lowercase music

tregoweth writes "Wired News has an article about "lowercase music" -- electronic music made with itty-bitty quiet sounds."

Comments

be prepared

[tunah]

for the endless stream of posts in lowercase.

ha ha, get it? tunah

Re:be prepared

[punkyfish]

Shhhhhhhhh!!!! Listen to the silent humming of the computerscreen! ;)

Re:be prepared

[foodb4nk]

All I hear is the zinging from the fans.

Damn!

[xiangpeng]

Damn, I just went to the doc yesterday and they said that i got hearing problems in my left ear. kinda unable to hear anything below 25db. Guess hearing this is the same as hearing nothing :)

Re:Damn!

[Anonymous Coward]

so when you got home you overclocked insanely and shoved in a tonne of cooling fans right?

Re:Damn!

[Anonymous Coward]

Demythtifiers.

1. 'Quiet' has nothing to do with it... acdc with the volume turned down could be considered the same. What these guys are doing is re-inventing ambient music, pioneered in the 50s and 60's by guys like Cage, Stockhausen -> Eno -> FSOL -> Richard James -> et al. Some of them even called it 'minimalism'.

2. Creating music from background or ambient electronic noises is about as old as electronics themselves, the russian Theramin was the first analogue synthesizer and was an oscillator based on valve feedback. Originally played like a violin mind you.

3. The emphasis on the mac is a bit sickening, yeah cool, the mac has a mainstay in the audio "industry", but the real innovators (authors of PD, J/MAX, csound etc) spawn from a NeXT/Linux community. (The linux audio community is experiencing a bit of an open minded renaissance right now in fact.)

4. Mutek was/is a term used by students at the Qld Conservatorium in Brisbane, QLD, Australia. Short for a Diploma/Bachelor in Music Technology. From which I didn't graduate, but stuck around to the end.

5. Does it mean anything? A friend told me the most important thing in art is not the art itself, but the bullshit you write to go on the label next to it.

Other than those few narky points, their stuff sounds good... it just sounds like the guys at wired discovered avante garde for the first time. Typical post recession behaviour.... consider it a 'where was I before all this commercialism got to me' before the new wave hits.

Now where's my arts grant application template...

Re:Damn!

[Anonymous Coward]

Number 5)
I've heard the same thing from an art student.
The interpretation is very important, especially if your artwork is a thin orange stripe on an otherwise empty canvas or a broken peice of cement "sculpture" or some other such rubbish.

Re:Damn!

[Inthewire]

Now where's my arts grant application template...

I dunno, as I'm not seated in the same shithole you are.
Perhaps you can get someone to tug your head out of your ass so you can look for it your damn self.

There is hope

[Maiko]

I hope this means we won't be able to hear Britney or Christina as much as we already do...

Electronica as a whole can benefit

[ObviousGuy]

If only we could get rid of that goth/death/I hate everyone electronica, or at least replace most of the noise with lowercase music, that would be awesome.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[uebernewby]

Well, you *could* of course try to find some non-goth/death/I hate everyone electronica yourself. It's not exactly rare, you know. Pay a visit to a good record store near you that imports European electronica. I dare say you'll be in for a little surprise.

In fact, in the US (I'm assuming you're in the US on the basis of what you say - no European would ever make the statement you did), Nothing records (of NIN fame) does quite a good job releasing the more popular Warp-esque artists.

You could also fire up Audio Galaxy and download tracks by (off the top of my head) Plaid, Squarepusher, Wagonchrist, Jaga Jazzist, Kim Hiorthoy, Tipper, Four Tet, Akufen, Daedelus, Andrew Pekler, Pole, To Rococo Rot, Pan American, EU, Arovane, Mouse on Mars, etc, etc (this list is completely random - pls don't flame me for leaving out your favorite artist).

Just to get you started.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

I think he meant that he wished the weirdo goth genre could become a forgotten nightmare altogether.

At least that's what I got out of it.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Bohnanza]

The main benefit would be that electronica would become almost inaudible and we wouldn't have to hear it anymore.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

What on earth are you talking about? This crap isn't music. These people aren't musicians. I'll accept that they're recording engineers, but recording boiling water and then claiming it's music is pure stupidity in my book.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

Akufen in particular is relevant to this discussion. he makes bouncy tech-house out of tiny little samples of radio/tv. like negativland and twerk in the same room.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. If only we could get rid of it.

While we're at it, let's get rid of most rap and especially free jazz.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Woody]

grab some marumari, autechre, aphex twin, twine, oval, mouse on mars, microstoria, etc. maybe not exactly "happy-go-lucky," (except for mom ;) but still pretty anti-goth.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Woody]

oh yeah, to reply to my own post... nobukazu takemura (aka child's view) is about as good as it gets for "smart" electronic. even my mom likes the sounds that guy makes...

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

bla bla bla. don't confuse your techno, ambient, hardcore, trance, etc/whatever... with industrial. industrial may be a subset of "electronica" but it didn't start that way.

by the way, the few tracks of this "lowercase music" i just listened to sounded lame. it may be art, but it isn't music.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you even know what Electronica music is? I think you are describing heavy Industrial music, such as Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor (neither of which, by any stretch of the imagination, what you call "goth"). I like Goth and Electronica because they _aren't_ "I hate everyone" styles. Listen to some Qntal, which most people consider to be "Electro-Goth" or some Lydia Lunch or even Nick Cave if you wanna get "mainstream" with it.

As for pure Electronica, mp3.com has a number of very talented artists. You'd be well advised to check some of them out before you spout off about that genre again.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot to include all that shitty ass "rap-core" (ie. Limp Bizkit) and pansy-assed, wannabe rockers (ie. System of a Down & Linkin Park). I'm so sick of hearing their whiny, nasally voices that I'm ready to kill the next person who plays it on the jukebox.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[r00tdenied]

Since when did electronica and the assorted genres of techno become labeled "goth/death/I hate everyone" music? 99.999999% of the stuff I have heard in these genres are quite on the other end of the spectrum. Unless you are thinking of Industrial electronica/techno which is its own genre in itself and typically contains pro-goth,death,hate themes.

r00tdenied

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, I did forget to include that shit. Thanks.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[suraklin]

Try mp3.com's electronica section. I have found quite a bit of good trance there.

Re:Electronica as a whole can benefit

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not a troll. That was a good, informative, on-topic post, dumbass. You can't mod something down just because you disagree, you stupid fuck!

Modders suck corn-shit from my anus.

what's it take to get a decent name?

[Em Emalb]

uhm, yeah...dude takes a frigging mixing board, jacks it back into itself and calls it music? Sure. plenty of silence in between beats. Guess I am just not artistic, but if this qualifies as art, then me drinking a bottle of water is worth millions. Ok troll time over, but this is a little silly. If this is designed to keep people calm and on focus (coding, problem solving, what-have-you) then I personally feel they are barking up the wrong tree...ok, well, not barking, but whispering. As anyone who has listened to Pink Floyd albums can tell you, if you listen hard enough, you can hear some crazy sounds in the background. Which is all this music would do, force me to listen intently for that back ground noise.

Kids these days ;)

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[Anonymous Coward]

The crazy sounds are in your head, dude..

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, this is what happens when you take stupid kids and give them drugs.

"Dude, that one fucking tone for 17 minutes sounds so fucking wicked"

rubbish.

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[Subliminal Fusion]

I think one of the most interesting points made in the article was that it gets people to notice sounds that they otherwise would not. Also, a lot of the focus is on sound design... There's some interesting things there if you're an audio geek. I definitely wouldn't classify this as music to help you focus, it's way too distracting and requires too much concentration...

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[Anonymous Coward]

umm, yeah... you've obviously got no idea what you're talking about. there are a lot of ways you can jack a mixing board back into itself, and once you do that, nobody said the system had to remain static. you know what i mean? using feedback to create music is no less artistic than using vibrating strings.

sheesh, kids these days.

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[wheany]

Maybe so, but unfortunalely that stuff behind the link was not music, or else I am composing a piece right now, called "the 20 second wait".

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[Anonymous Coward]

> ...or else I am composing a piece right now, called "the 20 second wait".

Take that John Cage! How do you like them apples?

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are people so ignorant and self-centered?

uhm, yeah...dude takes a frigging mixing board, jacks it back into itself and calls it music? Sure. plenty of silence in between beats. Guess I am just not artistic, but if this qualifies as art, then me drinking a bottle of water is worth millions.

You don't like it, or it doesn't sound like music you like, so it isn't music or even art. How nice.

You think this music doesn't require much talent? Fine. You think the music sucks/is boring/is a total waste of time? Fine. Opinions are fine. But, saying that obviously this isn't art or music? How closed-minded of you.

Thanks for putting it all on the table... now we don't have to spend time figuring out if you're an obnoxious ass or not.

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll lay something out for you. Art it may be, music it ain't.

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[r00tdenied]

You don't like it, or it doesn't sound like music you like, so it isn't music or even art. How nice.

Dude, you need to calm down a lot! First of all if you need a 10000000000 watt amplifier just to even barely hear it; then yes it can be considered a waste. Heck even I can go to the beach, record some stuff, then dub it to my pc and lower the volume to a minisucle level. You call that art or music?

r00tdenied

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[yusing]

Art it may be, music it ain't.

I understand the sentiment. Having spent several years creating new sounds with a computer -- and teasing field -recorded sounds into contexts where they're unrecognizable -- my experience is that many people agree with your assessment.

A series of different sounds is not music. It's *how* the sounds are *organized* -- and to some extent, how familiar they are -- that decides whether people respond to them as music or not. Like others, I've spent a lot of time exploring that edge. Interestingly people will try to respond to a series of sounds as if it were music until familiar sounds and structures are no longer prominent.

It's not lowercase, but I can recommend Boards of Canada's "Geogaddi" as one fine new exploration of the edge where many people would have problems deciding whether it's music or not. I'd be surprised to hear many people say that it's not an interesting experience, and feel certain that a majority would deny that it's music. TODAY.

Adding the word 'music' after 'lowercase' is misleading most of the time.
The point of lowercase (which, IMO, seldom qualifies as music) is the exploration of sounds. The emphasis is on the sounds themselves rather than their organization... and on experiencing how your brain responds to those sounds.

Whether lowercase ultimately evolves forms that lead people to respond to it *as music* is an open question. It *is* art, but a lot of it hasn't advanced far past shuck-and-jive yet.

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[Planesdragon]

You don't like it, or it doesn't sound like music you like, so it isn't music or even art. How nice.

Remove "you like" and place in "to you", and you've got the only real judge of what constitutes art.

Art is, really, a creative activity that is belived to be art. What is art for me is probably not art for you, and vice versa. Such is life--and such is the abyssmal status of national funding for the arts.

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[buck_wild]

Most people thought the same when Rap and Heavy Metal came out. Some would still agree.

Re:what's it take to get a decent name?

[chocolatetrumpet]

John Cage believed that one of the many roles of the artist was to keep the audience from drowning in their own thoughs. He also believed that beauty could be found everywhere, even in the sounds around you. If you don't find something beautiful, he said, spend 2 minutes with it. If you still don't find it beautiful, spend 4. If still not, then 8, 16, 32... eventually, you will find beauty, or at least you will find something interesting.

what?

[Anonymous Coward]

turn the compressor up to "Extreme 3", pussies. I prefer electronic music that punctures my skull with a hammer ... try some venetian snares.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

huh? Looking at my stereo gate/compressor at my desk.... Mine goes to ..+20 for gain. what gate threshhold, attack release ratio and trigger threshold settings? and then how about the final output gain?

finally, what the hell do you want to accomplish with cranking anything on the compressor but sonic distortions and clipping?

Admit it, you have no frigging clue what you are talking about, and you're just shoving words out your ass in an attempt to look cool.... guess what, you dont.

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's a preset for the TC Native X DX compressor, bitch. Set the attack to 0.1, release to 40, threshold to -56, and yer ratio to 18.0:1 ... Sonic distortions and clipping are fun, bitch! Did I mention that you're a little bitch? ... Take your shitty little radio shack compressor and shove it up your ass, nigger!

Re:what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. He's not cool. He's a troll making stuff up to get a response. His response to you is even lamer. Slashdot is going to the dogs, what with the paid shills and lame trolls. I almost miss the "BSD is Dead" guy sometimes. These new guys suck.

Zoober

WHAT ABOUT UPPERCASE MUSIC?

[Anonymous Coward]

DoEs CaSe SenSiTiVE MuSiC ReAlLy MATTeR?

Actually

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like lowercase news to me.

Silly

[Anonymous Coward]

This sucks

Evil plot, that's what it actually is!

[EvilNTUser]

"One recent album was so quiet, listeners wondered whether it actually contained any sound at all."

The RIAA strikes again!

Re:Evil plot, that's what it actually is!

[Anonymous Coward]

Think of it as: The emporer's new groove.

Trust us...it's music. If you disagree, you must be stupid.

Re:Evil plot, that's what it actually is!

[unitron]

"Think of it as: The emporer's new groove.

Trust us...it's music. If you disagree, you must be stupid"

Even funnier than the parent post.

Although I think it's supposed to be spelled emperor.

Neat article

[jx100]

Anyone notice that the article is as minimalistic as the music?

Re:Neat article

[echucker]

Not to mention the one sentence description here on /. Anyone else find the lack of editorializing refreshing?

Compaies are CLUELESS

[Johnny O]

Companies could give a $#!T! They want marketing $$$$$. They dont care if it can save them money... Big companies will oend it if they can. They want someone ELSE responsible!!!!

Quiet Sounds

[FranChycka]

itty-bitty quiet sounds.

I've been listening to this for quite a while, and I must say it's been a good change from the usual stuff labelled 'electronic'.

thats what I thought anyway, until I realised my headphones were broken...
fran

Re:Quiet Sounds

[CaptDeuce]

I've been listening to this for quite a while, and I must say it's been a good change from the usual stuff labelled 'electronic'.
thats what I thought anyway, until I realised my headphones were broken...

I would have found it funny ... except I'm not using headphones, my speakers are not broken but I still can't hear anything.

From the article:

Created largely by scientists, techies and experimental musicians, lowercase recordings are frequently based on the magnification of minute sounds through a computer, typically a Macintosh.

Oh, and I've been a Mac user since 1984. Imagine all of the kids today who boast about how many fans they have cooling their Pentium boxes ... 18 years from now ...

Re:Quiet Sounds

[MindStalker]

You really have to turn your speakers all the way up. If they arn't powered speakers, you probably won't hear a thing.

Re:Quiet Sounds

[Anonymous Coward]

I must say it's been a good change from the usual stuff labelled 'electronic'.

Like... all the other music made using electronic equipment? What's your point?

Re:Quiet Sounds

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe he's joking, because the fact is that this isn't a good change at all.

how about

[zephc]

holding my overclocked TI-85 within 3 ft of a walkman? =] *remembers playing TI-85 asm games in high school*

I didnt like them.

[O.F. Fascist]

Well I downloaded the ones linked to the wired article, and I cant say that I liked any of them.

Re:I didnt like them.

[ObviousGuy]

I just went back and listened to them. One problem I had was that the computer was louder than any sound being played. The noise of the cheap speakers drowned out anything but the loudest clicks and taps.

I've always thought that electronica was one of the closest relatives to traditional classical music where the meter and timing and beat were very similar in both styles of music. But this new electronica doesn't seem to have any of that. It's more like... random recordings of random sounds, no better than the background noise of your room.

This fad will hopefully pass quickly.

It one is really interested in some interesting electronica, there's a really great sound coming out of India or at least is based on Indian music. Very cool. I wish I could remember the term off the top of my head.

Re:I didnt like them.

[proj_2501]

The Indian flavored music you're talking is often called "Bhangra" or "Asian Underground". It's mostly coming from the UK.

There is always more than one "fad" going through what you call "electronica" and I call TECHNO.

You can easily choose to ignore the ones you don't like, unless you get all your music news from Slashdot.

Re:I didnt like them.

[ObviousGuy]

I use the term electronica because techno has itself been pigeonholed into the larger classification of electronica. In conversation, though, techno is the term I use. Funny that.

Of course I'm way over here in the house camp licking Danny Tenaglia's boots. But that's a different conversation.

Re:I didnt like them.

[grepMeister]

I've always thought that electronica was one of the closest relatives to traditional classical music where the meter and timing and beat were very similar in both styles of music. But this new electronica doesn't seem to have any of that. It's more like... random recordings of random sounds, no better than the background noise of your room.

I don't suppose you like pretty much any of the classical music written between 1925 and 1965, then. A lot of it really is just random recordings of random sounds, and most of the rest of it sounds like it to someone who hasn't studied music for a good number of years.

Re:I didnt like them.

[ScumBiker]

As a musician, I completely agree about the state of classical music between '25 and '65. There where some great pieces done, think Copeland, but most of the rest was forgetable. I understand that composers are attempting to write in the style of the masters again. I recently heard a piece called "Loon" which was most certainly not pops, click and random noise and ideed got the feel of being in a marsh and hearing loons. Wonderful piece.
Anyway, the lowercase music I've heard and been fiddling with on my Mac is pretty cool, although the extreme pieces that feature lot's of silence are in my opinion just plain silly.
Does anyone remeber the radio program "Hearts of Space"? That is the kind of music I think of when I hear this lowercase stuff. I really do like most of it.

Thanx everyone for al of the great electronica tips!

Re:I didnt like them.

[mskfisher]

I was confused about the different genres inside electronica until I read this:

http://phobos.plato.nl/e-primer/

VERY helpful, complete with sound samples.

Re:I didnt like them.

[GutBomb]

pretty sad that you don't realize it's music until you have already studied music. and then the only reson you recognize it as music is because your instructors told you "even though it does not sound like music, it is music"

Re:I didnt like them.

[Xaoswolf]

I would like to say that I downloaded and listened to the songs, unfortunately, it appears that everybody on slashdot is doing the same.

Re:I didnt like them.

[Jon-o]

FOr that matter, the classical music written between 1550 and 1650. Or 1750 and 1800. Or 1850 and 1900. Hell.. ALL of it.

If your classical music sounds much like electronica, you're not playing it very well. Just because, on paper, it can be described in terms of precise rhythms and exact tempos and so on, it doesn't mean that it should be performed that way. Any pre-20th century music is very flexible in almost every way. It's just the advent of modernism and mechanization that brought on much strict adherence to the printed page, metronomes, and other gizmos.

Re:I didnt like them.

[proj_2501]

I suggest Ishkur's site for a similar primer. Just make sure your sense of humor is activated :)

Re:I didnt like them.

[Anonymous Coward]

This fad will hopefully pass quickly.

OK, you didn't like it. Is this a good reason for you to wish for an entire genre to get up and die? Many people don't like Classical music, but I doubt that it's very existance irks them.

Re:I didnt like them.

[djdavetrouble]

I wouldn't really consider what Danny does House anymore, its not techno either, in fact i consider techno to be used incorrectly most of the time. Techno's original designation was for the sound coming out of detroit in the late 80's, a similar tempo to house, but completely instrumental and more 'bleepy' and electronic than house. i'd call Danny's set hi-nrg house derivative club music with a twist of trance.

I have heard about the Bhangra parties at S.O.B's, I had the misfortune of hearing some of this music in a taxicab a while ago, the driver told me that this was one of the most popular artists. Every song was a sample of some american song that was previously an underground hit.

lowercase seems derivative but in another way, instead of ambient synthesized sounds, the emphasis is on sampled sounds of real world noises.
I can't imagine any of this music settling in my head, and say, humming the tune as i walk down the street.

lowercase is getting on my nerves already....

Re:I didnt like them.

[Anonymous Coward]

"ALL of it." ?!

You can find books on music > 100 years old that suggest very strongly to play pieces as they are written. Even if the tempo is not strictly adhered to, lots of the music does indeed sound musical, unlike the random noise written between 1925-65 that the previous poster mentioned.

Re:I didnt like them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Theoretically -- there was a Baroque period (Bach), a classic period (Beethoven, Mozart), a romantic period (Chopin, Liszt), and then the modern period. Therefore, traditional classical music did have meter and timing, and not the craziness/clashiness of modern.

However, waiting 5 seconds, and then hearing a small crunch, and then waiting another 5 seconds does not seem like any kind of music. It may have a theory behind it, be it musical or not, but I'll pass on ever buying the cds

Re:I didnt like them.

[phossie]

either that or it's just another abstraction towards appreciating everything you hear, all the time. i don't think it's sad at all.

it's kind of like a really fine scotch. you probably won't appreciate it as a kid when all you know is fruit juice and soda and water and milk. you'll think it's horrid. (i didn't, but i think i'm not average that way.) but you could end up really enjoying it later in life *as your tastes mature*.

interpreting your post a different way, yes, it's pretty sad that it takes a formal education in music for people to realize that there is much more to 'musical' than stuff we create. musicality is in the *perception*.

Re:I didnt like them.

[grepMeister]

pretty sad that you don't realize it's music until you have already studied music.


I can agree with that to a great extent. On the other hand, if we develop new ways of listening, we can be opened to a new world. As humans, we really can enjoy listening to pretty much anything -- but there are definitely some undeniable and unchangeable constraints that many composers don't/didn't take into account or believe in. Some composers just seem to have been better at making the unconventional -- what might well go against certain of those constraints -- sound good.

To put on my music student's hat, I think Milton Babbitt's music is somewhat listenable despite its intricate complexity, and I adore Webern. Boulez and Schoenberg, despite their lofty status, may look good on paper, but frankly, they sound bad. Cage, however, was ingenious, and did absolutely wonderful-sounding things. (And yes, I include even the infamous 4'33". It is beautiful and indeed quite powerful if you know how to listen to it.)

What it means to "not know how to listen to" certain things seems to be one of two things (depending on what you're listening to): (1) Nature (the constraints): human beings can only naturally listen to certain things together without going crazy; (2) Nurture: your inability to listen to something is only because you've grown up not knowing how -- and in fact, this very often reflects society's basic way of living. A Buddhist, for example, would I think take no issue with Cage's comment, "Open your windows -- music!" But most westerners would say something like "This is stupid." Not to be able to listen to a running stream is "sad," I think -- not that I don't partly agree with you.

Re:I didnt like them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly.
It's like having a bigger dick than all the other kids, but never really thinking about why that's a good thing until the camp counselors start paying extra attention to you in the shower.
No, wait, that isn't it.
It's like having finer sensibilities than your peers, noticing how much less your shit stinks than everyone else's.

Re:I didnt like them.

[phossie]

It's like having finer sensibilities than your peers, noticing how much less your shit stinks than everyone else's.

i love replying to ac's.

yes. it's like having finer sensibilities than your peers. exactly. you're right. you notice things other people either don't notice or don't give a shit about.

that goes hand in hand with really experiencing the stink of shit intensely. your own included.

Favourite minimalist band.

[Ted Maul]

I've got a tape by these guys called "Head Cleaner". It's very quiet. I've got their video as well.

Re:Favourite minimalist band.

[mosch]

Odd that you say that, seeing as I'm listening to headcleaner, by atmos right now.

Re:Favourite minimalist band.

[lllama]

I knew Lens Cleaner were doing a cover. Now I know where to look for the original.

Thanks!

Herbert

[proj_2501]

Reminds of Matthew Herbert does.

For a live show, he will take samples of himself breaking stuff and do all sorts of things with the noises. Lately he has taken to ripping up bits of corporate branding (soda cans, mcdonald's fries, etc.)

Re:Herbert

[dietz]

Herbert is great (and his live shows are both great music and funny), but he's most certainly lumped into "IDM" and not "lowercase" or "microsounds" or whatever you want to call it.

Re:Herbert

[proj_2501]

Actually, I hear a lot of talk about him on techno and house mailing lists. I personally most of these labels except for the most general ones are a load of tripe anyway. (and i thought microsound was something different but oh well)

Re:Herbert

[Cuthalion]

A heads up to anyone interested, Wishmountainisdead is Matt Herbert's project that is exhibits this the most strongly. It's also excellent.

nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[discogravy]

cage did this, as the article points out. one of the main points behind his "silent" compositions -- aside from the obvious tongue in cheek 'let's mess with the critics' attitude it had -- was the use of ambient sound as part of the composition. brian eno was inpsired to make "music for airports" (for intents and purposes the first non-classical "ambient" record) when he was recovering from a car accident and asked a friend to put a harpsichord record on the turntable..but she didn't raise the volume high enough before she left so he had to put up with it at a very low volume, barely loud enough to hear over the rain on the windows in his room. the ultra-quietness of these recordings reminds me of heavy metal guitarists trying to out-"heavy" each other. these guys are just trying to out-"quiet" each other.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[panaceaa]

I found a good article about Cage's work here. His most notable performance piece was 4'33, consisting of a man coming out on stage, and sitting at a piano for 4 minutes and 33 seconds while occasionally flipping his sheets of music. It shifted the focus from the stage to the audience, making audience members aware of all the sounds around them.

One thing that Cage's performances had that lowercase music doesn't, however, is variability. Each Cage performance was slightly different. I would really welcome a movement such as this in popular music, where songs have variability of notes, measures, keys, or whatever an artist would like. It would make listening to the same song over and over on the radio much more interesting. And it's completely possible with today's technology.

Maybe this is why I like listening to dj mixes online... they're always new and different.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[discogravy]

some bands do this with their live music -- unfortunately it's almost always one of the many jam bands, (like phish, medeski martin & wood, et al) but some other bands -- including electronic acts, like Coil vary their live performances of pieces GREATLY -- to the point where it might even be called a different song.

Frank Zappa did something quite similar with is bands: he would use hand signals to change a performance of a piece and make a rock song into a reggae song or a jazzier piece or what-have-you. In some ways, John Zorn's "game pieces" use this same method of improvisation (although Zorn's "games" really are games: there is a competition and winners are picked at the end of the performance.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[3.5 stripes]

Actually, I did the same thing a little while ago, I stopped downloading "copyrighted" or album music, and just listen to dj sets. I really enjoy different mixes, and the fact that you can hear some really really strange songs placed together. The avalanches do some incredible genre jumping, and there's a breezeblock of chile gonzales that kills me:)

Zamfir master of the pan flutes!

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[CharlieG]

That was my thought

sounds like they never heard of "Music on a long thin wire"

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[checkyoulater]

Frank Zappa did something quite similar with is bands: he would use hand signals to change a performance of a piece and make a rock song into a reggae song or a jazzier piece or what-have-you

Zappa also did something which I think is almost the opposite of this lowercase stuff. Ever heard Weasels Ripped My Flesh? Great stuff...

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[rnturn]

``the use of ambient sound as part of the composition. brian eno was inpsired to make "music for airports" (for intents and purposes the first non-classical "ambient" record) when he was recovering from a car accident and asked a friend to put a harpsichord record on the turntable..but she didn't raise the volume high enough before she left so he had to put up with it at a very low volume, barely loud enough to hear over the rain on the windows in his room.''

The recording you're thinking of was Discreet Music released in 1975 on the Obscure Label (Eno's label). If memory serves, the event you are referring to was either from the liner notes or the back of the album; can't recall just now. Music for Airports was released in 1978.

But, as you said, Eno wasn't the first to get involved in this sort of music. Check out http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/. It has some pages that go into a lot of the background, thoughts, etc. about ambient.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[AtaruMoroboshi]

Um, I'd have to say you are wrong about the variability.

Consider how much of this music is made, often with Powerbooks running Max/MSP or Reaktor, or Logic Audio with a lot of VST instruments. Now, with Max/MSP and Reaktor, creating algorythmic music that does in fact change from playback to playback is relatively simple.

Max and Reaktor are both modular environments for music. Max is fully extendable, if you need an object that doesn't already exist, you can write your own in C++. Br00tal. It's the environment of choice for artists like Autechre and Tetsu Innoue.

Reaktor is less powerful, but is nearly as cool, and I use it because it doesn't get quite as low level as Max and I don't have my brain wrapped around Max just yet. (There are 1200 pages of documentation for Max/MSP for a reason.) Taylor Deupree uses Reaktor and I went to a roundtable discussion on Loops in music at Pier 1, NYC, a few months ago, and he played for us one second of sound, looped, but with a random start point on the sample. The sound evolved but did not repeat, at least not in a way that we could understand. Very cool to listen to.

If you are really interested in computer music that evolves, I highly recommend Autechre - Confield. It's not microsound, though there are micro-elements, but it's a mindblowingly different album, made by a pair of guys who have been pushing the edge of techno for over ten years and have finally fallen off the deep end into territory that is just paradigm shattering. For an equally complex but much more traditionally listener friendly release, check out Autechre's also recently released Peel Sessions 2.

(Peel Sessions 2 has the best minimalist cover art ever. It's white text on white background; you can only read it by angling the cover so that the difference in gloss shines at you.)

Autechre play live using two powerbooks, two Nord Modulars, and heavily custom max/msp patches. The recent live sets I've downloaded off of *soulseek* are generally comprised of 4 15 to 20 minute songs that are definitely evolving and changing.

The microsounders do this too. In my experience, there are two kinds of post-techno musicians:

1) those that improvise and "jam" with their machines

2) those that hyperedit and plan everything with extreme precision.

I tend to be in catagory 2, spending 8 hours on sequencing constantly changing drums for a 2 minute song. But many of the microsounders in question build libraries of sound files, and libraries of audio environments and when they play live, it is improvised.

With all that said, I figure I might as well continue:

Anyone intersted in what's going on in computer music should look into these software packages: max/msp, reaktor, supercollider, melodyne, ableton live, absynth, Audiomulch. While I also use stuff like Reason, these programs are more "forward thinking" and non-traditional.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[Asprin]

brian eno was inpsired to make "music for airports"

Ahhh, there's a name I haven't heard in a while. He produced several records for the Talking Heads and others.

obTrivia: Didn't he composes the now-famous Windows 95 start-up sound?

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[fingal]

Anyone intersted in what's going on in computer music should look into these software packages: max/msp, reaktor, supercollider, melodyne, ableton live, absynth, Audiomulch. While I also use stuff like Reason, these programs are more "forward thinking" and non-traditional.

I'll just drop another one into the list, namely PD. PD (or Pure Data if you prefer) is written by Miller Puckette who worked on Max, and has since re-written it as PD. Can be downloaded from here and there is a very useful site here.

PD is particularly nice because as well as letting midi + audio flow between the blocks in a particular patch, it will also let you handle 3d graphics primitives thereby letting you create generative video as well as sound.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: yes, he did.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[igorxa]

actually, the eno recording you are referring to is called discreet music, from 1975. from the liner notes:

"In January this year I had an accident. I was not seriously hurt, but I was confined to bed in a stiff and static position. My friend Judy Nylon visited me and brought me a record of 18th century harp music. After she had gone, and with some considerable difficulty, I put on the Record. Having laid down, I realized that the amplifier was set at an extremely low level, and that one channel of the stereo had failed completely. Since I hadn't the energy to get up and improve matters, the record played on almost inaudibly. This presented what was for me a new way of hearing music - as part of the ambience of the environment just as the colour of the light and the sound of the rain were parts of that ambience. It is for this reason that I suggest listening to the piece at comparatively low levels, even to the extent that it frequently falls below the threshold of audibility."

i have to agree, "silent music" is nothing new or groundbreaking. also of note are ambient masters moby (yes moby--check out the album "ambient"), orb, orbital, and aphex twin. and not to forget matthew herbert, using everyday environmental sounds and bodily functions as the basis of composition.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[edhall]

Another nice thing about PD: it's Open Source, and it runs on Linux. In fact, it runs best on Linux.

-Ed

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[jzitt]

sounds like they never heard of "Music on a long thin wire"

...which, for those others who haven't, is a wonderful piece by composer Alvin Lucier, released on the Lovely Music label, with an excerpt on the invaluable collection OHM- The Early Gurus of Electronic Music.

In it, Lucier strung a long wire across a cavernous indoor space, excited it with an oscillator at one end, and left to ring for a long time. The initial performance was broadcast for a week on the radio, and got a good listenership.

Lucier's work in general may be of interest to anyone intersted in the combination of art and science. Most of it involves simple and beautiful explorations of acoustic phenomena, such as the wire.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[alouts]

You're basically talking about jazz. Or, more generically, improvisation - which is not new or revolutionary, but definitely has been limited to certain genres.

Some modern rock bands are all about this kind of thing, and it's one of the primary reasons the Grateful Dead were so popular musically (admittedly though, the drug culture that accompanied them was pretty popular in its own right). If you want improvistaion, listen to basically any jazz recording, or any live recording of a jam-type band like Phish or the Dead, or even, like you said, a live recording of a decent DJ if electronica is more to your tastes. With the artist there to alter the themes, you get all kinds of spontaniety and creativity that you just don't get in pre-arranged compositions.

Somehow I don't get the feeling that this is what you are talking about though. If what you're talking about is having commercial radio vary what it plays each time it plays it, I think you're pretty much SOL. The artist would not only have to be present each time in order to customize the music, but they would need to get away from using pre-recorded music altogether, and rely on generated music. That would change the landscape for the demand of music recordings, and we all know what happens when you suggest change to the music industry's business model...

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[panaceaa]

What I was saying was essentially what the post before yours said. Music-as-data that has a degree of randomness to it when played. Yes, it is a lot like jazz improvisation, but the improvisation is done by the music player using some logic embedded in the music file/format. This way, listeners don't have to go to concerts to listen to improv. The artist sets what improvisations are acceptible so that while every play is slightly different (or possibly drastically different), each play is a creation of the artist.

And the post before yours is right, now that I think about it... this has been done before. But I'd like to see it done by more than just groundbreaking electronic artists like Autechre.

Re:nothing particularly groundbreaking about it

[symbolic]

As a music theory & comp major when I entered college, I'd never heard of Cage. I can still remember the day I sat in the newly-remodeled music library, listening to one of Cage's work that consisted of a bunch of chirps, squawks, bangs, and whatnot - what you'd hear of an orchestra *before* the performance. I could hardly keep from breaking out in laughter.

Although I've never had a reason to listen to Cage since then, I applaud his different "wavelength". Another artist, not nearly as odd-sounding, was Steve Reich - he's a long way from "quiet", but his minimalist style is quite intriguing. After I left the university, one of his works stuck with me..."Music for Mallet Instruments, Voice, and Organ." It was about 10 years later than I finally found the CD- an import. So, while you have minimal sound with these guys (cited in the article), you have minimal change with Reich (at least with some of his work, anyway).

WHISPER THE SONGS OF SILENCE

[Anonymous Coward]

Music GENERATED on a computer is USUALLY associated with the thumping beats of techno. But a quieter AESTHETIC is emerging.
It's SO subtle YOU CAN hardly HEAR it.

"LOWERCASE SOUND" is the NAME given to a loose MOVEMENT in ELECTRONIC MUSIC that emphasizes very QUIET SOUNDS and the long, EMPTY SILENCES between them.

Created largely by SCIENTISTS, TECHIES and experimental MUSICIANS, LOWERCASE recordings are frequently based on the MAGNIFICATION of MINUTE SOUNDS through a computer, typically a MACINTOSH.

Recent COMPOSITIONS include a bubbling SYMPHONY of BOILING TEA KETTLES, the GENTLE HISS hiss of blank TAPES being played through a STEREO and the soft BUMPS of HELIUM BALLOONS hitting the CEILING.

Where is the sound?

[z_gringo]

Was anyone else able to hear any of those "songs?" from the article? I tried, and I couldn't hear anything other than the background hiss from having my speakers turned up all the way. I think this "music" may be about the same thing as the Emperor's new clothes story.

I don't guess it matters, because after reading the article, It sounds even more lame.

Re:Where is the sound?

[Anonymous Coward]

no, your speakers are just standard-issue piss-poor crap. Sorry. Get a set of Spirit Absolute 4Ps like mine :D

What about sound quality?

[pheph]

While the idea of very quiet sound may appeal to some listeners, one cannot deny the concept that since this is recorded at a lower volume it is actually of lower representative quality. Why not record it at resonable volumes and play it at your desired listening volume level?

In example, instead of your sample range range being from 0-65535 it is 0-4096, it may be 'lowercase music', but it could also be represented in just 12 bits instead of 16. The vinyl enthusiats must HATE these guys!

Re:What about sound quality?

[ObviousGuy]

They just ship blanks to vinyl enthusiasts. Those releases sound better than the CD version.

Re:What about sound quality?

[billsf]

Really, what is the point of throwing out about
five of the most signicifant bits? Madplay says
-27.6dB peak (which is actually just over 30dB
down from the full 16bits or 11bits total here)
Also who's idea is it to use 160kbit/s (this is
the old rip-kiddie speed) and ontop of that, it
is downsampled to 22.05kHz! Not impressed at all.

Re:What about sound quality?

[jzitt]

While the idea of very quiet sound may appeal to some listeners, one cannot deny the concept that since this is recorded at a lower volume it is actually of lower representative quality. Why not record it at resonable volumes and play it at your desired listening volume level?

That is, indeed, how much of the lowercase music that I know is recorded.

Re:What about sound quality?

[cosyne]

In example, instead of your sample range range being from 0-65535 it is 0-4096, it may be 'lowercase music', but it could also be represented in just 12 bits instead of 16

Ok, geeze. someone needs to be an anal bastard here, may as well be me: your could represent 0-4095 in 12 bits. 0-4096 would take 13.

But I agree entirely. Lowering the recording volume really just cuts the signal to noise ratio, not the actual listening volume.

This is bullshit

[uebernewby]

This music has been around for quite some time. For a short while two years ago, it was called 'glitch' and it was the 'in' thing of the week - heck, 'Clicks and Cuts 2' got reviewed in Playboy magazine.

It got to the point were everyone and their third rate techno musician was spicing up tracks with 'lowercase' sounds.

Before the 'glitch' revolution, there was already a large scene of musicians who used computers to create tracks out of supposedly non-musical sounds. They were called 'experimental musicians', 'soundscapists' or 'musique concrete people'.

It's nice to see Wired drawing some attention to these guys, but it's hardly new and I also dare say the scene of people who like this kind of stuff is quite a bit larger than '10.000 people world wide'.

Re:This is bullshit

[iapetus]

They were called 'experimental musicians', 'soundscapists' or 'musique concrete people'.

They were called plenty of other, more colourful things as well. :)

Re:This is bullshit

[jafuser]

It's nice to see Wired drawing some attention to these guys

Re-read the article and determine whether it was written to draw some attention to a music genre, or as advertising for DigiDesign and Apple.

• Picture with a Mac
• "magnification of minute sounds through a computer, typically a Macintosh."
• "...and amplify them with software such as DigiDesign's Pro Tools."
• "...attracted about 100 people to see three performers, all using Apple PowerBooks. "
• "Macs are central to the creation of lowercase sound ... and they amplify and edit the soft sounds on Macs. "
• "this work has blossomed tremendously with the relative availability of Pro Tools (especially the free download from DigiDesign)"
• "the lower prices of Mac hardware over the last few years"
• "The Mac is the favored platform ... Most people who work with computer music use a Macintosh. "
• "This grew out of putting powerful computers into the hands of ordinary people..."

Re:This is bullshit

[geektweaked.com]

i would believe that if it weren't for the fact that nothing beats protools with the only possible exception of logic.

while protools is available in an x86 friendly edition, it was originally made for the mac. as a result more people tend to use it with the mac. take me for example. my everyday computers are x86, but my protools machines are macs.

-c

Re:This is bullshit

[Lemmy Caution]

This sort of music can actually be made very well with Csound. Kim Cascone has done some pieces in this style using Csound.

The article left out the Raster-Noton folks, like N0t0, and musicians like Ryoji Ikeda, Gas, and some of the Mille-Plateaux artists who really got "laptop music" (the term I've always heard) off the ground. Still, a good start.

Re:This is bullshit

[dedair]

What you are actually refering to is considered 'IDM' or Intelligent Dance Music. One of the best examples of this is a label named Warp Records @ Warprecords.com . What this article is refering to is even beyond the scope of 'Clicks and Cuts'. If you want IDM, listen to Autechre, Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin or kid606. These guys have been using Apple laptops for years.

Re:This is bullshit

[jafuser]

I'll have to check it out. How does it compare with Cool Edit?

Re:This is bullshit

[Heironymus Coward]

there was already a large scene of musicians who used computers to create tracks out of supposedly non-musical sounds. They were called 'experimental musicians', 'soundscapists' or 'musique concrete people'.

well, `experimental' covers a hell of a lot more than that, and `musique concrete' began in the '20s, but I catch your meaning... this isn't really new -- except to one group of people.

note that the article is written as part of wired's cult of macintosh category, and that the article suggests you have to have a mac to do lowercase music, because kids with macs "invented" it.

I'm sure all the experimental artists like klowd, crawl unit, and aube who don't use a computer at all, just contact mics directly on their chosen instrument, will be happy to hear about this rule.

what it all amounts to is kids getting excited about something they (re)discovered, but not being sufficiently "in the loop" to realize that they are part of a very long tradition.

which is all for the best, I suppose... if they were to join the larger community of noise musicians, those poor sheltered mac kids would probably cry once they find out that "harsh noise" people frown on "laptop" people.

Re:This is bullshit

[geektweaked.com]

protools is essentially magic. i don't really know how it works, but damn does it do it well. it's a completely different ballgame compared to cool edit (although, i do use cool edit for simple wav editing on my x86 boxes - i'm also a fan of goldwave, mostly because i've been using both for years)

-c

Re:This is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree - goldwave is the dogs' danglies. I just don't like cooledit. Protools is weird - you spend about an day at first going "what the heck? Where's the ?" and then it just clicks. It Just Works :)

Re:This is bullshit

[jzitt]

Re-read the article and determine whether it was written to draw some attention to a music genre, or as advertising for DigiDesign and Apple.

Reread the article and notice that it was posted in the Cult of Mac area of the site, hence the Mac focus.

Duh.

Re:This is bullshit

[reverius]

Why is it called "laptop music"?

Re:This is bullshit

[uebernewby]

I was most definitely *not* referring to IDM (that has to be the worst, most conceited and downright stupid name to be given to a genre of music ever).

'Clicks and Cuts', 'Micromusic' or whatever the hell has more in common with techno. In fact, I personally call it 'experimental techno', for good reason, too. Check out some stuff by Taylor Deupree (mentioned in the article) for instance, that's techno with Cool Sounds (tm).

A quick history lesson: apart from musique concrete and its offspring, in 1999-2000 there was a subgenre of techno called 'heroin house', on labels like Chain Reaction (a Basic Channel offshoot) that, also in fact, put out the first releases by people like Vladislav Delay, who later got lumped in with the glitch crowd, then, when he did a cheeky house-ish album, with 'microhouse'.

At the same time, there was a strong 'experimental electronics' scene, with imprints such as Raster-Noton (home of the only true glitch meister Carsten 'alva.noto' Nicolai) that started to take pointers from popular dance music. Some clever Wire journalist then figured these two movements ('experimental techno' and 'experimental electronics') yielded similar sounding result and called the 'movement' Glitch.

Over in the US, a similar convergence between academic experimentalism and techno was produced by people like Taylor Deupree, Kit Clayton and Sutekh.

None of this has anything to do with IDM. In fact, most of my IDM loving friends *hate* this experimental electronica, because to them it's boring and repetitive (to me, IDM is convoluted and tiring, but then that's just me).

Anyway, this is a rant. Mod me as such. The point is, I wasn't referring to IDM at all.

Re:This is bullshit

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD THIS UP! (+5, 'ACTUALLY READ THE ARTICLE')

I was just thinking the same thing.
Zoober

My computer's fan sounds louder.

[slumpie]

cat /vmlinuz > /dev/dsp sounds better :-D

Re:My computer's fan sounds louder.

[uebernewby]

Aahh ... but what you *really* want to do is open vmlinuz in an audio editor (in 'raw pcm' mode) and snip the best bits from it to work into a composition using a regular sample sequencer. Or maybe some kernel modules. The USB module, for instance, sounds fairly pleasing but it has a certain crude, unpolished feel to it that reminds one of early punk records. *Very* nice.

Re:My computer's fan sounds louder.

[distributed.karma]

My absolute favourite so far is "cat shannon1948.ps > /dev/dsp". It's quite spooky as the paper deals with information and sampling, and you hear these patterns of beeps. Some other PostScript files also have nice techno sounds.

Re:My computer's fan sounds louder.

[teaserX]

Actually, If you send the output through an analog chorus and an echoplex, crop the high frequencies,lower volume and superimpose a cat bathing itself you might have something there.

Re:My computer's fan sounds louder.

[Buck2]

try 'find / > /dev/dsp'

pretty cool if you ask me.

Surprise!

[Bitmanhome]

It'll be great until some smartass makes a track that's 45 minutes of near-silence followed by A LOUD BANG! One more fad bites the dust.

Re:Surprise!

[plumby]

You can achieve that effect by putting a computer disk in your old audio CD player. I did that once (by accident), with a magazine cover disk. I couldn't hear anything so I kept turning up the volume. Just as I got to max, I got an extremely loud bang, followed by more silence. I thought I'd blown something up, but it all seemed OK afterwards (except for my ear). I don't recommend it.

Re:Surprise!

[Crizp]

Some guys at a norwegian radio station did something like this on purpose. They got the producer to decrease the volume bit by bit, so everyone was turning up the volume to hear what they was saying.

After a couple of minutes everything was almost completely silent - until they cranked up the volume and shouted "BAH" and started some (really loud) music.

Blew my car speakers on that one :(

Re:Surprise!

[ColaMan]

Heh,
one of the early phillips demo CD's did this to demonstrate the new-fangled CD players dynamic range... it went like this..

Orchestra playing softly....
Orchestra playing softly....
Orchestra playing softly....
Orchestra playing soft *********FUCKING BIG CANNON!************

As I recall, a lot of audiophile's speakers were replaced after the cones practically leapt across the room.

Re:Surprise!

[jdludlow]

Odds are good that a lot of audiophile's pants were changed after that too.

Re:Surprise!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the old game systems (early 90s) used to have an audio track on some of the CDs with this demented elf type guy talking. If you ran it in a CD player, you'd hear something like this:

"This disc contains computer data that can BLOW OUT your stereo system's speakers. Hit stop now, ... or kiss your tweeters goodbye!"

Even with the massive quantities of archived data available on the Internet now, I still can't figure out just what disc/game system had that elf guy.

Re:Surprise!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not new, sounds like the 1812 Oveture...

Re:Surprise!

[jzitt]

It'll be great until some smartass makes a track that's 45 minutes of near-silence followed by A LOUD BANG!

Granted that these were before most readers here were born, but this trick (with somewhat less silence) was done with King Crimson's In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969, and Haydn's Surprise Symphony somewhat earlier.

Re:Surprise!

[dazedNconfuzed]

You can achieve that effect by putting a computer disk in your old audio CD player.

Worse:
I went to a screening of The Matrix on an IMAX screen, where the audio was farked up. They stopped the film to fix the sound system. Something went extra wrong, and they pumped digital noise (maybe the PCM audio stream directly into audio in) at full 50,000 watts volume. AAAAAAAAA!!!! All the tweeters blew out; not sure about my hearing.

Re:Surprise!

[Mojojojo Monkey Inc.]

I cranked my computer speakers up pretty damn loud to actually hear the 'lowercase' song samples in the article. Then, I got a new email and Brak screamed at me at 90dB to "READ THE MAIL, READ THE MAIL, READ THE MAIL!!!!!" I need new pants now.

My definition

[HiQ]

If these people are happy making this, and other people enjoy listening to it: good for them! In my book however, this doesn't qualify as music. For me music has structure, meaning and most importantly emotion, and contains almost nothing but non-randomness. For me this only qualifies as sound. Definately not my cup of tea! (come to think of it, the sound of a cup of tea cooling down could make a nice record!).

Re:My definition

[MrFredBloggs]

"structure, meaning and most importantly emotion"

Stay away from John Cage, then - at least until you understand what he`s trying to achieve.

Re:My definition

[scrm]

Depends. I categorize music rather simplistically, into two groups: active and passive. When you listen to music actively you're pressing the headphones against your head and trying to understand the song. Here, chord structure, less repetition, buildups and fill-ins are important elements.

Passively, the music is just a mood enhancer - lyrics could be pretty much anything, mixing and production are less crucial, etc. [Of course there are grey areas and some pieces have elements of both, but you get the picture].

This 'lowercase music', Brian Eno, etc, for me qualifies as passive music in a very pure form. Perhaps you could sleep to it (Music for Airports put me to sleep anyway).

Re:My definition

[Anonymous Coward]

In my opinion, music should be able to stand on its own and convey emotion without requiring the listener to know the composer or what he was trying to accomplish.

That's just me though. I don't care who a song is by. If I don't like a piece after about 3 listens it's likely I won't llisten again.

Re:My definition

[MrFredBloggs]

Not all music is supposed to convey emotion. I agree with you in general (read `the painted word` by tom wolf), but I`ve found i do get more out of music when i know what it follows, why it was done etc.

Lull are a good example of this sort of thing.

[Mordant]

It's one of Mick Harris' (of Scorn, Napalm Death, etc.) side-projects, available from Isolation Tank:

http://www2.mailordercentral.com/isotank/

Re:Lull are a good example of this sort of thing.

[lhooq]

i beg to differ.

i'd file lull (and artists like thomas köner) under dark ambient or perhaps isolationism.
lowercase music (think bernhard günter) has very little to do with ambient, light or dark.
it has more in common with modern "classical" composers like morton feldman.

Sounds I would like to hear

[DRAGONWEEZEL]

The top ten (11 if you count #5) sounds I would like to hear relating to lowercase music is....

11. The sound of Spiders walking on a hardwood floor.

10. The sound of my cablemodem reving up when I turn on KAZAA.

9. The sound of 'The Sound of Music' in a dvdplayer with the inputs off.

8. The sound of the electric meter while cracking rc/5's

7. The sound of my moniter while listening to winamp, and watching various visualizations.

6. The sound of the first few molecules in a fire oxidizing.

5. The sound of a mouse farting.

4. The sound of an acid eating away a substance.

3. The sound of my boss increasing my pay.

2. The sound of a lightsaber in standby.

1. The sound of a router whilst being slashdoted.

Re:Sounds I would like to hear

[Anonymous Coward]

"10. The sound of my cablemodem reving up when I turn on KAZAA."

The screams of RIAA employees whenver I start Kazaa...there are thousands of them...any Vulcan can hear them..

Re:Sounds I would like to hear

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The sound of a router whilst being slashdoted.

I reckon this is not the router we discussed last week in the poll on woodworking ...

Re:Sounds I would like to hear

[Anonymous Coward]

8. The sound of the electric meter while cracking rc/5's

I haven't tried that, but tuning a scanner radio to my computer's CPU frequency while crunching Seti@Home sounds rather interesting...

7. The sound of my moniter while listening to winamp, and watching various visualizations.

...whereas this thingy needs nothing but an ordinary AM-radio! :)

Re:Sounds I would like to hear

[buck_wild]

You forgot several, such as:

1. The biological sound of a woman's orgasm.
2. The sound of one hand clapping.
3. The contented sigh of a tree as I click 'send' on an email.
4. The diminishing sound of my computer just after the power button has been depressed.
5. The sound of my boot embedding itself into a spammer's or telemarketer's ass.

Just my opinion.

artical is really about

[gnudutch]

That's funny, when I read the article I got the feeling it was more about their website design than the music.

Re:artical is really about

[diesel_jackass]

oh, it was an article?
i thought it was a Mac advertisement.

The body of this comment follows the genre

[jukal]

1 0

0 1

1 0

0 1

Ugh.

[natehaas]

Reading these comments is the most painful thing.

This kind of ignorant joking is just embarassing.

Re:Ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

You shut up now.

Re:Ugh.

[musinc]

I have to agree with you. I would dare bet that most of the people posting here don't know the slightest thing about the history of electronic art music. The url's posted seem to point to sites that contain the development of electronic dance music, and mostly ignore the works of people like Schopenhaur and Ussachevsky. Is this stuff up to that par? I don't know, but making fun of it out of ignorance (the "only is real music" mentality) is like opening your mouth wider just so you can stick both your feet in, instead of just one. I agree with one thing, though. Turn the volume up a bit. If you want people to appreciate the nuance of the sound, let them hear the sound.

Re:Ugh.

[Anonymous Coward]

Score: -1, Whiner.

If you liked the sample clips. . .

[BitHive]

. . .then get ready for my upcoming album "The Sound of One Hand Clapping", and my new hit single "Average Global Rate of Trees Falling in the Forest When Nobody is Around to Hear Them in 2001".

Re:If you liked the sample clips. . .

[Jonny Ringo]

Can't wait for your concert!

"Is Springfield ready to soft rock!

Before you all jump on the hate-them bandwagon. .

[freakpower]

. . . you should consider that an artist deserves some respect for being consistently unlistenable. How many of you out there like Aphex Twin? You have to admit that, though brilliant, tracks like "Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" probably wouldn't go over well with the average listener.

Electronic music is the new outlet for kids who ten years ago would have sat in a garage with a bunch of friends and a guitar. It offers a sometimes cheap and always flexible way to release your musical boognish.

That being said, these people probably shouldn't have been written up anywhere outside of their best friends' websites. Any movement for which "there may be 10,000. . . fans around the world" probably isn't worth paying much attention to. The article seems to be more focused on the fact that the musicians use Macs. Surprise, nobody!

I'm not making a "you don't know what the next big thing is" speech, because, quite frankly, this is far from it. People still prefer 4/4 beats and sound samples with the word "booty" in them. But I wonder how many of those out there ridiculing these guys now are going to be the same ones that whine to their friends two years down the road when their favorite minimalist techno band sells a song for a car commercial.

Why the Mac emphasis?

[Westley]

Several times in the article, it mentions that almost everyone on the "scene" uses Macs. It never really explains why this is, but it certainly implies that Macs are better for this than anything else. Is this actually just FUD, or do Macs have more sensitive line-in connections or whatever?

Jon

Re:Why the Mac emphasis?

[distributed.karma]

The article mentions the use of internal feedback (usually unwanted) and noise in sound cards, to produce these minimalist sounds. Macs must be quite noisy if they are good for it... ;-)

Re:Why the Mac emphasis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Very simply:

A piece of music software called Max/MSP

Re:Why the Mac emphasis?

[natehaas]

mod parent up, informative

Re:Why the Mac emphasis?

[Anonymous Coward]

nono, not Sound Board as in Sound Card - Sound Board as in Sound Desk - big thing with sliders on ;)

Re:Why the Mac emphasis?

[the rug]

You surely never heard about the g4 cube... i surely didn't.

The future of commercial music

[spektr]

I think this is an experiment by the RIAA to test whether they can leave out the music around their audio watermarks and sell them standalone. If the market reacts positive, their profit will skyrocket up to 100.05%, because they don't have to pay those greedy musicians anymore.

Re:The future of commercial music

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't this turn blank media into something which voilates their copyright... Drat! What an evil scheme...

Quick! Someone copyleft silence before they do!

Re:The future of commercial music

[symbolic]

The ultimate in satire. I haven't laughed this hard in a long time. : )

Kid 606

[Anonymous Coward]

A perfect example of this music would be this DJ.

Personally, I can't stand his stuff, not one bit, but he seems to have quite a following right now.

Doesn't seem to do anything new, however. Arovane and others have done a much better job at this laid-back sound.

Re:Kid 606

[nonent]

err.. laid back? minimal?.. microsound?.. lowercase? I wouldn't describe kid606's music as being any of those. but, he keeps changing up his style, instead of settling which is pretty refreshing. none of his albums sound like each other, his sets are pretty unique too. Last time I saw him, it was more of a 'sonic assault' than anything else. Quite the barrage. Incidentally, I didn't really dig the guy until I saw him live. What a show..

Copyright infringment

[WhaDaYaKnow]

I can't believe you guys are posting links to websites that obviously hold illegal copies of the works I recorded somewhere in the 70's called 'Silence'.

You'd better get ready for my RIAA lawyer, because everytime a moment of 'Silence' is heard, royalties are due! So the next time you hear nothing but 'Silence' think of me, the poor artist, who should be compensated for this (lengthy) piece of work, but who's work instead got stolen just because the compression ratios of the piece turned out to be particularly favorable.

We've always had this sort of thing.

[Chardish]

I've always been into the whole techno thing. If anyone ever wanted downtempo, beatless music, there are a variety of options. This hasn't ever been called "lowercase", it's simply been referred to as "ambient" or "downtempo".

The internet radio station Cryosleep is a great example. It's "100% No Beat Guaranteed." Listen at www.bluemars.org.

A lot of Underworld music is very downtempo and quiet. Try listening to:
Underworld - Stagger
Underworld - Thing in a book
Underworld - Tounge
Underworld - Skym

Or you could always try the sounds of Autechre or Brothomstates. It may have somewhat of a beat but it's often extraordinarily quiet. Try:
Autechre - Bronchusevenmx24
Brothomstates - We kill da enemy

Finally, there's a lot of old-school pre-Everything Is Wrong Moby out there that's really "lowercase." Try:
Moby - House Of Blue Leaves
Moby - Slight Return
(Yes, I've been a Moby fan before he got popular. ;P)
Hope this helps in your quest for fine music.

-Evan

Re:We've always had this sort of thing.

[zephc]

I was also thinking of posting about Cryosleep, which i have playing while I sleep and when I want to just really chill.

iTunes users can go to Radio Tuner > Ambient > Cryosleep

Re:We've always had this sort of thing.

[zephc]

oh, i was also going to say, that my absolute favorite Moby song appeared in the XFiles episode where Mulder finds the truth about his sister's death. The song is called "My Weakness", and it with that scene from the XFiles just made me weep.

Distribution source.

[fingal]

Hum, well the whole lowercase or glitch or click or whatever you want to call it seems to be getting a bit of a slagging in the comments above. Fair enough 'cos it is definately towards one of the extremes of musical genres and therefore will statistically attract less folk who actually like it.

However, if you decide that you do actually like what is going on with this and want to track down recordings of this nature then I would recommend that you go and check out smallfish records (or even better drop in if you around the Shoreditch area of London). They've got about 18,000 records on-line at the moment with short reviews and (albeit very low quality) sound samples of them all and they specialise in the more obscure electronica. Also there is a mailing list available that automatically drops off details of the new releases on a weekly basis (~150/week).

Silence

[Innomi]

FINALLY Those who can't compose music, can have an excuse for it! Can't write music? Just record some silence and call it lowercase! It's the new big thing!

this isn't about glitch.

[netsrek]

this isn't glitch.

this is lowercase, or microsound.

it might seem like an academic distinction, but glitch can be quite noisy and abrasive, and generally people lumped in this lowercase catchall aren't.

This isn't revolutionary though. Kind of behind the times if you ask me... Weird that Wired chose to pick up on it now, next thing you know they'll be interviewing Kid606 and talking abou the rise of laptop punk

Re:this isn't about glitch.

[dietz]

they'll be interviewing Kid606 and talking abou the rise of laptop punk

I would be seriously surprised if 606 hadn't already gotten a few mentions in Wired. But I haven't read it in quite a while, so...

And, of course, he was on the cover of Wire a few months ago, which is just one letter off.

Re:this isn't about glitch.

[extra88]

Wired has all their issues online. Kid06 is only mentioned in one article, from May 2002.

Re:this isn't about glitch.

[NulDevice]

lowercase and microsound aren't synonymous.

As far as I can tell, lowercase and glitch are subsets of microsound. Or maybe not.

Pan Sonic has been categorized as Microsound for a while and they don't sound much like any of the artists featured. Their arrangements are sparse, yes, but not always quiet. Uwe Schmidt/Atom Heart has been called microsound too and he's almost listenable sometimes. :)

huge diff between downtempo and lowercase...

[netsrek]

You can't seriously say you think Underworld are in the same ballpark as this lowercase stuff?

downtempo and ambient is not the same thing as this kind of music.

wtf did this end up on /. anyhow? damn geeks don't know shit about experimental electronic music.

Re:huge diff between downtempo and lowercase...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever heard of John Cage?

He composed and performed live a song called 4"33', and it surely is ambient.

Lower case? Nope, I don't think so. The song was performed sometime in the sixties or seventies, I recall.. Or so have I been told. I'd like to hear the composition played live.

The thing you are calling "lower case music" is surely known as ambient. Or that's what it really is. Ambient noise.

- Voice of Ambience -

Re:huge diff between downtempo and lowercase...

[NulDevice]

I think it's more of a subgenre of ambient. Ambient != lowercase. There's plenty of ambient music that you can actually hear, that has maybe even melody and such.

lowercase is...sort of a hybrid beween musique concrete, ambient, and microsound. As far as I can tell. I admit to finding a lot of it terribly uninteresting.

Re:huge diff between downtempo and lowercase...

[Anonymous Coward]

Heard of John Cage?

No, he's probably too young.

Re:huge diff between downtempo and lowercase...

[pauleir]

actually I don't think Cage ever performed his piece 4'33" himself. The piece was premiered in 1952 by David Tudor not in the seventies and is in no way "a song."

Music/not music

[JohnPM]

I think people need to be pretty careful before declaring that this isn't music. Stating that it's merely sound puts you in the same camp as all the people who said the same about jazz, rock, metal, rap, etc. Everything new gets labeled noise/sound by people who don't appreciate it at first.

I don't appreciate lowercase either yet, but the way I look at it is it's like hearing a language you don't understand. It sounds like noise, but intellectually you know it isn't. You just need to learn to understand it.

Re:Music/not music

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, except they were right about jazz.

Re:Music/not music

[Anonymous Coward]

You tell that to Jazz musicans. They usually have an immense knowledge of theory. You ask them what the key signature of D lydian is and they can tell you immediately. I am a classical pianist and I have worked with quite a few jazz pianists. They are just amazing. Sure, I can read and interpret music, but they can make it up as they go along. They know how to voice chords well, the list goes on. So what, you don't like their music. My definition of music (and it's a common one) is that music is anything that has melody, harmony and rhythm. This 'lowercase music' is a joke.

Re:Music/not music

[Anonymous Coward]

They do have an immense knowledge of theory? As a piano player (hobby, not professional), I respect that. I also agree this lowercase music is a joke.

I like a damn lot of music, especially piano music. But what the hell is this I've been hearing that sounds like random notes and lacks rythym? Free jazz?

e e cummings would be proud

[Anonymous Coward]

no puncutation either

Lowercase music?

[JimPooley]

AND I SUPPOSE THESE ARE FORTISSIMO LETTERS?

Head up arse syndrome strikes again...
But then, this was found on Wired.

the subtle aproach

[Anonymous Coward]

some of those tracks remind me of the game "Homeworld". Quiet and subtle.

Re:the subtle aproach

[GutBomb]

actually it reminded me alot of the stuff NIN did for quake 1. except trent did not record it at low volume. same kind of sound though.

Nothing new here.....

[Bowie J. Poag]

Kids these days...yeesh. We used to call this sort of stuff the "voice of God"...And used it as a crude diagnostic tool to determine if hardware was alive or not. You can get the same effect by holding an AM radio near a computer, and tuning the radio to a clear portion of the dial.

Infact, I diagnosed a bad power supply in an SGI Indigo 2 a few years back using this method.

What I would really like to see is a formal explanation of the faint warblegoogly noise produced by idle analog synthesizers with ring modulation.

Cheers,

Re:Nothing new here.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you got any samples of "the faint warblegoogly noise"?

Re:Nothing new here.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Your cables are acting as antennas and picking up stuff from your monitors, for example.

Re:Nothing new here.....

[Bowie J. Poag]

Thats not it at all -- Its an inherent property of all analog synthesizers with ring oscillators, that they have this curious random noise when idle. Its not interference.

Re:Nothing new here.....

[Anonymous Coward]

uh, i hate to say it - actually i enjoy it - but you should just get off your ass and go do a google search on ring modulation. i expect the combination of the simple mathematical formula and a circuit diagram may well answer your question. this isn't a complicated topic.

Re:Nothing new here.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes there is something new here - the wonderful word warblegoogly.

Googling for it:

Your search - warblegoogly - did not match any documents.
No pages were found containing "warblegoogly".

Suggestions:
Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.

Re:Nothing new here.....

[Inthewire]

Right - some dude used that effect to play "Fool on a Hill" for the old Homebrew Computer Club way the fuck back in the day.
I googled and flipped through _Fire_in_the_Valley_ but I couldn't find a reference.
My eternal bad.

Heard this before somewhere :).

[gusnz]

One one hand, it makes for great copy protection.

On the other, they'd compress wickedly well for distribution... :)

Re:Heard this before somewhere :).

[uebernewby]

I know you're joking, but ....

These tracks, like all 'noisy' tracks, compress like shit, actually. MP3 encoders completely destroys them, as (I'm guessing) they figure it's unwanted noise or something. Even at 256k, some 'glitch', 'micromusic', 'lowercase' or whatever the hell it's called today, gets mangled beyond repair.

Which is just one reason why experimental musicians don't need to worry about losing sales to file sharing.

Re:Heard this before somewhere :).

[Anonymous Coward]

So ZIP em, or RAR em, or something...

Re:Heard this before somewhere :).

[Dr. Awktagon]

Heh, think of MP3 defects as an unintended remix. It's mostly noise anyway, so what's the problem with changing it around. There have been artists who distributed their (vinyl) records without sleeves, in the hopes that the inevitable scratches and so forth would add a little "character".

I believe some of these glitchy folks have already played with encoding something over and over again until it becomes unrecognizable. MP3 decay does have a unique and recognizable effect on sounds (kinda like how JPG artifacts are recognizable).

Of course the artists could just distribute PROGRAMS instead of audio files. I've seen a lot of that lately. For instance this CD by Kim Cascone that comes with some of the software used to generate the CD. I played with that shit for hours!

This is not lowercase

[Anonymous Coward]

It's homeopathic music.

Modern art forms and "studies"

[JaredOfEuropa]

That is what this music is to me... modern artists trying some things out. The problem with modern art as a whole is that all studies, trials and experiments are deemed worthy of publication. A few of the great painters and composers of the past have done some crazy things as well, but (thankfully) in most cases, they thought "this is bollocks" and painted something else over their study, or ripped up the experimental score.

Not a definition of art, but perhaps a good negative test: good art requires effort. Not all things that cost effort are art, but art that didn't require any effort or skill is very, very rarely art in my eyes. A guy setting up a mixer in a feedback loop and walking off is not art.

Upper case Headcleaner

[root_42]

The last band I knew with a song called Headcleaner was Front242. And that song REALLY was a headcleaner! I think it was called "upper case" music...

Re:Upper case Headcleaner

[Anonymous Coward]

Ehm... it's Headhunter. Get a clue!

Re:Upper case Headcleaner

[root_42]

Right! I'm sorry. I mistook it with "Headcleaner" from the "Einstürzenden Neubauten"... My mistake.

Re:Upper case Headcleaner

[_ph1ux_]

front 242 is still my favorite all time band (and skinny puppy) but i still listen to industrial cds from the late 80's early 90's over and over. the music is so well put together it never gets old.

actually my best friend owns a record label [lotek] and we sample some ofthe sounds out of old industrial for hardNRG uk hard house - from bands like coil, 242, skinny puppy etc...

at one point skinny puppy was the band that held the record for the most samples in their music - then 242 took the lead. love these guys...

Integrated soundcard

[pacc]

My Compaq Evo Laptop makes chittering noises with network traffic and clicks on HD access in addition to the usual background of interference hiss.

My favourite track is sharing files from the HD on a peer-to-peer service while a VNC terminal makes rythmic use of the spare network bandwith.

But I guess it's too loud and intruding to be real low-key, so I've only got the slow oscillation in the flow of water through my apartements radiators - which only makes me sleepy at best.

koan pro (was Re:nothing particularly ground...)

[fingal]

One thing that Cage's performances had that lowercase music doesn't, however, is variability. Each Cage performance was slightly different. I would really welcome a movement such as this in popular music, where songs have variability of notes, measures, keys, or whatever an artist would like. It would make listening to the same song over and over on the radio much more interesting. And it's completely possible with today's technology.

You should go and check out Koan Pro from sseyo which describes itself as "the award winning vector audio, interactive audio and generative music authoring system".

Re:Before you all jump on the hate-them bandwagon.

[JaredOfEuropa]

you should consider that an artist deserves some respect for being consistently unlistenable.

No, no. Precisely the misconception that is the cause of all sorts of rubbishy music and art.

Good music is "hard to listen to", which means that on the first listening, you won't pick up all the subtle details in the rythm, undertones or even the lyrics. After hearing it a few times again, you'll start to grasp the structure of the music and discover new subtleties. This doesn't mean that the music is for a select few only, there's enough "mainstream" bands out there that write good music like this. "Subtleties" doesn't imply quiet music, it is subtleness of the structure of the music, and can apply to anything from classical music to metal.

On the far side of the spectrum, there are bands who write simple music for an audience that doesn't want to bother with any subtleties. In other words, what we call "pulp". Which is fine, usually neither the audience nor the artists pretend that they are involved with some high art form, they just enjoy the music.

On the other end of the spectrum are the "artsy" people who take the tenet that good music must be hard to understand, thus only understandable to a select elite, then focussing on making their audience small by any means available. They then go on to make music that is so strange, mindboggingly boring or just plain awful, that only a few can stand to listen to it. These are not the "select few" that can grasp complex music, they are just "a few". To the artists, it is all the same: they have their elite audience.

You jest but...

[alistair]

John Lennon did actually record a track called "Two minutes of Silence", which has been covered by several bands including Soundgarden.

17 years earlier John Cage wrote "433", a work for no instruments which required the performer to walk onstage and do nothing for 4 minutes 33 seconds, there is an excellent introduction to Cage's work in this field in this Washington Post Article.

Re:You jest but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I didn't know playing music was so easy before I learned to play "Two minutes of Silence". You can't go wrong with a great artist. ;)

Re:You jest but...

[phoenix123]

covenant (an "upper case" electronic band) made a track called "you can make your own music". - that was actually 1 minute binary zero silence. Was hard to get on Kazaa, since I wanted the album in full and didn't know it was only nothing. ;) So I kept searching for days for this song...
Everyone is filtering out binary zero's when encoding. It's a shame

Re:You jest but...

[phoenix123]

addendum: it's actually 4min 32sec of silence. and the silence is not pure. it has static in it. but since I pirated that album I cannot tell if covenant experimented with lower case music or the original cd-grabber used a shitty old mitsumi cd-rom to extract the audio tracks or his mp3-encoder was flawed...

Re:You jest but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, 4'33" is a peice for Piano. it includes accelerondos and ritardandos, and is comprised of several different movements. The performer is supposed to open and close the cover of the piano keys between movements, and is supposed to count the beats in each measure of rest (but dear god, don't tap your foot!).

Re:You jest but...

[Anonymous Coward]

433 - wasn't minimal sound it was no sound. He Called it 433 because 4 mins 33 seconds is 273 seconds. -273 degrees C is absolute zero. (hence the no sound). As a song it's stupid, as a joke, it's marginally less funny than that.

Re:You jest but...

[NulDevice]

I thought it was called 4:33 just because that's how long the first performance of it was. I don't think Cage actually titled it that.

The point of 4:33 wasn't as a joke, it was as a statement on audience reaction. A guy sitting at a piano for 4 and a half minutes will eventually cause the audience to stir a little bit. And then more. It's sort of interactive found sound.

Re:You jest but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Lennon song was "The Nutopian National Anthem", which implied that silence was a unifying structure meant to bring people together. Or else it was just a goof - you never knew with him...

Re:You jest but...

[pauleir]

Actually 4'33" is "for any instrument or combination of intruments." The work is in three movements (originally 33", 2'40", and 1'20") : I tacet II tacet III tacet I found the Wired article to be nothing more than propaganda for Apple and Digidesign and This so called "lowercase music" has been around for decades. Listen to Xenakis' PH Concrète (1958) or even Feldman's later works. John Cage, the minimalist modern classical composer John Cage was not a minimalist composer (some minimalists: Lamont Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass). The term Minimalism is attributed to music which uses simple ideas often repeating them with rythmic variation to form hypnotic, slow moving textures. "The Mac is the favored platform," As an electro-acoustic composer, I myself don't use either a Mac or Digi tools and I know many in the community who also do not. While it is true that Apple and Digi do still seem to have dominance in this market, many electro-acoustic music composers and researchers are moving to linux and home-brewed applications.

Re:You jest but...

[pauleir]

(better formatting)

Actually 4'33" is "for any instrument or combination of intruments." The work is in three movements (originally 33", 2'40", and 1'20") :

I tacet
II tacet
III tacet

I found the Wired article to be nothing more than propaganda for Apple and Digidesign and This so called "lowercase music" has been around for decades. Listen to Xenakis' PH Concrète (1958) or even Feldman's later works.

John Cage, the minimalist modern classical composer

John Cage was not a minimalist composer (some minimalists: Lamont Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Phillip Glass). The term Minimalism is attributed to music which uses simple ideas often repeating them with rythmic variation to form hypnotic, slow moving textures.

"The Mac is the favored platform,"

As an electro-acoustic composer, I myself don't use either a Mac or Digi tools and I know many in the community who also do not. While it is true that Apple and Digi do still seem to have dominance in this market, many electro-acoustic music composers and researchers are moving to linux and home-brewed applications.

Re:You jest but...

[usr122122121]

The assertion that 4'33" didn't require an instrument is false.
For a very good analysis of 4'33" check out Larry J Solomon's essay on it.

Enormous compression

[trickydisko]

This kind of music seems to be perfect for online distribution. With all that silence, it must be able to be compressed by a huge amount!

Re:Enormous compression

[Anonymous Coward]

not really - mp3 tends to mutilate these sorts of sounds with aliasing problems.

Re:Enormous compression

[trickydisko]

So don't use mp3.

The Hafler Trio

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone who thinks this kind of music even is close to new, really should read up on the subject. One influential band is The Hafler Trio. The records I own with them are from '84 '85 and '86. And they were in no way first with this. Sheesh.. slashdot.

this was news in 1956.

[Anonymous Coward]

john cage did this for decades.

wired, slashdot, as always, getting to the party long after the venue has been torn down.

lame.

But mine goes to -1

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Spinal Tap:

Interviewer: But why don't you just leave zero on the dial but make it quieter?

lowercase "artist": But mine goes to -1...

subtlety, thy name is music

[robburt]

OK, as a musician and an artist, I am kind of surprised that it took so long to get to this. We have to think back to the time when artwork meant being able to paint a pretty landscape, then someone like Picasso here comes along and "distorts" art by painting disfigured images, kind of like Roland Kirk here and the like "distorted" music with their free-form jazz. Then along came someone like Piet Mondrian here who "reduced" art to the simple lines that are contained within. I know that Ambient has been around for quite some time, but what we're talking about here is a more ethereal tone, the reduction of the essence that makes up music (as an art form). Bravo to the movement, and to those promoting its very existence.

Ah, a little content, and a lot of non-content

[pyramid termite]

Reminds me of Slashdot.

whew!

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank goodness we now have the genre of "lowercase music". We were running dangerously, dangerously low on sub-genres of electronic music.

They Are Not Musicians...

[Black-Man]

However, some of them actually don't claim to be. They like to be called 'soundscape artists' or whatever.

IMHO, alot of the really technical people, that can get some great, interesting sounds can't put these sounds together to form a song. Conversely, those that can write 'great' songs (whatever the definition of that is in these days of fading pop music) can't get great sounds to complement the music.

I see it all the time... these EE's or EE wannabe's... all they care about is the technology (be it 30 year old analog or DSP) and completely lose focus of what's being accomplished... MUSIC!!

Gaaah!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

What's a deaf guy like me gonna do with *this* stuff?

Kind of a waste.

[einexile]

I'm not so sure 10,000 is too low an estimate unless you lump in a bunch of music that doesn't really deserve the (stigma of the) association.

Mick Harris' Lull project has dipped into this realm, but as a rule Lull records are passionate and somewhat structured, or at least unstructured for drama's sake. Robert Rich and Crawl Unit have made effective and interesting songs I think qualify as music using room tone, feedback, and that sort of thing. Aube, has (almost?) exclusively released recordings put together from found sources.

I don't mean to invoke It's Been Done Before here for the millionth time. The relevant and irritating thing is it's been done effectively, as a component of entertainment.

Now, it may not matter if sound is music or if music is entertainment, but on that level it also doesn't matter if an object is food. The question is, do you want your work to be of use to someone? What this movement seems to be is an extraction of something which was already around and its purification into a form that is virtually useless to a listener who does not himself engage in its creation. These are more like etudes or technical papers. In this way it sort of does matter that the ideas are old. Rip off When Worlds Collide and you've got yourselves a nice asteroid movie, and Aerosmith get to play at the Oscars next year. Rip off Man with a Movie Camera and well, exactly what the hell are you trying to accomplish?

There's also a whiff of elitism here which reminds me of all the intentional (or simulated) bad recordings I saw coming from US indie people in the mid 1990s. Nice if you have a good stereo system, easy access to silence, and/or proximity to the usually weak stations that play experimental or otherwise interesting music.

If you want people to listen to your music at low volume the correct way of pursuing that goal is to ask them nicely. There is no escape from the world's limitations and eventually these works do or will have hiss to compete with. Perhaps hiss is music, and creating a situation where some must hear hiss accompanying your music while others do not may itself be art, but neither one creates or enhances entertainment. Perhaps for folks who spend a great deal of their time being amused this doesn't matter.

In fairness, at least some of these composers have more than paid their dues. I anguish daily at Taylor Deupree's apparent flight from the tradition of composing to brighten and color ordinary people's dull, cloudy lives. Recording as Human Mesh Dance, and with Savaas Ysatis (a.k.a. Omicron) as SETI, he released some of the most original and beautiful albums of the 1990s. Because of his involvement I choose to view all this (imho) nonsense as coming not from elitism but from, at worst, boredom and maybe frustration; at best, genuine adventurousness and experimentation. At a time when electronic artists seem unable to break away from tired IDM and downtempo conventions, who'll argue we couldn't use a little more of those things?

Or maybe Taylor Deupree just went completely fucking nuts, like everyone else did.

Thanks, Chardish, for the bluemars.org link. Both very nice stations there.

Manifold Records is a good source for ambient and noise music - both experimental and not, both electronic and otherwise.

Is this the next wave of audio?

[neflyte]

Up until hearing this, i always thought that the likes of Autechre or Funkstorung were the limits of new music. Now it seems we've broken new ground...very quietly.

I say kudos to these guys...making something different in music that more than a handful of people (even on the web) appreciate is no easy task. right on :)

TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[acidfast7]

TECHNO is not a genre, it's a subgenre within electronic music as a whole. Unfortunately, most people consider any electronic music "techno". The use of "techno" is usually accompanied with the famous line of "How can you listen to this TECHNO stuff."

The fact that you've "been into the whole techno" thing demonstrates the usual laypersons' ineptitude in describing electronica.

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music should straighten you out a little. While I don't like Ishkur's attitude that he can classify music better than anyone else, it does serve as a goode exposure to what's available in the electronic genre. Also, the music samples are the BOMB.

Techno is one of the major classes of electronic music along with breakbeat, house, jungle, and drum and bass.

As far as ambient, or illbient for that matter, being considered the same as downtempo and lowrecase, that's crazy.

I'd have to disagree with you that a lot of Moby's early works are really "lowercase." Most of his works are ambient and house(rave):

Moby - Ambient
Moby - Early Underground
Moby - Collected B-Sides

being three examples.

Autechre, IMHO, should be considered Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) and it's not very "lowercase". I thought my head was going to explode listening to it and processing all of the sounds.

On a final note, I'd use Shoutcast radio as a source of Internet Radio within the electronic genre. Highly Recommended:

Digitally Imported

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[radish]

First off - thanks for underlining the techno thing. I find real techno very hard to listen to but when I try to explain to people the kind of music I play (as a DJ) they often go "oh like techno?". Jeez... :)

But those categories you list seem a little iffy. You differentiate between "Jungle" and "D&B" (which IMHO is a fairly subtle distinction) but lump everything else into "House"? Hmmm.... what happened to Trance? Prog? Breaks? hell even HipHop & Rap are missing. I think you need to get some new categories :)

One thing which also annoys me is the made-up word "electronica". I mean it's so meaningless - kind of a catch-all word for "all that stuff we don't really understand". How can one category cover everything from Moby to Scooter to Timo Maas and back to Eno? There's way more variation in there than even words like "Rock" can cover. For instance, I would liken the Prodigy to a metal band, just with no guitars. Yet that's "electronica". Yuck!

Oh and DI is pretty good if you like cheesy euro-trance :)

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[acidfast7]

No prob with "techno" misnomer. I must admit that my comment is somewhat hypocritical because I usually refer to R+B, rap, and hip-hop as "rap", although, I am attempting to edu-ma-cate myself with the help of my fiance.

I do apologize for the use of the term "electronica", I dislike it myself. The only reason I used it was to illustrate that "techno" was a subcategory of electronic music and not what, IMHO, should be used to refer to the majority of it.

Note that IANADJ (I am not a DJ) but I don't think everything from DI is Euro-cheese. I enjoy that "Hard Trance" selection and find that it's the only place that I can find streaming not-as-progressive as mainstream progressive trance. I really enjoyed some early Platipus albums and some older psy/astral trance but that stuff seems to be getting more and more difficult to find because of the emergence of the progressive. If you know of a streaming station that leans more toward dark/acid/hard trance PLEASE share the info.

I usually spend most of my time listening to recorded DJ sets. In my player right now is Astral Projection - Live at Brotherhood Beach Party 3.8.02, but I'd like to have some variety and a solid internet radio station would be very appreciated.

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[Anonymous Coward]

One thing which also annoys me is the made-up word "electronica". I mean it's so meaningless - kind of a catch-all word for "all that stuff we don't really understand". How can one category cover everything from Moby to Scooter to Timo Maas and back to Eno?

And then there's the even more offensive catch-all word: "music"! How can any word try to encompass all the stuff we listen to? And then the word "art" lumps together "music", "fine art", "movies", and a million other things!

It's called a hierarchy of terms. Electronica covers a broad range of music, and then there are subcatagories. Don't get your panties in a bunch about it. That doesn't mean the person is considering two music styles that you find very distinct to be the same thing. And even if it did, what effect does that actually have on the music you enjoy?

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[Syllepsis]

You differentiate between "Jungle" and "D&B" (which IMHO is a fairly subtle distinction) but lump everything else into "House"?

I know it is unorthodox, but I like to view "Jungle" as not a genre but a flavor of D&B.

D&B is a genre, it is anything that leans more on the rhythm of the drum, uses the heavy bass for the "melody", and has that specific syncopation on every other beat that the rythmic structure is architected around.

There are "flavors" you can mix in:

Jungle - loose dirty breaks, ragga sounds, stratching and high pitched bleeps.

Jump-Up - Simple, repeated rhythm. Rounded repeated bass melody. Gangsta rap, get up and dance.

Techstep/Hardstep - Tight controlled breaks. Sci-fi samples, rolling bass, unadulterated computer evil.

Atmospheric - Slowed down, relaxing bass. A few jazz or trance elements usually thrown in.

Intelligent - Complicated non-repeating breaks to make your mind reel. DJ Unfriendly, who cares if you can dance to it.

Most good D&B is a mix of these styles, and other styles that I don't know much about. Subgenrefication of electronic music is really more for giving people adjectives to talk about music in terms of style than for categorization. Each of these subgenres is a mix of things that go well together and produce a really nice feel in combination.

Unfortunately, alot of people are so attached to "the new sound" that they only listen and dance to very specific styles/subgenres

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[NulDevice]

I think it's an american thing.

In europe, Techno is a subgenre, usually of the detroit variety.

In the US, thanks to some annoying marketing of compilation CDs early on (they were trying to look "harder" than "Rave Til Dawn") "techno" came to represent all of the instrumental electronic dance music. It entered common parlance and once something like that's bitten into the american pop consicousness, forget about ever trying to get rid of it.

It's still a better term than "electronica"
though. :)

I do wish there was a better term than "IDM". There's little "dance" to most of it.

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[radish]

That's what I love about dance music...so many genres, sub genres, sub sub genres. Your flavors make sense. I was listening to the new Kosheen album the other day. Great stuff, some of it laid back d&b, almost Roni Size style. Other stuff (some wicked prog remixes) going right back into 4/4 trance territory.

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[radish]

I wish I could point you to some good stations, but being a european who only just got broadband, they're all a bit new to me :) You could try MoS (www.ministryofsound.com) who have a radio channel. It varies wildly, but they publish a schedule and have some very big name DJs spin exclusive sets. Prepare for popup hell though!

In your quest for tunes pick up some of the Tranceport series, they have been getting progressivly more progressive (!), the first (Oakenfold) is straight up 1999/2000 melodic trance, the most recent (Quivver) is moody and dark, with some occasional (fantastic) melodic moments. Highly recommended.

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[Anonymous Coward]

While I don't like Ishkur's attitude that he can classify music better than anyone else, ...

Oh man, if you don't like his attitude there, you should meet the little prick. He's funny, for about 10 minutes. Then you just want to bitchslap him and tell him to get a new outlook.

Re:TECHNO is not the same as electronica.

[The Raven]

The fact that you've "been into the whole techno" thing demonstrates the usual laypersons' ineptitude in describing electronica.

Someone can be 'into' a type of music, yet still label it incorrectly, because they are not into the 'scene' surrounding the music. For example, I could care less whether Smashing Pumpkins are Rock, Alternative, or Pop of some various sort... if I said 'Starting with Smashing Pumpkins, I've been into this Rock thing for a while' a lot of purists would leap down my gullet because I get the f***ing label wrong.

Don't be so tightassed. Techno is what made 'Electronica' popular, before Techno it was fringe. Now a lot of people refer to all Electronica by referring to the first sub-genre that boomed. So what. A person does not have to read magazines, websites, and cd liners obsessively to like a genre of music. Telling someone 'they are not a real fan because they get a term wrong' is stupid, IMO.

Raven

If I really like the song

[The Wooden Badger]

Do I turn it down?

Give your music to a passing dog

[ph8ts2l]

I'm slowly beginning to grasp the Zen of lowercase music:

"Subhuti, can a lowercase music composer have the thought 'I am a lowercase music composer?'"
"No, for if he did, he would have the mark of an ear, the mark of a sound, and the mark of a creative life."
"Correct. The lowercase music composer is spoken of as no lowercase music composer, therefore he is called a lowercase music composer."

Need more? Dog chases bone.

Taylor rocks...

[acidfast7]

Human Mesh Dance's Hyaline was my favorite album for the longest time. It got some of my friends hooked on electronic music for a lifetime. We often talk of it and revisit it with a listen when the opportunity presents itself. We usually follow it directly with Aphex Twin: SAW II (2 CD set). Those bring back the collegiate memories. Also, one of my FIRST emails of all time was to Taylor just as I was being to learn of the "internet" (1994-1995). The mailing list he put out was interesting as I could order CDs without speaking with anyone. It must have been one of the first e-commerce transactions.

WOW I am a trend setter

[IRNI]

And to think I was on the edge of a musical revolution back in 99. I think I invented this music. http://www.sexcowairlines.com/sept2999-cd.php3

Re:WOW I am a trend setter

[Anonymous Coward]

Even in its current form, with the current set of practioners using the current set of tools, this stuff has been around since well before 1999.

The discussion that this has provoked on one of the home lists, microsound, centres of course around the fact that several of the people quoted in the article have been misrepresented. It is categorically not true that Macs are necessary to make the music, which the article almost goes so far as to say. Some of the very artists mentioned in the article say they are using Windows, Linux, or even no computer at all.

Re:Before you all jump on the hate-them bandwagon.

[freakpower]

It was actually meant as a bit of a sarcastic comment, since, after all, they have to listen to their own creations. Merit doesn't grow out of snobbery.

Good music is "hard to listen to", which means that on the first listening, you won't pick up all the subtle details in the rythm, undertones or even the lyrics.

Very true. Much in the same way that a fine piece of literature will not expose itself in the first [or first several] reads, quality music requires attention, on the parts of both the listener and the composer, to be fully appreciated.

shit sucked...

[spettibo]

music my ass, that shit sucked... just noise. might as well just listen to my own breathing. i think i'll stick with my drum and bass: http://www.breakbeat.co.uk

Re:shit sucked...

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah dude smoke some of your skank herb AND JACKOFF TO YOUR DRUM

Re:shit sucked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes. Drum and Bass is lovely - i've got the drum&bassarena CD and it's fantastic (track 7 CD2 is bloody amazing) but if everyone were as closed-minded as you are on this then DnB wouldn't have appeared - we'd be stuck listening to 4/4 House. w00t.

Re:shit sucked...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, according to many ancient traditions that's a very good idea.

Sound of Silence

[Copperhead]

This is like the Emperor's New Clothes, right? We all sit around and say, "Yeah, I hear it! It's cool!", and then someone says "There is nothing there." and then Taco pops out and says we're all listening to dead air. APRIL FOOLS!

More of An Idea about Music, than actual music

[Anonymous Coward]

Like most minimalist music, most people would not actually listen to this stuff for is aesthetic qualities; it's more of a manifestation of an "idea" about what "music" can be.

This is basically the Western way: separating the cerebral from the corporal. Most music contains a viseral component to it that resonates with the more primitive aspects of human nature; "lowercase music" resonates (or attempts to resonate at least) with the cerebral. In many ways you could get the same effect from just reading about the music as opposed to listening to it, which is why so many of these musicians spend more time talking or writing about the music than acutally composing it.

Not so new...

[optisonic]

This is a section of music called electronic ambient. Such as ambient sounds from mixers and other electronic devices. Microphones submerged in water, ultra sensitive microphones sealed in sound insulated boxes with seemingly non-existant sounds amplified so you can hear them, mixers dropped in water with the output recorded and amplified so you can hear it, mixers surrounded by magnets that revolve at oscillating rates and amplified, etc. I'm surprised that this has gotten so much buzz. Why weren't you people interested in this many years ago? Gimp news if you ask me. Seeing how news indicates new IMO.

Cage may also be avant garde...

[Anonymous Coward]

...but that doesn't mean it's the same.

I agree there's nothing absolutely radically new about these pieces, but they're not uninnovative, and definitely not the same as Cage.

Maybe if Cage was still alive and into electronic music he would be composing pieces like these, but that's not the same as saying he did compose music such as this.

Cage was not about "being quiet". Cage was about deconstructing typical notions about what constituted music. While it was true that this involved silence, or unorthodox instruments or sounds, not all pieces were silent or based on unorthodox instruments. Many were not either.

So, while lowercase music may be in the tradition of Cage in the sense of deconstructing our notion of what constitutes music or sounds to attend to, it is not the same as Cage. While Cage was saying "look, music can be all these things!", lowercase music is saying "look, bet you didn't even know this made a sound! Pay attention to the little things."

All I'm saying is that there's a difference between saying lowercase is similar to Cage, and is the same as Cage.

Often I feel that something is missing in contemporary music, and this sort of thing helps to fill the void. Often I listen to classical, but classical employs certain traditional textures, media, etc. that have become somewhat overused. Electronica appeals to me, as it can be complex and precise, but in the past it has often had a certain brashness that turns me off. The emphasis has seemed to be less on exploring musical and sonic composition and more in having an attitude. Maybe we're starting to see a change, though?

New from Ronco!

[ellem]

Aged Hippie #1: Dude is this lowercase music? Well Crank It UP!

Aged Hippie #2: Yeah man.

Aged Hippie #1: No dude really, Ministry '94 really fucked up my hearing, you have to cank it up.

Aged Hippie #2: (whispers)It is up.

Ronco Announcer: This is lowercase music! Hear tea kettles as they cool off. Listen to the air inside a snare drum when no one is playing it or how about this classic; Mixer Feeding Back With No Inputs. Yeah, lowercase music rocks... (emphasized whisper)gently like a leaf on still water!

You Have got to be joking.

[Nobody's Hero]

This is not music.

Anyone who has bought this crap...you've been duped.

I mean think about it this is no more music then me listening intently to my CPU fan. If I wanted to relax to the "sweet sounds" of a teakettle, I'd make some damn TEA! I can't believe people have actually spent money on buying these albums!!

And as far as it being "art", I can tell you right now that this is simply going to be another thing for the "art people" to be pretentious about. So you can call it "art" and tell me that obviously I don't understand because I can't comprehend it's true beauty. But obviously you people are only intent on listening to the sound of your own heads up your arses.

Re:You Have got to be joking.

[Anonymous Coward]

so? just because you don't like it doesn't mean that everyone should automatically hate it. I mean, I don't like your post, but it doesn't mean that I automatically hate you.

Re:You Have got to be joking.

[jzitt]

This is not music.

... for you.

Music is not a way of making sound. Music is a way of perceiving sound. What you choose to listen to as music is music for you.

Re:You Have got to be joking.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. This reminded me of Ross (Friends) and his electronic-keyboard crap. Laughed my ass off at that episode.

Re:You Have got to be joking.

[Nobody's Hero]

C'mon.....this doesn't make any sense.

Is a dialtone on a phone music?

Is the sound of the fans on my pc music?

is the sound of an aerosol music?

No.....it's a sound. A singular sound...

here is the definition of music for all of you people who require it....

Pronunciation: 'myü-zik Function: noun Usage: often attributive Etymology: Middle English musik, from Old French musique, from Latin musica, from Greek mousikE any art presided over by the Muses, especially music, from feminine of mousikos of the Muses, from Mousa Muse Date: 13th century 1 a : the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity b : vocal, instrumental, or mechanical sounds having rhythm, melody, or harmony

this so called music is nothing but a singular sound amplified. There is no succession, no combination, no temporal relationship. By the very definition of music. These amplified noises are not music.

Re:You Have got to be joking.

[Nobody's Hero]

I can tell you right now that this is simply going to be another thing for the "art people" to be pretentious about. So you can call it "art" and tell me that obviously I don't understand because I can't comprehend it's true beauty.

I rest my case.

Perhaps you should read the definition of music. Music is not a way of perceiving sound, it is :

"the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity "

this so called music has none of the above and is by defintion not music. It is simply a noise.

Re:Why the Mac emphasis?- Protools

[TibbonZero]

Simply because most the composers, including myself, use Protools . Protools was created for, and best done on Mac . Believe me, i use it on a PC- its SOooo much better on the mac. There is alot of other software, that is just for mac. DirectConnect, many software synths, newest versions of everything.

Its a sad state, but the Mac running OS 9 (protools doesn't support X at all) is just about the only way to go, unless you want to program CSound .

Csound

[TibbonZero]

Csound is another great way to create electronic music. check out www.csounds.com. It is a programming (well perhaps more scripting language) that you program exactly how you want the sounds to work. You can use any algothym possible! An audible lornez attractor is really interesting.

24bits, mp3s and quality equipment

[TibbonZero]

In all seriousness, don't try to download mp3s of this stuff. You probably want to get the highest quality medium possible- 24bits preferably. Mp3 would kill this stuff (or produce other weird sounds for me to play with when normalized...).

Quality really isn't an issue today. I use only condenser mics and high quality preamps for this type of thing. I really need a better preamp for my own use and a better AD convertor, but oh well

Check out my website

[TibbonZero]

www.mp3.com/neopro

It doesn't have my electronic music stuff up as of the moment. But it should have it up by the end of today.

Right... I get it....

[doppleganger871]

...no I don't. The cheap Juster speakers and Dell Latitude sound system produce more hiss than what's actually recorded. I'll stick to things I can hear.

I find all this genre nonsense...

[amarodeeps]

...really frustrating. I mean, what's with all the people getting on each other's cases about "this isn't ambient, how could you confuse it with glitch..." etc. Why are we incapable of listening to music as it is rather than dividing it all into little categories?

Okay, before you give me a response, I've heard these things before:

Point- It helps us understand what other music we'd be interested in and find it.
Rebuttal- Why don't we compare musicians to other musicians? That's more accurate and would probably get us closer to something we'd like. Frankly, there are more similarities between say, some Aphex Twin and Stockhausen than Aphex Twin and Moby, but they are lumped together and you are less likely to find out about Stockhausen than Moby because of that. That's a shame, because Moby sucks balls ;). You are going to enjoy music more if you throw those categories out the window and just listen.

Point- By putting things in genres, you can understand the lineage of music.
Rebuttal- This is true only to a point. Unfortunately I think it's been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because we've had these categories people have started classifying themselves and putting themselves willingly into little boxes. Remember though that the great musicians didn't give a shit about these categories...Coltrane, Coleman, Mingus, etc. weren't out to create 'Free Jazz,' they were just bringing in aspects of their culture and other cultures together. That's a much more broad-minded grasp of music. The really funny thing to me that people do today is take little bits and pieces of different genres very consciously and try to call it something new, they categorize it before it's even out there. "Yeah, it's my new Funk/Jungle/Experimental Digital Hardcore/Polka band!" Why not just play some fucking music??

Anyways, this is a brief digression for a nerd site like this, but thought it'd be interesting to get some REAL discussion going about musical styles.

BTW, I have to ditto the poster above who said that the article was little more than an ad for Macs. I guess more generally it was an illustration that Wired probably shouldn't be doing pieces on music. Or they should realize that the technology is just a tool, no matter how much it has empowered people to create new music. For real music coverage, instead check out The Wire.

Re:I find all this genre nonsense...

[Anonymous Coward]

You have great wisdom. Brief digressions make life interesting.

Re:I find all this genre nonsense...

[amarodeeps]

Well, dunno if you're being facetious or not, but thanks in any case, either for the compliment or for paying attention at all!

Double Standards....

[svwolfpack]

I think it's very interesting to note how the slashdot crowd doesn't have nearly as much trouble accepting this as music or art as they do accepting artists like eminem. The discussion about the early releases of his new album quickly degenerated into a discussion, or really a rant about the evils of eminem, and how what he doesn't music or art. But here's something that has no tune, is barely audible, and rather than blasting it for trying to corrupt/ruin/depress the children with it's emptyness and blank space or some other made up psychology, the slashdot crowd embraces as being a "nice break" from regular techno, and having lots of aura and a positive ambient quality. That to me is somewhat of a double standard...

Re:Double Standards....

[illerd]

Well lets look at who's making the music. On the one hand, we have modest, amiable, mac loving computer nerds making quiet music. On the other hand, we have eminem. Who do you think slashdotters are going to identify with?

I'll take barely audible over a rehashed dre beat any day.

Re:Double Standards....

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for proving (what again?) that slashdot is the most biased, cliqueish, self serving group of people on the net!

Re:Double Standards....

[illerd]

Of course. Why do you think I read this shit?

Re:Double Standards....

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, read the rest of the comments. the response is overwhelmingly negative.

granular synthesis

[thanjee]

If you really want to talk about electronic music made with itty-bitty quiet sounds, then you should check out this web site designed by a friend of mine:

http://zor.org/synthesis

or

http://www.granularsynthesis.live.com.au

He creates music made out of itty bitty bits of music - 20ms samples (grains of sound), and just creates textures and sonic landscapes using these bits. It's all based on an old synthesis method called granular synthesis.

It is mostly computer generated, although some composers have been known to use this method on analogue audio tapes with a razor blade and sticky tape!

Re:granular synthesis

[mixbsd]

some composers have been known to use this method on analogue audio tapes with a razor blade and sticky tape

Wonder how you'd get 20ms of sound by splicing an 8-track. Surely even a millimeter of spliced tape would be longer than 20ms? Anything longer than, say, a second would probably then be simply classified as sampling rather than granular synthesis.

Look on the bright side...

[mixbsd]

... at least if you happen to find yourself sat next to a walkman-brandishing moron on the bus, you won't be subjected to any perceivable sound pollution if that's what they're listening to. It might even drive the boom-boy car drivers to extinction at the same time.

Well we can live in hope.

What is this crap?

[AyeRoxor!]

I'm sorry, but this is not off-topic, and I am not a troll. My on-topic, informative, insightful donation to this topic is that this stuff is crap. Total, absolute crap. And I would really like to know why it deserves to be on the front page of slashdot.

Anyone interested in this type of music. . .

[KurtSchroeder]

should check out what Leif Brush (now a professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth) has been doing since the 1970's and earlier. This guy has recorded the sound of grass growing, and other sounds you probably never thought existed. http://www.d.umn.edu/~lbrush/

the other name for the genre is MICROSOUND

[AtaruMoroboshi]

I wish I'd seen this topic earlier...

The other name for the genre is MICROSOUND, I would know, I'm on a mailing list by that name, that Richard Chartier, Taylor Deupree, Kim Cascone, and other "big name" microsounders are on. The name of the list, by the way, is Microsound.

Microsound is often a stark beautiful experience, akin to minimalist painting. I am very fond of Tetsu Innoue's "cuts and clicks" album, for it's ever shifting sound, and Bernhard Gunter's "Monochrome White / Polychrome w/ Neon Nails" double cd, which is a dense texture of sounds that are just outside the range of human hearing. The first disc is higher in pitch than the second disc, but it is the second disc that sounds higher, simply because you can hear it. Very moving, at least to me, despite all lack of melody.

Another great record, one that took me about 2 years to appreciate is Otomo Yoshihide & Sackhio M's "Filament". Yeah, this involves one of those "no input mixer" people. It really sounds liek the private conversation of two computers, not meant for human ears. At the time I got it as a birthday present from a friend of mine (who shares my interest in fringe experimental music) I was listening to a lot of Merzbow, who is the "god of Japanese noise music", which is a great deal denser and louder than any of this stuff, and I didn't know what to make of it.

A few years later, it clicked and now I love it, and even create some myself!

my prediction

[Anonymous Coward]

lowercase interest from the public

lowercase sales

lowercase profits

So, uh. This is news?

[dave-fu]

What's next? Laptoppers are really into glitches? Will the life and times of Jan Jelinek and kid606 make the front page of Wired? Because I sure hope so!
If this barely-there variation on minimalist techno is all the rage, it's high time that I auctioned off my microstoria CD. The bugger's so goddamned quiet I can't make much out of it even with my headphones on. Infintely more aggravating than even the power electronics that I've got. Speaking of which, Wired should slap together an article on MSBR and Government Alpha.
At any rate, since Mouse on Mars' brilliant _Iaora Tahiti_, glitch and its variants (looking at you, Vladislav Delay) has been downhill with few exceptions.

and furthermore (found sounds)...

[nullnvoid]

Cage more or less directly influenced groups like Einsturzende Neubauten, who were experimenting with "found" sounds in the late seventies and early eighties.

While Neubauten can rarely be accused of being quiet, they were composing collages of sound by doing things like crawling under a house with a tape recorder and taping the sounds created by someone else dropping various objects on the floors above.

Coincidentally, their last album was called "Silence is Sexy," a fairly subtle and enjoyable work.

Re:and furthermore (found sounds)...

[salmo]

Don't forget the classic sound of a man getting bearhugged until his ribs crack with a mic taped to his chest that they actually used in a track.

Re:and furthermore (found sounds)...

[uebernewby]

One of the coolest Einstuerzende Neubauten tracks featured them flicking the master power switch of their studio on and off.

Awesome.

ways to tell you're not an average listener...

[geektweaked.com]

"Bucephalus Bouncing Ball" is one of my favorite aphex twin tracks :)

Re:ways to tell you're not an average listener...

[Dephex Twin]

Mine too, that's the track that got me into Aphex Twin. I downloaded MP3s of that one and "Alberto Balsam" from someone on my college network a few years ago and it took off from there.

mark

Re:ways to tell you're not an average listener...

[geektweaked.com]

if you're in the mood for something different, try this track i just put up on my server:

http://www.geektweaked.com/noise/u020530a.mp3

i've been working on it for the last couple days, still has some work to be done...

-c

Re:koan pro (was Re:nothing particularly ground...

[AtaruMoroboshi]

Heya, thanks!

I'm always looking for new mac friendly audio software for me to play with...

I mainly sequence beats in reason and then drop everything in Logic Audio, but it's always good to have more, and this is the kind of thing I've been looking for to further my experimental tracks (i've got the hard drill'n'bass thing down pat now.)

More great music

[jcsehak]

As another poster mentioned, be sure to check out the original masters of this stuff: John Cage and Brian Eno. I tend to prefer Cage's piano work (his "In a Landscape" is unbelievable), but Eno's ambient music is some of the best of any kind of music out there. I'm listening to his "Ambient 4: On Land" right now. Others of his to check out are "Discreet Music" and "Atmospheres and Soundscapes." Some more:

Boards of Canada: In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country. This somehow manages to be ambient and melodic at the same time. I never get sick of listening to it. It's a 4-song single, so it should only be 5 or 6 bucks in a store (I got the vinyl for $6, and was pleasantly suprised to find a beautiful marbled light blue record). If you're into this kind of music, you need to buy this right now.

There's a great 3-disc set called "Ohm" which has a huge cross-section of music spanning the history of experimental electronica (for lack of a better term). Some of it is kinda annoying, but some really gets under your skin, in a good way. I sometimes find myself hitting "repeat" on a song that doesn't even have one chord change in the first place.

I don't like it as much as Eno's stuff, but if you're a King Crimson fan, you might want to check out Robert Fripp's "The Gates of Paradise." He experimented with some ambient stuff in "Exposure," and with this album has gone full blown.

I picked up this great german LP at a records store in Minneapolis for $2 called Gas Pop. One of those might be the name of something, I don't know. It's wonderfully anonymous. I later saw it in a store in western Montana (albeit for $17), so chances are good that it wasn't just a, like, 10-record pressing. Very nice to listen to. Wait, there's a URL listed. Apparently the band/guy's name is Gas and the release is Pop.

It isn't quite ambient, but William Orbit's "Pieces in a Modern Style" evokes the same mood. It's basically a bunch of classical pieces that are arranged, performed and programmed by him with in electronic means. It effectively raised the ante for electronic music everywhere. I like his version of Barber's "Adagio for Strings" better than any symphonic version I've heard, and his take on Gorecki's "Piece in the Old Style 3" is likely to sit in your head the whole day. Yet, instead of being annoyed with it, like a jingle, you find that humming the melody actually calms you.

My own music falls right around here. It's somewhere between ambient and downtempo, maybe a cross between William Orbit and Moby. Plus it's open source!

If you haven't gotten into the downtempo scene, now's the time. I've been addicted ever since I heard Thievery Corporation's "Sounds from the Thievery Hi-Fi." Chances are, you've heard it too (tracks have been in a lot of movies), but I get more out of it with every listen. Gorgeously complex drum beats. After the Thievery, get:

Peace Orchestra "Peace Orchestra" when Kruder and Dorfmeister split up, Peter Kruder made this album under the Peace Orchestra moniker. I think it's genius. If you give it a listen, go straight to the song "Shining" and you'll be hooked.

Nightmares on Wax "Carboot Soul" Contrary to the title, this album is the opposite of freaky. It's sort of a cross-over from hip-hop into downtempo, but it's its own thing and can't be pigeonholed. There are a few of the songs where there's a female voice that's either sampled or recorded, but whatever it is, he makes it so that the sound of the voice (and really the sound of every instrument on the album), hmm, let me put it this way: I can't think of anything more pleasant to listen to.

Re:More great music

[NulDevice]

Theivery Corp's "Mirror Conspiracy" is even better than "Hi-Fi." Also just about anything on their Eighteenth Street Lounge Label is gunna be good stuff.

For those into more experimental stuff, I highly recommend the works of Uwe Schmidt. He's recorded under a zillion different pseudonyms, from the kraftwerkian "Lassigue Bendthaus", the jazzy "Flanger" (with Bernd Friedman), the glitchy "Bund Deutscher Programmieren", to the classical latin dance "Senor Coconut." Some is better than others, but most of it is at least worth checking out. A lot of his work is a sort of "invisible influence" to many more popular artists.

If you're interested in creating any of this stuff, buy yourself NI Reaktor and you'll pretty much be set. It's a great geek-music program. It's not free, or open, or ported to linux, but it's a damn lot of fun to twiddle with.

The Shit They Call "Art"

[thelizman]

Not that these artists don't honestly have a point; Some of these sounds are beautiful. But it's not art to record it, and then play it a few times. It sure as hell isn't music by any stretch. It may be art when one person does it once, but as a genre, it's shit.

Re:The Shit They Call "Art"

[Chris Johnson]

Hang on a second there. It's not my type either, but possibly unlike you I've done serious musical work in a genre just as 'shit' and seen the results.

I've been playing guitar, building gear, fooling with synthesizers etc. for years and years (see URL link), and after doing music on the Net for a little while, I stumbled across something unexpected. It was called 'Noise'. I went, "hey, really? I bet when I was a stoned teenager I did better 'noise' than that", and then I looked into it a little. And wow! One guy was putting wireless mics in a clothes dryer with bricks. Someone else had written a passionate statement of what NOISE, true NOISE really was. It was uncompromising- no beat, no melody, you had to be getting into producing a blast of brutal sound or you weren't Noise... and I realised, hey, that was part of MY musical background. There were other people into that. It didn't matter that any sane person would turn the result off with a spastic lunge at the 'OFF DEAR GOD TURN IT OFF' button. What mattered was, there were people who WANTED what I used to do with sound.

Result: Hard Vacuum. Knowing there were people who were hardcore fans, I took some of my gear (a three-band compressor I'd built and a shortwave radio) and, in just one long intense session, recorded a whole CD's worth of noise performances, making heavy use of shortwave interference, satellite noises and circuit disruption. For one of the tracks I pulled the plug on the equipment to stop it, resulting in a classic 'weeeeoooooooSNRK' dying electronics noise. It was great! I drew on all the twisted teenager delight in abrasive unmusical noise, combined with a lot of years of musical development telling me when to change it up, keep it moving, go for different effects and results.

That album has been one of my most successful albums. There's stuff I've done where I spent days laboring over detailed little sequenced parts or played until my fingers were blistered, that still hasn't been as popular as this crazed noise crap that was seemingly effortless and talentless.

Why is this? Because there are people for whom raw noise expresses their feelings, their selves- seemingly normal people whose inner 'music' is like RAARRRRRRSSSJJJKKKKKFFTTTTZZZZZBK and most people can't do that, not sincerely, not with understanding. You get people trying to do 'noise' by making little techno ditties using noises for beats, and it is like comparing a wolf with a poodle- somehow even insulting, you want to go 'do you even understand this?'. And with me, it's the wild breed of Noise in its purest form, and anyone into Noise instantly gets a hit off of that and instantly KNOWS 'yeah, this guy gets it'. And I keep meeting people like that. One guy wanted me to come out to do live gigs with him. You'd think there wouldn't be many people into this, but the ones that are, are seriously into it.

And that's what this 'lowercase' stuff is about. It's not the same genre (though I bet they'd understand my noise work, even if it's way too loud for them), but it's the same deal. If you don't like it, well congratulations, join the majority, and you forfeit any possible claim that you understand what's going on here. It's not being done for you. It's never gonna be done for you. If they wanted to make music for YOU, they'd be doing something completely different.

another slashdot article about electronic music!

[Dr. Awktagon]

Hmm, another /. article about music I've been listening to for years. I hope some of you folks check this stuff and other electronic music out, there's so much cool non-RIAA stuff out there, and so much stuff that will challange pre-conceived notions, etc., etc.

Though I always called this type of music "MINIMAL" (written in all uppercase for irony ;-) and it's been around longer than "Macs" (true, most electronic musicians use Macs but that's not important).

Part of the appeal of this minimal electronic music for me is that it takes machine/electronic sounds and "places them with intent". Usually we are surrounded by noise that we have no control over, but what if you could control it. For example your P4 on your desk is making a bunch of noise, mostly fan noise. What if you could take that noise and chop it up and play with rhythms and so forth? Maybe make a short beep into a beat, make the hard drive access noise into another beat, etc.

My favorite stuff is from Taylor Deupree's 12k label and mille plateaux.. I like to play it on the computer while working, just barely mixing with the sounds of the fans and the keyboard, and adding in a little rhythm or unpredictability to take away the monotony of the usual machine sounds. Was that little beep from the OS or the CD? Has my fan speed suddenly changed? Etc.

My CD recommendation at the moment would be Frank Bretschneider & Taylor Deupree: Balance on Mille Pleateaux. It really isn't a pure minimal CD, it has a techno beat, but the sound is very clicky and micro, with static and beeps, etc. It's an awesome CD, very listenable, and comes with a video for one of the pieces consisting of pulsating white square on a blue background that visually represents the music.

Old Art, New Name, New Fad

[greygent]

This has been around for decades. At various points its been labeled in the realms of ambient, glitch, discrete and others.

I've done tons of experimenting in this area for probably 15 years, so have a lot of other people.

If you want to join in this "new" fad, buy one of those nice PZM ambient sound microphones from Radio Shack. They're the small mics on the square metal plates, and they work well for picking up discrete sounds ("discrete" was always the term I used for this type of work).

Gold mines of sounds I've found:
- Water running in my metal sink
- Hum of refrigerators and other appliances
- Chopping up a fresh potato (especially the audio whilst knife is still slicing through potato)
- Sound in underground tunnels under busy city streets
- The sound in my front bathroom at work (great creepy ambient stuff there)
- The sound of the air flow in the attic of a building near here
- Socked feet walking on carpet
- Sound inside a Pepsi can while blasting "Master of Puppets". (Resulting recordings don't sound even a hint like Metallica. Serious resonating going on here, the whole album is great for resonating soda cans, and other pieces of thin metal.)

Nothing new, move along. Eno is god.

Re:Old Art, New Name, New Fad

[Tiado]

Gold mines of sounds I've found:

- Water running in my metal sink
- Hum of refrigerators and other appliances
- Chopping up a fresh potato (especially the audio whilst knife is still slicing through potato)
- Sound in underground tunnels under busy city streets
- The sound in my front bathroom at work (great creepy ambient stuff there)
- The sound of the air flow in the attic of a building near here
- Socked feet walking on carpet
- Sound inside a Pepsi can while blasting "Master of Puppets". (Resulting recordings don't sound even a hint like Metallica. Serious resonating going on here, the whole album is great for resonating soda cans, and other pieces of thin metal.)

Another Interesting source of sound is when you tape a small condenser mic to the guy wire of a power pole, then strike (the cable) with a pipe.

Video Game Sound Tests

[Anonymous Coward]

I can make lowercase music too. Pop in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the Sega Genesis and play the sound fx tests over and over.

Intent listening

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems as if one of the purposes of this music is to get you to listen more intently...just using something as background noise whilst coding wouldn't cut it. The first thing I thought of was those itty-bitty quiet sounds that were on all kinds of Nine Inch Nails songs. Even on Closer. You knew you were going to lose your hearing when the vocals came in again, but you just couldn't resist turning the volume way up just to hear what was going on...

microsound vs. lowercase

[phossie]

microsound and lowercase are not necessarily the same thing, though they can be. they both focus on the details of sound. microsound tends towards a 'digital aesthetic' (ref. kim cascone, microsound.org) and fine manipulation of very small particles of sound... i personally think the aesthetic is due in large part to people getting proficient with granular synthesis. lowercase can be different, in that the emphasis is on testing the limits of perception... though that's often not the artistic aim.

that could sound lame (and i'm sure it often is - that's art for you), but think about it this way: it takes advantage of a much greater dynamic range, in much the same way classical music can (or any other typically uncompressed sound). it gets closer to what we actually hear, not what sounds 'best' (ie loudest) on the radio. and the really cool thing is that in many cases it gives us super-hearing, whether that's through contact-mic'ed field recordings or just very meticulous technique in the production environment.

aside from my personal efforts in similar areas, i think this is a great development. people forget that hearing is a full-fledged sense. people forget to listen to what they're hearing, and they miss a lot. and i'm really, incredibly sick of everything being compressed to within an inch of its life. if we hadn't been conditioned to it, we'd realize how much more it doesn't add to the music.

if you're in san francisco, check out quietamerican.org and see when the next "field effects" will happen. at #3, aaron brought steve roden up from LA (his personal hero). the space is wonderful and the atmosphere perfect, filled with peple that listen. highly recommended. not too pretentious, either. (!)

Re:microsound vs. lowercase

[dietz]

That's fun. I'm a fan of quietamerican (and Steev Hise's more-sparse phonophilia), but I didn't realize there's a live component to it, too.

What are those shows like? How do you make field recordings live?

Re:microsound vs. lowercase

[jzitt]

microsound and lowercase are not necessarily the same thing, though they can be. they both focus on the details of sound. microsound tends towards a 'digital aesthetic' (ref. kim cascone, microsound.org) and fine manipulation of very small particles of sound...

Indeed, much of the lowercase music is acoustic. The granddaddy of the movement, is a sense, was Morton Feldman, who created carefully constructed, often very long works, using conventional instruments at the edges of audibility.

There's also a crossover with the Phonography movement, which uses often very subtle field recordings.

I have a piece on the first lowercase sound compilation CD name "mouth. midnight." which is a pretty much unprocessed quiet vocal improvisation.

Re:microsound vs. lowercase

[phossie]

What are those shows like?

they're informal, presented in aaron's shared (and imho gorgeous) loft. the one i went to had a very nice PA (short problem with ground loop, eventually corrected), and cookies and cider and stuff were available. they eventually turned off the lights, which was quite nice (large windows provided enough to get around).

basically the artist would sit in the center and do their thing, with the audience comfortably scattered around. cushions provided. really nice vibe.

How do you make field recordings live?

short answer - you don't. :) some of the 'performers' just pressed play, but interestingly (and unexpectedly) the experience of listening to their music/sound *with them* was more than just doing it myself. there is a difference, to me. others took advantage of the mixer and did a bit more. still not what i'd normally think of as a performance, but totally worthwhile nonetheless. this one also wasn't totally field recordings, though all the performers at least featured them.

good lit requires work

[Anonymous Coward]

yes, true.

however it is possible to read, and re-read (listen to, listen again) something and never detect the high quality because IT ISN"T THERE to begin with.

Like attempting to "see the picture" in that email that went around a couple years back. There wasn't one.

Emperor's new clothes

[texchanchan]

z_gringo said:
"...this 'music' may be about the same thing as the Emperor's new clothes..."

This and much more. New art forms have about the survival rate of baby spiders.

I am surprised that the phrase appeared so late in this discussion.

spiders walking on hardwood

[Anonymous Coward]

that one phrase is worth reading this whole discussion. keep up the good work dragonweezle.

What would Beevis and Butthead say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I listened to some of the recordings and can imagine the dynamic duo as they watch a lowercsae music video...

"Huh?"

"This crap sucks."

"Give me the remote, asswipe."

genre-label my ass..

[nonent]

Yay.. someone else that appreciates Mick Harris. Next thing you know 'minimal hip-hop' will become all the rage. Anyways, I do have lull albums, and I think the microsound people would definitely consider themselves to have a different aesthetic. Although they're both still definitely 'minimal/sparse' in nature.

But, I think the whole definition of music is getting pretty silly. There's a pretty good article here needledrops on the subject. Especially the classifications based on what type of process you're using to create your sound.

If it's something that's been done before, and you're just using somebody elses new techniques to make generic music, what's the point of it? This happened with the whole 'glitch' thing a while ago. People started making clicks and pops a more integral part of their music.. it sounded neat/different for a while, then everyone started copying the 'neat idea'. Pretty soon it became generic.

Now, I remember when I heard 'A chance to cut is a chance to cure' for the first time by Matmos. It's got danceable tracks composed entirely out of microsounds of cosmetic surgery. again.. another new thing to hear and process with the ears. but when a bunch of other people start using the same techniques to make similar music, it stagnates ; it's not really growing anymore. using fashionable techniques to make mediocre music isn't really getting you anywear.

John Cage has been cited a bunch of times already, but he stated:

I believe the use of noise to make music will increase until we reach a music produced through the aid of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard.

back in 1937, no less.

Noise/sound is just a tool. You can make stellar music with an acoustic guitar, you can make crap music with a $100,000 state-of-the-art digital recording studio.

that being said, i've got a lot of respect for many of the people listed in that article, i'm just getting annoyed with people proclaiming sound techniques 'the next big thing'.

it's interesting tho that programmers are becoming a more integral part of the music scene. if everyone uses the same software, everyone tends to start making similar sounding music. if you program your own software, you can make something much more unique.

Anybody heard the Cex parody of a MTV music awards after the 'minimal techno scene blew up'? hilarious. 'look at all the guys with laptops'

Frank Zappa's Cover

[epepke]

Frank Zappa did a cover of 4'33" which was actually just a little over 5' long. I guess it was the extended dance remix.

Different aesthetics

[lhooq]

the previous poster is right on the money.

digital music, yes, but not even remotely close to idm (the ilk of aphex twin, autechre, squarepusher) or glitch / clicks'n'cuts (the likes of oval, pan sonic, ryoji ikeda, alva noto, stilluppsteypa, vladislav delay).

to me, lowercase sound means composers like bernhard günter or (sometimes) francisco lópez or most of the output coming from the trente oiseaux label.

this can be difficult music even to ears used to such artists as the hafler trio or john duncan.

lowercase sound is definitely not ambient or muzak -- it is not music for airports. quite the opposite, it requires intense, focused listening and long attention spans. otherwise, you won't get anything from it (actually, you won't even notice it -- it's often softer than the buzz of your fridge).

but... if you're willing to make the effort to understand the underlying structure, beauty can emerge, as rewarding as a painting by marc rothko or a radio play by samuel beckett.

--
If you don't believe in free speech for your enemies,
you don't believe in free speech at all.

/. Public Service Announcement #583

[Anonymous Coward]

this is *insightful* on slashdot:

"obviously you people are only intent on listening to the sound of your own heads up your arses"

um. ok. i think i'll go home now.

monty python

[prockcore]

Monty python wanted to do something like that, but the BBC wouldn't let them.

They would start the show normally.. but throughout the show, they'd slowly turn down the volume.. causing the viewer slowly turn it up.. then at the very end they'd crank the volume.

Re:monty python

[howlingfrog]

I could be wrong, but I thought that Andy Kaufmann? I can see either him or Python wanting to do that.

Little did I know...

[seanscottrogers]

I created dozens of these masterpiece tracks back when I was trying to find the correct soundcard jack for my microphone. Little did I know...

Re: I hate everyone

[benzapp]

Wow, I don't know what year you are in or where you are from, but if you are referring to industrial style music (ie Front 242, Front Line Assembly, KMFDM), I MISS this kind of music.

Dance music today has become the same commercial crap that the masses consume in droves. All dance clubs in the US play the same crap. Yes, some of that happy music sounds great when you are on ecstasy or other amphetamines, but it gets old real fast. Every club you go to its a bunch of unemployed kids cracked out with glow sticks listening to music that sounds like a broken washing machine... It doesn't sound angry or ANYTHING. I would rather listen to Britney Spears all damn night than some of the records DJ's throw on their antiquated record players. When the music does convey an emotion, its some euphoric happiness that I rarely feel unless I am on drugs.

Nihilism and anger are just as important of emotions as happiness... the problem is not so much one style is worse than the other, but variety is in order. Pick up a Front 242 album like Up Evil. You CAN alternate between angry music and calm "trance" music in the same album or music set, it just takes a little skill. Hell, even Orbital did this all the time and they were always very popular.

Outside of Project Pitchfork, I haven't heard any new industrial music in ages. Here in Chicago, the supposed birth place of this genre of music you hate, there is one dance club left that plays it and its not much bigger than my four bedroom flat.

Anyway, bring back the I hate everyone electronica. After, since I hate almost everyone it fits my life perfectly.

Re:Before you all jump on the hate-them bandwagon.

[greygent]

No, 10-15 years ago, we sat in our bedrooms with large numbers of cassette recorders with variable speed knobs, and cheap casio synths creating & looping stuff and getting yelled at by our parents for wasting our time with such drivel.

:)

John Cage

[commodoresloat]

I believe he wrote a composition that is being performed in Germany that begins with 16 months of silence, followed by a single note in January 2003, then 8 more months of silence, and another note.... It sounds rockin!!

That's nice but....

[thelizman]

..recording my refridgerator humming doesn't exactly qualify as "the conscious production or arrangement of sounds", which is what art is. At best, they are guilty of plagiarizing nature. Your art at least involves a human producing something, which is were art is distinguished from nature.

hah! latin frenzy!

[netsrek]

I wouldn't call Atom Heart microsound. Pan Sonic maybe, but definitely not Atom Heart.

Definitely not his Senor Coconut persona... :)

We are the Robots! cha-cha-cha!

Re:bull shit.

[Anonymous Coward]

Like Metallica, this music also sucks balls.

that's a better definition..

[netsrek]

lowercase is...sort of a hybrid beween musique concrete, ambient, and microsound. As far as I can tell. I admit to finding a lot of it terribly uninteresting.

Ambient to me suggests all that melodic stuff, not timbral-based music like this.

Oh and yeah, I have heard of John Cage... I've studied my Michael Nyman books... bah! historical perspective! I've got it in truckloads...

i still think you're missing the point to compare underworld to lowercase music.... way off track.

what about luomo?

[netsrek]

I thought that was an interesting project of Mr. Vlad. Delay.

kind of glitchy house. good stuff.

Mouse on Mars are the Kings! Every album by them just blows my mind.

Re:Why the Mac emphasis?- Protools

[the rug]

I'll probably stick to mac os9 as much as i can, osx is still a little too demanding on the cpu to be used for audio processing, i'm afraid.

lowercase live

[quiet_american]

Why not give it a listen and then decide? If any Bay Area folk want to see 'lowercase' performance live, I'm hosting a show at my warehouse in SF tommorow night... four artists will be presenting quiet(er) work live.

(No promises, but there may even be a powerbook in the house...)

The details direct are here. Apologies for the table formatting, that page is intended to be a pop-up from my news/updates teaser page, which sits off www.quietamerican.org.

nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for posting this. I, for one, find it refreshing. It's sort of the opposite of the noisecore movement, isn't it? :)

I can't see myself buying any CDs (except maybe the paper sounds one, but I'm a library geek) because it's rare that I get to settle down in an appropriate environment to just listen to music without other noise intruding. Unless I turned up the volume really loud and defeated the purpose.

For all the "this isn't music" people, you sound like my grandpa. Nyah.

Re: I hate everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

You live in Chicago. You are likely an American. If so, it isn't a fucking flat. It's an apartment.

this is not music

[borat]

what's the difference between this and sound effects tapes?

1. these are sounds you may not hear often
2. they are really quiet

I never considered sound effects tapes to be music, just sounds.

meee toooo

[cosyne]

Ok, so i downloaded some of the mp3s and listened to them. I would have thought my soundcard died, except i was listening to _music_ a few minutes before and i could hear it just fine. That's when i looked at the spectum analyzer it was blank. No sound to hear. So i though "i could do better than that." So here's a recording of my Altec computer speakers cranked, outputting noise from the rest of my system. The persistent message-from-space style thumping is the jornada- i think that's from the usb connection to the cradle but it has an 802.11b card so it could be that. (If i removed the jornada from the cradle the thumping would become less frequent, but the undocking sound would blow the speakers.) At about 10 seconds i started moving my cordless mouse, which makes a (vaugely lightsabre-ish) humming noise and, odly, a bit of a thud every time it goes over a link in mozilla (fukt if i know why that happens). Perhaps it's not better, but you can at least hear it. And if you happen to be offering record contracts you can check my contact info page ;-)

more than "aware" of the sounds around you

[chocolatetrumpet]

The philosophy of 4'33 is that all the sounds around you ARE musical. They are presented on a stage with an instrument to get your attetion - "hey, there really is something going on here." By the end of his life, Cage believed that 4'33 should be performed for an infinite amount of time; he thus considered the sounds all around him to be music, or at least, interesting.

4'33 is actually composed of a bunch of "rests" added together, and these durations were determined by chance operations with tarot cards. He felt the natural structural beauty of randomness was more beautify than anything his mind could construct. However, it is often suggested that the total duration (4'33") is that standard length of Muzak, to which he originally intended to sell his composition.

Imagine how you feel listening to your favorite music; now imagine you feel that wall all the time. It is understandable that Cage was rarely found without a wide grin on his face. What an amazing guy!

SEE?!? IT'S EASY!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Lowercase music, this wonderful new style of music, is easy, and so beautiful! I just had to contribute. Listen to my interpretation and try to get a sense of how I feel about lowercase music.

ftp://slash:slash@64.59.151.142/- upload/art160.mp3

Or search for art160.mp3 on WINMX

Re: I hate everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

An apartment refers to a rented space in a complex that was designed to be living areas for many people. A flat is a house or building that has been divided and modified to house more than one person or family. Typically an address at an apartment would be something like "1200 Main St. Apt. #3B" whereas an address for a flat would be "2500-C Central Ave.".

Hope that clears up the differences.