No Subject

[J Eric Roskos <seismo!princeton!peora.CCUR.UUCP!jer>]

Subject: Re: Love-Hounds Digest

> Since when does *more* texture make a better song?  The "Hounds of Love"
> is *thick* with texture for textures sake. ...  Listen carefully to the
> string sections on "HoL".  Do they sound anything like real violins,
> cellos, and double basses?  Unless you commonly listen to six foot wide
> doubled violin synthesizers, I don't think so.  I find it hard to belive
> that anyone willing to spend hours programming synthesizers just to get a
> specific musical texture would be willing to completely ignore the basics
> of high fidelity recording.

But I think maybe you are missing the point.  This genre of music which
Kate Bush sort of fits into differs from more conventional music in that
it is principally rhythmic and timbral, with just sufficient melody and
harmony to keep it "musical" in some sense.

This is an important genre of electronic music.  At present I tend to feel
that two "good" forms of electronic music exist.  The first involves
conventional music played on electronic instruments.  When this is
successfully done it can be interesting (as, for instance, the presently
popular "Bachbusters" CD) especially if you are already familiar with the
music.

The other, to me more interesting, genre does something unique to electronic
music, viz., to make the variety of sounds in the music be as important as
the more traditional things one usually recoginses in music.  The reason
this tends to be unique to electronic music is that conventional instruments
don't have as much variety -- although of course musicians have always been
interested in getting new sounds out of conventional instruments, there just
isn't as much variety possible.

Thus the string sounds are not *supposed* to sound like violins.  Why should
they?  The people who originally built violins were trying to produce and
refine a particular sound produced by a particular technology, but at that
time it was a new sound.

Making this approach succeed is very difficult, however, which is why there
aren't many successful musicians in this genre.  If one is not successful,
the music ends up just being strange sounds.

I think that listening to such music must be like listening to Laurie
Anderson's lyrics.  Doug Alan keeps telling me "you didn't like Kate Bush
at first either," but I just don't understand Laurie Anderson.  I think
maybe a particular frame of mind is required to appreciate particular
kinds of music.
--
E. Roskos

"May I not sacrifice a hasty and petty completeness here to entireness
 there?  If my curve is large, why bend it into a smaller circle? ...
 If life is a waiting, so be it.  I will not be shipwrecked on a
 vain reality."                        -- HDT, 7/19/1851