Thought for the day - January 28, 2001

Subject: Thought for the day - January 28, 2001
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 12:18 AM

Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art.

~ Charlie Parker ~

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - January 28, 2001
From: AllisonA(Animaterra)
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 07:08 AM

Amen, sister! Lately I'm more and more aware of how much there is to music. I've always known it was an essential part of my own existance but I'm beginning to have a missionary zeal about getting others to either make or at least be around live music.
Last night I was at a musical friend's birthday party. I didn't eat a bite, I barely drank, but I sat in the room where music was being made and played and sang till hours past my bed time, until my SO's weary and plaintive gaze finally got to me and I staggered home. Another party, with just chatting or cds and I would have been home by 9!

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - January 28, 2001
From: katlaughing
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 10:09 AM

Good for you, Allison! Thanks!

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - January 28, 2001
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 11:39 AM

Of course, this is romantic nonsense and basically wrong. Without boundaries, lines, rules, there can be no art, only chaos. Playing with the rules, pressing against them, violating them, fulfilling them in new ways, is the creative process. Charlie's sentiments are the sort of lies -- his own creativity was deeply subversive of the rules, but could not have been there without them -- that have wrecked more potentially creative people than any other, except the lie that the boundaries and rules are all that you need to make art.
see yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - January 28, 2001
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 12:14 PM

Peter's right about the creative musical process involves working with rules and around them and inside them; but Charlie Parker is right about music having no ultimate boundaries.

There's an infinite set of types of music, and to be on of those types there are rules; if it's a waltz, it's got to be 3/4, no arguments. So if you change around a waltz so that it isn't 3/4, it's some other type of music. And maybe it's a type of music that hasn't been in existence before, and the imaginary boundaries of music generally has been extended.

No different from poetry - if it's a sonnet it's got to have one set of rhymes, if it doesn't it's not a sonnet, but that doesn't stop it being poetry. And the same when you abandon rhynme, or abandon metre, it's can still be poetry.

Most of the time I seem to prefer to work within a set of rules, and prefer artists who do the same, but that's personal preference rather than a macro-rule..

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - January 28, 2001
From: NightWing
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 01:57 PM

Don't know whether I agree with this or not. I've long used rap music and beat poetry as my examples of the boundary conditions. While musical instruments are indeed used in performances of both, IMO [I don't have humble ones] neither rap nor beat poetry is "music". "Art" yes, most definitely. But not "music".

(And no, I'm not merely reacting from the point-of-view of someone who doesn't like rap)

Comments?

BB,
NightWing

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - January 28, 2001
From: Peter T.
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 02:14 PM

I would personally say that rap is well within any boundaries I know of (except maybe the content). The rythmic structure is straight out of Old English -- a four beat line with a mid line caesura, heavy alliteration (the rhyming is a bit later). If you read the Seafarer or the Wanderer (approx. 700 A.D.) with a rap machine, they work perfectly. I have done it in public.

yours, Peter T.

Subject: RE: Thought for the day - January 28, 2001
From: Gypsy
Date: 28 Jan 01 - 02:43 PM

Goodness Peter, what an education you must have! Wow! Any way, while rap is not MY music, it certainly is SOMEONES music. And every generation is entitled to their own music.