source file: mills2.txt Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 22:34:54 -0800 Subject: microdoodling From: bq912@freenet.uchsc.edu (Neil G. Haverstick) Haverstick here...this post has been brewing for a while...let me say that it is not inspired by anything I've read here at all, but may overlap in places with some things others have said. The deal is this; I am a musician first, theorist second, and my approach to other tunings is from a very practical viewpoint: I want to make some music that kicks ass, and has some substance to it...the MUSIC is first, the theory of the tuning system follows. Thus, my dilemma...over the last 7 years, I have heard a lot of music in non 12 tunings, but much of it, I hate to say, is NOT happening by my standards of what a baaad musician is, or should be...in other words, microdoodling. Basically, a lot of what I have heard sounds like theorists who are demonstrating their theories on musical instruments, rather than musicians letting her rip...the dreaded word "academic" seems appropriate here. The sad part, though, is that much of the non 12 music I have heard I will not play for anyone...I am concerned that this sort of dry doodling will do more to drive folks away from "microtonality" than it will to draw them in...now, since I have a mission in life to help end the reign of 12 eq as the dominant tuning, this is very frustrating to me...I WANT to hear my fellow microdudes playing their asses off, but this seems to be rare in the field, with some notable exceptions, of course. In fact, just recently, a fellow microtonalist (who IS killer) told me that he would not play, for his own friends, a CD he appeared on as sideman for a wellknown microtonal composer because it sucked.. I agreed wholeheartedly with this assessment, since I think this CD is awful...yet, the gentleman in question is revered in some circles as a major talent...I think it's a case of the Emperor's new clothes again...look, I came up in a hard school, and was blessed to meet and be taught by some genius who could cut you to shreds and leave you bleeding on the floor...but, you DID profit by it if you got the message and went home and practiced...and I did just that, and got my chops way up (and I still practice). Yes, there are many genius level personalities in the tuning firld, but there is a big gap between the level of the theories and the level of expertise on the actual playing field. There are a couple of areas here that are at fault...1. there seems to be a very low level of just plain technical skills when it comes to actually playing an instrument...I actually think my7 year old daughter's noodlings on her 12 tone mini keyboard are as interesting as a lot of the stuff I've heard by the microdoodlists...guys, just cause one plays in a cool tuning doesn't mean it's gonna hold water unless you can play your axe...sorry, and I do not mean to insult anyone here...2...I've also noticed a terrible lack of synthesizer programming skills as well...cheesy tones and patches seem to be the norm in the microdoodling realm...a lack of imaginationseems to be the problem here. and 3. a real serious lack of compo- sitional skills as well. By this< i mean that in a lot of the pieces I hear, there seems to be a basic idea presented, which is often not bad, but then it goes nowhere, other than a few minutes of sort of, well, doodling around, and then out...I'm left saying, "go on, develop those ideas!" Oops, my service is going to cut me off...I will post more later...but, here's the remedy to microdoodling: PRACTICE YOUR AXES, AND LEARN TO PLAY WELL, AND THEN YOUR IDEAS WILL HAVE MORE SUBSTANCE...make the music as powerful as your theories, and then we can take over the world...thanks...Hstick Received: from ns.ezh.nl [137.174.112.59] by vbv40.ezh.nl with SMTP-OpenVMS via TCP/IP; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 07:56 +0100 Received: by ns.ezh.nl; (5.65v3.2/1.3/10May95) id AA14279; Mon, 2 Dec 1996 07:58:34 +0100 Received: from eartha.mills.edu by ns (smtpxd); id XA13301 Received: from by eartha.mills.edu via SMTP (940816.SGI.8.6.9/930416.SGI) for id WAA05838; Sun, 1 Dec 1996 22:58:31 -0800 Date: Sun, 1 Dec 1996 22:58:31 -0800 Message-Id: <199612020655.XAA24326@freenet.uchsc.EDU> Errors-To: madole@ella.mills.edu Reply-To: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Originator: tuning@eartha.mills.edu Sender: tuning@eartha.mills.edu