nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan) (07/13/85)
["Who's gonna win the war, boys? Who's gonna win the war?"] > From: jeffw@tekecs.UUCP (Jeff Winslow) > A great variety (sic) of music has been written using this notation, > so your notion that it is "extremely limiting" appears to be somewhat > extreme on its own. I never said that musical notation is useless -- only that is is limiting. Lots of good music can be denoted very well with musical notation, but there is also lots and lots of good music for which musical notation is nearly completely worthless, and where probably any attempt to come up with written notation to describe it would be completely futile. In these cases, perhaps the only good dentation of the music, is the recording itself. "This is the time And this is the record of the time" Doug Alan nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (or ARPA)
tynor@gitpyr.UUCP (Steve Tynor) (07/15/85)
Doug Alan has repeatedly made the claim that ordinary musical notation is
extremely limiting and that Kate Bush has eschewed it for that reason.
Avant garde composers sometimes come up with wierd notations, but their music
usually demands this (Cage, Xenakis,...)
Though Kate's music is out of the ordinary, I don't hear anything that could
not be written in standard notation.
In fact, from the reviews I've read about her work, I've gathered that much
of her music *is* scored traditionally (ie. string accomp). From what I
know about the Fairlight CMI, it's sequencer uses conventional notation
So why the claim that Kate Bush has gone beyond traditional notation?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Many an aborigone's mistaken for a tree,
'till you near 'em on the motorway and the tree begins to breath...
Steve Tynor
Georgia Instutute of Technology
...{akgua, allegra, amd, harpo, hplabs,
ihnp4, masscomp, ut-ngp, rlgvax, sb1,
uf-cgrl, unmvax, ut-sally} !gatech!gitpyr!tynor
--
Steve Tynor
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,masscomp,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!tynornessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan) (07/17/85)
> From: tynor@gitpyr.UUCP (Steve Tynor) > Doug Alan has repeatedly made the claim that ordinary musical notation is > extremely limiting and that Kate Bush has eschewed it for that reason. I did say that musical notation is extrememly limiting (though I should probably have said "limited"), but I never said Kate Bush eschews it for that reason. She probably doesn't use it all because she never took piano lessons -- she is entirely self-taught. I don't want people to think that I think musical notation is useless. It can be successfully used to describe some aspects of some music (and that is a useful thing) -- it just is not sufficient to completely (or in many cases even remotely) encode all of the information needed to recreate a performance of many pieces of music. This is true for lots and lots of music. Not just Kate Bush. Much of the music of Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, The Residents, The Beatles, etc., etc., etc. cannot be described suffiently using musical notation. Some aspects of the music, maybe, but certainly not all of it, and perhaps not the most important aspects. Jazz musicians have realized for a long time that conventional notation can't completely describe much of their music. They have a special notation for "blues notes". When one of these notes is played, the player isn't supposed to play that note in tune. But the notation doesn't specify, how much out-of-tune it is to be played. Thus every single performance can have a completely different feel to it, and thus each performance can be in effect a different composition. > Though Kate's music is out of the ordinary, I don't hear anything that could > not be written in standard notation. Come on! How are you going to describe bizarre timbres, feedback, distortion, vocal inflections, breathing sounds, studio effects, microtonality, machine noises, animal and jungle sounds, guitar solos (ever notice how sheet music that you buy always says nothing but "guitar solo" at the guitar solo part, and doesn't give you the music for it?), screams, helicopters, etc.? > In fact, from the reviews I've read about her work, I've gathered that > much of her music *is* scored traditionally (ie. string accomp). The only time Kate Bush uses musical notation is when a (classically trained) musician is hired who wants the music written down rather than sung or played on a piano for them. And even then, she doesn't look for how closely they can reproduce what was written down, but for how they can introduce interesting imperfections that make the music more emotional. I suspect that she makes them play parts over and over again, until she gets something that is perfectly imperfect. > From what I know about the Fairlight CMI, it's sequencer uses > conventional notation. I hear no evidence of sequencer usage (except for rhythm tracks perhaps) in any of Kate's music, and even if there were, I'm absolutely sure she wouldn't enter the music via notation, but by playing it. > So why the claim that Kate Bush has gone beyond traditional notation? Because she doesn't need it, she doesn't use it, and because there is absolutely no way the album "The Dreaming" could be described using musical notation such that aything remotely like it could be recreated from it without already knowing what the album was like. Again, all this describes many musical artists -- not just Kate Bush. "Over the quavers Drunk in the bars" Doug Alan nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (or ARPA)