what is experimental music

[egw]

There was a thread on looper's delight recently about experimental music.
Some were of the opinion that much of what gets called experimental music is not experimental at all. They feel that it should be "experimental" in the classical sense. That is, you form a hypothesis, then you do an experiment to test wether the hypothesis is true. The music itself must be an experiment.
Personally I don't agree with this view. I think that experimental music can be anything in which new ideas were tried during it's creation. In that sense, free improv could be considered experimental, though it may not be trying to prove or demonstrate something.
Very few genres are actually "about" what the name of the genre is.

[elektro80]

[elektro80]

Experimental music! The definition depends on which camp you come from.

I agree with your attitude towards imrov. Yes.. I see your point. But the concept of experimental music is pretty much become a tradition within academic music and there seems to be a similar tradition within modern electronic/media art about what can be called experimental music. In that sense a lot of what is being tagged as experimental within electronic/ambient music is not experimental at all. Some of the dark ambient music is for instance well within a modern avantgarde tradition and takes it from there. Nothing experimental about it, just some great modern music based on relatively modern roots.

A small digression: There is a lot of wonderful music out there which mixes ideas from classical music, old experimental noise music, orchestral avantgarde. In some weird way a completely new breed of music has been born and this music is evolving as music. This musical movement is in fact global, but it is up some dark virtual back alley and being completely ignored both by music theorists and the music biz. Too sad.

I will mention that I also do not see a lot of improvisation as true imrovisation. Some of my jazz buddies train themselves at scales, riffs, specific ways to solve "problems" etc. The improvisation then turns out to be a real time shuffling of methods and solutions already learned. This does not make good or bad music as such.. but it is not quite what I label as imrovisation myself. -But.. then I also have to accept well used definitions of terms.

Personally I do not think that experimentation is music. When I experiment I am not sure what is going on. The music I write is just music. Nothing fancy about it and certainly no experimentation.

This might all be semantics. I see really no basic difference between how you and I really think of these things, just that we use terms a bit differently. Discussing such matters is very fruitful indeed.

[elektro80]

One more post.. on experimental and imrpovisation. Within certain folk music grenres etc. we clearly see a LOT of improvisation and intuitive music creation. This is far from what I tend to call experimental music regardless of which definition of the term I would use.

[egw]

Yes, I agree with you about improvisation.
In Jazz and some other forms, much of it is very idiomatic and barely improvised at all. And the more you practice something, the less it is improvised. On the other hand, if you don't know exactly what you're going to do until you do it, I guess you can say it's improvised.

The question about genre labels isn't (in my view) about how descriptive the label is (though many people wish it were so), but only about whether sufficient associations have been established so that both producer and consumer can communicate something about the music, without having to hear it. So that you can search within categories, for example.
But you can't tell by the name, you just have to learn what people mean by it. I've been to shows advertised as "space rock" and others as "space music" and there's no resemblance at all between them!

To most people I think experimental means that it will be somewhat challenging to listen to.
The whole question of classifying music is both necessary and frustrating.

[mosc]

[elektro80]

[mosc]

[elektro80]

.........

[jsampson]

[elektro80]

The Wikipedia has a go at the term:

"From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Experimental music, or Avant-garde music, is any music that challenges the commonly accepted notions of what music is. It may do this by trying new harmonies or adding other new sounds, and by using new forms and structures, for example. Experimental music often sounds unpleasant or abrasive to people who are not used to hearing it. "
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experimental_music

It says this about free jazz:
"
Free jazz is a style of music developed in the 1960s and pioneered by artists such as Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, John Coltrane, and Albert Ayler. It uses jazz idioms but considerably less compositional material than in most earlier styles -- improvisation is much more prevalent. Like all forms of jazz, free jazz still has its practitioners today.

Typically this kind of music is played by small groups of musicians. In popular perception, free jazz is loud, aggressive, dissonant and in general full of sound and fury. Many critics, particularly at the music's inception, suspected that the abandonment of familiar elements of jazz pointed to a lack of technique on the part of the musicians. Today such views are more marginal, and the music has built up a tradition and a body of accompanying critical writing. It remains less popular than some other forms of jazz.

Beyond this, free jazz is most easily characterised in contrast with what we refer to here as "other forms of jazz", an umbrella which covers ragtime, dixieland, swing, bebop, cool jazz, jazz fusion and other styles, as in the following paragraphs.

"Other forms of jazz" use strongly-pulsed metrical rhythms, usually in 4/4 or (less often) 3/4. Free jazz normally retains a general pulsation but without regular metre, and often with frequent accelerando and ritardando, giving an impression of the rhythm moving in waves. Often players in an ensemble adopt different tempi. Despite all of this, it is still very often possible to tap one's foot to a free jazz performance; rhythm is more freely variable but has not disappeared entirely.

Other forms used harmonic structures (usually cycles of diatonic chords). Improvisors played solos using notes based on the notes in the chords. Free jazz almost by definition dispenses with such structures, but also by definition (it is, after all, "jazz" as much as it is "free") it retains much of the laguage of earlier jazz playing. It is therefore very common to hear diatonic, altered dominant and blues phrases in this music. It is also fairly common for a drone or single chord to underpin a performance, but the absence of such rudimentary devices is also common.

Finally, other forms use composed melodies as the basis for group performance and improvisation. Free jazz practitioners sometimes use such material, and sometimes do not. In some music which is called "free jazz", other compositional structures are employed, some of them very detailed and complex; the music of Anthony Braxton furnishes many examples. It would perhaps be best to call this modern or avant garde jazz, reserving the term "free jazz" for music with few or no pre-composed elements.

See also free music, experimental music, noise music "

And the entry on electronic art music tells us this:

"Electronic "art" music is a regrettably vague term for the formal and primarily academic branch of electronic music that is focused on extending musical capabilities through technology. Electronic art music suffers from naming difficulties similar to those associated with the terms "contemporary music" and "modern classical music" (modern music composed in the traditions of Classical music.)

When electronic techniques first came to be used for musical purposes, the experimental field was fully contained within the term "Electronic music". Many of these early Electronic compositions drew widespread interest, but little enthusiasm. Beginning in the 1960s, however, Electronic techniques and instruments were embraced by popular musicians, eventually leading to more mainstream styles that also came to be embraced under the umbrella of "Electronic music". Although both forms are still referred to as "Electronic music" by their respective adherents, the term "art music" is generally used to specify the less mainstream of the two branches.


History



Although electronic musical instruments date from the late 19th century, it was not until the 1940s that they were adopted as a tool for the creation of non-traditional music. In 1920s public demonstrations of the Theremin, for instance, Clara Rockmore frequently used the instrument to play violin parts for popular classical pieces.

The foundations of modern Electronic "art" music (hereinafter referred to simply as "Electronic music") lie in the developing musical sensibilities of early 20th century symphonic music. Perhaps the most direct lineage can be drawn from the music of composers such as Arnold Schoenberg, who felt that contemporary music had begun to exhaust its potential, and that musicians would have to break away from the constraints of tradition before the art could advance. This belief was widely adopted amongst the musical avante-garde, and led to the exploration of atonality as a means to exceed the limits of classical harmony.

Although atonality was refined to a great degree, some musicians felt that the simple use of traditional symphonic instruments was a serious limitation. It was the development of the tape recorder and Musique concrete that alerted the musical community to the potential of electronic music as a means surpass the limitations that were imposed by the use of traditional musical instruments.

Concrete itself can be compared to a sonic collage, in which various natural and man-made sounds are spliced, mixed and looped on the tape recorder to form an integrated "piece". One notable characteristic of Concrete that drew strong interest was that with Concrete, the final product and the musical "score" are one and the same. As a result, there are no additional layer of abstraction and interpretation (such as a musical score, musicians or a conductor) between the composer and the "orchestra". This concept intrigued many experimental composers, many of whom soon adopted the technique.

See also: sonology "


Personally I have adopted modernism as my thing.

[yaniki]

hallo

We can thinking about experimental music in serious thoretical context, but interesting maybe define experiment in music in reference to composer/player practics. If we are trying new techniques of composing, or new instrument, and we don't known, what result will be - it's experiment

Experiment is too, eg. live improvisation...

[mosc]

[seraph]

Being experimental means being innovative and whatever kind of musical project one is pursuing is always very hard to say something new.
Does anyone remember the song "Can it be done?" on the Weather Report album "Domino Theory". The lyrics talk about the possibility to write a melody no one else has ever written before.
Isn't a little pretentious, sometimes, the thought of being "experimental"?

About jazz: it's true, many of its forms are not "experimental". Sometimes I compare structured improvisation (like jazz) to chess playing: you must follow the rules but once you are fluent with them it's possible to be creative and find new ways to use them. Being innovators within the constrains of such rules is a big achievement (have you ever analyzed a chess game by Bobby Fisher or a solo by John Coltrane?)
Sometimes someone finds a new, elegant, aesthetically beautiful way to force the established rules but it takes a genius to do something like that!

[AgentA]

Nothing to add to this interesting thread, but some related reading:

Jeff Harrington posted in beepSnort May 29 2003:

"I've written about this many times on other boards, in essence,
I contend that the genre experimental has devolved into a
continuum of essentially anything that isn't obviously in some
other genre. Take a look at the MP3.COM experimental electronic
or ES experimental genres and you'll find beatless ambient,
drone, jazz.

Although I believe that genres are only as useful as they
provide assistance in finding music, calling one 's self
an 'experimental' artist and not engaging in the act of
experiment-ing is disingenuous. And I would also contend
that 'experimenting' does not mean something new to YOU.
A genuinely experimental artist knows the recently
experimented-upon territories and attempts to plumb those
depths further."

---------

"I do not write experimental music. My experimenting is
done before I make the music. Afterwards, it is the listener
who must experiment." -- Edgar Varese

[elektro80]

Edgar Varese!

[elektro80]

I have met peope who say" I only listen to experimental music"...

I guess they mean that experimental music is good.. and nonexperimental music is evil?

[seraph]

It's only a point of view:
centuries ago a perfect fourth was considered a dissonance (I mean the interval!)

[elektro80]

OK.. so... right.. this means that the relativity theory applies to evil as well? Or music

[seraph]

[elektro80]

diabolus! yup... sad story..

Great thing on love you have there carlo! Excellent!

Hmm.. I wonder.. is the nature of this thread experimental in itself?

[seraph]

[elektro80]

Yup.. we are all just recycled photons.. true true

What we can do next is to do a naked Lunch cutout of all the threads here and start a new thread in the spirit of Burroughs?

[seraph]

"Language is a virus..."

[elektro80]

He might be right!