All the sudden, everybody's PHISH!

[JeffD]

Ah, where the rubber hits the road!..some of us like that

If it's interesting to the players, l'll tend to be interested, myself, as a listener.

Sure there is overlap. Especially to the musicians in the audience.

[catmandu2]

Sure there is overlap. Especially to the musicians in the audience.

Well yes but I'm not really thinking of it as "overlap"; as players or musicians we may tend to be engaged in a given musical performance--listening--in a more, shall we say, elaborate, or involved manner--"playing" along, if you will. As jazz musicians, maybe more.. It's a gestalt

[mandopete]

Now back to my own territory - ITM, where chords are supposed to wrap around melodies, not the other way round...

Information Technology Music?

[Bertram Henze]

Information Technology Music?

funny you should say that - information technology is my day job.

[journeybear]

So it's actually NOT funny, because it's true ... Hey! Looky there! You mentioned "job" and all of those jam band fans just scattered. How about that?

Ahhh ... peace and quiet, at last. Probably won't last ...

[LastMohican]

Well yes but I'm not really thinking of it as "overlap"; as players or musicians we may tend to be engaged in a given musical performance--listening--in a more, shall we say, elaborate, or involved manner--"playing" along, if you will. As jazz musicians, maybe more.. It's a gestalt

Sorry, not buying it...but that's OK!

[catmandu2]

Sorry, not buying it...but that's OK!

Not a "gestaltist" then?

[Jeffff]

I am sorry Cat. While I know he is indeed highly regarded and I love Charlie Haden, there isn't enough structure for me to hang onto.

[catmandu2]

Well it's not everyone's cup of tea

I totally relate with charlie's story--migrating out to LA and throwing himself into that scene...talk about someone with a concept able to impose form

[Bertram Henze]

So it's actually NOT funny, because it's true ... Hey! Looky there! You mentioned "job" and all of those jam band fans just scattered. How about that?

Ahhh ... peace and quiet, at last. Probably won't last ...

...and didn't, though you gave me the illusion of power to calm the waves for half a day.

Thinking what information technology music might actually be, I found this.

Thinking about the cat man's gestalt thingie, I think there is some truth to that; however, does it mean the real piece of music as such is exactly what the musicians don't play and has to be imagined by the audience?



And the easiest way to build a large repertoire is to play nothing at all?

[catmandu2]

Thinking about the cat man's gestalt thingie, I think there is some truth to that; however, does it mean the real piece of music as such is exactly what the musicians don't play and has to be imagined ]

Well Bertram, now you've done it.

What is real, what is imagined? In order to answer those questions "definitively" (if you will), we will have to understand the nature of phenomena, and the nature of mind

But, a shorter, working answer: I would say the total effect, or experience of music is indeed the product of both inner and outer environment--how can it not be so?; after all, what you hear and what I hear are different, right?

[Dale Ludewig]

Well, it could be. It probably is. Same with color. But we all tend to agree that what you see as green, I see as green. But I don't think we'll ever be able to actually see what the other person is seeing, or hearing. What is "out there" and what each of us perceive. Or what a dog or cat or cow perceives of the same "out there".

[catmandu2]

But more specifically, and pertaining to the matter at hand--what we are doing with music:

What is green? Or, what is our experience of green?

Of course, it is all a "subjective" experience. Then we have the problem with language: words are often inadequate to express what we experience (it's why some prefer more easily "definable" or more readily "relatable" phenomena, etc). So, you say green, and I might agree--yes, it is green. Then, this or that is consonant or dissonant...and here it becomes even more elusive for we cannot see what we are hearing, etc; is it formless? Arrhythmic? Unmelodic? How shall we describe it?

Of course when we begin to relate and communicate about more and more "unknown" phenomena--and internal experience-- the challenge becomes ever greater

[Dale Ludewig]

Exactly.

[JeffD]

Well, it could be... But I don't think we'll ever be able to actually see what the other person is seeing, or hearing... What is "out there" and what each of us perceive.

Well now.

Useless to go too far in that direction. Without a common experience, a common language could not exist.

Lest we sit arond, bobbing our heads, grooving on private experience and sharing only how special we feel having an experience that can't be shared.

Just be quiet. Just listen.






http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNFBCx-rYT4

[journeybear]

... does it mean the real piece of music as such is exactly what the musicians don't play and has to be imagined by the audience? ... And the easiest way to build a large repertoire is to play nothing at all?

Thai reminds me of this - a lampoon of the alternative scene/approach/whatever which by extrapolation can pertain to anyone with a cooler-than-thou or more-artistic-or-profound-or-conceptual-than-thou attitude:



In case you dont want to spend four minutes listening, here are the lyrics, pertinent snippets in bold:

Talkin' Seattle Grunge Rock Blues

Hey, hey, my, my, rock 'n' roll will never die,
Just hang your hair down in your eyes
You'll make a million dollars.

Well, I was in this band goin' nowhere fast
We sent out demos, but everybody passed
So one day, we finally took the plunge
Moved out to Seattle to play some grunge.
Washington State that is.
Space Needle ...Eddie Vedder ...mud 'n' honey!

Now to fit in fast, we wear flannel shirts,
We turn our amps up until it hurts,
We got bad attitudes, and what's more
When we play we stare straight down at the floor, wow-ee
Pretty scary.
How pensive ...how totally alternative.

Now to fit in on the Seattle scene
We gotta do somethin' they ain't never seen.
So, thinkin' up a gimmick one day
We decided to be the only band that wouldn't play -- a note.
Under any circumstances.
Silence ...music's original alternative.
Roots grunge...

Well we spread the word through the underground,
that we were the hottest new thing in town.
The record guy came out to see us one day,
and just like always, we didn't play; it knocked him out.
He said he loved our work, but he wasn't sure if he could sell a record with nothin' on it.
I said tell 'em we're from Seattle.
He advanced us two-and-a-half million dollars.

Hey, hey, my, my, rock 'n' roll will never die,
Hang your hair down in your eyes
You'll make a million dollars.

Well, they made us do a video, but that wasn't tough,
'Cause we just filmed ourselves smashin' stuff.
It was kinda weird, 'cause there was no music,
But MTV said they'd love to use it.
The kids went wild, the kids went nuts,
Rolling Stone gave us a five-star review; said we played with guts.
We were scorin' chicks, takin' drugs,
then we got asked to play MTV Unplugged; you shoulda seen it.
We went right out there and refused to do acoustical versions of the electrical songs that we had refused to record in the first place.
Then we smashed our sh*t.

Well, we blew 'em away at the Grammy show,
by refusin' to play and refusin' to go.
And then just when we thought fame would last forever,
Along come this band that wasn't even together.
Now, that's alternative ...hell, that's alternative to alternative.
I feel stupid ...and contagious.

Well our band got dropped, and that ain't funny,
'cause we're all hooked on drugs, but we're outta money
So the other day I called up the band,
I said, "Boys, I've taken all I can,
"Shave off your goatees, pack the van...
"We're goin' back to Athens"

The guitarist in my band pulls this out now and then, which is how I knew it existed. I was about rolling on the floor the first time I heard it. and that line about a band that wasn't even together still gets me, almost every time. I mean, how do you go one step further than a band that doesn't even play music? He found a way!

[catmandu2]

Useless to go too far in that direction. Without a common experience, a common language could not exist.

Do we have a common language? (What is green?)

There is some "agreement"--convention makes it easier to coexist. I find it most interesting to study the variations, the unknown, for I am more certain of the preponderance of variation than I am of uniformity

Which must lead us again to: what is known?

[Dale Ludewig]

I think we think we have a common language. But back to the original question, or at least that area of thought, the jam part of a "song" is inherently freeform to some extent. And there is the problem, isn't it? It's the movement. It's beyond "what is green" or what you personally see in your head when you look at a color that we agree is "green". It's the movement of the music. Yes, that's C. We can measure that. But once you move to D and G and how you move and what that motion means to the listener is very personal, colored (sorry) by many personal experiences listening to a similar movement, chord progression, whatever.

I remember some years ago seeing Bela Fleck and the group doing The Bluegrass Sessions tour in Chicago. I walked out with my fellow musician friends, all of us completely blown away. Ran into another friend, a player of more traditional bluegrass, and he thought the show was horrible. Not enough structure to the songs and so forth.

We heard the same thing. We heard different things. I think I'll go let my head bobble about.

[catmandu2]

Well we are moving toward more commonality of language all the time--with expanding vocabulary and information (and "consciousness" for lack of a better term)--our facility with systems of symbolism evolve. It requires speculation and refinement; the more capable our imagination the broader our empathy

And of course humans strive for commonality. However, we are often too quick to ignore our differences--the subtle vibrations and variations of patterns in our rush to conformity--that make life the more beautiful

[imleath]

So it's actually NOT funny, because it's true ... Hey! Looky there! You mentioned "job" and all of those jam band fans just scattered. How about that?

Ahhh ... peace and quiet, at last. Probably won't last ...

I like how you jump on a played stereotype that's not even remotely true. I think you should get to know the people on the scene before you start insulting us. There's no need for that. This is a friendly discussion about music and musical preferences not a place to take cheap shots at a group of people you clearly know nothing about.

catmandu2, I concur with most everything you've said.

[journeybear]

Who's taking a cheap shot at someone one clearly knows nothing about? Or for that matter, tossing around insults? For what it's worth, I've been to scores of shows that were largely improvisational, going back decades - and not just Grateful Dead, though they were the lion's share, and still the best in this area, as far as I'm concerned - as well as been in a few bands in which improvisation was a major element. And in all this time and experience I have gotten to meet a lot of fans of this kind of music and the attendant lifestyle, who embraced both to varying degrees, so I'm not exactly unaware of the culture. But I hardly ever met anyone who couldn't take a little ribbing, or took themselves or their culture or what they were doing so seriously they couldn't see the humor in it or felt a need to get self-defensive. If we can't laugh at ourselves, how can we hope to deal with the absurdity of life? Lighten up!

[Dan Johnson]

Jam does not equal Phish. BTW I'll be going to see them tomorrow night at SPAC! Awesome band with more than a little bluegrass in their background.

So, here. Might as well have at least one bit of mandolin-related content in an otherwise ungenerous attack on an entire genre and several artists in particular.




If you don't like what an artist is doing, don't go see them again. Otherwise, take it as a part of their process. I love when artists try to open up a bit - when they fail, I feel bad for them, but I try not to hold it against them.

[JeffD]

[QUOTE]

Do we have a common language? (What is green?)

Of course we do. We spend a lot of hours on this website using it. Green is something we can all point to. It doesn't matter what our internal experience of green is, when we talk we all refer to the same objective property of green out there in reality. (Wittgenstein: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about (internal experiences that cannot be shared even in theory) we must pass over in silence. Or words to that effect.)

Which must lead us again to: what is known?

Many people are quick to point out that what we don't know is so much bigger than what we know. But is this a trick? We don't know how much we don't know, so we imagine it is huge. We really don't know.

Studying the variations, measuring them and categorizing and classifying is what humans do, tucking more and more of the chaos of the universe into our understanding of the world. There is not much to be said for just wallowing in the variations, ignoring attempts to find a pattern, pretending its all random, refusing to know, just "grooving".

This is especially the case when we find out that the perpetrators of the randomness, the jammers, are using specific techniques and algorithms and learned ways of responding and re-responding. There is the showmanship of the "groove" which is the swan on top of the water, and there is the years of work and study and practice and knowledge and trained intuition brought to bear, which is the swans legs under the water paddling a mile a minute, but hidden to our eyes. We just see a graceful groove.

[Bertram Henze]

What is real, what is imagined?

I'd say if I had no instrument with me, just my voice, ask somebody else "do you know this tune?" and whistle it to him (you can do it with Sailor's Hornpipe or with Beethoven's 5th), this identifyable minimum feature needed to recognize a piece of music is the core I mean by "real", everything else is ornament.
Now, if you have a full band they can afford to just play the ornaments and thus make the missing piece audible.

[catmandu2]

[QUOTE=JeffD;1068424]

Of course we do. We spend a lot of hours on this website using it. Green is something we can all point to. It doesn't matter what our internal experience of green is, when we talk we all refer to the same objective property of green out there in reality. (Wittgenstein: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about (internal experiences that cannot be shared even in theory) we must pass over in silence. Or words to that effect.)



Many people are quick to point out that what we don't know is so much bigger than what we know. But is this a trick? We don't know how much we don't know, so we imagine it is huge. We really don't know.

Studying the variations, measuring them and categorizing and classifying is what humans do, tucking more and more of the chaos of the universe into our understanding of the world. There is not much to be said for just wallowing in the variations, ignoring attempts to find a pattern, pretending its all random, refusing to know, just "grooving".

It sounds to me that you (and Wittgenstein) are making my point