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Maybe we'll twist this one back around to topic yet: I realized after I sent that response to Richard's message that he was talking (I think) more specifically about avoiding cliche sounds-- that was the connection to the whole Fripp signal chain discussion-- rather than cliches in playing content.
It's totally on the philosophical side of things, but the connection to looping I see is still the same, and it just has to do with being authentic as opposed to automatic-- with the sounds we choose, and with what we play.
I like a lot the idea you've posed of going even further, beyond the thing itself to one's experience of the thing-- that actually does a good job expressing what I'm trying to say. For example, taking someone's sound and how that effects you as a listener, and then translating that emotional response into your own sound.
d
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ghost 7/ Oranje
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d.ans@verizon.net
on 11/26/02 10:29 AM, Scott Hansen at scott-a-hansen@uiowa.edu wrote:
avoiding cliches is good (in art and music).
dan-your drawing analogy is good, but to counteract your teachers
advice in drawing:
i believe the teacher was trying to address your ability question
perception and how you deal w/ abstraction and representation.
the abstract lines on paper worked in a certain way will somehow represent
the "perceived" world around us. the instructor was just getting you to
look harder: do you see lines around the walnut that define the walnut,
do you see texture/value that give the walnut volume. or in painting
do you see how the light/volume hits the different planes and make the
walnut 3-dimensional, etc.
my beginning drawing teacher told me way back in 1983, and he was using
a chair as the example: "we already have the chair, i don't need to see the
chair anymore, what I want to see is your interpretation of the chair" (paraphrase).
my MFA in drawing/painting 2 cents for the day.
i have no idea how that ties in w/ signal processing or looping.
s----
http://artists.mp3s.com/artists/452/hsacnostetn.html
The last part of Richard's post, where he talks about avoiding cliche, reminds me of something a drawing teacher I once had pointed out:
Let's say you're drawing a walnut and you want to draw the shell. You can start just automatically making a bunch of lines that you think will represent the texture of the nutshell. But are you really looking, and are you really seeing what the light on the surface of the shell is doing? Are you really being conscious about each mark you make on the paper being an attempt to communicate your true visual experience of the object you're drawing?
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I feel the same logic applies to playing. I definitely get into automatic states where I am basically playing cliches of my own way of expressing-- this happens especially when I'm tired or don't really feel like playing. The only way I've found to avoid these automatic states is to do what amounts to a meditation where all thought between you and your instrument (e.g. whatever far-out rig you play) is redirected back into the instrument and the music itself. It feels to me like digging down and down and down in a moebius-strip like fashion, or like those celtic designs where the animals eat their own tails. I'm curious to know how other people experience this process.
dan
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on 11/25/02 8:05 PM, Richard Zvonar at zvonar@zvonar.com wrote:
At 7:43 PM -0500 11/26/02, Butch wrote:
>God, is this thread EVER going to die?
Sorry, Butch.
This thread . . . . could go in any of several directions, but the most productive
might be to try to identify how certain musical "gestures" entered
our common language, how and when these became part of the technical
tools we use, and how we can avoid sinking into endless and repeating
sonic cliché.
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