EN/OF 050 Smalley (following Schaeffer I think) believes made with a sampler and are not a recording of REVerSE PRACTICE AS that there are different kinds of listening. an actual orchestra playing those notes; and, Schaeffer divided listening into 3 types: at 3mins 5seconds in, those vocal sequences causal, listening to the music’s cause; were obviously done on a sampler doing TECHnoLOGICALLY semantic, lis-tening to its meaning; and something that samplers make easy: i.e. playing reduced, listening to the music in itself. a short snippet of sound faster or slower ConSTITUTED CRITICAL To these three Smalley adds technological over a keyboard. For me, the foregrounding of listening, a kind of variation on causal those technical features (piano, tabla, tape, listening. He argues that techno-logical sampler, etc.) do not block the meaning of the AforMALISM IN listening happens “when a listener ‘perceives’ music, they add to its meaning. the technology or technique behind the music FOWLer AND YoUNGS’ rather than the music itself, perhaps to I like that the sampler is clearly present such an extent that true musical meaning is in sample-based music, and most of my fellow blocked”. There are a few things going on music producers would agree. So why is it ‘STRATEGIES’ in Smalley’s argument that I want to draw that those same producers complain about the attention to: (1) the reference to background tendency of fans who “just want to talk about MARK FELL (technology) and thus an unstated foreground what software is used rather than the music (mu-sic/meaning); (2) a thing called music itself”... Their complaint echoing Smalley’s “itself”, asserting a theoretical distinction aversion to technological listening? Perhaps between it and technology; (3) the belief that it is in part because the habits we use when A. TeCHnoLOGY VS. technology can block, i.e. has a potential we speak about music divide music (in essence) opacity that is in opposition to an ideal from the technological tools inherent in its MEANING transparency; and finally (4) that music has a making. Think of Alvin Lucier’s seminal work “true” meaning. I am sitting in a room (1969). Here a voice is recorded in a space, and then repeatedly “In spectromorphological thinking we must try According to this account, technology is a played back and rerecorded in the space. It is to ignore the electroacoustic and computer carrier of musical meaning and ideally it does suggested that the acoustic character of the not change that meaning as it passes from the space is amplified until the voice becomes an technology used in the music’s making. author to the listener and, if so, it remains indeterminate resonant band that corresponds to Ideally the technology should be transparent true. I feel that this account parallels some the resonance of the space. In any discussions […]” religious discourse… Asserting that the soul I have encountered about this piece, and in is that which is essential to our self and is the bits of critical writing that I have read, readily separable from the body, an opposition no one has ever acknowledged the function of i Denis Smalley, 1997. haunts our particular Western folklore. If we the equipment used in that recording. No one go back a few centuries Descartes’s distrust has ever mentioned that the tape itself has of the body clearly anticipates Smalley’s a dramatic effect on the quality and tonality What is a transparent technology? If we think contemporary misgivings about technology. For of the recording, or that the same is true of of the condition of transparency as that which Descartes the self is composed of pure thought. the microphone and speaker. In fact it would lets light pass through without changing it, The body, although intertwined with the mind, be useful to restage Lucier’s piece in two ways what might transparency mean when it comes should ideally be entirely disregarded. Like – firstly in an anechoic chamber with analogue ii to technology? For Smalley a transparent technology it is something that only ever gets tape, a microphone and speaker similar to technology is one that enables meaning to in the way. those used in the original; and secondly in travel through it – unchanged, like light a room similar to that used in the original through a hypothetically perfect lens. For me Of particular interest for me is Smalley’s with the highest quality digital recording, the correla-tion between meaning and light suggestion that spectromorphological music microphones and reference monitors. My guess implicit in Smalley’s transparency metaphor has a ‘true’ meaning that can be ‘blocked’ is that the character of the tape-based bears discon-certing similarities with the if the listener focuses on the means of recording in the anechoic space would display correlation between truth and light present production. Shan-non and Weaver’s classic model some of the resonance type effects present in in spiritual or religious discourse: light as of communication (published in 1948) pre- Lucier’s original work. My point is that the symbolic of salvation, the soul, or the divine empts Smalley: here technology (the means of rhetoric surrounding this work acknowledges the cre ator. communication) is only included as a potential function of space, yet ignores the function of noise source. According to their model, technology as central to the character of the technology is at best imperceptible, and if it piece. is present at all it is necessarily problematic rather than productive. For me this attitude is like trying to hide the cheese in a cheese sandwich. When I order a When I hear these kinds of arguments, I am sandwich made with cheese I would ideally like always a little bit (actually very) confused, to taste some cheese. “Sorry sir, Denis Smalley be-cause from my point of view most of my made your sandwich today”, would not really favourite music has an inherent and inseparable cheer me up much because I do not want to eat re-lationship to the thing that produced it: over-processed food that tastes of nothing the piano, for example, is very present in most (which is basically what Mr. Smalley is saying piano music that I can think of; the tabla in he wants to do with music). Similarly I would Indian classical music; the use of tape delay not be very impressed with the chef’s excuse, in some forms of music production; the sampler “I tried the cheese sandwich today sir, but on early forms of hip hop; and so on… And, felt that the overbearing presence of cheese what’s more, I really like these things. I like somehow blocked the meaning of the sandwich in for example that the sampler, when sequenced it s e l f.” iii Pretty silly, yes? But I think this and played, makes a sound that is typically demonstrates how extreme our beliefs get when the kind of thing a sampler does. Remember IOU we talk about the thing we call technology and by Freeez (1983) mixed by Arthur Baker? Those its relation to the thing we call art. orchestral stabs at the beginning were clearly EN/OF 050 Smalley’s attempt to place technology in the between musical vocabularies, technologies Man at the mercy of the machine is a familiar background is largely contrary to contempora- and practices, and asks how they fit into the story: when synthesizers found their way neous practices in art and music. Peter Gidal’s subjective and political imperatives of that into popular music, legitimate concerns about theory and practice of ‘Materialist’ film, for moment. musicians losing their livelihoods were example, aims to do the opposite: to foreground often ac-companied by rather more abstract the processes involved in a works’ production. If we are to retain the correlation between accusations that synthesizer music was not Here the technologies, methods and materials are meaning and light implied in Smalley’s transpar- ‘real’: it was cold, without emotion, beauty intentionally unveiled. If Smalley’s interest in ency-opacity narrative, I think that endless or (to recall Smalley) meaning. Yet anxieties music ‘in itself’ suggests we disguise the means kaleidoscopic refraction is a more attractive about synthesized music significantly predate of production, Gidal’s interest in the material met-aphor. synthpop. For example the Russian artist and quality of film implies full disclosure. While composer Andrey Smirnov recalls a science- researching Yvonne Rainer (for another project) fiction essay written in 1917 by Evgany Sholpo I came across an interesting quote on Wikipedia, entitled The Enemy of Music. Sholpo describes that cites Rainer’s response to feminist a machine called the Mechanical Orchestra that Audre Lorde’s statement: “You can’t dismantle B. ArTISAN VS. is capable of producing sound and music without the master’s house using the master’s tools.” the need for performers.xii Rainer’s reply was: “You can, if you expose INDUSTRIAL AND t h e t o ol s.” iv This sense of revealing tools as During my introduction to electronic music ideological apparatus corresponds to Gidal’s these objections and anxieties didn’t bother position.v Common to both Gidal and Smalley is POST-INDUSTRIAL me in the least, I hated ‘real’ music and an acceptance that the technologies and the everything it stood for. I took great pleasure process involved in the production of work and TECHnoLOGIES in the fact that my little second hand drum meaning are never actually transparent – never machine (a Boss DR55) upset the heavy metal the obedient servants dreamt of by Varèse.vi and punk communities at my local comprehensive Although Gidal’s way of dealing with the opacity Surely a stereo set, consisting of a turntable, an amplifier, school equally.