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theavondon wrote:Though, I don't like Earth 2, but it's because it's really poorly mixed.

Dude,
I thought I was the only one.

Achtane wrote:

theavondon wrote:Though, I don't like Earth 2, but it's because it's really poorly mixed.

Dude,
I thought I was the only one.

Just turn it up and it sounds fine.

theavondon wrote:It's all about the atmosphere with Sunn and that shizz. Though, I don't like Earth 2, but it's because it's really poorly mixed.

Not trying to be obtuse, but I don't know what that means. Do you mean the robes and smoke and theatricality? Or are you talking about the music itself. Because I don't get what's atmospheric about a guitar holding a chord for 90 seconds, and then switching to a second chord for 30 seconds, and then switching back to the original chord for another 90 seconds, rinse/repeat.

Again, not trying to be a dick. I truly don't get it, and I am willing to accept that this is somehow a failing of mine.

Well, if you can get into it, the change of the chords, the slight decay of the notes over time, it's all just so overwhelming. Plus, they do a lot with vocals and synth and such, although a cursory glance over their stuff won't really show you that. I dunno. Plus, it's ultimately about the live experience with that band.

Chankgeez wrote:

Gearmond wrote: like you could make a noise piece in the serialist tradition and no listener would know you did unless you told them

That's sorta going back to what we were talking about before. Like not being able to tell the difference between whether a piece is pre-composed or completely improvised. It's all in the process, but you don't necessarily hear the process. You only hear the end result.

and in most visual process art, it usually fails if the process isn't apparent or the end result isn't interesting.

as for the david byrne thing, thats generally pretty true for a lot of things. like Varese's Poem Electronique was like that too, and theres a bunch of multi part visual stuff where single elements stand on their own as well.

For me, any noise music I've listened to (which isn't much) is just almost overwhelming? or confusing maybe? I just don't get it. I've tried listening and never knocked it or anything but at the end of they day it just doesn't interest my ears... or my ears now at least.

Gearmond wrote:while we're talking about ambient, thats another "genre" i'd like to call bullshit on"

the only defining feature of it seems to be sparseness, and even when going and applying the actual definition of ambient, i can't help but think: isn't that what ALL music should be anyways?

any ambient-as-genre music i hear just sounds like slowed down shitty new age with some ornamentals thrown in to disguise how boring it is.

i'm not saying all music has to be fast, i'm just saying that slowness, as a conceptual threshhold like all others, is something that once passed, is seldom worth returning to in a near identical fashion. thats why most anyone who basically works as an abstract expressionist is met with a resounding "meh". going back to my point about "avant garde" ideas being retread.

It's ok if you don't really understand, or you don't like what others like. I personally don't see what is wrong with "slowed down shitty new age with some ornamentals thrown in to disguise how boring it is" because that is what it is actually suppose to be. The idea of a lot of ambient is to be background music that doesn't get in the way of whatever, or something to relax to. The best ambiant stuff is where and when you can create a space or atmosphere or even just a mood more then something that WANTS your attention in a LOOK AT ME PLEASE I AM NOODLING!!! kind of way Not everything has to be groundbreaking or even interesting to be music or art or vallid. And I think you need to spend more time actually listening to different ambiant artists to get a better grasp on it.

As for drone like sunn It is the same idea of using sound for a mood and a atmosphere more then it just being a song or a style/sound but in the opposite direction from ambiant [even though the two can and do cross over a lot really] it is to overwhelm the listener with volume and overtones, really it is as much about the overtones of the note/chord as the the striking of it in the same way ass seen in the chant video, it's the same thing just a different way to go about it and subject matter.

example: really these two things are the same "concept"

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1xZC3TtcBU[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Djdi6z0m8[/youtube]

The difference I suppose between the Tibetan stuff and Sunn O is the basic cultural context; I know (and so do the listeners of the Tibetan stuff by and large) that it's intended for a spiritual thing and meditative or ritual purpose.

Sunn O gets passed off as 'listen to this, man, I'm packing a bowl' without that context and if it is usually falls on its face.

For me if I want to get the Sunn O-type headspace I just turn the amp up and go there myself, have been for twenty some years. If I didn't play music, or know how to autopilot even when having to "do" something (thank you, lots of drugs when I was younger!), it'd be different.

I can tell the live experience would be different; in the same ways that the magic isn't there sometimes when you listen to a live tape of a show you were at that was just amazing in that space and time.

rfurtkamp wrote:The difference I suppose between the Tibetan stuff and Sunn O is the basic cultural context; I know (and so do the listeners of the Tibetan stuff by and large) that it's intended for a spiritual thing and meditative or ritual purpose.

Sunn O gets passed off as 'listen to this, man, I'm packing a bowl' without that context and if it is usually falls on its face.

For me if I want to get the Sunn O-type headspace I just turn the amp up and go there myself, have been for twenty some years. If I didn't play music, or know how to autopilot even when having to "do" something (thank you, lots of drugs when I was younger!), it'd be different.

I can tell the live experience would be different; in the same ways that the magic isn't there sometimes when you listen to a live tape of a show you were at that was just amazing in that space and time.

Oh I agree about the spiritual context but as someone that doesn't pack'da'bowl I find that their music puts me in a similar mental space, I do get tired of the theater at times with them though... I almost, no.. that is why there are other artists and why I make my own music too

Yea, as somebody who's been mostly sober (i.e. I didn't quit because of an arrest, conviction, addiction, etc., I just got bored and moved on) for 15 or so years, I don't need or want the drugs any more, which makes at least two people out there in noise/wierd land who might pass a drug test.

Ok, I'd pass with a note from my doc on the opiates, but still. ;0

I'm glad you brought up "conception" though, Blackened Soul.

I used to feel that pretty much all of my musical ideas were merely concepts and weren't somehow valid as actual music.

Then, one day I read an interview with James 'Blood' Ulmer which contained the following line:

Blood Ulmer wrote:Every band I ever played in was not about the music, it was about the concept.

After I read that, I felt validated because I realized that listeners rarely hear the concept.

They hear the music, or the noise, or whatever it is they hear, but not really the concept.

Chankgeez wrote:I'm glad you brought up "conception" though, Blackened Soul.

I used to feel that pretty much all of my musical ideas were merely concepts and weren't somehow valid as actual music.

Then, one day I read an interview with James 'Blood' Ulmer which contained the following line:

Blood Ulmer wrote:Every band I ever played in was not about the music, it was about the concept.

After I read that, I felt validated because I realized that listeners rarely hear the concept.

They hear the music, or the noise, or whatever it is they hear, but not really the concept.

Very true really. I think the concept has more to do a way to focus your ideas about what you are creating, that is how it works with me anyway. To do my drone ambiant stuff I sort of need a background idea almost like writing a story with sound [otherwise it all comes out really similar], maybe no one but me will ever get what I am going for and that is ok.

After I read that, I felt validated because I realized that listeners rarely hear the concept.

They hear the music, or the noise, or whatever it is they hear, but not really the concept.

It's why I always laugh at some of the comments on my material, or that I make on others' stuff that is obviously mostly an internal dialogue that happens to be public in some way, usually without a translator or dictionary available to make sense of it all.

I went through a stage in the late 90s where I let spam email titles (back when they'd just be random word salad) tell me what to conceptualize and record. I never bothered to tell anyone because it was my little secret that kept me sane as I did what I wanted and had something of me for me.

That's what a lot of the ambient/noise/wierd stuff ends up as I'd wager, it's an internalized conversation that somebody happens to have mic'd and distributed.

But as a listener, I have to like the end product and not just the concept.

Blackened Soul wrote:I think the concept has more to do a way to focus your ideas about what you are creating, that is how it works with me anyway. To do my drone ambiant stuff I sort of need a background idea almost like writing a story with sound [otherwise it all comes out really similar], maybe no one but me will ever get what I am going for and that is ok.

I think by the end of the process, oftentimes, the concept may be totally forgotten. It's served its purpose.

rfurtkamp wrote:I went through a stage in the late 90s where I let spam email titles (back when they'd just be random word salad) tell me what to conceptualize and record. I never bothered to tell anyone because it was my little secret that kept me sane as I did what I wanted and had something of me for me.

Sounds like some Oblique Strategies-style composing there.

Blackened Soul wrote:It's ok if you don't really understand, or you don't like what others like. I personally don't see what is wrong with "slowed down shitty new age with some ornamentals thrown in to disguise how boring it is" because that is what it is actually suppose to be. The idea of a lot of ambient is to be background music that doesn't get in the way of whatever, or something to relax to. The best ambiant stuff is where and when you can create a space or atmosphere or even just a mood more then something that WANTS your attention in a LOOK AT ME PLEASE I AM NOODLING!!! kind of way Not everything has to be groundbreaking or even interesting to be music or art or vallid. And I think you need to spend more time actually listening to different ambiant artists to get a better grasp on it.

As for drone like sunn It is the same idea of using sound for a mood and a atmosphere more then it just being a song or a style/sound but in the opposite direction from ambiant [even though the two can and do cross over a lot really] it is to overwhelm the listener with volume and overtones, really it is as much about the overtones of the note/chord as the the striking of it in the same way ass seen in the chant video, it's the same thing just a different way to go about it and subject matter.

oh no i understand completely, its just really overblown simplicity to me. as for the "not in your face" thats way more about mentality than design. i've had years of people pestering me to like ambient. i know its supposed to be made to be in the background. it misses the point because "background music" isn't a thing determined on the end of the musician. all the things you described are, to me, things that are/should be present in all music regardless.