turn that box into a circle... or switch it up an make it a trapezoid.


whoa.

^ aka alternative tunings

exactly.

i agree, what we like the best and what we are best at doing are often not the same thing. it's important to learn to differentiate, otherwise you'll probably just make something that is competant but derivative.

I think my music sounds more like Unwound than Sonic Youth, personally, though not 100%. But I really don't care if it is derivative, I'm not trying to add anything new nor am I trying to replicate anything.

I will take one mediocre band that sounds like Unwound to the dozens and dozens of crybaby emo soft-candy-ass BULLSHIT bands that exist.

(not to say yr mediocre, OK?)

pbradley-i was going to reply to what you said and then realized that i dont even 100% agree with what i am trying to say. i think i only agree to it on paper (or cyberspace) but in reality-fuck it, leveryoje should do what they want and hope for the best. thats my musical ideology :-)

really my life is a dichotomy in a way, so I would never suppose that everyone should approach the music as I do. I spend so much time in philosophy classes, reading, writing papers, etc for my degree that a free form art is necessary to keep me from intellectualizing everything.

go forth and thrash, I say

I completely gave up playing music because I decided that first of all my vocation has always been visuals rather than aural creativity and, most importantly, because I am not good or good enough.

What visua stuff do you do?

See post you art thread.

oh, yeah, well, obviously. this means I need to go to bed.

I don't think there is anything at all wrong with purposely creating something experimental. The Fluxists did this, and much of what they did is damn entertaining as well as thought provoking.

What sucks is when people don't know how to do anything, and can't coherently express anything, and so they fuck around with technology without any real ideas and then call that "experimental". I think that sort of thing is what you are really railing against and that does litter the arts with garbage (almost as badly as those who just imitate others as closely as they can which is still the #1 source of crap).

Thinking about process can make for interesting art. It doesn't always, that's a risk you take. I don't believe, however, that without experimenting with process a bit that any original art can ever be created (somebody is immediately going to chime that "original art" is impossible to begin with, but I actually disagree with that). I also don't buy that thinking about process removes passion and emotion. It doesn't put them in there, but it doesn't take them out either - that's really up to the artist.

I think it's worth noting that you and I are (I think) discussing experimentation throughout the arts and not just in music, while others are probably talking more directly about music. There is a tendency particularly within music to try to define experimental music as a specific genre the way that "alternative" was once codified. Despite having founded the Olympia Experimental Music Festival and participated in it for 14 years straight, I've never seen things that way. I'm with Rob that Experimental Music just means music where you take risks, be it based in rock, jazz, klezmer, or whatever the fuck.

It's too bad that there are the clueless who make shit and call it experimental and thereby give a word with a noble direct definition a bad name. You can't ask anything about experimental art without starting a big discussion about the worth there of. I seriously doubt if the original post had asked what we all do to get in a "creative mindset" (which I'm pretty sure is exactly what the author was really asking) if there would have been so many responses about how doing so is a bad idea.

i dont know what my band sounds like, all i know is what we want it to sound like. i think its always up to the listener to determine what music sounds like, and ive never understood what bands get pissed if people think their music sounds a certain way that they disagree with (unless is absolutley retardedly unfounded and miles off).

Of course the result of those experiments would have to be used to create something artistic, otherwise I wouldn't see the point of creating and mass-producing anything like a moog synthesizer in the first place.

I do agree with Torn Curtain that there are people who create within what they percieve as an artistic enviroment with a way too mathematical mind. This is not to say that an artist must be ignorant of what goes on technologically in their field at all, it's just that when it comes to create they need to be able to focus all the techniques that they've learnt into an emotional whole, coherent or not, otherwise their work will end up lacking soul.

I do agree with a lot of what you're saying in the above post, by the way.

Sure, there are just a lot of types of "soul" besides the one that people most often think of. To me, John Cage is incredibly soulful. Granted, I've read a lot of his writing and lectures, so I know the whole picture, but it mostly verifies what I got out of the music.