Mandolin Philosophers?

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  1. Dr H
    Dr H
    So, where are all the mandolin philosophers? I'm just noticing that out of the hundreds (thousands?) of registered users of the Mandolin Cafe, this little forum has only managed to pick up ... four? That's only half as many as the Tiple forum.

    And I just noticed that, with one exception, the handful of forums I specifically joined seem to each have fewer than about 15 members -- as opposed to others that have several hundred members.

    I wonder if this tells us anything (other than that I personally tend to gravitate towards fringe topics ... ) ?
  2. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Maybe you'd better tell me where this tiple forum is ; )

    There certainly does seem to be a reluctance to engage over (ostensibly) more peripheral topics--in a serious manner. I always hoped for wide-ranging discussions here--as it seems logical to me that (any) music forum would be suitable to accommodate such

    I would be most interested in finding fora suited to my broad interests. What are some you might recommend--where broad musical topics are more prevalent?
  3. Dr H
    Dr H
    catmandu2: "Maybe you'd better tell me where this tiple forum is ; ) "

    http://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/group.php?groupid=155

    catmandu2: "I would be most interested in finding fora more suited to my broad interests. What are some you might recommend--where broad musical topics are encouraged?"

    I've not found any one place that encourages "broad" discussion. It's one of the reasons I flit around from blog to blog so much. You're likely to find an interesting discussion almost anywhere now and then, but most of the online fora I see are all somewhat insular communities and will give you grief if you step "too far" outside the bounds of what they feel to be "acceptable". This is true even for composer blogs and experimental music blogs -- it's kind of bizarre.

    Fortunately, with my short attention span I don't mind getting involved in a particular topic for a while, and then moving on to greener pastures when things start getting less interesting. Right now I'm rather caught up in ragtime, and have been enjoying some of the stuff at "Perfessor Bill Edwards'" site.
  4. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Thanks. Yea, we find ecumenism everywhere

    I've been looking for something like the old "Avant" magazine in the UK
  5. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Hmm, doesn't seem to be much florid discussion over there on tiples

    I can relate: I've been seeking more and more "exoticism" (in acoustic instruments) since becoming addicted to "detuning" my 12-string guitars (my first guitar as a boy was actually a 12-banger). My solution is oud. Although, for your preferences--fretted strings--I still think 12-stringed guitars are the best bet. I wanted to get (some) of those papoose 12-stringers, but couldn't find one. I recommend hunting down some of the old Applause 12-stringers: they have alloy necks/fretboards, of course the plastic bodies, and the tops are quite ruggedly built...as an economically viable platform for experimentation. Mine's even A/E

    I wanted as many strings per course as I could find, too. Eventually, this brought me to sympathetic strings, and lugging around a hackbrett-style hammered dulcimer--with 4 strings/course; of course, it doesn't have a neck--there're compromises with all instruments ; )

    Unless you're interested in the traditions of these instruments, as well. I guess that's mostly where my interests lie. It's fun to play a slab through a synth, but there's something about the acoustic sound in context that compels me. At some point, I became less interested in the sound, and more into form

    Have you heard Ed Powell's creations? He may be someone you may want to check out--he may be doing some work with fretted instruments too
  6. Dr H
    Dr H
    For whatever reason, I don't seem to have access to the "reply with quote" option in this thread, so please bear with my attempts to manually accomplish same...

    >catmandu2: Although, for your preferences--fretted strings--I still think 12-stringed
    >guitars are the best bet.

    I have a couple, one specifically for experimenting with alternate tunings and such.
    Additionally, over the past three years I've managed to acquire: 5-string acoustic bass guitar; requinto; bajo sexto; cuatro; li'liu; charango; tiple Colombiano; octave mandolin; three unplayable concert zithers; and a set of cheap highland bagpipes (that I'm still searching for the frets on ). These in addition to my collection of more conventional guitars, basses, and mandolin/mandolas, of course.

    >catmandu2: I wanted as many strings per course as I could find, too. Eventually,
    >this brought me to sympathetic strings, and lugging around a hackbrett-style
    >hammered dulcimer--with 4 strings/course; of course, it doesn't have a
    >neck--there're compromises with all instruments ; )

    Ah, have I got the instrument for you! Have you ever encountered the gitarron Chileno? 25 strings, set in courses of 1, 3, 4, and 5 strings per course:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwhhGE0aNX8
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCMMfsB02so
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6x1KEI1MGY
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFSsf9RaIsM

    >catmandu2: Unless you're interested in the traditions of these instruments, as well. I
    > guess that's mostly where my interests lie. It's fun to play a slab through a synth,
    >but there's something about the acoustic sound in context that compels me. At some
    > point, I became less interested in the sound, and more into form

    I'm interested in both -- to a point. I like to know the traditions, so that I can definitively depart from them, if I choose.

    And I have a streak of absurdism coupled with a penchant for performance art. Just before Bela Fleck hit the scene with his Dearing Crossfire, a friend of mine (another composer) and I were expermenting with various ways to electrify a banjo and still have it sound like a banjo. One experiment was pursued not so much because it achieved this, as for it's sheer irony: We fitted an acoustic banjo with a MIDI pickup, used to drive a Roland synth, which we used to control a bank of samples of an acoustic banjo.

    >catmandu2: Have you heard Ed Powell's creations? He may be someone you may
    >want to check out--he may be doing some work with fretted instruments too

    I have heard some of his stuff -- always reminds me vaguely of South Indian raga. What I always wonder about guys like this is how the hell he finds time to be a luthier and build all these beautiful, elaborate instruments and have a career as a performer? Between practicing, composing, and performing (not to mention re-stringing and tuning) I barely have time for the day job that pays the bills.

    I've played around with fretless a bit. I studied double bass, and played in college and community orchestras for a while. I converted an old Harmony electric guitar (that a roommate was going to throw away) into a fretless. But lately I've been going in the other direction -- I'm considering having a luthier put mandola frets on my viola.
  7. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Very nice



    You're right--I'd be very interested in one of these: a harp guitar in a compact size. Just right for working up a solo version of As Falls Wichita...
  8. catmandu2
    catmandu2



    I couldn't stop thinking about this instrument--after viewing it a few hours ago. I'm really compelled by these in several ways. I think this piece will lie nicely on melodeon--which will have to do until I can procure an gitarron Chileno--or maybe arrange for 12-string...the odds of obtaining an instrument in the middle of Lake Missoula are slim

    Yeah, it'll be fine for my D/G box. I'm really compelled by this gitarron c. It has the flavor of the Scandinavian small zithers with the refined fingerstyle guitar approach (that I love so much)
  9. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    For any melodeonists keeping score: it lies very naturally on G/C--not surprising with the GCF box being so prolific in Latin music

    Of course melodeon may be "cheating" a bit--one reason why I play is its ease of obtaining such a full, lush sound and accompaniment...with relatively little effort. This is perhaps the more appropos issue to be discussed on a "philosophy" group ..."is it ethical to use an accordian?"
  10. Dr H
    Dr H
    I discovered the gitarron Chileno ("Chilean big guitar") when I acquired my tiple Colombiano about 2 years ago, and was searching for information on string guages and tunings. And I had thought triple-strung courses were a bear to play!

    I've been trying to find a source for a GC ever since. A YouTube commentor gave me the name of a luthier in Chile -- apparently well-known and well-regarded, considering how frequently his name pops up on the web. But his website's been down for months, and I don't know if he's still around; retired; or what. At any rate, I haven't been able to contact him yet.

    Bus the search will continue...
  11. Dr H
    Dr H
    BTW, the tune being played in the second video you embedded seems to be a characteristic (or at least popular) tune for the instrument. There are several youtube videos out there of GC players performing that tune either solo, in a duet with a conventional guitar, or with vocals.

    Also, I've seen some pictures of GC's fretted all the way up the neck, though how you'd get past those tuners on the upper bouts to use them is an interesting question. (The four single strings attached to the bout-tuners are knows as "diablos" -- "devils".)
  12. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    That (devils) is really a good subject to discuss here

    Maybe we can explore some aspects (sure, even nomenclature and "classification") of the role and use of such "daemon" strings in music--and its contexts aesthetics, harmony, etc., as we eventually get round to dissonances. Of course it's impossible to just willy-nilly throw up something without context regarding harmony (other than individual experience$), but maybe we can begin here--with Chilean music; as here we have an instrument exploiting more liberal harmonic territory, more latitude with respect to consonance and dissonance--than trad western harmony--one of the reasons for its evocativeness (compare Peruvian harp with western orchestral harp; "microtonalism" of eastern harmony; etc)

    Someting that the accordian (and of course keyboards and temperaments of all kinds) reduces is the latitude of dissonance. Some of the more interesting experimentalsm (imo) explores sonic limits. My accordians are my poor man's/convenient efforts in music making (indeed , they were conceived and designed as such); a solution, for a problem--for example in the case of first encountering a gitarron c suddenly (which created a musical necessity)--we all must solve all the time. One of my interests has been "finding" the "right" instrument--actually it's been an obsession and a neuroticism and a demon for most of my life; for example, fiddle, flute and concertina have long been "optimal" for sound/size--I can pack them around easy, and they are expressive instruments, etc. There are many aesthetic questions to solve for--one, unfortunately, is practical/logisitical

    In folk music, one of my favorite things is the more liberal harmonic palette of scandinavian music (there is an element here in the above vid that sound similar). My hardingfele-playing colleague, an older Norwegian fellow, used to regale me with olde world tales of the fiddle/devil relationship. Of course, the long-wrought tradition of dissonances in jazz and art music. It's the sonic (as opposed to the more abstract symbolism, formalism, etc.) language of music and its hueristic framework that I find interesting, here especially, in folk music

    Long story short--My days of stringed instrument acquisition andexperimentation are increasingly waning...yet the urge persists
  13. Dr H
    Dr H
    I must correct myself, the single strings are actually refered to as "diablitos" -- "little devils".

    I've really only begun to scratch the surface with this instrument. Thus far I haven't uncovered a great deal of its history. So I'm not really sure why the early makers felt a need to put so many strings in a course, or what musical aesthetic they might have been trying to address in so doing. I do know that the instrument is usually described as being the choice of poet-singers, and used to accompany their verse. The artform is know as Canto de Poeta (the poet singing), and exists in two main forms: serious/religious, and humorous/satirical.

    I have noticed that the tuning of the main courses has some similarity to the traditional tuning of the tiple Colombiano, but that could well be merely coincidental.

    As to devils or daemons in music, the early western tradition of calling the tritone interval diabolus in musica comes to mind. Less "diabolical," perhaps are the many instances of instrumental features which are present, but never (or only rarely) used. The last tone hole on a Japanese sho, for example, or second string on a rebab. (The diablitos of the guitarron Chileno, I'm told, are rarely plucked.)

    The notion of keyboards "reducing the latitude of dissonance" is an interesting one. I have hung out with early music afficianados who would insist the exact opposite: that by favoring equal temperment, keyboards have assured that dissonance is pretty much everywhere.

    Many many moons ago, I went through a 12-tone/serialism phase in my composition, in which I became (among other things) hugely enamored of the music and theories of Ernst Krenek. I was fascinated to find that his system treated tritones not as the uber-strong disonances they are usually considered in tonal music, but as neutral intervals. Going with the flow I eventually produced some pieces that were so commitedly atonal that the sudden appearance of an open 5th or a major triad was as jarring to the ear as a C-F# interval randomly tossed into the middle of a folktune in F would have been.

    RE the hardingfele: a fabulous instrument. I first heard of it pretty much by accident, when I discovered some old Norwegian folk-recordings in a box at a garage sale. Were I ever to seriously return to the fretless world, I would definitely want one of these.

    As to "sonic language," well, your regard for Cage says a lot there. I've tried to take his contention that "music is everywhere" to heart, and it's been no end of fascinating. Back in grad school days I once amused a bunch of housemates by spending the best part of a couple of weeks roaming the house with a bass bow and a hard timpani mallet, bowing and/or whacking everything in sight, looking for some interesting "found sounds". (I found bicycles particularly rich territory in this regard.)

    Considering the practical/logistical, yes, that's often been a motivation. I was just telling someone the other day how, after years of schlepping around a truck full of amplifiers and instruments, I found myself at some point playing mostly acoustic instruments, then mostly acoustic guitar, and lately much smaller acoustic guitaroid instruments like li'liu, charanco, and mandolin. Less to carry.

    I suppose the next step is down to a harmonica or maybe a nose-flute. Or perhaps to take the Cage plunge and carry nothing but myself around, making music with whatever I find, wherever I go.
  14. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    I have hung out with early music afficianados who would insist the exact opposite: that by favoring equal temperment, keyboards have assured that dissonance is pretty much everywhere.

    Well, the point is the "temperament": that the keyboard (and other instruments "tempered" in similar fashion after a well-established system--say, 12 tone) induces limits--divides tones discretely and definitively (that any given level is attributed any particular quality is beside the point) as opposed to, for example, a fretless instrument, the voice, or other open, "un-stopped" system. The fact that it is "equal" is what I'm talking about...doesn't matter if it is equal consonance, or dissonance, or potatoes...IOW, we have to play the tones that are established for us, predominantly. So, on my accordian, I may effect playing "between" the buttons in a variety of ways, but for the most part I am left with the tones assigned the buttons

    Most of my gigging has been with drums and doublebass--which may be influencing my latent fondness for "little instruments"

    I think what I'm posing here, so much as anything, is the anthropology of music. I appreciate all the info from as wide a perspective as possible--as we are so culture-bound, we certainly entertain only a limited purview
  15. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    (I found bicycles particularly rich territory in this regard.)






    (I'm an ex-roadie--devotee of Italian steel tubing...kids today--have to contend with carbon hybrids and aluminum ; )
  16. Tom Wright
    Tom Wright
    Although I have 57 years experience on violin or viola, I now prefer picking for personal satisfaction. It is mainly the fact that I don't have to support the notes after I play them---it denatures them in a way that frees me to place my attention on the whole tune. It makes sense that the piano has more literature written for it or adapted to it than any other instrument; the relatively non-expressive keyboard encourages playing whole music, not so much delivering an aria. I learned to improvise on guitar long ago (not that I was good), and I find it natural in a way that bowed instruments don't achieve for me. But the familiarity with the violin/viola fingerboard now helps me.

    My 5- and 10-string mandolins have more range than a guitar across the open strings, 2 octaves plus a major 3rd. With 20 frets, my electric has a 4-octave range. Its bass extends into useful guitar range, and solo guitar lines are easily encompassed. I can combine travel-friendly size with the ability to play melodies and bass lines with internal harmony. Since my acoustic is set up like a flat top guitar, its sustain is considerable, making piano and classical guitar colors available, as well as rock or folk. And although I haven't ascended to the level of playing bass lines while improvising jazz, it is as possible on this instrument as on a guitar.

    On top of all the previous, I find it impossible to sing a song while playing viola.
  17. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Hey Tom--thanks for joining in. What scale length are your mandolins?

    I switched from sax to guitar at age 12--because I couldn't sing with sax (I wanted to be Mick Jagger, not Bobby Keys)

    I hear what you say above; these days--relative ease of rendering the music seems to be becoming more of a priority. I got into performing with accordians (and banjos--two of the most reviled! ; ) because of their efficient noise/energy expenditure ratio--when I didn't want to "work for tone" with the bow. Ideally, I'd be bowing my stringed bass--for shear sonic pleasure--but I never do that anymore <insert old fart smiley face here>
  18. Tom Wright
    Tom Wright
    My 5 is 14", the 10 is 14.25". Basically mandolin or very slightly long.
  19. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    (drH) I might better have said, "limiting dissonance potential" to better describe the "equal" temperament system from the broad perspective of uniformity vs "open" systems, per se, I was getting at.
    I recall a wide-ranging discussion of the term "m'biri" -- not sure what it translates to--im without benefit of the mighty intrrwebs on my phone here --in my readings on African sensibilities--apparently used widely in reference to certain aesthetic qualities (not limited to music, or--of course "music" is relative and has wide-ranging meanings and references--perhaps beyond our more discrete western conceptions--beyond the "m'bira," etc). Considering aesthetic categories and experiences cross-culturally, I'm interested to learn about various traditions of certain musical qualities--and the "limiting" aspects of these--as these (outer limits) tend to fascinate me. Interplay of opposites: consonance/dissonance; tension/relaxation; tradition/innovation--process. When I was in college I spent all of my time listening to the tmost outre music I could find (and there was a lot of it around in Boulder)...now I spend most of my time going back to tradtion. there are many ways we meander--and some (if not all) fairly typical among humans--so this is not surprising, but it is interesting of course freom an experiential pov and in many respects like pedagogc aspects, and of cousre aesthetics and metaphysics. Ultimately, we come round to that--mythology, and expilcation. But as a simple player, with a question, it (music) is an interesting course of action and ,method

    Mentioning "limits" in the context of this is really weird, for all of this is ultimately palced square in the middle of the gist between tensions--more medial than lateral, in the spectrum of possibilites--for how else would we be talking about it and conceiving of it? But the conceiving is what I'm talking about--the experience of music--where it can be "located" and mined in the imagination and followed back, as is the usual method, to its origins
  20. Dr H
    Dr H
    >catmancu2: Well, the point is the "temperament": that the keyboard (and other
    >instruments "tempered" in similar fashion after a well-established system--say, 12
    >tone) induces limits--divides tones discretely and definitively (that any given level is
    >attributed any particular quality is beside the point) as opposed to, for example, a
    >fretless instrument, the voice, or other open, "un-stopped" system.

    True, but we induce those limits all the time. I know of music systems which are in some ways more flexible than ours, and most if not all of them seem to be far more rigid than ours in other ways.

    For example, a friend of mine is very much enamored of Indonesian Gamelan music -- to the extent of having become something of an American expert in the field, and marrying an Indonesian wife... Anyway, from long association with him and his music I also acquired an interest in this musical culture. Gamelan has no absolute concept of pitch, nor of interval. A Gamelan is tuned to whatever pitch the Gamelan maker finds pleasing, and the intervals are tuned to whatever pitch-distance he happens to think "sounds good" on that particular day. Consequently, no two Gamelans are tuned to the same pitch. Even two Gamelans made by the same maker, while the intervals may be similar for tha maker, the central pitch may be wildly different.

    Yet there is a huge body of standard music for Gamelan ensembles, and any Gamelan musician who expects to get a gig is expected to have internalized at least dozens, and preferably hundreds of these. To the uninitiated western ear, the same piece played on two Gamelans in villages just a half-mile apart may well sound like completely different pieces of music. Yet any Gamelan musician will recognize them as the same.

    The western concept of "harmony" is also absent from this musical tradition, Gamelan being what we might pedantically describe as "heterophonic" music.

    This (to us) wild freedom from the tyrany of fixed pitch, scale, and chord is grounded by many other cast-in-stone concepts, however. All Gamelan pieces are in what we would count out as 4/4. There is no such thing as syncopation, as we sould recognize it. While there is a fair degree of what we might call "improvisation", it is strictly limited to certain instruments, in certain places, and often to certain notes on those instruments.

    Whether this is "freer" music than the music in the culture we share is a matter of debate. In many ways, to be a Gamelan musician requires a HUGE amount of memorization compared to what, say, a member of a typical American symphony orchestra is expected to internalize.

    >c: ...but for the most part I am left with the tones assigned the buttons

    I can related to wanting to "get between the cracks" of the keys. I've played around with macro- and micro-tones, instruments without frets, electronics where the entire audible frequency range was available to me, etc. I still do play around with it, some.
    At one point I (only half-jokingly) used to tell musician friends, "you shouldn't tune-up before you play -- it destroys a lot of the harmonic richness of your performance."

    But I suppose I bacame more interested in other things -- rhythm and raw acoustics, currently. My fasciantion with all these fretted guitar-oid instruments is partly to cross-fertilize my playing technique (being able to apply zither technique to the guitar, for example...); partly it's also a fascination with subtlties of sound. Like what makes a plucked string on a zither unique, as compared to a plucked string on a guitar, a mandolin, or a tiple? And what does it tell me if I listen to music in this way, listening for those subtlties and perhaps ignoring things like melody, harmony, etc.?
  21. Dr H
    Dr H
    >c: Most of my gigging has been with drums and doublebass--which may be influencing
    > my latent fondness for "little instruments"

    Heh. I also play double bass. Or perhaps I should say "played", since I haven't taken it out of the corner in several years. The reason I play bass is because it's a large instrument:

    I play clarinet. In high school, if you played clarinet, you played in Band, anif you played in Band, you played in Marching Band during football season. I hated marching. But... I also played guitar in the Stage Band (jazz band). The rule was, you could only play in the stage band if you also played in one of the "formal, conducted ensembles" -- that is, either band or orchestra. If I quit band, I would get kicked out of stage band. As a clarinet player, orchestra was out, since all clarinet players in orchestra also had to be in band.

    They had the system well-rigged to populate all their ensembles. But I found a loophole. I looked around for an instrument that they couldn't possibly make me march with, and found two: cello and double bass. There was always a shortage of bass players. I picked up a bass and thought (hmm... tuned the same as the bottom 4 strings on a guitar, an octave lower -- I can do this). And so I did

    >c: I think what I'm posing here, so much as anything, is the anthropology of music. I
    >appreciate all the info from as wide a perspective as possible--as we are so
    >culture-bound, we certainly entertain only a limited purview

    I can relate. In my early days as a composer I set myself the task of taking formal lessons on as many different instruments as I could find people willing to teach me. I didn't want to be one of those people who only plays piano, and then write impossible parts for trombone or harp. After I had worked my way through (and around) the orchestra, I tired to do the same thing with other musical cultures. I took sitar lessons and studies Indian raga. I played in a Balinese-style Gamelan. I hung out with early keyboard students who put their harpsichords and clavichords into a new temperment for each piece. I even, having avoided country music for most of my life, started playing with a country band in a redneck urban cowboy bar on weekends.

    I haven't stopped doing any of this, though I do it less frequently than when I was 20. I probably still have a limited musical purview, but perhaps not quite as limited as the guy next door.

    What's emerged for me is that I do have certain preferences, although they tend to shift from time to time. But I'm pretty much willing to listen to anything. I played in punk bands when all my old hippie friends couldn't peal themselves away from the Grateful Dead. I listen to hip-hop, and all my old punk buddies think I'm nuts (the the old hippies are still following the Grateful dead around!)

    So much music, so little time.
  22. Dr H
    Dr H
    Hey guys... maybe y'all already know this but ...

    I contacted the web master to try to figure out why I couldn't "reply with quote" to messages in this thread, and learned -- to my surprise -- that we are having this discussion not in the "Forum," but in the "Social Groups".

    How it happend that I started the thread there, I'm not sure, but it comes with limitations. No "quotes," for example, and (as I just discovered) a 5000-character per post limit. There may be other limitations as well -- I'm not sure if attachments work here.

    I may ask if the web master can move this thread into a forum, or I may restart it in a forum, to get some of that functionality back.

    Unless there are objections?
  23. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Yes, we have to induce "limits"--we're human ; ).. This is really the interesting aspect at play here , wrt to language, meaning, communication, and all

    This dialectic of tradition and "individuation" is vividly expressed in your gamelan example. Excellent. Its very interesting to me how cultures handle "paradox"

    "Rhythm and raw acoustics"--yes. My accordian fetish is only for others , really...my personal itch is that exploration, but is being assuaged by oud (currently)--which has been the ultimate instrument for me in terms of "raw" rhythm, resonance, and lyricism. There's the quest for "the sound" that cannot be escaped. Fortunately, we have lots of instruments and lots of music to mine. (And I am captivated by that gutarron c.!)
  24. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    That's okay, we can cover the nature of existence in 5k characters or less.. ; )

    That last bit--about plucking zithers and all--is what I'm thinking about here: it's been my primary interest, really, in music, and likely why ive been plucking through all the instruments i have (Leo kottke said--perhaps not entirely facetiously--that he plays guitar because it gives him something to do with his hands...I can relate), and only to arrive that--only a plucked zither will solve the dilemma...(there is nothing like "plucking" a doublebass; yet, it doesn't assuage the need for more strings, blowing, drumming, singing, etc). Western polyphonic harmonic tradition--very dense musical form. But there is also an incredible amount of information in a single note, sound, moment. I'm compelled, too, by those traditions exploiting more "elemental" aspects and approaches in music and art. This aspect--that twang, buzz, rattle, or whatever it is...the "primitive" or "essence" in music--which we seek in various instruments, tunings and temperaments..
  25. Tom Wright
    Tom Wright
    We were talking about limits in the less-is-more thread. I find refuge from the bombast of my day job in the small capacity of my mandolin, and enjoy finding music for which my small instrument can be the whole show.

    For the purpose of this topic I will add that I find that theory interests me less as time goes by. The philosophy I have settled into is that music defines itself, and we don't gain much by talking about it as a thing. I leave to Derrida, or similar, discussions of meaning. If we could learn by talking about it we would not need music.

    There are some "meta" questions, though. For me, interesting issues include to what extent music is not arbitrary (hardly at all in terms of rhythm and simple melody, I think), and how performance techniques are useful in carrying the listener. For the former question, sometimes people will propose the universality of music, to which I ask whether Beethoven's funeral march would not sound like a snappy number to an elephant or whale. It is true, I think, that tempos are universal for humans, since we have a narrow size range, thus a narrow range of walking or running or heartbeat pace.

    Harmonic and scale preferences can be culturally induced, but natural harmonics are heard in the vibration modes of strings and pipes, so we all hear the satisfaction of the tonic and the close relation of dominants, the primacy of major over minor thirds, etc. So it is not that hard to imagine that music enjoyment came from shared primal experience, and is by now genetically selected. (The ability to recognize a song is essentially universal.) We can imagine that music induces body states (sympathetically) that correlate to actions and emotions (such as the emotional significance of a tremulous voice). We can reasonably conclude that some further conventions have added to the primal sources. And college students can write papers about it.

    But for performers, what should we know? Beyond simply learning the long, hard way, what traps to avoid? I don't think there are shortcuts, but traps would include attitudes like classical players expecting the listener to know the music, and to not need the kind of help a jazz player would give by showing the pulse. (Or to not know how to show other players where it is.) Or whether to play a tune faster, or just better.

    I said music defines itself, and what I meant was that it shares with story the characteristic of resisting arbitrary substitutions. It is a somewhat error-correcting, in that it will resist random changes. Where it gets interesting, is that, like a story, some changes work fine. And that is the magic that lets us alter someone's tune and make it new while preserving some of the original meaning. But to do that, we need to know lots of music, tunes, songs, in a genre. Then we can make it our own.
  26. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    I just now noticed MIC hardanger fiddles all over ebay

    What a trip. I'm almost tempted! Just think how lonesome one could sound while waiting for the viola caipira..
  27. Dr H
    Dr H
    > catmandu2: Western tradition, harmony--very dense musical form.

    And yet that same western tradition eventually gave us serialism and Anton Webern, with his 10-minute Symphony, in which some orchestra members play fewer than two dozen notes.

    Not mention John Cage and 4'33" -- although one could argue that was the Buddhist influence working on him.
  28. Dr H
    Dr H
    > Tom Wright: If we could learn by talking about it we would not need music.

    LOL! That reminds me of the argument I had with the graduate school office regarding my master's thesis. As a composer, the thesis had to be a composition of significant depth and length, for which I was expected to prepare a score, and get a public performance and a recording. The graduate office, OTOH, wanted everything -- all theses in all departments from history, to sociology, to physics, to music -- to be in uniform format: 8-1/2x11" bond paper, table of contents, abstract, chapter headings, index, etc.

    Clearly most of this doesn't apply to most musical scores, and we went back and forth for months, as I collected documentation as to why I needed exceptions to most of their cherished rules (I suppose every other composer went thorugh this, at some point -- there weren't that many of us). Finally, we negotiated away most of the bothersome details, except for the abstract. They insisted on a formal, two page, typewritten abstract, presented in my best imitation of the King's English.

    "How," I asked, "am I supposed to do this? The thesis is a musical composition. What do you expect me to verbalize about it?"

    Without batting an eye, the assistant dean I was haggling with said "You'll just have to say in words what you said in the music."

    To which I replied, "if I could do that, I would have been an English composition major; not a music composition major!"
  29. Dr H
    Dr H
    @catmandu2: Have you explored the so-called "button" accordion, or the Russian bayan?
  30. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    I play diatonic button accordians -- "semi-chromatic" 2-1/2 row club (and both anglo and English concertinas, and some piano accordian). If I were young, I'd start on "continental" chromatic C-system, perhaps free bass. I've never played the B-system, bayans, nor semi-tone "British" chromatic, nor even "mixte" old-style GCB (although I'm considering taking it up). But for tunes, the diatonic boxes are good: bisonoric boxes (melodeons) are something of a fancy. For chromaticism I simply play a PA
  31. Dr H
    Dr H
  32. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    CBA is a powerful and versatile instrument. In many respects--it's my favorite instrument
  33. Dr H
    Dr H
    I'm guessing that the meatball is optional equipment.

    Years ago I wrote a ragtime piece for an accordionist friend of mine. The original score is long lost, but several years ago I sort of "recomposed" it for piano. So I decided, what the heck, I might as well recompose the accordion version, too.

    In the interim, I had switched from writing music out on paper in ink to inputing it on a computer in a notation program, and printing it out. And I had also learned a lot more about the accordion. I didn't have some of the notational symbols I wanted, so I went on to create an entire accordion font. First complete font I ever created.

    I can truthfully say that music has moved me in directions that I probably otherwise wouldn't have even considered going in.
  34. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    This is very true for me as well: I never set out to be a banjo and accordian entertainer (of all things, e'gadz), for instance

    I suppose my destiny was wrought long ago when I was playing pedal steel in a "classic country" band...the folks had to tell me what "classic country" was; growing up in "Rock City"--my idea of "country" music was the Allman bros, and of course the Eagles (Glen Frey's little bother was a classmate of mine)

    Speaking of ragtime, (I'm a clarinet player too) one of my favorite musics is afrobeat, highlife, and all the big horns in Africa and the caribbean. If I ever get out to play again, my ambition is to play bass clarinet (my favorite of the horns) and bari sax in a cumbia/afrobeat/dub/no-time situation. I practice sop cl just to keep my chops up for this ambition (although the odds are against--in the middle of Montana)
  35. Pasha Alden
    Pasha Alden
    Wonderful discussion here Catmandu, Tom Wright and Doctor H

    Thank you! That was the point of this group, to address all fringe "fringe" music topics? I also find a reluctance to philosophise about music.

    Some additional remarks about the magic of music - they may be somewhat arbitrary, but my ho anyhow:
    To me there must be something meditational about music; A kind of power and a sort of abstract process happening between player and instrument. An interaction of a deep nature, sometimes not all that easy to explain though taking place, well it certainly is.

    Now about courses? Well, I had a muso friend who told me of a mandolin with three string courses? I said wow, that must produce a tremolo very naturally?

    Back to off the beaten path topics - I spoke of myself hearing music in colour - so I found from only one person a brave enough response. You are certainly correct, many do not wish to become philosophical.
  36. Tom Wright
    Tom Wright
    I'm a spatial-reasoning type, and tend to see shapes, so music has architecture, and texture, when I am looking for it. However, when I play I feel it in my body. I also tend to write from the body feeling (the small amount I have done).
  37. Pasha Alden
    Pasha Alden
    Hi Tom Wright

    Wonderful. I think I definitely compose music by hearing, not only a sense of pitch but the colour derived from my sthynesthesia. It also adds a different dimension to how I hear, listen and right.
  38. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Here's something you may be interested in: 79-tone tuning -- which the author proposes as solution to the problem of "72-tone equal temperament is none other than the sixfold enrichment of 'twelve equal steps per octave'... and 53-tone equal temperament appears to be a model restricted to calculations on paper."

    http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard....php?tid=13818
  39. Dr H
    Dr H
    At one point I was researching the music of Julina Carillo. He was very much an advocate of micrtotones (on the piano!) and had reconstructed/tuned various old pianos for his experiments, including one with 96 tones per octave. The sound was interesting, but pretty close to the limit of what a human ear can distinguish as a "different pitch".

    As with most western microtonalists (e.g., Ivor Darreg; Harry Partch), he seems to have developed only a cult following.
  40. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Didn't conlon nancarrow also use altered tunings for his piano works? I remember them sounding quite unusual--and not only from being "mechanized"

    I'd thought of partch halfway through this thread--but couldn't remember his name! I was really intrigued by him years ago. What a visionary

    Didn't Lou Harrison--either with or apart from his gamelan interests--also work extensively with microtonalism?
  41. Dr H
    Dr H
    Nancarrow used conventional tuning and temperment on his pianos. He did, however, condition the hammers in various ways, covering them with rubber, leather, metal, etc., so he often got a lot of strange overtones out of them.

    Lou Harrison did work with microtones, and wrote some microtonal stuff for western instruments, but I'm not sure he separated the concept from his gamelan interests that sharply. I got to meet him on a couple of occasions, and I sort of got teh impression that it was listening to traditional gamelan that got him interested in microtones, and then the difficulty of working with microtones on conventional western instruments led him back to gamelan.
  42. PhillipeTaylor
    PhillipeTaylor
    I am joyful to find this group as others have reflected, but this tendency to avoid "philosophizing" is not original to music... I'm only a beginning mandolin player, but I'm an English teacher by profession, and I have been chastized in the teacher work room for bringing up such topics stating "it's to early for this kind of discussion, Taylor!" In reality though, it's always too early, or too late, or too, whatever.

    A few people seem to just enjoy "philosophizing" about everything they do, most do not. I think it's just an approach to everything they do. The first day I was learning scales and chord progressions I was contmeplating the metaphysical implications of it and drawing it into various contemplations... and I'm willing to bet a lot of others in this group will relate... I think a passing comment at the coffee shop can strike such individuals a certain way, and they're off and running. It's perhaps a personality trait (or flaw, depending on who you talk to We have to make a practice of seeking one another out to find one another, which is counter-intuitive, I think for such people, because I find most are fairly introverted, by nature.

    I have a friend, Vanilla, who also has this color effect with music, so it is not completely unusual, but a rare gift! He is an visual artist, however, with some piano background and doesn't play anymore.
  43. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Music is a wonderful phenomena to study in this manner--with its multiple aspects, poetic and existential essence. But of course, I don't "get anywhere" spinning French tunes round on my melodeons, pondering...ah well : )
  44. PhillipeTaylor
    PhillipeTaylor
    Ya! Gotta grind!
  45. Dr H
    Dr H
    Well, I see the philosophers have begun to trickle in -- we're up to 11!
  46. k0k0peli
    k0k0peli
    Not much philosophizing lately. Let's talk automatic music. I used to build simple electronic circuits. I loved playing with oscillators driven by solar cells -- pitch, harmonics, volume, controlled by varying light. My ultimate was the Bonfire Symphony. I set solar cells around a flickering fire. Into the fire I set branches with old piezoelectric ceramic phono cartridges embedded. These picked up the sounds of the wood shifting and crackling as it burned while the oscillators played their weird accompaniment. Everything was wired into a surround-sound amp system. At the finale, the branch disintegrated, the piezoelectrics screamed and died, and it all faded away.

    One gets a gentler experience with aeolian harps, of course. Except during major storms.
  47. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Evocative - thank you k-peli. I first thought I saw "automatic muse."

    "Automatic music" makes me think of Nancarrow.

    Have you ever heard the UK group AMM? Old stuff. Keith Rowe? Wild stuff .. I used to listen to the Crypt sessions for a while .. helped me get through college! And I think I have a copy of Fahey's City of Refuge somewhere -
  48. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Shame the conversation died-out .. Tom might say - 'what more can be said?', perhaps. Although, Pasha and Tom are hitting well upon aspects I find eminently interesting - what music does, and the multitudinous ways we experience.

    Here, in the future, music and various other means/modes of communication will be ever-revealing of their significance, as we begin to learn about ourselves -
  49. Tom Wright
    Tom Wright
    Keep hope alive. I was looking back through the string and noticed the dean (for his master's thesis) telling Dr H "You'll just have to say in words what you said in the music." I read somewhere that a writer characterized fiction as "saying with words what you can't say with words". It's not only a clever phrase, it makes sense because the way words are being used is in story, not analysis or argument. As such it talks to your deeper feelings, and the reaction is more in your body than in your head.

    So of course he can't do what the dean asked, but he could indeed talk about the music. This is what we all enjoy when reading or listening to/watching interviews with artists. It sometimes increases the sense of understanding one has of the work, but the artists of course never (or rarely) starts off with intention of explaining the work via media presence.

    The traditions of philosophy assumed a couple of conditions, as I see it: 1) Because we can think, we need to think in order to understand and explain thinking, and 2) The most logical thought constructions suffice to explain us and the world. It was a worthy effort when we lacked data and effective physical theory, but many issues of philosophy drop away now that we have learned more stuff.

    Aristotle's efforts to explain the physical world had to yield to facts. Efforts to determine the basis of morality yield to facts such as primate studies. Consciousness itself is at least partially explainable now, and it is not the simple "thinker" pulling the strings of Descartes' world, but rather a bunch of expert systems acting without conscious control, and an executive system that models the world and calls up scenarios to guess at the future also edits the record of experience to make it coherent, after the fact of decision and action.

    The main "philosophical" question I have these days is about the different ways people have for knowing, for learning, for organizing their knowledge---Can one know which approach a particular person should have, can one determine that person's best way of learning and knowing?

    For example, I was trying to learn some jazz, and a player would tell me "that's a common substitution" (in a chord series), or "this is an example of altered 7th", and I would ask for more examples, and for a system to identify/predict what chord would work in similar situations. Instead, what happened to me was I eventually had learned enough tunes for harmonies to begin sounding familiar, and I just found the notes that carried the color, or tension, to use Don Stiernberg's terms. I found my own way of feeling the interaction between the melody and bass that calls forth the chords that do the right job.

    Other players are comfortable with the "system" talk, but I find the terms don't help me. It was only learning enough tunes to feel all tunes were kind of like other tunes that mage me feel I "understood" jazz harmony. It also means I "know" what a particular riff "means" in context. When I first was trying to play some bluegrass, or jazz, or even classical music, because I did not know more than a little of the body of work, I lacked that contextual knowledge. It is this that makes the parts of music mean something, and technique does not mean understanding. For me, it is simply learning a bunch of actual music, whether by reading or listening, that led to understanding. But others seem to latch onto formal systems, and need them for feeling they understand.

    My personal "system" is (I think) kind of like Hindemith's. Of course, this could be my personal system warping his, but it seems he just found a melody he wanted, an interesting bass line he wanted, and whatever harmony those two created was then fleshed out. To me, jazz harmony does the same thing often, with the harmony really being the result of the bass and the melody. I would learn the chords for a song, but they did not jell until I saw the two main lines and how they fit. Then I could choose a few notes to do that job.

    Gosh, that was long, time to stop.
  50. catmandu2
    catmandu2
    Ah the necessary evils of positivism. But music is like other modalities currently beyond our grasp – and thus its esteem.

    Very interesting are the outliers – that challenge the necessary consenses; what we communicate (indeed, are able to communicate verbally/textually - symbolically) is of its given cognitive realm – art is our salvation in the regard – the range of human sense experience, and perhaps its significance. Frankly my own interest is mostly limited to a ‘perennial philosophy’ – and largely leaving the problems of modernisms far behind me as I’m able. The hierarchical arrangements, processes, faculties and forms of knowledge – even the meaning of knowledge itself – is so colossally variable that the biological basis of human compatibility seems often the extent of commonality. This is where music seems to have renown effect and utilitarian efficacy ahead – through therapies, modes of communication - sound research, commensurate with burgeoning scientific theorizing and manipulation of the human brain, will create new pathways and courses for human experience

    >"For example, I was trying to learn some jazz, and a player would tell me "that's a common substitution" (in a chord series), or "this is an example of altered 7th", and I would ask for more examples, and for a system to identify/predict what chord would work in similar situations. Instead, what happened to me was I eventually had learned enough tunes for harmonies to begin sounding familiar, and I just found the notes that carried the color, or tension, to use Don Stiernberg's terms. I found my own way of feeling the interaction between the melody and bass that calls forth the chords that do the right job."

    What you’d said up there abut experiencing music >"I'm a spatial-reasoning type, and tend to see shapes, so music has architecture, and texture, when I am looking for it. However, when I play I feel it in my body. I also tend to write from the body feeling..." - is so for me as well. The expression of something so corporeal through verbal/textual (symbolic) interaction – pales drastically compared with sharing sounds: where does the music stop and the transposition/symbolic conversion begin? Often I can feel intervals and harmonies, and of course melodies, lyricism - as 'distances' or fields of spatial plane both within and without, for the sound with which we are connected occupies both realms as well. Music/sound is this particular phenomenon that immediately transcends the mundane, discrete world of 'object.'
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