[Glice]

So, listening to Throbbing Gristle today - got a copy of the 10CD TG+ thing recently - and quite admiring the guitar work of, I think, Cosi Fanni Tutti. Mainly because it's not very guitar-y. And I started thinking about non-musicians who are also good musicians.

So, the likes of Philip Jeck who doesn't really play a 'proper' instrument, or play anything ostensibly 'musical' but still manage to make beautiful music. Also, the like of Keith 'AMM' Rowe who plays guitar but doesn't play it in a guitar-y way.

I've got a few other non-musician musicians in mind, but I thought I'd float this out there, see what you lot think.

NB, I'm not terribly interested in people who make noise - when done well, very good, but noise (the genre) is necessarily opposed to the idea of musicality. I'm thinking of people who make beautiful music in spite of the way they make it. If that doesn't make sense, well, fuck you and your people.

I've always thought that Fennesz was a non-musician until i've found out that he used to play the guitar. What i admire about Jeck is that he doesn't set himself to be an innovative musician by using those dansette record players. He seems more preoccupied with making poetical music with un- traditional tools. As i've just re-watched 'Alchemists Of Sound', a special mention should also go to John Baker, who used small pieces of tape to create some of the most ahead of its time music, still relevant today. Things like that can be pulled off if there is a musical mind full of ideas, as simple as that. Regarding the noise mention: very few people master that sort of thing, but it seems like a world inhabited by way too many people with scarce ideas but willing to make themselves heard more than ever.

[HaydenAsche]

I think I know what you're talking about and the only example I can really think of is Yellow Swans. While they might be considered 'noise' they do the guitar much differently than the majority of other noise/improv bands and much differently than how one is supposed to do the guitar.

[Gulasch Noir]

Hm, are you talking about musicians, you could say in a polemic way, they sound like 3 year olds, who never played any instrument before, but do have an appeal to you? If so, then the Godz and the Shaggs come to mind.

[Gulasch Noir]

The Godz, only partially .... Also the shadow ring, but they don't have much appeal to me.

[MellySingsDoom]

Mine would be: Bruce Russell, early Blixa Bargeld, early Consumer Electronics (a 14-year old with a shortwave radio shouting abuse at people), Henri Chopin (probably the only 70-something sound-maker who can still really piss off people) - people who all make music which involves a fair bit of 'noise', but isn't totally noise, if you see what I mean.

[noumenal]

Yeah, instruments, because of the way they're tuned and standard techniques, can begin to sound cliche in the wrong hands. I agree with this. SY gets around this of course because of the alternate tunings. As do others. There are so many instruments out there, why always guitar?

I don't have any good examples really, but I must say that those guitar technique books are a huge problem--they teach a very prescribed method that locks people into certain fingerings and so on. This goes back centuries (have you ever seen those technique books from the early 17th century?). I always find it interesting when someone who has mastered a certain instrument picks up a new instrument and teaches it to themself. This yields weird but good results.

I think the problem of cliche technique and whatnot is amplified in improvised music, for obvious reasons. There's nothing worse than a bad guitarist or pianist who uses the same formulas all the time.

An aside: I have some great examples of some composers that exploited the tuning, instrument layout, or technique of a certain instrument:

1. Stravinsky-Petroushka-The scene in Petroushka's room when the white and black keys on the piano battle it out and
2. Berg-Violin Concerto - the open strings of the violin form an integral part of the 1st movement's structure

[Savage Clone]

Originally Posted by noumenal

There are so many instruments out there, why always guitar?

Yeah, you're right. I'll spend the next 25 years perfecting my own idiosyncratic and totally original method on triangle instead. The years between 1982 and now on that overused guitar were merely preparation.


I do find it hilarious that the guy on this board who is the most obsessed with pen-and-paper symphony music from a couple of hundred years ago is talking about what is or isn't hackneyed, tired or suffocated by "convention."

Don't take this as an attack either, noumenal. I don't mean it like that; it's just funny is all.

If i got the first post right, the thread isn't about replacing a guitar with a flute or a flute with a guitar, but it's about using non-instruments as a compositional tool. Or perhaps using guitars as , say ,tabletop instruments etc etc. The mention of Rowe and Jeck made me think of that.

[Savage Clone]

Hafler Trio come to mind, as does Steven Stapleton.
Chris Watson too, though I don't know that his work really qualifies as "music" per se.

[noumenal]

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

I do find it hilarious that the guy on this board who is the most obsessed with pen-and-paper symphony music from a couple of hundred years ago is talking about what is or isn't hackneyed, tired or suffocated by "convention."

Don't take this as an attack either, noumenal. I don't mean it like that; it's just funny is all.

Yeah, OK, I see how it's funny, sort of. But for the record, those works I mentioned are less than 100 years old.

Oh, and I'm not as anti-guitar as Glice. In fact, I wouldn't say I'm anti-guitar at all. In a lot of ways, it's not just one instrument. But, if it wasn't so prevalent, then people wouldn't get so tired of it, that's all.

As far as pen-and-paper symphony music goes....Well, I'm actually more obsessed with chamber music, but that's just being picky and lame. Anyway, the classical tradition NOW suffers from the same problems as all music--popular music inherited anxiety of influence. I mean, the post-mod plight.

The classical tradition managed just fine for over 300 years, perfecting the means to avoid cliche and convention--because it was a coherent practice, unlike 20th-century popular music. The idea that anything written between 1600 and 1945 is cliche or hackneyed is just plain silly. It's old news--something might have been cliche in 1809, but we usually don't remember that stuff and the bite is gone anyway, if you know what I mean. So, really, I don't get what you mean. If someone wrote a symphony that sounded like 5th-rate Mozart today, then that would be cliche and tired, etc. But a real Mozart symphony from the late eighteenth century (39 is my favorite) isn't cliche at all. It's old, but we listen with un-innocent ears. I mean, I know it's 200-odd years old. If you want to point your pole at the classical world TODAY and catch some fine fresh cliche, then just motor over to the academic waters and try your luck. I won't name names, but I'm thinking of my alma mater. The cliche argument only really works for contemporary music--this is what I'm saying. It's a now problem or issue. Music that was cliche a long time ago is certainly not what I'm obsessed with and it's not possible for it to be cliche today. This is something that bugs me.

The Velvet Underground proabaly sounded pretty un-cliche in 1967. If a band puts out a record today that sounds exactly like VU, we would snicker. But we listen to the original records as if we were in the late 60's. Just because it's cliche now, doesn't mean that it was cliche then. When I listen to Beethoven's 3rd, I put myself in the early 19th century. Same thing.

[Savage Clone]

I know Stravinsky is more recent.
But the fact remains that an awful lot of people have violins, horns and all the rest, and they all have methods to so-called "mastery" that can make one fall prey to the kinds of problems we are talking about. Anything that is a known and mass-produced instrument will have an awful lot of practitioners, not just guitar.
I was just speaking to the tiredness of the same classical pieces being trotted out year after year for decades or centuries with extremely minimal "interpretations" being done by the conductor or musicians. Honestly, a lot of times it's like reading a book for the 80th time and simply having one or two different words being given italics or bold print in each chapter.
And in any case, I wasn't trying to make you defend your position or anything, I was just making a little jab.

Edit:
I am making no value judgments on classical music, though most of it simply does not speak to me on a deep and resonant level and I find it difficult to connect with in anything other than an academic way most of the time. A powerful piece of music should have fans and torchbearers hundreds of years later; any musician would be so lucky to have their work survive for so long.

ErikM is also a good example. He is a former guitarist but certainly not in the traditional sense.

[noumenal]

I'm high on coffee. Thus the wordiness and defensiveness.

On the whole, I think that this idea of getting tired of the way an instrument sounds is really kind of weird and a product of reproduction. And really, it's just a surface thing. We're so obsessed with new, new, new, but it's really a shallow surface style thing that is of little consequence in the long run.

About classical music, I know that it doesn't speak to a lot of people on a deep level. The only reason it does for me is because that's where I started. It was the first music I listened to and played. I didn't get into anything else until I was about 19 and in college. So most things I say about rock music are bullshit. I've never been in a band or anything and I don't know what I'm talking about most of the time. This is how I got into classical: playing the music and listening to it during my formative years, starting when I was 12. Whatever people get into when they're young is going to stick with them forever and mean the most to them. I come from a southern lower-middle class background, and my parents like the Allman Brothers, so, anomaly. Anybody wants to really get into classical music should play it, play it, play it, play it.

[Everyneurotic]

Originally Posted by sarramkrop

I've always thought that Fennesz was a non-musician until i've found out that he used to play the guitar...

he played guitar when i saw him live a couple of weeks ago, dude's an octopus.

Sorry, what i meant to say there was that he used the guitar in his music before, but i wasn't aware that he could also play it. Was he any good? I missed him when he played here recently.

[Everyneurotic]

he's by no means a stage act, all his movements are for the music and he's doing like seven things at the same time to make his shit; but the music he did was amazing!!! he did drone pieces and let them develop and hang in the air long enough when he would switch to another piece almost immediately. i'll be posting a full on review on my zine/blog soon.

excellent. check this out:

Live at Cave 12, Geneva
This edit was taken on the short Touch tour of Switzerland [with Philip Jeck & Hazard] in October 2002
Listen
Download

[Iain]

Originally Posted by noumenal

(have you ever seen those technique books from the early 17th century?).

Nothing good to contribute just yet, I'm sleepy. I just wanted to say this is one of my favourite sentences in recent memory.

It is possible creating a whole piece of music or song making it sound like it was played by a human being, down to the erratic way an instrument might sometimes sound. How about that?