Subject: Re: [linux-audio-dev] XAP: a polemic
From: David Gerard Matthews (dgm4+@pitt.edu)
Date: Tue Dec 17 2002 - 05:17:18 EET
Pascal Haakmat wrote:
>16/12/02 16:51, Paul Davis wrote:
>
>>western music's emphasis on integral beats per bar has led to a
>>slipping away of a great deal of the fun and beauty to be found in
>>other musical traditions. i've recommended it before, and i'll do it
>>again now:
>>
>
>I find your exposition on Indian rhythms fascinating and very
>interesting, but I'm afraid I don't see how it relates to a discussion
>about designing musical instruments.
>
>I do not believe that the goal of instrument design should be to
>accomodate every possible musical expression under the sun. A musical
>instrument is always part of a culture and a history and this defines
>its use.
>
Because that's why a lot of us turned to making music with computers
instead of
only with acoustic instruments. Speaking for myself, I greatly respect
and genuinely
love music from many different cultures (Indian, Middle Eastern,
Korean...), but my
own music is pretty much purely western. However, western musicians
from Steve
Reich to Brian Eno have studied and been strongly influenced by Indian
and African
rhythmic concepts, and incorporated ideas from those concepts into their
own work.
I do not think that the design of the piano is fundamentally broken
because it is unable
to perform the microtonal intervals I like to use; I simply use
instruments which can.
One cannot approach the design of a synthesizer API the way one
approaches the design of,
say, the violin. In the case of the violin, an instrument of originally
Middle Eastern origin
was borrowed into Europe, and adapted over time to the needs of European
music, and then
(at least in Iran) borrowed back into Middle Eastern music with some
slight modifications.
However, if you look back to even the very early history of electronic
music, you see an
attempt to create instruments which transcend cultural and aesthetic
boundaries: the Theremin
makes no assupmtions of equal temperament, and the ondes Martenot,
although possessing a
12-tone keyboard, can be played in any scale. We have a unique
opportunity, because of the
multicultural nature of the postmodern era, to design instruments
capable of accomodating
as many aesthetic positions as exist. This, as I see it, is a good thing.
I'll personally probably never use a beat-synced arpeggiator, but it's
absolutely essential that
a modern synth API allow for such a thing, because so much tekno and
rave music depends
upon it. Similarly, much "modern western classical" as well as many
non-western musics
require non 12-TET tunings, and arbitrary non-simultaneous tempi.
(These last items are
also, it has been noted, useful in ambient music and soundscapes.)
-dgm
>
>It makes little sense to say that the piano is a flawed instrument
>because it is so closely tied to Western musical values. In fact the
>opposite is true: the piano is one of the great instruments precisely
>because it lends itself so well to the expression of Western musical
>values.
>
>Modern technology (and software in particular) allows us to design
>incredibly flexible instruments without needing to commit to any
>particular musical tradition at all. That doesn't mean that doing so
>is also always a good idea.
>
>After all, is it preferable to have a piece of wood with the potential
>to become any kind of instrument, or a guitar?
>
>Pascal.
>
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