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From: nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan)
Newsgroups: net.music
Subject: Re: Volume
Message-ID: <4549@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 25-Jun-85 09:36:51 EDT
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.4549
Posted: Tue Jun 25 09:36:51 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 27-Jun-85 06:07:55 EDT
References: <4450@mit-eddie.UUCP> <353@mhuxr.UUCP> <1099@pyuxd.UUCP> <356@mhuxr.UUCP> <1105@pyuxd.UUCP> <359@mhuxr.UUCP>
Distribution: net.music
Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 128

["I don't want work -- just want to bang on my drum all day!"]

> From: etan@tellab1.UUCP (Nate Stelton)
> Will the REAL Doug Alan please stand up?

I'm the real one, and if any other message apparently from me comments
on Nate Stelton's message, will someone please tell me, because these
forgeries screw up our mailer.

> From: mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON)

> I never said rhythm is the single most important element in music.
> I did say that rhythm is at the core of successful music.

Marcel, you can't pull the cashmere over my eyes.  You said that "music
*is* rhythm".

> What someone chooses to fix upon as the single most important element
> in a given piece is a matter of opinion. I make the argument that a
> successful piece, whatever the criterion for success, will *also* be
> found to be rhythmically successful. Conversely, I also believe that
> an unsuccessful piece, however unsuccessful is defined (a matter of
> opinion) will *also* be rhythmically unsuccessful.

I don't accept this Marcel.  If this were true then we could take any
successful piece of music and replace all the instruments, drums, etc.,
by new instruments, such that the rhythmic qualities are the same, but
also such that each instrument can only play at one pitch, and all the
instruments play at that same one pitch, and get a new piece of music
which is also successful.  Now, we might have some trouble
distinguishing between the instruments in this case, so we might have to
allow the instruments to have a very slight degree of freedom in pitch,
just so that they can use the slight pitch differences to define rhythms
and to distinguish instruments.  In any case, using this process I think
you will be able to turn a lot a very succussful music into a lot of
unsuccessful noise, so your assertion seems clearly false.

> WHy is that? Well, rhythm marks the passage of Time.

I'd say it's more like time marks the passage of rhythm.

> Rhythmic success keeps us interested in what is coming next.

So does melodic, harmonic, and contrapunctal success.

> Likewise, Time cannot pass in flat fashion. It must keep moving. The
> degree to which it moves, essentially, is a measure of rhythmic
> success.

Marcel, this is just mumbo jumbo!  Time passes fine by itself, without
rhythm or anything.  And who says that the degree to which it moves is a
measure of rhythmic success?  I totally disagree.  I think that
successful rhythm has nothing to do with the degree to which time moves,
whatever that means.  I have found that some very successful rhythms are
very static.  For example, when I saw Laurie Anderson live last year, at
the very beginning of the concert, before anyone came on stage, a drum
machine started up along with an animated film loop.  The drum machine
played, repeating its short little rhythm pattern over and over again,
and it was perfectly synched to the film.  This continued for five
minutes without any change.  Now this may sound boring, but it wasn't in
the slightest.  The beat was strange and captivating.  It was hypnotic,
and made it seem almost as if time were stopped (to use your vague
terminology, Marcel) or running in a loop, for those five minutes.  It
was a very interesting (and musically successful) experience!

> Rereading the above, I realize all of this is really intangible and hard
> to pin down. I hope it makes sense to others.

Not really.  Most probably because it is untrue.

In any case, Marcel, even if I accepted your statements, how would you
then go about "proving" that drum machines are worthless?  You've
already indicated that all instruments provide rhythm.  Therefore, in
music with a drum machine, the drum machine is only providing some of
the rhythm, and there is still an infinite amount of possible rhythmic
variation that the other instruments can provide.

I've, in previous postings, mentioned several methods that can and have
been used to create successful music using drum machines.  You never
responded to any of those claims, though, Marcel.  In a sense, you can
philosophize from first principals, all you want to, to "prove" that
music with drum machines can't possibly be successful, but proof by
example is still one of the most accepted forms of proof.  There exists
highly successful music that uses drum machines, therefore drum machines
can be used in successful music.  QED.

In my opinion, rhythm is far from the most important element in music.
All music may have rhythm, but so what?  Does that make rhythm most
important?  No.  All novels have a plot.  But is the plot the most
important element in all novels?  No.

When asking ourselves such questions as what is the most important
element in music, we might consider, which change would have the most
prominent effect on a piece of music.  Would changing the rhythm of a
piece of music or changing the pitches in its melody or changing the
harmonies change the piece of music the most?  Would changing the plot
or the character development in a novel change the novel more?  I think
the answer will be different for different pieces of music and for
different novels.

In my opinion, it is counterpoint that is the single most important part
of any piece of music.  And I don't mean just melodic counterpoint, but
rhythmic counterpoint too.  What I really mean is that it is not any
single component of a piece of music that is most important, but that
the *relationship* between the components is THE single most important
aspect of music.

Now we can see that drum machines have some very interesting and
important uses in music.  One method of creating an interesting
relationship in music is to have a fairly static drum machine beat, and
have the rhythms of the other instruments not fully conform to this
rhythm, but weave in and out of it.  It's not the drum machine rhythm
here that is important, but the relationship between the other rhythms
and the static rhythm.  In a sense, there is now a rather complicated
implied rhythm in the music that is defined by the difference between
the static rhythm and the flowing rhythms.  Two clashing static rhythms
can create a complex relationship between the two that creates a very
complicated implied rhythm.  And drum machine progressions can create an
effect where one static rhythm flows into another static rhythm, for a
rather interesting perceptual effect, where perhaps time seems to move
in lumps.  Time is frozen for a little while and then suddenly jumps
forward, only to be frozen for a little while again, etc.

			The only rule is
			There are no rules

			Doug Alan
			 nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (or ARPA)