Electronic Music Philosophy

My blog today arises from one particularly long and impassioned response to my last one which was about gear fetishization in electronic music. There were quite a number of responses to that blog (which has become my most read blog) both on this site and in the Facebook groups where I posted it and a good discussion was generated. However, some people did seem to be coming at what I had written in that blog from fairly traditional and unreflective positions, as I judged it, and this lead to me seeing that in some people's responses quite a lot was assumed that shouldn't have been and quite a lot of things were equated with one another that shouldn't have been either.

           Morton Subotnick with a Buchla 200e system and a Livid controller

Now I am very, very aware that electronic music is a wide subject. It is delineated, in many ways, by what were the two stand out pieces of electronic music commercially at the beginning of this commercial electronic music era back in the mid to late 60s. Those pieces were Switched On Bach by Wendy Carlos and Silver Apples Of The Moon by Morton Subotnick. With these two records, which are completely different in musical style and intention even though they are both electronic, we see instantiated a kind of broad choice regarding how electronic music is going to be. And each choice comes with a whole philosophy of music attached and a direction of travel laid out in front of it. Wendy Carlos was playing traditional music on her Moog synthesizer in Switched On Bach and Subotnick was playing what he thought of as new music on his Buchla 100. Carlos's music followed traditional ideas of music and attempted to transform it by means of the synthesizer. Subotnick was simply trying to do something new.

Switched On Bach and Silver Apples Of The Moon

Even the covers of the albums seem to project different motives and ideals.

It is important to say that there will be no talk here of either direction being wrong in this discussion. Although I am very happy to pick my own side in this binary choice, that does not mean I think the other has no merit. In what follows I hope to explain why I personally feel the way I do. Hopefully both those reading this who agree and disagree with me can explain themselves too. For this is an on-going conversation here and not one that can be settled by a simple choice once for all time. Music is a subject in which you can be influenced by diverse and contradictory sources and, for example, one could learn plenty simply by listening to both Subotnick and Carlos rather than one or the other. The same is true when reading the arguments of those on both sides of this debate. For example, I was lead into much thought about this subject when reading what I thought were the mistaken comments of the person who replied to my last blog, the one that motivates this one. We likely start and finish in different places. But this doesn't mean we can't get insights from each other. Such is the spirit in which I discuss this matter.

The heart of my argument here is that the whole of someone's understanding about electronic music is directly influenced and originated by their electronic music philosophy. I see this as a "top down" process. What you think about the big things (like what is good, inventive or interesting - and why you do) will direct your practice and how you carry on with the smaller things which fit into the whole. We can perhaps see this in the examples of Carlos and Subotnick I have already given if you know the albums I referred to or something about their consequent careers. (If you don't know I suggest that researching this would be of great interest and benefit to you.)  One thing this means is that I don't think there is any one philosophy or guiding idea which is applicable to all forms of electronic music or all reasons to make it. This, I hope, should be fairly widely accepted. It is a completely different thing to play concertos on a Moog modular rig than it is to make harsh noise with electronic boxes and FX pedals on a table in a warehouse. And it takes a different philosophy, with its consequent beliefs, motives, goals and knowledge, to do either. There is no one way to do things or one motive to do them. The ways are as many as can be imagined and the motives are as many as there are people.

I state this first because that was the main thing that my respondent, I think, didn't see. He came to my post with his own ideas and ways of doing things, things that had been blessed by probably years of his practice as well as the blessing of those he had learnt from and, for him, that was enough. I understand that. The problem is, it wasn't enough, not for a broad understanding of all the possible forms of electronic music practice. For "electronic music" is a wide name that covers a lot of diverse things. And this is the problem. If you try to think about those two albums by Carlos and Subotnick again how do you begin to describe them whilst keeping them under one roof? They both are using synthesizers to be sure but even their equipment was designed based on opposing philosophies. They were using instruments meant to be functional in different ways and these ways delimited, shaped and directed the musical possibilities. Skill on the musical keyboard, such as Wendy Carlos has, would be of great help on the Moog. It is useless on the Buchla 100 because there is no keyboard to play! And what good would knowledge of either be if presented with Ableton Live and a Push controller or some turntables and a drum machine or some drone synths that had no labels on the knobs or a collection of touch devices? All of these types of equipment enable "electronic music" to be made as do circuit bent children's toys, theremins and any other number of electronic things.

But let's get into it before this blog becomes a long ramble instead of the tightly focused argument I hope it to be. I intend to argue against the position that my respondent took up yesterday and so I need to lay out concisely where I saw him as coming from. This position, which was meant to be applied to the whole of electronic music, anything that could be so described, was delineated in the following way:

Quality of output was linked to "musical ability" or "skill".

Technical ability or learning or training were assumed to be superior to random play, pure experimentation or happy accidents.

"Electronic music" was assumed to be a new form of sound as opposed to a new way of doing music.

Intention was prioritized over accident.

"Being good at music" was equated with knowing certain canonized things, having validated skills and having been trained in professionalized ways.

Now I appreciate there is some overlap between the five things I've noted there. They are my summation of the philosophy I was seeing at work in one response that was given to my last blog. It is a philosophy I come across quite often from electronic musicians who I regard as people wanting to do what Morton Subotnick labels "new old music". This is music which relies on the traditional ideas of music going back centuries within western music. These ideas are as basic as that music should rely on melody and harmony to be musically desirable as well as all the technical knowledge of chords and scales, for example. The essential description of this music is music that is traditional except in that it is now made with electronic devices. There is nothing wrong with this music. It is the dominant form of electronic music and certainly the one we are all most used to. But, and this is my point, it is ONLY ONE WAY to think about electronic music at all. Subotnick and many others since have demonstrated that time and time again. 

So let's kick off with the first point, that musical quality is linked to musical ability or skill. The first point to note in response here is that dependent on your form of electronic music and your tools then what skill or ability is required is wildly different. I don't see how knowledge of musical scales or keyboard chops are relevant to someone who is a noise artist or a turntablist, for example. There are plenty of examples of those who make minimalistic, beat-driven electronic music who have no musical training of any kind and so have not been educated in traditionally understood musical ways and yet they seem to have an instinct for creating rhythms and grooves which can make packed rooms jive. Is this based in their skill or ability? Is the quality of their work directly related to how much of this they have? I don't think so at all. At best we might say they have a feel or an instinct for what works musically. (PS none of this is meant to suggest that any form of electronic music cannot be done better or worse. It is to question whether this must be because of skill or ability in a direct way.)

Next we come upon a common assumption, that ability, learning and training are superior to play, experimentation (in the pure sense of not knowing what you are doing until something happens) and accidents. This I simply refer to as a base prejudice for one over the other, the expression of the dominant electronic music philosophy active in the person concerned. It is to choose one approach and designate it better AND NOTHING MORE THAN THAT. Again, there are lots of examples of relatively untalented musicians with no training that have undertaken no formal learning but yet who make music that packs stadiums or dancehalls. This particular point almost seems to veer into snobbishness, it seems to me. When you hear a piece of music you have no idea what the musical background of the creator is. You don't know if they know any musical theory at all or if they have been trained to the highest classification possible. But you must surely admit that if you hear some piece of music you like then all these things are in that moment irrelevant. We can codify this fact by noting that there is no such algorithm operative in electronic music as "more skill = better music". Its simply untrue. More skill equals more skillful music. But more skillful music is not necessary better. 

And so we come to a discussion of electronic music itself and what it is at its heart. This part of anyone's electronic music philosophy is very important for it will, in large part, direct where you want to go with it. Those who think that electronic music is merely normal music but made with synthesizers and electronic music devices will make music as traditionally understood and have a bias towards that as what they see as "valid electronic music". This is because for them music hasn't changed just the devices for making it and the sounds that can be made have. But there's another way. This is the way which sees that electronic music is not old music done with new things but THE POSSIBILITY FOR A NEW MUSIC. This is the direction Subotnick has taken. It is the direction Buchla took when designing his synthesizers. It is the direction noise artists in Japan have taken. It the direction the first Kosmische artists took in Germany when they made space rock or abstract, atonal sound washes. This is not old music made with new things. Its new forms of music. So when making electronic music asking yourself what you think you are doing is a vital question to answer for yourself.

Affenstunde by Popol Vuh from 1970. This is an example of the new Kosmische music that began to appear in Germany in the late 60s and early 70s. It includes one of the first European uses of the Moog synthesizer and one of its first recorded uses for original music.

Part of the traditional paradigm of music is the idea that music is something intentionally done by a creator who purposefully and with a plan creates his or her masterpiece. This has in many places been thought to be the definition of what "valid music" is. But is it? One among many things that electronics have given musicians the ability to achieve now is randomization. Randomization is musically desirable because it breaks things up and can disrupt something that feels too machine-like or regular. It can add what is sometimes called "human feel" because human beings, unlike machines, cannot be clocked. Indeed, if we measure humans making music to the limits of our ability we see that human rhythm is not straight. Its off, it varies. We are not machines, right? We see a similar thing in oscillators. People complain about the machine-like digital oscillators which are measured and perfect and favour the analog ones which are prey to physical variation and imperfection. They say they sound "warmer". People like Dave Smith put digital oscillators in their synths because the precision is useful to the synth builder. But they then give the user the ability to dial that precision out for reasons of musical taste (oscillator slop).

But let's bring this back to intentionality. Put simply, this, yet again, is only one way to see music rather than the only game in town and it is electronics which have changed the game and required the reorientation of the participants. We see with the burgeoning interest in modular synthesis, for instance, the possibility for pieces of music that are more conducted than played, more steered than precise expressions of a human intention. This is even the attraction of this kind of electronic music, that even the nominal creator of the piece does not know exactly how it will turn out. This not knowing is the desired and appealing feature of the performance. This is not music that could be notated or even repeated and it absolutely is not following the old "intentionality" paradigm. If anything, it has slid into a co-operative paradigm but one in which machines and devices co-operate with human beings to produce something electronically musical. A similar thing happens in DJ booths where "on the fly" performances occur mixing diverse sources to unpredictable outcomes. Is this "musically invalid"? I say a definite "NO!"

The attitude that I am really arguing against here is a professionalized one. Some people are professional musicians and so must abide by professional standards to survive. I get that. Others wish to imitate them and so preach these same standards since they are the ones they hope will enable them to follow in the footsteps of their heroes. I get that too. But neither of these groups have the right or the ability to thereby delineate what the whole of electronic music should or should not be. Professional bodies are inherently and necessarily conservative. This, after all, is how they police their own standards. The problem is that electronic music is new and creates new, non-professionalized forms, ones that may require different standards or even, clutches pearls, very few standards at all. Of course a professionalized musical tradition will rub up against such ideas and take a different point of view. But we should be able to decipher this and see why. 

Some of the values this new and scary electronic music promotes are ideas such as that self-taught is as valid as traditionally taught, that electronic music is new music and not just new sounds for old music, that an accident caused by some oscillators or some valves or transistors is as valid as me deciding that a C chord should be followed by a G and then an F. Electronic music as a whole allows if not invites the notion that intention and accident or intention and experiment are equally as pregnant with musical possibility as each other. Electronic music enshrines and explicitly enables the notion that a programmer can make music as beautiful, powerful or emotional as a player. Electronics in music takes the old paradigm of music based on knowledge, learning and training and acknowledges that much great music has been and will be made this way but that now, because of electricity, it can all be one big playful experiment instead and that things just as valid, musical and enjoyable are created as  a result.

                     Some anonymous Russian electronic noise artists

There are people who will sniff at this. They sometimes reply to my blogs and insist that although they can see my point it still might be a good idea to get some training or learn some musical knowledge. It might be. But it is not a necessity. You will have a great, thrilling and fulfilling electronic musical life even if you never do that. Or, rather, it is possible. I see those who respond to me in this way as giving voice to where they have come from. That's fair enough. But I must gently remind them that things have changed now in the world of electronic machines. The electronic music world has brought in a lot of non-traditional people who nevertheless have musical impulses and desires and the electronic devices of today allow them to be expressed. This won't be in old ways and, as I hope I have shown, neither should it be necessarily. 

Quality is not necessarily linked to skill or ability.

Ability, learning and training are not necessarily superior to play, experimentation and accidents.

Music with electronics is new music not just new sounds.

Intention and accident are of equal validity.

Being good at music can be as much about instinct as training.

Perhaps, in one last point, I might say that perhaps the most important thing that music made with electronics liberates is the possibility of play. In his response to me my respondent referred disparagingly to "goofing around". I thought that he got this dead wrong. As he referred to it, goofing around was seen as somehow not serious in a world of electronic music which he clearly regarded as a very serious thing indeed. It seemed beyond question to him that "proper" electronic music wasn't something you messed about with. Sorry, my friend, I think you're dead wrong again. Another thing that electronics enables is the ability to goof around, save it and play around with it. Indeed, looping, which is really only goofing around to a purpose, it an actual genre of music as well as a way many electronic musicians build their pieces. Wasn't playing with magnetic tape in former times or building mixtapes, the way a lot of people got into making electronic music in the 80s, for example, really just glorified "goofing around"? And should electronic music be so serious anyway? I know that Bandcamp is full of a million very serious electronic albums made using a "space" theme. One loses count of the electronic albums there named after planets, galaxies and the like or scientific processes. But I say there should be MORE goofing around and not just because it is fun. Its also valid and musically useful too.

Well, that's my latest. I hope you find in it food for thought. Happy electronic music making to all!

If you like articles like this one and have access to Facebook you may like to join the group Electronic Music Philosophy which I curate where I hope we may be able to discuss this music we all love and how it gets made a little more expansively for the benefit of us all. Please feel free to join by clicking the link.

PS Please note that although I often use binary choices in my blogs I am aware things are a lot more nuanced than this. Please read for tone as well as for detail!

Electronic Music Theory and Gear Fetishization

It is good, I think, when you come across electronic musicians who are thinking about what they do. And this seems quite common because electronic music, for one reason and another, seems to attract quite cerebral people. But this is not to suggest that all electronic musicians do this nor that all thoughts are equal. This morning I was reading the website of one electronic musician who posts regularly on Facebook and I couldn't believe what I was reading. He is clearly a person who thinks about what he does but the results of this thinking seemed to be lots of rules about how to go about making electronic music as if there were a right or wrong way to do it. The vision of this person was based on technical skill and proficiency, another choice he had made rather than an unavoidable necessity. The whole philosophy of this person seemed to be very outward looking, as if the job of an electronic musician was to impress anybody who might be looking with what, for want of a better word, might strike someone else as a "professional" image. 

The 0-Coast Synthesizer by Make Noise

This all annoyed the hell out of me. The professional guild of musicians have been trying to hoodwink people for years into thinking that unless you could play your instrument properly or you had this skill or that skill or knew this arcane art that only they could teach you or unless you had the right gear which was truly "pro" then, somehow, what you were doing was invalid, pointless and even laughable. These were the kind of people who, when synthesizers started invading popular music, tried to get electronic music makers banned because they could seemingly do with one finger what they had taken years to learn with their professional notions of what music was about. Electronic music, as popularly conceived, became something which re-wrote the book on what "making proper music" was all about. And it didn't involve music teachers, professional notions of what music even was or even necessarily any playing skill. If I can program a 303 and an 808 I can make music that keeps a club moving all night in this new paradigm. You have to realize that this fact annoys the hell out of some people. So imagine what fiddling with knobs and plugging patch cables here and there does to them! And what comes out of the audio out might not even be a melody!

Now even if a fair number of electronic music makers today don't buy into such professional and misleading notions, perhaps because they have a "punk" ethos that you take what gear you can get and then make the best of it, there are still plenty who do buy into one aspect: gear fetishization. In fact, the Facebook group you probably saw this post advertised in is likely full of people discussing gear, stuff, instruments, look what I've got, isn't that expensive synthesizer great, etc. You get the idea. Other well known forums online, such as Gearslutz or Muffwigglers, are equally places where most often gear is discussed. I find this a bit strange and this is not because it is discussed at all but because it takes up so much space. The cherry on the cake of this sort of thing is the "show your setup" thread that such places always have. What for? It seems quite clear to me that whatever motivates such threads, or taking part in them, it is not a musical impulse. This is something else not to do with music. Maybe its a bit like someone showing you a fantastic sports car. Looks nice but you have no idea if they can even drive it. What's my point in mentioning all this? My point is that electronic music is about music and everything else surrounding musical output, which is the creating and arranging of sounds, is peripheral to that.

Of course, if people want to start "look at my setup" groups, clubs, websites or pages then that's completely up to them. For myself, I'm totally clear that I'm more focused of what comes out of electronic music equipment than what it looks like in your home studio or how much of it hundreds of anonymous Internet people have. From comments and conversations I sometimes have I think a few others are with me too. These people, perhaps people like me, wonder why so much space is given over to stuff and rather less is given over to what you might do with it - which is surely the point of having it at all in the first place? Part of the problem here is the electronic music press and media. A lot of those who write about electronic music write about things rather than ideas. You get puff pieces on what such and such an anonymous maker of trance music in Berlin has as opposed to a discussion of his musical ideas. This is not always true but it seems to be the prevailing direction of travel. Perhaps it is not then so surprising that we consumers and music makers go the same way. But it seems to me that this is arse about face. The fact you can show me your huge modular setup up or your Rick Wakeman style 28 keyboard rig tells me nothing about what you can do with it or how you go about utilizing the huge resources at your command. And, frankly, that is much more interesting than knowing you are rich and can afford a lot of stuff.

This is because I think electronic music, par excellence, is a music of ideas. Or, at least, it should be. And so when I routinely see people complaining about "fart noises" (and you could find such comments every day if you looked) I think that what they are complaining about is a lack of imagination, a void of ideas. Anyone who begins to build a modular synthesizer or buys something like the 0-Coast there is a picture of above can make the "fart noise" very easily and really without trying. This requires no effort or skill. This, I think, is what people complain about. If you think about the history of electronic music in what we might call its commercial period which is now almost exactly 50 years then what we see is a history of ideas with electronics. And that period extends back further with the various radiophonic experiments that took place in various labs in Europe and America even before that. These experiments took place on huge lab equipment largely adapted from radio studio gear. Those working there, people like Pierre Schaeffer in France who invented the Phonogene, were trying to put this equipment to new uses to author sound. What they were doing wasn't strictly conventional and they were coming up with new and controversial ways to do old things but also new things as well. Electronic musicians today with an 0-Coast or a modular or an electronic device of most kinds have the same opportunity that they did. 

This opportunity is not based so much in stuff. Indeed, if I may be so bold, does it REALLY even matter what you have got? You may be one of those who looks down on the guy (or girl!) with their 3 or 4 Volcas (or a Rhythm Wolf!) because you have one of every expensive synthesizer there is. (I assume this is what the "look at my big rig" pics are for?) So what? Its what you do with it that counts. And here's the thing about music: you may make a fantastic piece of electronic sound every time you switch your synths on BUT you'll never be the only one. Jean-Michel Jarre seems like a guy who has one of everything. He has made some of the best electronic music ever as my ears hear it but he has also made some limp dross. In terms of equipment I doubt there is a person on the planet who has had access to more of it than him. He has used (and owned) everything from the huge and rare Arp 2500 to the Fairlight CMI to the new Roland System 8 which seems to be his main keyboard on his current tour. But this doesn't guarantee that his next album (which incidentally is Oxygene 3) will be something you like or want to hear or that it will be musically innovative or interesting. Electronic music is a musician plus electronic equipment (whatever that is) plus IDEAS. And the ideas aren't the least of those things. 

                       Jean-Michel Jarre on his current Electronica Tour

What does this mean for electronic music? It means you should stop worrying about what you've got or not got and starting thinking about how to use it. The most distinctive thing about any electronic music will always be how it sounds. This isn't merely a matter of tone. People can do great things with a Minimoog, for example, but I assure you its just as easy to make rubbish with one too. The same applies to any musical tool whether analog, digital, hardware or software, modular or fixed architecture. No tool yet invented guarantees original, innovative or creative electronic music. This is because that is the bit that you, the user, supplies. So it would be a bit pointless, should you be lucky enough to be rich, to build a mega studio full of every synth desired if it turned out that you didn't have a single interesting musical idea in your head. Such people do exist. They probably spend their time showing off their kit, racking up likes and follows from people led astray by a room full of gear and thinking that that is the goal. Its not wrong to have nice things. But its not really the point either, is it? Synth museums are not places of exciting musical creativity.

But back to the person with whom I started, the man whose website listed all the rules he thought he needed to follow in order to feel professional about what he was doing.  It was all very interesting. But its a million miles away from any understanding of musical expression that I have. And, to be clear, I think that for many people, if not most making electronic music, expression is what it is about. This man also seemed to think that musical proficiency was the basis for taking part as well, how well you could play something. But how does that apply to a music that is primarily about the creation of sounds as is the case with electronics? It occurred to me as I was reading that I have personally eliminated the need for the vast majority of these rules simply by regarding music as a matter of personal expression rather than technical ability. What's more, if you take the view that any musical piece or performance is nothing more than yet another experiment, as many experimental musicians might want you to, then you don't have to worry about artificial notions of how good or bad it was either. These, I find, are stupid terms when assessing music you make in any case.  All rules seem to do is heap personal pressure on the music-maker. And I just don't see why anyone would want to do that. If I were to make any rules there would be just one: don't worry about what you do or how you do it: any sounds you make are perfectly valid and equally worthy. Electronic music is experimentalism pure and simple: there is no right or wrong.

What more of a framework do we need than this? We certainly should not impose the standards of commerciality upon our creativity (unless that is what we are doing and I concede that those for whom making music is their business have to do this). Electronic music has always been a pioneering form of music, a form of music which is about originality, experimentalism and ideas. Since the first music with commercial synthesizers was made in the mid to late 60s numerous whole new genres of music and sounds have been created and become the soundtracks to numerous people's lives.  This is the very heart of what electronic music is about. This is why in previous blogs I've written about the exciting possibilities of machines. A lot of this is to do with the so-called "happy accidents" and the possibility that something electronic may just spit out some sound or phrase which inspires you in a direction that you, as a player, may never have thought of. I personally have 100's of examples of this from my own time making electronic music and you probably do too. Electronic music is not just about playing a tune either. Electronic music is how you build sounds up and weave them together, yes, but its also about creating the sounds themselves. This is what synthesis is! Indeed, much electronic music is just electronic sound and whole genres (such as Japanoise, for example) are based on making a certain sound.

                                Japanese Noise Artist, Merzbow

So I'm very much all in favour of an experimental, non-professional approach to the creation of electronic music, music that becomes an expression of the human through machines. I think it helps to have some idea about what you think you are doing when turning on a synthesizer too. I don't mean in terms of how to use it (much good music has been made by people who had no clue how to use the device in front of them just as it has with the most proficient user of all) but in terms of a philosophy of ideas. I personally find the most joy and excitement in electronic music which is interesting and this is different from simply "good" or "bad", subjective terms which are functionally useless when judging music I think. What I want to hear when I listen is some clue that the music maker was trying to do something specific or get somewhere in particular or musically describe or inhabit some space. If I can see they are doing that then it helps me to appreciate what is going on. In comparison, a simple like or dislike is pretty meaningless. I think what informs this thinking in me is the idea that with electronic music you can go places. You can make new things and you have a blank canvas to do it on. Electronic music can go wherever you want to take it. It can describe the future, as it often does in sci-fi soundtracks, or create whole ideas from nothing. 

Electronic music is as big, or as small, as YOUR imagination. So imagine. Dream crazy dreams!

Racism and Electronics

Like many, I suspect I have sat out the last week in disbelief. I am not American and so, unlike those who are, I will not be directly affected by the recent election. However, it is true to say that its effects ripple around the world. This is literally true on a subject like climate change, a thing Trump and many of his closest allies have disavowed as a scam or made up. My Twitter feed since last Tuesday night has resembled some fictional dystopia. I read that people generally follow those who mirror their own views, the so-called echo chamber, and so people who more or less represent views I would go along with have related with varying degrees of explanatory power and personal involvement just what the American electoral choice means for them. And then there is the nexus of media interests and journalists reporting to their taste. The New York Daily News's Shaun King has been detailing racist incident after racist incident since last Wednesday AM, a sickening and terrifying list of bigotry, hatred and stupidity. I'm sure many would tell me this is their reality, one that as a white European I'm privileged to be able to avoid. They are right, of course, but its no more my fault I was born white than someone else's that they were born something else. But it may be my responsibility to see past my whiteness. If I can.

This whole area of race and nationality annoys, confuses and frustrates me. There are obviously people prepared to use it their advantage, people who see in skin tones or in passports differences, fundamental, unbridgeable differences. I don't see that and I certainly don't WANT to see that. But this is where it gets confusing because there are certainly people of many nationalities, races or creeds who DO want to view themselves as different or set apart based on these things and these are not just malignant, racist people. So it becomes hard to think clearly about such issues and not step on someone else's toes. I'm quite aware that by even writing about this particular hot potato of a subject I may be inadvertently offending someone. And offending anyone is not my aim here. If anything this blog is being written just to address my own person frustrations about and problems with the subject. This is a personal blog not an authoritative article.

As it became clear that racists had captured the White House, something brought home even more now since Trump appointed Steve Bannon of Breitbart infamy as his senior counselor and policy advisor, I wondered what I could do to signal, in my own puny way, some measure of dissent. I am not a political animal. I am not even a social animal. I live my life withdrawn from society. Occasionally, however, I look out of the window from behind my curtains (which are always closed) and am assaulted by the things that for many others are normal, everyday events. Seeing all the hatred, unfairness and egotism of society often makes me feel ill. I have felt ill this past few days too. Its one reason I've deliberately withdrawn from it. Maybe you want to blame me for that. Its true that I can imagine many who are politically engaged who might want to. For such people its a person's duty to fight injustice. And yet, as I see it, so many people's lives are torn up and thrown away as they are totally consumed by politics. I'm aware that if everyone just shut themselves away then opposing forces would win without so much as a fight and that certainly is a concern. But is the alternative that every person opposed must lay down their life on the altar of political differences? That sounds like a recipe for constant conflict and war.

I was about to write that clearly no one wants that but that wouldn't be true, would it? Some do want war. Some do want conflict. Some do want to provoke trouble. The world is full of such damaged humans. And these damaged people damage even more, a repeating tragedy. But must I spend my life fighting them? I ask this question of myself openly like I hope others do too. But I don't think I can tell others what they should do or how they should react. Some people do think they can do that. In my mind this all seems very reminiscent of how it must have felt to be a German in the 1930s. Although Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, his NSDAP party never won an outright majority at an election. The best they got was 43.91% of the vote in the March 1933 election during which their thugs had engaged in much voter intimidation. But even with this intimidation they'd failed to achieve a majority. Hitler had to manipulate the German head of state and outlaw other parties after this win to finally achieve an effective one party state so he could push through laws which made him Germany's dictator. I've been reading about this in the last few days, spurred on to do it having once lived in Germany for a number of years and looking for parallels to other things. I've also always wondered how Nazism could ever have happened. I ask myself what an "ordinary German" must have been thinking. I ask myself what an "ordinary German" was to do about it. I ask that because I've been fortunate to know many good "ordinary Germans".

These aren't simple questions to ask because we know that even at this early stage of the official Nazi regime the first concentration camps were being built and people, especially the communists Hitler despised along with other political opponents, were being disappeared, some never to be seen again. If you were just an ordinary citizen could you afford to show dissent? Would you be prepared to potentially end your life for a point of view? Now for all the modern parallels we may see or want to make (Steve Bannon seems very much like Trump's Goebbels to me) we have to acknowledge that the USA is not (yet) Nazi Germany. But we also need to be aware that there is a very specific racial history to the country we now call America. And this is not just about slavery or black and white as the the recent Dakota Pipeline protests show us. Although no American white racist is apparently aware of this fact, America was not originally white. If this land ever was or is a "white land" then it is only because it was forcibly stolen from indigenous peoples, peoples that were neither black nor white. In many ways these are the forgotten people of what is now known as America. And these people are not "Native Americans" either for they are pre-Americans! America is, as I have heard some of them say, nothing to do with them. America is what came and destroyed and stole where they once lived.

I already feel like I'm getting into deep waters and it would be easy to drown myself in them. Racial difference and racial divides run deep and their currents can easily drag us under. And its not just about the Nazis or American history either. My own country of the UK has experienced racial problems too and racial incidents rose after the Brexit vote much as they have seemingly done in the USA in the last few days. This was inevitable as political victories embolden those who formerly judged the public mood as intolerant of their antediluvian views. But in other countries, too, race and nationality divide. The whole of Europe has been rocked in the last 18 months as Arab and African refugees struggle across a body of water in ramshackle boats or across land from one country to another seeking better conditions to live their lives. Thousands die in the attempt and many make it only to find that the press and media of the countries they land in are hostile to the foreigner or outsider, whipping up resentment and hatred quite openly. Politically, many European countries have parties dedicated to a politics of race. One need only think of Marine Le Pen's Front Nationale in France, Geert Wilders' PVV in the Netherlands or Frauke Petry and the AfD in Germany. And that is before we get to Trump's best British friend, the utterly opportunistic Nigel Farage, a man who once said in public that he would not like Romanians living next door to him.

Its all a terrible, life-affecting mess and I appreciate only too well that many people's lives are materially affected by this reality in a way that mine is not. I wrestle with my conscience over this daily because I cannot help but care about it. I fundamentally do not see differences between people based on nationality or even race (albeit that I leave people to define for themselves who or what they are) and despair that others do. It bothers me that a person's status in this world is based on a passport, something that was really only invented in the recent past anyway. I have spoken before in these blogs about some of my intellectual influences and one of them was the great pragmatist, liberal philosopher, Richard Rorty. Rorty saw justice, racial as well as any other kind, as a matter of an ever increasing "larger loyalty". He saw the task of the human being as to increase the number of people to whom it felt allegiance so that, ultimately, you would feel the same loyalty to one person as you would to any other. You can see that this is a program that is the opposite of difference and division based on something like race or nationality. Such differences, so Rorty thought, had to be negotiated away so that, eventually, the words foreigner or stranger would completely lose their meaning and emotional force. Now clearly this is a white, liberal, American philosophy professor's way of expressing these ideals but such was the way they came to me. I heartily agree with this idea.

And so it was in this spirit that, as I was looking back over my podcast series, The Electronic Oddities Podcast, it struck me that the people in it were almost totally white. I have often tried to focus on "pure electronics" within the series and maybe that just is a white domain. I even wrote an article about this for this blog and, in the writing of it, managed not to notice that the famous electronic musician, Richard Devine, is apparently of Asian origin even though he was born in the USA. I had always considered him to be white and it never occurred to me to think anything else. I was embarrassed to have this pointed out to me in various Facebook comments where I had posted the article. However, rather fewer (one, in fact) pointed out that the female synthesist, Bana Haffar, wasn't white either. It may be that she is not as well known, of course, but I admit I had mis-identified her knowingly to see if anyone picked up on it. As I say, just one pointed out to me she is of Lebanese heritage. However, as I now look back on my podcast series it does look like a catalog of white guys in the main and, yes, this does bother me. In the article I had previously written I had asked for examples of non-white synthesists and whilst I got some names back it wasn't lots and lots. So it must either be that they don't exist or, more likely, that the white clubs that are the electronic music discussion groups online are all white people talking about other white people.

This bothers me because in the abstract electronic music I have come to favour I do not see difference and division. I see in the swirling, noisy movements of an oscillator a lack of definition, a refusal to be anything other than a continual becoming. I see the politics of difference and division as, once again, human hubris, a knowing too much which is, in reality, the mere assertion of ignorance. My vision of electronic music, a music of electronics, does not square with a racist worldview but with Rorty's "larger loyalty" instead. And so I do not want to present a podcast which is a "white man's music". It should not matter who did it, where they are from or what gender they are. Whilst recognizing that people do come from differing cultures and inform their identities by such things, in some sense I think electronic music should be colour blind. I look back on my own music history and how I came to be aware of music itself and it is often dominated by black musicians. My mother played The Supremes when I was a child on an old radiogram. I lived next door to a Jamaican family growing up and they played reggae and ska music. The latter was the first kind of music I took as "my own" when I started to like music for myself. In my teenage years, as I discovered the synthesizer which was played by white men, I simultaneously learnt about black disco, soul and funk and this has always been a musical grounding for my appreciation of sound. I would be missing a huge musical education without it.

I have yet to find huge hidden reserves of non-white electronic music for my podcast. (Of a "pure electronics" kind, at least. If we open out the definition then "electronic music of colour" is everywhere.) I have begun to search. I am intrigued to find if there are some hidden forms somewhere that can broaden and enrich the music that I have heard so far. And this is what it would be: an enrichment. I know, for example, that there is a large, and to me largely unknown, Japanese electronic culture. I think it needs to be remembered that there is no loss involved in finding something different. It only adds more variety to the whole. This week's podcast will be music entirely from non-Caucasian artists and, yes, this is a deliberate choice. I've been listening to the music chosen for it as I wrote this blog and it is a beautiful edition full of diverse styles and moods. Apart from the few known artists I've included, the music itself, which is largely instrumental, gives no clues as to its origin and that is how it should be. It is just music made by humans that anyone should be able to enjoy. I unashamedly say, as I've said before in these blogs, that I strive not to see artificial differences but just people of one race, the human race. To some that will make me a "globalist", something in opposition to their narrow nationalism. They are right because it is. No nation is going to survive that sees itself in isolation from the rest of the planet it is but a tiny part of. All of humanity's problems will be solved together. OR NOT AT ALL. It is my tiny and probably unnoticed gesture to try and curate a podcast series that includes electronic music made by all kinds of people as an expression of this. To be honest, it troubles me how white so much of a more electronic kind of music seems to be. One thing I can do is give a little light to that which isn't.

The Electronic Oddities Podcast is at https://www.mixcloud.com/DrExistenz/

What Kind of Electronic Musician Are You?

I don't know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense. - David Lynch

Today's blog will not be for everyone since it is to be my own ruminations on a couple of interviews I've done recently with Marc Doty, synth educator, demonstrator and archivist, and Tony Rolando, founder and main inspiration behind Make Noise, the synthesizer manufacturer. To be straight with you, I'm going to discuss below my own thoughts on something that everyone fundamentally has and needs: a context for setting their understanding of electronic music within. To be clear: we all have this and we all need this. If you had no context to set your understanding of electronic music within or no way to relate the electronic sounds you hear or make to one another, or to lots of others you've heard or made before, then all the music you make would be both equal and meaningless, equally meaningless. It is having this framework, what I'm here calling a philosophy, that enables you to decide good or bad, desirable or undesirable, music or noise (where these are seen as opposites - and they need not be). That's why I think you should keep reading if you make or listen to electronic music. Because this concerns you. But I understand if you want all this baggage left undisturbed and undiscussed. Many do. Thanks for reading this far and I hope you'll stop by to read another blog soon.

                               The Lyra 8 Organismic Synthesizer

For those of you still here I want to start by addressing a number of things that Marc Doty brought up in his interview with me recently. Although I've never met Marc personally, I like him quite a lot. A lot of the reason for that is that he has opinions on electronic music and electronic music making and he is prepared to explain them and, if necessary, defend them too. It probably helps that, instinctively, I want to disagree with Marc's views as well. Wise people realize that they learn as much, if not more, from those they disagree with as those who share similar views. When differing views can be discussed, or contrasted and compared, in a spirit of mutual respect this is even better. Marc is certainly a person who can do this and I value that greatly.

But on to matters more electronic. Marc starts his interview with me by stating that he is happy to see reissues of old classic synths because, in a number of cases, they don't have any memories or way to save patches. This forces the necessity of something that may or may not be quite rare on some synthesizers: synthesis! Marc states that he is happy if people are shepherded by these classic instruments into needing to learn something about synthesis. It can certainly be argued that as technology progressed and memories and presets got added to synths that synthesis was de-emphasized. Marc says that this happened to him too. It certainly did to me. Its all too easy to just take the sounds that are there and do nothing more than a perfunctory tweak. Some softsynths today even have several hundred sounds so why would you ever need to learn how to make your own? But on an MS-20 or an Arp Odyssey or, if you have the money, a Minimoog none of this exists. If you want a sound then you have to make it. And then you have to learn how to make others too. And how to get back to the first one if you forgot to take notes on how you made it. Synthesizers are for synthesis is what Marc seems to say. I couldn't agree more. This is one reason I have veered into interest in modular synthesis because there memories and saving things are much more difficult if not impossible. And that is very good.

Right from the start here I am revealing something about my own philosophy of electronic music and, at this point at least, it seems that Marc and myself are of one mind. But it becomes pretty clear as Marc gives his answers to my questions in his interview that we diverge quite soon afterwards. I asked Marc specifically about Eurorack synthesis in my interview with him because I had a sense from snippets of things he'd said before that it didn't seem to sit right with him. I was delighted when he went into detail in his replies to me about what the problems with it were from his perspective. One problem seems to be, in the wider Eurorack culture as whole at least, that Eurorack synths aren't played with a musical keyboard. Marc likes the keyboard in a way that many within Eurorack (and Buchla and Serge and other types of) doing synthesis seem not to. In this respect Marc Doty and Morton Subotnick, the earliest of adopters of the Buchla way of doing synthesis, are complete opposites. Marc describes how he has tailored his whole appreciation of doing synthesis to using the musical keyboard as his input device. Subotnick, should you ever ask him about using a black and white keyboard, will pull a face as if you've just asked him to eat food that disgusts him. He sees it as a way to make what he calls "old music", music he doesn't want to make. For future reference, I'm with Morton here. 

And I'm not the only one. Alessandro Cortini explains in an interview with Nick Batt of Sonicstate from 2015 that one reason he plays Buchla gear is that this paradigm is not based on ability to play a musical keyboard. He says he is "not a player". And this is relevant because, since roughly the 1980s, new electronic music technology has meant that the traditional music making skill required before then to make music, playing ability, was needed less and less. Computers have meant that you can literally build patterns, melodies and harmonies step by step as opposed to in real time based on ability to play. You no longer need to play to make electronic music because you can program instead. Cortini even goes so far as to say in the same interview with Nick Batt that he doesn't need to know what is in front of him in a Buchla system. "I just need to stand in front of it and weird stuff usually comes out" is his comment on the process. Most would say, listening to his work, that it is profoundly musical but also significantly melodic. These qualities carry over in his music if the instrument is a VCS3 or an MC-202 or a Make Noise Shared System as well.

       A Buchla 200e system with one of Don Buchla's touchplate keyboards

The notable thing about all this is that Cortini did not need a musical keyboard or playing chops to achieve this. Instead he just needed an instrument through which musical instincts could be suitably expressed. What's more, it seems to me that it is simply a fact that since the 1980s, and certainly since the rise of the computer, most people making electronic music aren't players of a musical keyboard in a traditional sense at all either. Many may not know a thing about musical theory or chord shapes, for example. Even in the 1980s there was already the trope of the synth player playing a one finger synth line on a synth with a traditional keyboard to the ridicule of his cultural contemporaries. But the fact is that technology changed who could even make music electronically. It was also in the 1980s that the TB-303 was invented, an instrument that had a representation of the keyboard on its faceplate but that wasn't there to be played. It was there so you could program pitches. This instrument by itself invented a whole genre of new music in acid house. So electronic music technology became a democratizing leveling of the playing field that took away the need to learn how to play a keyboard, often a difficult and time consuming process, to make electronic music. Making specifically electronic music became an easier thing to do and more about mashing buttons than learning a centuries old playing technique. Incidentally, to me this also makes the regular arguments about minikeys on instruments rather moot too since I imagine the vast majority of synth buyers today can barely play a note either. Because, today, you need that ability even less.

It will be clear to all reading this with an interest in the subject that if you want to play with synthesizers then there are a number of ways you can go about your interest. One basic choice you will have to make, and Marc saw this just as clearly as I did when posing him a rather playful question about it, is if you will have a keyboard attached to your synth or not. I think both Marc and I realize that this will fundamentally affect the type of music you can or will want to make. So its not a trivial decision. Morton Subotnick, Alessandro Cortini and Tony Rolando, too, all realise that adding a keyboard, or leaving it off, makes a difference in where you can, or will want, to go musically. So no one should regard this as a rather pointless question. It isn't at all. A Buchla synth or a Make Noise system are things ideologically conceived to make certain things possible and certain things not possible or, at the very least, much more difficult. It was the same with Moog's modular as Marc Doty could talk about at great length I'm sure. I respect Marc for pointing out that Bob Moog's original keyboard controller for the Moog Modular allowed significantly more leeway for user calibration of its possibilities than many keyboards since. But I end up falling in line with Morton Subotnick who conceives that the musical keyboard simply has too much traditional baggage to be used to find new kinds of music. To just sit in front of such a keyboard, even attached to the most modern of synths, is to hear a thousand music teachers telling you how it SHOULD be played.

And so it comes down to a keyboard paradigm or a machine paradigm, a playing paradigm or a sequencing paradigm. Buchla was the second and Moog was the first (in general terms. All of computer and much modular music is the second too.) This was even more so in terms of how these paradigms have been taken up by their users and adherents. Its in this sense, I think, that Marc Doty regards Eurorack as a Buchla-influenced "machine music". With Eurorack most users use the machine to organise the music. They are programmers or conductors (not negative terms as I use them) rather than players. If you have a keyboard synth, a synth that is a descendant of Moog's fateful decision to add a keyboard to his first modular, then the suggestion at the very least is that you are supposed to play it. The keyboard sits there and begs you to play notes and chords. This then becomes a fateful moment of decision too because keys on a keyboard are primarily on/off switches for pitch information. Keyboards play pitched music. And pitched music, contrary to the unprobed assumptions of some people, is not the same as music as a whole. For we also have unpitched music. We also have sound collage. We also have noise. And pitched keyboards aren't very good for that for they were designed exactly to be able to make pitched music that was the intention of musicians. "Intention" is another problem with musical keyboards too because we can imagine a music that is not intentional. We can imagine randomness. We can imagine soundscape. We can imagine chaos. 

Now some imagine only harmony but others can imagine disharmony, what John Cage called "the co-existence of dissimilars". Cage, in his book Silence, referred to this disharmony as "simply a harmony to which many are unaccustomed". This suggests the thought that notions of musical correctness or incorrectness, of validity or invalidity, of harmony or disharmony, are not much more than ingrained habits. And habits can be changed. Or educated. Or got rid of. I imagine that this is what Tony Rolando of Make Noise means when he quotes the ethos of his company as making instruments that cause their users "to change our trajectories and thereby impact the way we understand and imagine sound". Indeed, Rolando said explicitly in his answers to my questions that, for him, "music is noise, noise is music". And I take this very much on board in my own philosophy. We have a choice, it seems to me. We can look back to our forebears and regard them, technological or theoretical, as our limitations or we can see them as nothing more than a history of what has been done so far, something to which we hope to add but without necessarily repeating. Tony Rolando nails this by saying "Art does not have to be organized by the parameters set by those people from our past. We should look to those people for our inspiration, not restriction". The suggestion, then, is that Rolando looks forward with a knowledge of what's behind rather than looking behind and hoping to make more of it in the future. The enemy here is always conforming to some past sacred notion and the ideal is a "wild west" of ideas and electronic musical practice.

A Roland System 8. Would the music made with this sound like that from a Buchla 200e?

But back to Marc Doty and his thoughts about Eurorack for I found this to be the heart of the musical differences, inclinations and instincts between us. Eurorack is, perhaps, a contentious thing within the synthesizer community as a whole because it can easily be caricatured as the latest cool, hipster craze. As is the nature of these things in a social context, it seems to some like the next big thing people feel pressured to get involved in if they want to be seen to be in with the right people or part of the right group. I don't see it like this. I just see it as a very interesting set of electronic tools for creating and manipulating sounds. Marc agrees with me here I'm sure but thereafter we go our different ways. This is because Marc sees Eurorack as basically being under the Buchla paradigm, machine music as opposed to played/performed sound. In my interview with Tony Rolando of Make Noise he put forward the view that as far as he was concerned the format was agnostic mainly, or so I got the impression, because it was just a format and within it you could have modules or synthesis methods snatched from any form of synthesis you could imagine. And you absolutely could strap a keyboard to this if you wanted to as well (although I doubt Tony encourages it!).

Now the Buchla paradigm that Marc sees as influencing the culture and practice of Eurorack is notable because both Don Buchla, its inventor and also a musician himself (unlike Bob Moog), and its first users, Morton Subotnick and Ramon Sender of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, certainly wanted to make what they saw as a new kind of music. And they all thought that to make new music you needed a new process to do it. They thought that if you used old tools you'd always be tempted to fall back into old ways and make what Subotnick calls to this day "new old music". So this explains their dislike of the musical keyboard as opposed to Marc Doty's dogged arguments in favour of using the keyboard in as many ways as are imaginable. This is relevant to us here now because with the modular synths we have today, seemingly dominated by the popularity of Eurorack (which may turn out to be Don Buchla's lasting legacy within synthesis as opposed to his own format machines which are much more expensive and very rare), we have completely different forms of music being made than are being made with fixed architecture synths of all kinds. These synths, of course, have keyboards attached. Or maybe they are hooked up to computers and used as sound modules. Or maybe a desktop version of such a synth is used in which case it can be attached to a sequencer or, perhaps more likely, a computer for playing purposes. From many angles, "traditional" electronic music is under attack. 

These attacks to the traditional player's paradigm, the one Moog used urged on by Herb Deutsch, have changed how electronic music sounds. The baton is passing, with desktop synths, synths connected to computers and modular synths of all kinds that use formats not reliant on musical keyboards as input devices, from people who are trained musicians, like Marc Doty, to untrained nerds like Alessandro Cortini and everyone who dreams of being like him. With phenomena like the Eurorack movement in synthesis what we see is the rise of the person who likes to tinker with things and see what they can come up with. The emphasis is on experiment and possibility rather than the use of musical training. Of course, in the experiment and possibility you will inevitably pick up some self-taught knowledge of your own. But it won't be official or kosher or canonical. On this new technological paradigm, which has enabled new individuals completely outside of the guild of what were formerly thought of as musicians to take part, a new musical culture has been created and new ways of doing old things (i.e. making electronic music) have been invented. This has sometimes caused conflicts as when, in early Eighties Great Britain, the actual Musician's Union tried to ban acts like Depeche Mode or The Human League or Gary Numan because it was perceived their ways of making music took away opportunities from what were then perceived to be "real musicians", i.e. ones who could play instruments. It shows how far we have come with technology and with technological ways of making music that this argument wouldn't even be imagined today. Electronic methods won as Jean-Michel Jarre rightly said recently.

Various Eurorack modules made by Make Noise. The synthesis power of such modules as against other fixed types of synthesis and synthesizers is unarguable.

But where does this leave my argument with Marc Doty? I think that it perhaps leaves Marc on the wrong side of history. But that is okay for I don't mean to suggest that there is anything wrong with playing or using a keyboard. Neither do I conceive of it dying out. In fact, its not even the case that I don't value music made with them because, of course, I do. Like anyone else reading this, most of the electronic music I will have ever heard was made using one. So how could I not like them? I see it a bit like John Cage sees dissonance in his book Silence. There he says that "dissonances and noises" are welcome in experimental music "but so is the dominant 7th chord if it happens to put in an appearance". So why do I see Marc on the wrong side of history? I think its because I'd like to think that the keyboard has had its day and that we need to find new ways, complimentary ways perhaps, to make electronic music. I think that Don Buchla invented one and that Eurorack manufacturers are inventing them too. I think that technology and innovation has unwittingly accelerated this process. And, yes, even Bob Moog helped this along as well. I think Marc is on the wrong side of history because he is seeking to carry on an old tradition rather than trying to invent or take part in new ones. Now there is nothing wrong with him doing that and I like much of the music that he has made. Some of his theme tunes for his demonstration videos are insanely good and I hum them repeatedly. But we've done that now. Let's do something else.

But there is a further component to this and its a matter of musical philosophy. Indeed, it comes to the very heart of making music at all. It starts off with the point that electronic music making paradigms are implicit instantiations of how we see the world. They are generalized ways of seeing things with everything that implies. For example, I regard so-called machine music that cannot be repeated, perhaps because it contains machine randomizations that are not recallable or desired as repeatable phenomena, as in tune with the flux of our reality. I see, perhaps like Kraftwerk with their talk of The Man Machine or like Daft Punk with their ruminations on the same issue through their Human After All album and the associated film, Daft Punk's Electroma, that "machine music" may be made by machines but, actually, its not lacking in humanity or reality at all. Indeed, it can even be perceived as thoroughly natural and in tune with the wider reality that we are a part of. For in a random, self-generating patch constructed on some modular synth that requires no creator, no God plinky-plonking out their intentions on a keyboard, do we not have a perfect model, a creative, artistic picture, of the constantly fluctuating reality that we inhabit?

This is perhaps a deeper thought than many contemplate as they switch on their synth, of whatever kind, and begin affecting its outcomes. And yet, for me, it is the machine music that is human and authentic and not the music coming from the player paradigm, music that is a repeatable freezing in time of a canonized linear collection of note values. I ask myself what could be more foreign to an experience of life than that? For real life is forever in flux, always moving, a river that never stops. Its not something to be frozen, notated and repeated. And that's what the old music was and its what old music made with synthesizers still is as I see it. To my mind, if electronic music is to be anything significant then it must throw off this old and once useful idea and become something else, a technological expression of an ever more technological race. The player paradigm, if you think about it, is actually just very artificial and machine music, in its ability to reflect and mimic a truer picture of reality, is more authentic. Silver Apples of The Moon trumps Switched on Bach.

This, anyhow, is how I explain my current preferences. But there is one more thing influencing my thinking that leads me to machine music and away from the player paradigm. And that's what John Cage has to say about intentionality in music. In Silence he critiques those who regard music as "sounds intentionally made". This notion, I believe, is crucial to the player paradigm of electronic music as I've discussed it in this blog. But it is anathema to Cage's understanding of any kind of music at all. Not only is this a deeply conservative and limiting idea of what music can be but it is, as a matter of fact, not even correct. Music can be sound unintentionally made or even sounds without intention. This is part of the reason why Cage's 4'33" exists. Now Cage is very aware that it will take some kind of psychological turn, a flicking of the switch, to see this so it seems implicit in his thought that not everyone will. But that turn, once taken, opens up a whole new understanding of music and its one that electronic music makers, as the musicians of both possibility and of the future, should be benefiting from the most. For Cage this turn leads to nature and to seeing that, in the giving up of the cherished notion of music as intention, a notion still very dominant even amongst electronic music makers today, that nothing has in fact been lost. For Cage, "sounds may occur in any combination and in any continuity". Cage sees music as not much more than, in some sense, organized sounds and silence. And that organization may be little more than preparing the conditions for some music's appearance. He thinks that taking music forwards involves finding ways and means by which musicians can "remove themselves from the activities of the sounds they make". That doesn't have to be modular synthesis but it certainly sounds a lot like it as practiced by people on Buchlas, Serges or many kinds of Eurorack system.

I began this blog, which I'm aware has gone on longer than usual, with the title "What kind of electronic musician are you?" When you began reading it may not have occurred to you that there were differing kinds of electronic musician but I hope that now, at least, you can see that all electronic musicians have choices to make, directions to look in and ideals to live up to for we all stand in relation to everyone else making electronic music and this very fact is how we define who we are and what we think we are doing. So I want to say at this point that each one in turn chooses what they are and its nobody's business but their own what they choose. However, the choices we make will reveal what we see electronic music as being about, where we root ourselves within its on-going culture and for what we are aiming. This is inevitable if we make any sounds and much more so if we share them with others. No choice we might make is wrong but each will reveal what we value.

If we imagine a Moog/Buchla divide, as I did when interviewing Marc Doty, then I am on the Buchla side. I want to make new music, music not involving keyboard skills or knowledge. I agree with Subotnick that to get a keyboard involved is to be inevitably tempted back into old ways. Its because I want to explore new ways that I make this choice and not because I think all keyboard music is rubbish. I don't and it isn't. This is to separate what I like to hear as a listener from what I want to make as a creator. Tony Rolando expressed this perfectly when he said that he can appreciate The Beatles but that doesn't mean he wants to make Beatles music. In a similar way I like lots of kinds of music but that doesn't mean I want to make them. I am different from all those people who want to sound like..... and then they append the name of their favourite group or music idol. I want to sound like a group of one, the people who are me. 

The Minimoog, a synthesizer known primarily for the sound it can make. 

John Cage wasn't big on the idea of music as expression or communication. He didn't think that sounds had a message. Far from it, he thought that we should just let sounds be what they are. Marc Doty, in his interview, when answering a question about making the most of our tools, made the distinction between music as personal endeavour and music made for the enjoyment of others. He seemed to suggest that the more you made the first the less likely it would also be in the second category. The problem is when making electronic music, which has the capacity to be as weird as it gets as forms of human musical creation go, I don't control anybody but myself. (Often I don't control that either but I digress.) I can form and shape myself as a person. I can educate myself about the music I am making and why. If I make harsh noise or abstract bleeps I can rationalize that in my mind or assign it a place in my understanding intellectually and emotionally. But I can't do that for anyone else. Everyone else hears what I do through the filter of their own context and understandings. For me it is part explanation of my understanding of who I am and being alive as a being in the world and also the soundtrack to that process. But its not that for anyone else. Its just more music in a world overflowing with the stuff. 

People complain a lot about electronic music. Its either too bland, too traditional or too mainstream or too abstract, too bleepy or too random. Really this is all just about how we as people understand what we have heard. When I hear bleeps and blips I often find this very amenable. Why? Because as I process this within my web of understanding I can make sense of it and assign it a musical place within my life. Many others may not be able to do that. They just hear meaningless noises. But when I hear the same "meaningless noises" they take on meaning. Music does not come with values attached. WE ATTACH THE VALUE. So electronic music like any music does not come to us with its meaning and importance inherent within it. We give it those things as we are able. And its exactly those values I've been trying to show up in this blog today. Even if it was only to make you aware that you had some. Because you do. As I said right at the start, thats how you decide if some piece of electronic music is worthwhile, good, desirable, nice, exciting or anything else at all. But its also how you decide what kind of music you want to make as a creator of electronic music.

The Arp 2600 which is a better synth than the Minimoog because its semi-modular and thus has much more variety and possibility inherent within it.

In the end, equipment doesn't matter. Its not about which synth you have, how big your setup up is, what it cost, or anything like that. Its about what it sounds like and what the end product is. Music is sound. Music is noise. Music is not stuff or pictures of your gear. Of course, what you use will determine your possibilities. This is why I favour electronic music options influenced by the machine music paradigm because I value what I think it can give me as a creator and I think it can give me more than other options. But I'm quite prepared to acknowledge that there are many "players" who make music I like too. Its just, as with Tony Rolando, that doesn't mean I want to repeat them. What I want to do is make electronic music that doesn't make sense. Because life doesn't make sense. Life is absurd (which is why my blog is Absurdwurld). And so art that aims to be true to life should be absurd too.

I totally get David Lynch's frustration.