Melody vs. Drone (MP3)

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The melody that makes itself heard occasionally in “Potential Ride” by Mark Rushton certainly doesn’t sound tense. The effect resembles the opening theme music of The X-Files, a wavering single-note riff whose playful childlike manner serves as a kind of musical interrogative, an aural “what if?” And that’s about as threatening as it gets.

But there is tension in “Potential Ride,” considerable tension, and it has nothing to do with television reference points and everything to do with the space between that melody and the background drone in which it is heard. Rushton himself hinted at this when he mentioned (at markrushton.com), while posting the track last December, that it’s “more melodic than you normally hear out of me.”

What he was getting at was how just the slightest bit of melody can bring music permanently into the foreground, and that permanence is at odds with the background potential of ambient music, which by most definitions should be able to function as both background and foreground listening.

Rushton deals with this by pacing the melodic segments with a certain amount of hesitance, and allowing the drone to consume much of the listening experience. The result is one in which the melody is doubly subsumed, both in the hazy drone, and in time.

More on Rushton at markrushton.com.

Images of the Week: Sketches of Dismembered Pianos

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

What happens when discarded pianos are rejuvenated and extended with technology? It should look something along these lines:

That’s a rough sketch by artist Hugo Solís of his interactive sound sculpture “Metaphors for Dead Pianos,” which opens at the Seattle gallery Jack Straw on January 29 and runs through April 2, 1010.

Photos of two previous public renditions of “Metaphors” from last year (first at the Ex-Convento del Carmen in Guadalajara, and later at Biblioteca Vasconcelos in Mexico City) appear at the website of Eric Thompson (nestofdemons.com), who assisted in their installation. Here’s one of Thompson’s photos:

The original title of the work is “Metáforas para Pianos Muertos,” in the native Spanish of Solís, who was born in Mexico City and is pursuing his Ph.D. at DXArts in Seattle, aka the Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media at the University of Washington Seattle.

The image of a suspended piano, its innards splayed and connected to a raw grid of electronics, brings to mind David Byrne’s recent work “Playing the Building,” in which an organ is rigged to trigger sounds from inside an architectural site. But whereas Byrne’s piece physically links an antiquated instrument to a building, in the case of Solís’s “Metaphors” the relation of building to instrument is one in which the expansive space allows for the instrument to be taken apart — essentially allowing individuals to move inside the instrument. In that sense, “Metaphors” is in the tradition of the prepared piano, in which the insides of the object are treated with string, tape, metal, and other items in order not only to alter its sound, but to bring to the surface aspects that might have come to be taken for granted, made almost invisible, to the audience.

The brief description at the Jack Straw gallery states, in part,

“The poetical goal [of ‘Metaphors’] is to revive the instruments using a contemporary sonic perspective. The pianos are extended with custom electronic circuits, custom software, microcontrollers, sensors, motors, and solenoids.”

It would be interesting to know if the addition of these motorized, electric components is part of a metaphor intended to depict the piano, and the musical and cultural legacy associated with it, as something in need of life support.

More at hugosolis.net and jackstraw.org.

Quote of the Week: What Is and Isn’t Repertoire

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

From an interview with Robert Carl, author of Terry Riley’s In C (Oxford Press, 2009):

I think there’s a subtle but a real difference, though, between the repertoire and In C. In C has an open instrumentation and an open duration. And as a consequence of the kind of accordion structure it has, where it can expand or contract, the relationships between the modules are also different from performance to performance, even though the sequence always remains the same. Every time someone decides to perform it, every time someone decides to record it, it’s a new version, maybe a new realization. Maybe we should be using the word realization instead of interpretation, because interpretation suggests a 19th-century ideal of a score which is a fixed artifact that one is supposed to realize as close as possible to the text. But with In C, you can only get so close and then like a magnet you bounce off it.

The distinction is an interesting one, and from reading the interview, it’s clear that Carl is no dogmatist. He’s not making a stark distinction here that he’ll then defend to the hilt. He’s pointing out, in his word, the subtle distinction between what is understood to be “repertoire” and what Riley’s In C proved to be. This is a distinction between works whose depiction in standard musical notation is fairly fixed, and those works, such as Riley’s, that are fluid, in that they depend as much if not more on instructions/procedures as on musical notes. The score for In C, for example, if half notation (53 short melodic segments) and half “Performing Directions” (including such ambiguous koans as “If for some reason a pattern can’t be played, the performer should omit it and go on”).

In complimenting several renditions of In C that he thinks are particularly successful, Carl says, “For me, I like the works that take off from it and actually make truly new pieces, but that’s just my taste.”

The full interview, conducted by Frank J. Oteri, appears at newmusicbox.org. The full score of In C is available for free download at otherminds.org: PDF.

Past Week at Twitter.com/Disquiet

/ By Marc Weidenbaum
  • Please Retweet and Sign this Petition 'Make Apple allow audio file sharing for music apps' – http://301.to/ftv #
  • Oh, if you purchase budget earbuds with "extended bass support," that means you end up having to use the reduced-bass setting on your iPod. #
  • Currently playing in the kitchen: Chamber Trio for Drip Coffee, Cooling Stainless Steel Kettle, and Fluorescent Bulb (Adagissimo). #
  • Starting to get "All Summer in a Day"/"The Long Rain" feeling. When home not sure background noise is precipitation or radio/TV on static. #
  • I'd really like to hear a Cake song remixed by Giuseppe Ielasi, especially based on "03" off his Aix album. #
  • My Village Voice Pazz & Jop ballot: http://is.gd/6HGYi Same as my year-end top 10 but you can click thru to see who also liked the albums. #
  • Does the rain amplify or otherwise funnel the sound of sirens, or is there just that much emergency activity during a downpour? #
  • Bought new, inexpensive earbuds (with mic). Cord is fabric, like from old lamp or iron. Thus flexible; less prone than plastic to cracking. #
  • Major thunder over San Francisco — thick, deep Ten Commandments thunder. #
  • Definite incongruity between the birdsong-based field recordings playing inside, and the bird-less, rain-ready skies outside. #
  • Belated RIP, musician Walter J. Carpenter (b. 1982), aka wwcarpen, aka aghost, passed away November 2009. Legacy site: http://is.gd/6s69A #
  • Found iPhone. Went to Apple store to get it back to its owner. Genius-bar guy says, "Sure you don't wanna keep it? Goes for a lot on eBay." #
  • Bill Fontana environmental sound-art piece at @sfmoma today — but will the free admission make it too difficult to get in? #