From mcess Sent Sun, Aug 22nd 1999, 21:37
From mcess Sent Sun, Aug 22nd 1999, 21:37
"Every noise has a note." That's a helpful motto from the folks at AMM (circa '66) that I think is really applicable to this whole wave of posts about "melody" vs. "clanky noise". Pure white noise aside, just about every sound you can make has some pitch information in it, and when you create patterns out of those sounds, you create sequences of pitches- there may be melodies inside all sorts of purely glitchy, complex programming beats if you listen for them. To keep things nice n IDMish, I would single out Ae's "Chiastic Slide" as an excellent example of this effect: melodies are implicit in almost entirely percussive songs. To venture away from IDM, consider gamelan in this context: is there such a clear distinction between what is a rhythmic pattern and what is a melody in a gamelan performance? Another example would be a Xenakis piece like "Pleiades", where melody and rhythm seem to mesh. If the complaint is "Why isn't IDM melodically rich enough?", I would suggest that, if melody is really the *primary* thing you are looking for, why not try Burt Bacharach, Mahler, Van Dyke Parks, Bach, etc.? Why not check out people who are actually talented at writing complex melodic music, not just puny drifting three note minor chord whooshes? Seriously, if you listen to even a prosaic Broadway standard like "Baubles, Bangles, and Beads", you will hear more intricate bridges, shifts in tempo, strange chords, and multi-layered melodic information than you will hear in your standard IDM track- not to say that therefore they should listen to Broadway instead of the latest Schematic 12", but people who think IDM is "the most complex music" really ought to check out other sections of the record store before they pat themselves on the back again for being so "deep". . . Drew