babblings

[hsu@uicsrd.CSRD.UIUC.EDU (William Tsun-Yuk Hsu)]

Miscellaneous comments:

<Joe Turner complains about our "attitude problem" >
Hmmm, I didn't think I've had one for several years now :-)... hey,
relax, if somebody raves about this mondo bizarro band I haven't
heard about, I just fill the guy's mailbox with queries if they
sound like something I MUST get. And I'm sure we all love to
pretend to be experts on whatever obscure band we're blabbing about,
even if nobody else cares... someone's got to spread the word, you know. :-)

BTW, if you want to hear about Diamanda Galas and Current 93, there's
this guy John Hogge (hogge@p.cs.uiuc.edu) who'll tell you all you
need to know. Maybe he'll even post some new conceptual noise reviews...

< Lots of discussion on whether The Dreaming is overproduced, etc. >
This sounds like the old debate about style vs. content again, tho
the parameters for music are probably different.

How do you break down a piece of music into the "meat" and the production?
Suppose we assume the "meat" of a song is the basic skeleton conceived
originally by the artist. (Never mind how we read the artist's mind to
find this out.) It would probably consist of the basic melody, chord
progressions, etc. Suppose the artist conceived the piece with certain
instruments in mind. Then maybe the "meat" of the song includes specific
instrumentation. Suppose we stretch it and say the musician conceived the
piece originally with strings, digeridoo, ethnic percussion, and all
kinds of neat little details. The song would not be complete without
everything that was present in the initial formulation. So is all this
the "meat" of the song or the production?

You can also argue that the apparent lack of production of some bands
is really a type of production in itself. Even the simplest, unarranged
music has been filtered through the musicians' meddlings (however minimal)
in the studio. Production that emphasizes the rough edges is still production.

Let's all reread Susan Sontag's brilliant and readable essay "On Style"
before resuming this debate. 

(Hmm... scratch that, go out and buy a copy of Atomizer by Big Black
and listen to that instead while reading the show review.)

Bill Hsu