm aware that that was not your point as you havent mentioned anything in the direction of accoustic instruments whatsoever. but i think it's useful to be aware that this bias is not exclusive to electronic commitment (and is inherent to instruments in general). |
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argh...not commitment, but instruments ... |
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I refuse to read them on the basis that everyone is saying their pretentious bollocks and I know that'll piss me off. Infact I'm starting to get annoyed already |
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Why get pissed off at people trying to understand something? Just because a statement has a philosophical bent doesn't necessarily mean it's pretentious |
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Autechre's standpoint is the correct standpoint. |
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his point isn't so much pretentious, as is his wording. |
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I take one glance at something written by SP and I'm off running. I don't really understand why he has to write in this extremely complicated way. He is obviously highly intelligent but what is he trying to prove? If he wants his fans to take him seriously then maybe he should talk on our common ground. I read an interview with SP quite recently and I was again dissapointed. The questions that were asked to him in a casual fashion were pretty simple to understand and gave lots to talk about. Instead of giving a straight 'fan pleasing' answer, he gave out an essay load of inconrehensible crap which only the finest of minds could decrypt. All I'm trying to say really, is that maybe he should stop being so incredibly boring and just have some fun. Nobody likes a smartass. |
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oops Incomprehensible* |
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When the thought itself is unclear people tend to compensate by using big words in the hopes of gaining precision. Unfortunately, they usually make matters worse and make it even more incomprehensible than it originally was. |
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in defense of squarepusher: sometimes it can be pretty difficult to put your thoughts into 'fan pleasing' answers. and while it may seem to be the more easy/likely way to put your thoughts into 'fan pleasing' language, it can give you a friggin hard time just finding the right words or putting dots in sentences where you wouldnt put them if it were just for yourself if you catch my drift so to speak etc. perhaps he's just a smartass, but why blame him? |
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could someone post a link to the essay please? is this something different than his 'manifesto'? which, by the way is heartbreaking. i'm a fan of his music, and his manifesto. |
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I don't blame him for being who he is. I do think that he should realise that people don't like to see so many long words in one sentance. My criticism is at his bennefit as he would have more readers of his thoughts if they were conveyed in the same style of how he talks to his friends. I can't imagine him speaking to his mum in the same way that he writes in interviews. Maybe he just doesn't care about his fans? Maybe he has over estimated the intelligence of his fan base? |
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someone want to link the pretentious essay in question? |
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http://www.warprecords.com/?news=789 As you requested |
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Article from the March 2004 edition of Flux magazine "Collaborating with machines" by Tom Jenkinson. The old preconceptions of machines (ie: drum machines, samplers, software) as inhibitive to "genuine" creativity/ "soulless" etc. are now quickly evaporating. The machine facilitates creativity, yes, but a specific kind of creativity that has undermined the idea of a composer who is master of and indifferent to his tools - the machine has begun to participate. Any die-hard instumentalists that still struggle to retain their notion of human sovereignty are exemplifying a peculiarly (western) human stupidity - resistance to the inevitable. What is also clear, though certainly undesirable by any retaining an anthropocentric view of composition is that this process proceeds regardless of any ideal point of human-machine collaboration (ie one where the human retains any degree of importance.) One might say that music is imploding in preparation for a time when there is no longer any need for it. As is commonly percieved, the relationship between a human operator and a machine is such that the machine is a tool, an instrument of the composers desires. Implicit in this, and generally unquestioned until recently, is the sovereignty of the composer. What is now becoming clear is that the composer is as much a tool as the tool itself, or even a tool for the machine to manifest its desires. I do not mean this in the sense that machines are in possesion of a mind capable of subtly directing human behaviour, but in the sense that the attributes of the machine are just as prominent an influence in the resulting artefact as the user is; through his work, a human operator brings as much about the machine to light as he does about himself. However, this is not to say that prior to electronic mechanisation, composers were free and unfettered in their creations. As a verbal langauge facilitates and constricts our thoughts, the musical tradition, language and the factors of its realisation(ie instrumentation, limi |
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etc. |
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one word, Nauseous |
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i like a smartass. it's not always necessary to cater to the lowest common denominator. playing dumb so as not to be labelled 'prententious' isn't terribly productive in my opinion. i think it's testament to the arbitrary nature of our emotional connection with the technicalities of music itself, and the scatological thought processes and collaborations that give rise to it that (even after several pages of articulate prose on the subject) squarepusher's essays only offer a partial insight on the subject matter. ultimately his, and your, relationship with the music is a unique and personal one. no one else can define it for you. you'd probaby be hard pushed to define it yourself. i know i am. i cant put into concise words the rush i feel when i listen to my favourite tracks. that doesn't mean it's a bad thing for us to try and do that sometimes.. in whatever language we see fit; be they long or short words. but an inverse snobbery about using non-conversational language is something i'll never understand. it's an essay.. not a chat with your mates in the pub. |
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So basically then. You're all too thick to understand Tom's "Pretentious essay" right? Pricks |
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10/10 |
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i know intellectuals are dangerous, i wonder by golly why are they still allowed? |
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musical freedom as meaninglessness? haha, what a cheap way to justify this retro mania getting ahold of popular electronic music these days. "The inconsequentiality of new classical music serves to illustrate this point" what abysmal brashness! so many artists achieve to keep their integrity while oscillating between different musical vocabularies very well (spontaneously got to think of kaija saariaho and in more popular culture, maybe autechre), imho! the freedom/flexibility of form finally gave way again to the subject, that's at least how i see it. no wonder that this perception of things comes from someone who just excelled at further developing one style of breakbeats, adding some oh-so-virtous "real" bassplaying (so much for anthropocentrism / "rockism") and later some "jazzy" vibes, culminating in an album that has about the substance as a cheap 70s soft porn flick's soundtrack... although i didn't think it was articulated that pretentious, it could have been very well intended to be so, so Mertens compensation theory seems applicable to me. |
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as for the artist/instrument debate. it always has been a dialectic process, of course... what's so revolutionary about that?! the instrument provides the vocabulary, the artist articulates, both are hearable in the end. wow. wether you put it as "it happened", "i made it happen" "i can make it happen", is just a matter of taste/ego really, but it the approach doesn't affect the outcome that much, i think. bailey/malmsteen, both admired guitar improvisors, they just found their ways and later more/less put it into words, i don't think a intellectual process really took place beforehand, isn't it more typical for artists to deliver manifestos in addition, to justify their inital/intuitional ways of working? then he later comes to the thought of the possibility of "free will" and the artistic ambition to prove it's possobilty... yawn, what an old and pointless debate. so what if we are "dictated" by nature in every way... what's the consequence of that insight? sit beside and wait for "things to happen"? hello? and the conclusion that the desperation in finding out about the impossibility to gain total control is the main reason for artists to go mental... oh please! |
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oh, and say what? artist try to transcend themselves and their deaths via their work? duh, never thought of that! sure, our tools are more and more involved in that process, the more efficient they become. ironically his conclusion seems to be a plaedoyer for more self-knowledge in the process... contradicting to his initial "allow yourself to give in" attitude? it's a bit of an inconsistent/confusing read in the end, alright. "The last attempt to retain human sovereignty over machines is to don them as a fashion accessory, symptomatic of a moronic cultural environment saturated with sloganeering and "attitude", synonomous with the commodity oriented marketing strategies that underpin it, empty as the thinking behind it." this sounds ok, though, if a bit culture-pessimistic in it's polemic... |
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quote" One might say that music is imploding in preparation for a time when there is no longer any need for it. I do not agree. I don't thinks its music that's imploding, as music is a matter of mind body and soul. One could say that in this time, we as human beings have reached some kind of blockage within ourselves, and are haveing trouble to evercome that particular blockage. When that blockage is overcome, automatically music will keep on evolving, as we have reached a deeper level in our soul. Wether this music will be made on machines or whatever instrument is irrelevant. I think the best of music is still to come. Yet i do not think squarepusher is breaking through the barrier, although he may be trying to, way too "hard" in many ways. I'm full of sh!t, still i think i have a point. |
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I can agree with both views. We are limited and confined to specific sounds by the machines we use, therefore they shape our sound, but the way we use our machines is a personal expression that has many dimensions, and thus creates music. Music = Sound + Mind Example = Instrument + Player Or better yet = Machine + Programmer |
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And yes, I know machines have presets - but they're still created by somebody before they're set in stone within the machine. So in the end, I agree with both, but I think I'm leaning mostly towards Autechre if I had to pick a view. |
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I'd say music = mind, body and soul + instrument? |
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what is now becoming clear is that the composer is as much a tool as the tool itself |
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it depends if you create (thus 'creativity') the software you use, especially for some specific effect/etc instead of use someone elses. more broadly applicable software like a tracker/etc can allow plenty of creativity even though you didn't create the core broad tool. I guess with computers you HAVE to rely on lots of creativity from others.. you didn't make the hardware or the monitor etc. It's a complicated tool. |
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I don't understand why Tom is talking about these ideas as if they are a recent change and that they are new. Creativity has always been as much a product within the mind as it is from stimuli and external ideas combining in novel ways. The combination still happens within the mind. We just use electricity to make music aswell now too. So what? We've used countless ways to create sounds before, many of which have been called musical. Each use the same underlying concepts. The synthesizer and the sampler are just the most recent manifestations of our ideas, the machines are not responsible for new ideas. I don't credit Jean Baptist Fourier with the music I make, nor Alan Turing, just as I don't credit Native instruments or my laptop. Their ideas are contributors that set the groundwork. They aren't responsible for what forms you create with them. There is no question over the dominant character in the man-machine relationship. To paraphrase Sean Booth, you teleological twat, why dont you credit the big bang and shut up. Tom, use words to clarify, not to obscure. |
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i copyrighted the bigbang |
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