MUS33

Living Traditions

Disciplinary study and teaching

in ethnomusicology generally
focuses on music as a form of
human expression that exists in
the context of everyday life;
students and scholars, study
meanings and structures of
music, considering each cultural
event in which music is
performed as a meaningful
experience in the lives of
Jennifer C. Post
Ethnomusicology: a guide to research (2003).

Appendix
Full Session Notes

Stefan Putt (Music BA

Hons)

A famous picture of Ethnomusicologist

Frances Densmore recording Blackfoot
chief Mountain Chief for the Bureau of
American Ethnology (1916)

Lesson 1
Tradition As A Concept

Tradition & Myth

The word Tradition is very much a contested term. Some people swear by the
term such as the folk scene; if you go to a folk club youll hear people talk about
The Folk Tradition. What is the concept of tradition? Not everyone has it? Not
every time and place in the world is/was bothered by it like the Western World is.
Listening: Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi
The lyrics of the song seem to give a sense that the present day is lacking in
something and that the natural world is being destroyed and inaccessible to
people.
Took all the trees and put em in a tree museum, and charged a people a
dollar and a half to see them
She also refers to Big Yellow Taxi which seems to refer to the city life. Theres a
time when things were better before man had interfered. In a sense, in the
chorus, it seems to tell us an awful lot the way that tradition was constructed in
the modern world. Tradition is a concept that is really important in the modern
world from the 19th Century up to today. Before that, although the word tradition
existed in the dictionary it wasnt used in the same sense as we do now, it
merely meant delivered to. There is something in the song about the continuity
from the past to the present.
How are traditions constructed?
Book Eric Hobsbawm The Invention Of Tradition
Listening: Robert Johnson Cross Road Blues, Part 2
Robert Johnson is a stage character from history. He was in his 20s when he died
but the interesting thing about Robert Johnson is, he became known amongst
young musicians in Britain and America in the 1960s and the reason was
because of his album, King Of The Delta Blues Singers. If you look at the cover,
it gives
some idea of the impression that was being put across
about Robert Johnson.
Johnson was in the Mississippi Delta and he was a
practicing musician but he was only really known in
his
circle. John Hammond tried to find and contact him
only to find out that he actually recently die, not much
was
known about him but it took into the 1960s became
better known solely through this album. Keith
Richards
has always said that this record was the one that
got him going as blues guitarist. It became a kind of
legend in the
1960s. The legend itself was very much an illustration
of the blues legend as a whole. When you listen to this example, you can hear its
pre-electric, often referred to as folk blues. This music seems to convey a

connection with the folk roots; it seems to also have a loose structure, so much
so that it is almost apparent that the style is still developing into what it is known
today.
Hes in his shirt, baggy trousers and looking down into his guitar, a sense of
introspective blues singer. So you have this idea of front-porch syndrome that
at least some of these singers werent into the commercial world at all,
introspective, doleful and focussed solely on the music. Also, the title is
Mississippi Delta, which is a well-known origin of the Blues.
Book: Elijah Wald Escaping The Delta
In this book Wald says that, the fact that we have equated the blues in our mind
poor black Americans, as the Mississippi delta wasnt particularly poor
compared to other places and it is strange why this was picked out. The other
thing that is interesting about the folk roots thing is, the first blues ever
published (due to the infancy of Sound Recording at the time) was in 1909 in
New Orleans called Ive Got The Blues, was considered to be a ragtime novelty.
The only thing that really makes it a blues is the first sequence is a 12-bar-blues.
Blues became a type of pop music that was particularly current especially
amongst black people, but certainly not exclusively. It was often quite difficult to
determine the race of the blues performers. Had Blind Lemon Jefferson just heard
this old vaudeville music that was faux-blues and just developed upon this? The
origin of Blues then becomes really hazy. A lot of
people were much more concerned with being
urban, modern and relinquishing the badges of
poverty and the taint of the slave industry.
In the album cover shown above there is an air of
poverty which seems to have been purposely done
by the publishers to be appealing. In the album,
Robert Johnson The Complete Recordings he
seems to be dressed up in a suit, with a tie-pin and
trilby hat.
Many blues songs are about love, violence and sex
but not so much about politics. Very much like the early days of Hip-Hop in the
1970s, the people who created Hip-Hop were quite poor, but that isnt what they
wanted to present, they didnt dress that way (bling and colourful clothing), but
that theme goes through black music, black folk music, soul, R&B, motown. The
other thing that is important about Robert Johnson (and all blues singers) is we
get a very skew idea of what was performed by looking at what was recorded.
The truth about Robert Johnson, from what we can see from these sources is, he
didnt just sing blues songs (although they are loose in structure) but these were
never recorded. He sang covers of popular artists of the time such as Bing
Crosby and Gene Autry. Robert Johnson would have undoubtedly been in
situations where people werent necessarily listening so he used to lengthen out
his blues song. Recording technology seemed to impose a limit on the length of
songs. The recording company choose certain songs by Robert Johnson due to
Blues being the pop music of the time, so we get a very skewed idea of what
this guy was about, his favourite singer was Gene Autry, so we get a very

different image of this Johnson. What we seem to be dealing with here, is the
building up of the blues tradition and singer.

Constructing & Perpetrating Myth

Tradition and Myth are so closely entwined that they could even be seen as the
same thing. When we hear the word myth there is a sense that it might not all
be true. A myth is also a roundabout way of celebrating the truth; they are
allegories that describe origins or pre-history.
There seems to be four main things that myths seem to create/develop:

Origins;
Pre-History;
Exemplary;
Explanatory.

One thing that you could say though about a tradition (if a tradition is defined
like above) they give you a kind of mandate as it implies, this is how it was, this
is the natural order of things, it doesnt only order music, but it orders how we
should live. So music is terribly important in this respect. The thing that is very
clear is that the Blues was used by white counter-culturists to set examples for
their life.
There are many different types of people that try to keep tradition:
Purist People in folk clubs, wanted to sing the songs more or less, as they were
originally sung without improvisation etc.
Liberal The tradition provides a framework to work with, this seems to be the
tradition that we use today. The majority of people arent really too
interested in being Purist. They think that it gives them a framework,
repertoire and also a springboard to get somewhere else.
Experimental Uses tradition to overthrow it. If one uses a tradition to
overthrow itself, one is actively participating in it.
These quotes in some ways, sum up the idea of traditions and
myths:
Confucius tells us something about music, traditional music, and order. The
analects of Confucius are put out as if they were conversations between master
and disciples. Confucius was very concerned with order within the state.
1. Yen Yan (his student) asked how the government of a country should be
administered.
2. The Master said, "Follow the seasons of Hsi.
3. "Ride in the state carriage of Yin.
4. "Wear the ceremonial cap of Chu.
5. "Let the music be the Sho with its pantomimes.
6. "Banish the songs of Chang, and keep far from specious talkers. The songs of
Chang are
licentious; specious talkers are dangerous."

According to Bob Pegg, the closer that you get to a tradition the more ambiguous
it becomes. Pegg writes in the book Folk:
I think we have to face the probability that folk music is an illusion created
unconsciously by the people who talk about it, go out looking for it, make
collections of it , write books about it, and announce to an audience that they
are going to play it. It is rather like a mirage which changes according to the
social and cultural standpoint of whoever is looking at it. From a distance it
looks distinct, almost tangible. The closer you get the more uncertain its
outline becomes, until you merge with it, and it disappears entirely. What
remains are the conditions that produce the mirage... The only thread that
runs through the whole of the folk singer and musician's repertoire is orality.
Tradition is something that is created to perpetrate myth. Myth is always
ideological, by that, it doesnt mean political (even though it may involve
politics), but instead that there are ideas involved. Country music was most
typically made by Southern working class white people, these people were very
moral and religious, yet the songs of the music sings about divorce and things
that shouldnt be desired. Tradition can sometimes work in that way.
In the 1930s, the position of black people in the USA was pretty awful, they were
discriminated against and there was apartheid. Yet, it was apparent that there
was a large amount of music that involved black people. There seemed to be a
mismatch here though, the people were largely despised yet their music was
seen as vibrant and great. John Hammond
thought that what was happening to the
black people was terrible, and he decided to
put on a concert in the Carnegie Hall (of
which had almost never seen black people
inside, it mainly housed white European
classical music), his idea was to publicise
black people and to put them on the map,
he called it From Spirituals to Swing. He
constructed a myth that we have been
telling to this day, he constructed the
narrative of black American music, he
elucidated that black Americans are from
Africa, and therefore what we should have in
this concert in African Music. During the 1930s it would have been quite difficult
to bring African musicians from Senegal for example, over to Carnegie Hall.
Instead, in the middle of the hall there was an old Gramophone with (breakable)
records of African drummers and singing. Then came, the ring shouts and field
hollers and folk music of the Deep South, these were done by real people rather
than records. Hammond had heard of Johnson but it was very hard to locate him
due to the lack of his notoriety. Instead they found a blues guitarist called Big Bill
Brunsey, representing the Blues, there were Soul, Swing Bands, Early Jazz Music
also. What you actually had was a logical chronological history that ended up at
present day. It is an incredible over simplification of the black tradition; traditions
can never be this simple. This is a perfect example of the construction of a myth.
Another example is a slightly awkward and difficult one to talk about because;
one of the reasons why Germany didnt have a folk revival is because Hitler

ruined it. In the UK during the Second World War, there was a massive folk
revival, France, Italy and Spain had something very similar. Hitler had used
German Folk Music and had attempted to construct a tradition. Hitler and the
German idea logs of culture identified acceptable art and music and
degenerate art and music. It was kind of difficult if people like the
degenerate music, partly because a lot of Jewish people were the artists, such
as Stravinsky and Schoenberg, highly modernist music was condemned, along
with Jazz; this was due to Hitler and his subordinates classing this as Black
music. Music that conformed to a science of race was accepted. At the
beginning of the 19th Century, the whole idea of Folk (volk) was to describe the
very roots of civilisation and humanity (volkskunst/volksgeist). You wouldnt find
this level of culture in modern cities as these had become quite urbanised,
instead you had to go to the more rural areas; thus the idea of collecting folk
music was created. The idea was taken up by Hitler whereby they wanted to
create a German song culture that would actually reinforce the ideas of race;
they thought that this song culture was available through folk music so they
decided that they should teach this to the children in German Schools. They took
the folk tunes but changed the words to nationalist lyrics. Once in power, Hitler
moved to purge music and music scholarship of Jews in an effort to promote the
unique origin myths of the German Volk and further saturate citizens with racial
theories. These are two different examples but both are ideological.
The next example show how tradition perpetrates myth, and how myth is
continued through time. In the magazine Rolling
Stone there was a headline that stated Truck Driver
invents Rock and Roll, this was entirely untrue as
Rock had been around for many years before hand,
and to Elvis credit he did say this.
Listening: Elvis Presley Thats All Right
He went into the studio and wanted to be a pop
singer like Dean Martin or Bing Crosby, but the
record companys werent at all interested in the
songs he was writing, as it was quite predictable and
there wasnt anything particularly original. After
hours, during a coffee break Elvis decided to doodle around on a song called
Thats All Right which then became Elvis first single.
Listening: Arthur Big Boy Crudup Thats All Right
The song was apparently written by Arthur Crudup, but according to the myth,
according to Rolling Stone and so many books on the subject, started on the day
of July 15 1954. Its possible to dismiss the myth and say therefore its not
true, but its not that simple as myth often contains ethical truth rather than
factual truth, such as, life is like this or such things should be. This is a very
contemporary and modernist idea. With the example Hitlers use of folk music
and Hammonds use of black music we can see how myths are used to create
traditions.
Why is that this whole propensity for myth-making is so typical of modernity?
One very typical answer is the fact that sound-recording is a massive reason
behind making these myths. Buddy Bolden could play better, louder and more

beautifully than anybody but never made any recordings as he went mad and
didnt get a chance to record. There was a legend that went around that there is
a secret recording somewhere, but this folk legend was created because of
sound recording. The search for roots has been very typical of modernity, if we
look at Shakespeare or Elizabethan play there isnt much evidence of looking for
roots and identity, so tradition itself was not previously an issue, so why does it
suddenly start being important in the 19th Century. In the world of Classical
Music, no one really cared about what was old music. The music of JS Bach was
hardly known except for a few specialists. But in the mid-19th-Century
Mendelsohn rediscovered Bach and put him in a classical repertoire of music for
a concert. All of the famous academies and conservatoires then started to grow
up in the 19th Century and they basically taught a particular view of classical
music, and if the students were interested in any other type of music it was only
to utilise as a being useful to classical music, not to study in its own
independent benefit. These academies and people such as Alexander McKensie
though that they really ought to have a study of exams for young musicians that
we still use today, music then began to be taught in a certain way. Music History
started roughly in the Renaissance, so you might have Palestrina but not further
back than that (that was considered to be ancient music). When the academies
found themselves in the 21st Century, it stops during the Second World War and
they started to look into Experimental Music. The idea of the exams is rather like
John Hammond telling the history of black American music in his concert and
Hitler giving a narrative to emphasise German ideals, and this is myth-making.
Why does this come along in the 19th Century and continue up until now? Why
are we so obsessed with roots? Roots became such an in-word, we can
speculate that the way life changed for so many people under industrialism must
have something to do with why we like to keep roots. Karl Marx developed the
concept of alienation; refers to the separation of things that naturally belong
together, or to put antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. This
theory concerns the alienation from others, alienation from ourselves and also
the alienation from the world around us. What we get in music today is a sort of
tribalism, for example, a metal tribe is very different to a folk tribe, and this
identification is done visually, aurally and orally. The real difference is that in
previous times, life could feel very settled and definite and Karl Marx says:
Modernism, or the modern era, is that whole period of the history of
bourgeois society where the bourgeoisie has put an end to all feudal,
patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal
ties that bound man to his natural superiors, and has left no other nexus
between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous cash
payment, but has not yet entered the period of decline referred to as
post-modernism.
When you look at it in Marxist point of view, it does seem really appropriate to
touch the past and keep it, and music is able to do this really well. Just before
something is about to become extinct you will almost always see a revival of it;
just as Joni Mitchells song says, Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know
what you've got til its gone. Its true to say that in the 19th Century in the arts;
nostalgia was a very big movement. For example, Dracula was very nostalgic for
distant past and almost quasi-erotic due to its link to blood etc.

The details of change nowadays can be so small and miniscule that can delineate
a new style that it can be hard to keep up with it. The urban condition can often
be described as having a degree of loneliness, one of the performers that
portrayed this is Frank Sinatra was often considered to be a poet of loneliness,
especially in his song Night & Day.
Listening: Fred Astaire Night & Day
Listening: Frank Sinatra Night & Day
The lyrics in this song, In the roaring traffic's boom, in the silence of my lonely
room it shows a sense of solitude, obsessing over love, there are words such as,
yearning, burning, torment etc. Frank Sinatra actually said that he wanted
to make an art form out of popular singing, on the evidence of his track (which is
untypical as he usually sung with a big band) he definitely achieved his goal. The
urban living imagery is erotic, longing but juxtaposed with loneliness and
solitude.
Effects of Myth
Tradition is always something that is constructed and it usually has reasons
behind it. There are ideological reasons. Tradition therefore is very close to myth,
and the effects of this are. Tradition created frameworks, without frameworks to
create our music we are kind of lost, so we need those frameworks. They
certainly empower people, such as the case in Ireland where Irish people get a
sense of identity from traditional Irish music. There can also be a sense of
disempowerment if the tradition is hard and fast. The idea of a very rigidly
structured tradition in music might cause some people to break away from it.
There is also a very interesting effect that if outsiders have an interpretation of a
tradition that the insiders eventually take on the outsiders take on the tradition,
for example in Padstow the traditional music from there will often be told that it
is from Pagan times however, this has been learned by outsiders as the origins
arent necessarily from Pagan times. There is also an influence of commerce,
the recording company made value judgements according to what they thought
that they could sell; also the idea of funding was a factor in this as well.
Academia is also an influence in this, the whole study of something can actually
in a sense be part of the myth-making even when it purports to be challenging
the myths.

Lesson 2
The Experiences Of A Folk Music Collector

Tradition In The End Times

End times is a term that was coined by Slavoj iek, a lecturer and philosopher
that wrote a book known as, Living In The End Times. Sean O'Hagan wrote a
review on iek in The Observer:

To witness iek in full flight is a wonderful and at times alarming

experience, part philosophical tightrope-walk, part performance-art
marathon, part intellectual roller-coaster ride.
Listening: Frank Denyer Finding Refuge In The Remains
This is purely acoustic music and some of the sounds really are tiny, there is a
very sort of human scale within the music. There are some instruments within
this composition that he invented whilst also including conventional instruments
that have been doctored in some way, almost breaking away from tradition.
There doesnt seem to be an emotional
language within the music personally,
however it seems to give off some sort
of idea. A recurring idea in this guys
music is that there is a sort of a clatter,
some unidentifiable. Around about the
time he wrote this piece (1990s) he
used this knocking effect that came in a
lot of different piece. But out of this
clatter, there emerges something, small
and beautiful females voice, A
Monkeys Paw. Frank Danyer is an
ethnomusicologist and did a lot of work
in Kenya and he spent a lot of time with
a healer, and he was introduced to a
box that contained a hideously decayed monkeys paw, he felt that this was the
healing within the clatter. As an ethnomusicologist iek felt that he didnt have
to use instruments just used in Western Classical Music. He is very conscious of
musical traditions all around the world, whilst also being very conscious of the
world around, so he is able to use this global sound box as an orchestra but this
does imply a very different view of music, tradition and the way we live.
Living In The End Times Book:
Our era that we live in is only about 200 years old, after the industrial revolution.
We call this period after the industrial revolution modernity however; iek
refers to it as capitalism. There were all sorts of technologies that were useful
to music at this time. You could also say that, popular music as we know it was
developed because of modernity and increased communications and
socialisation. Industry, Economics and Science & The Arts developed within the
industrial revolution. The 1st and 2nd World Wars did bring a lot of inventions that
we still use today. iek argues that modernity has a sort of quasi-ethical basis,
because in the end it produces greater prosperity and happiness. If you restrict
this argument to the western world, this argument is quite strong. It was in this
context that music and the arts flourished; modernity created huge revolutions in
classical and popular music, however, it wasnt quite so kind to folk music. But it
was in this context where life changed a lot, previous to modernity things were
very solid and settled: marriage, religion and work. This was true in whatever
part of society someone was in. When all this changes (of which music reflects
this change), there is a feeling of the ground being pulled out from underneath
peoples feet, and this spurred on the wanting of tradition, almost an antidote
to uncontrolled modernity. iek calls tradition, a necessary structural illusion. It

always harks back to a previous time, of which is the settled time, where people
felt
more grounded. They felt that if they could contact
the music of that time we could feel much more
grounded and national. The idea of nationalism
in music and the arts Cecil Sharp (of who was
one of the most assiduous art collectors in
Europe of the time), wrote in English Folk Song:
Some Conclusions (1907):
If you want to gauge the music potential
of a nation, we must look to the
musical utterances of the folk music
Invented traditions came about in order to
give us some sort of link to organic social ties.
As you move on through the 20th Century, you
find that there is a gathering sense of urgency,
they felt that these old songs and tunes,
alongside the way of life that they came from. So
the idea that they were collecting the music wasnt just a
hobby, they felt that they were collecting culture. As you go further in the 20 th
Century, this became a Clarian call amongst folk collectors. Alan Lomax wrote in
one of his studies of Folk Music:
To a folklorist the uprooting and destruction of traditional cultures and
the consequent grey-out or disappearance of the human variety presents
as serious a threat to the future happiness of mankind as poverty,
overpopulation, and even war.
He felt that although poverty, overpopulation and war are terrible, for a folklorist
the loss of these traditional cultures was as important as war. Wars kill people,
but modernity kills cultures. When he was doing this in 68, it was true that local
dialects and languages were disappearing at about 200 a year. Folk musics
mission changed at this point because, earlier in the days of Cecil Sharp, it was
really about nationhood, and getting people to appreciate how patriotic you are.
But when you get to mid-20th Century there was a completely different agenda, it
wasnt about making you feel proud, it was more about empowerment, hence
why folk clubs were organised and really gathered in the 50s and 60s. With the
fact of empowerment, there is a sense of social bonding and refusal to accept all
the mainstream values. iek denies that globalism destroys and flattens global
traditions; he actually felt that it helped them to survive. iek is focussing on
the non-musical factors, but if you take a look at what he says about trade,
economy etc. you can apply most of it to musical features.
One of the many things that were distinctive about this era is fusions, there
were fusions in music, society, economy. It is not just that artists make fusions,
but its fusions are happening at the roots in neighbourhood between friends and
people who live together, you then get a blurring of traditions. From the point of
view from people collecting folk music, the threads that used to link us to a
previous society have almost gone and have almost changed and have been
compromised by this evolutionary culture. Collecting folk music and researching
folklore really began to change as the generations died out, traditions became

on-the-move. One thing you might say, is that in that prior time before things
started to fuse together, you could live within engulfing traditions within music
this would be simple, you were born within a culture or village, and the music
that you heard would be of one or two types, and this music would be made by
the community and the same kind of songs. This is what is sometimes called an
engulfing tradition basically because you dont need to look very far outside of
it. Modernity changed this completely, even though we all have traditions within
us, it can often be a personal question to find how we can make music from the
music that we have and the traditions that we are borne from. The old traditions
have almost been wrecked by modernity and it is important to salvage parts of
culture that are within this wreckage. Frank Denyers
title of Finding Refuge in the Remains
really shows how traditions were affected by
modernity.
Listening: Neptune Silver Pool
This is very much music that has a kind of
world vision and the building music out of
wreckage; this links very much to the
Frank Denyer piece.
Listening: Scatter She Moves Through
The Fair
The arrangement
of this song is a kind of fusion, the
singer Icelandic
and she uses a very pinched nasal
voice, they also
have random bells, drones and it is
very difficult to
find an example of Scatter that sums
them up as a
band, as their music is very
different to the
track before it. The world that is
often used to
describe our tradition (as opposed
to engulfing
traditions) is multivalent
tradition, which
describes this culture that is multifaceted and can be
taken from anywhere. ieks idea
of the End Times
are a transitional time, that we are
living from one
very old culture and we are looking
forward to, but we
dont quite know what. One of the
most alarming
things is, it is easier to envisage nothing that to envisage that end of our society.
His idea of why we are rushing towards these end times is due to Ecological
crisis, Biogenetic Revolution and imbalances within the system. In the case of
musicals, that at one time, musicals were a drama (a kind of integrated story)
with a book of songs especially written for it, and often set in prior times than it
was written, then you get these mid-century musicals, and then finally in the last
ten to twelve years are these very self-referential musicals, where the subject is
popular culture itself, such as Mamma Mia of where the story is woven around
the music that was already written. It is fascinating to relate what is happening
musically to what iek says. In Jaques Attalis book, Noise, he mentions that
music revolutions actually predict changes in society rather than vice-versa. We
have always been told that arts are an extra or an add-on, but once music and
musicians actually start of creating sound, this is when revolutions happen.

Folk Song Collecting

Sam was performing a lot of folk music material at the time that he became
interested in the collecting of folk music and the local dimension. When you start
a piece of field research, you are always told by academics to look up what you
have done before, but there was a drawback here, there was an awful lot of
rethinking that was happening to do with the concept of folk, the old idea that
you have to go to the country and rural areas to find the oldest inhabitants and
less educated in a modern sense, so this is basically what Sam did.
The first folk singer that Sam came into contact within this work was a man in
Broadhempstone Village; a man named Henry Mitchelmore who was a sexton at
a church. He found him by doing a very intuitive but detailed research. He asked
the people around the village until he found him. When it came to songs, he
didnt know any however, he referred Sam to another man in another village, a
man named Harry Smith. This man had a very vivid memory of singing
(especially in the navy) but when it came to songs, he didnt know any. Sam
asked him if knew the songs, Most Beautiful Leg of the Mallard, (of which is a
cumulative song very much like 12 Days Of Christmas) and the man told him
that he knew it but he couldnt sing it as it was someone elses song and this was
the first time Sam encountered this sort of informal copyright. Even though
Smith knew the song he said how the song belonged to someone else and hed
have to ask permission to sing it as he probably wouldnt be able to sing it as
well as the originator.
Listening: Henry Mitchelmore Leg Of The Mallard
These cumulative songs were quite popular in Devon, and also these songs were
apparently incantations at some time which had some sort of magical
significance, and these songs often referred to animals which they relied upon
(e.g. herring to a fisherman). These people also seemed to have a very great
retentive memory, mainly because these people came from a pre-literate
background.
Soon after this, Sam found a man from Totnes called Sid Parker, and he knew a
song called, A Young Sailor Who Was Cut Down In His Prime, it concerns a man
that enjoyed the promiscuity of life however he died of the pox, yet he was still
give a very dignified and military-like funeral. Sam found a man named Pop
Hingston (Bill Hingston). His cumulative song was, The Herrings Head, this
song was able to shut an entire pub up whilst sitting in the corner with his
squeezebox, he was very well-known in the community and he had a very
commanding presence.
Listening: Bill Hingston The Herrings Head
It became apparent to Sam that it was important to get to know the person
singing the songs and not just the song itself. You will find that specific pieces of
music has parts of your life within them, it might even be less specific and more
abstract. Sam almost always found that the music that Pop sang reminded him of
the original singer. It was very clear that certain songs, meant certain people to
him. Other songs came from somebody who he knew in the Indian Army, an old
man called Jack Norwich.

Listening: Walter Pardon - The Ballad of Lord Lovel

What was interesting about the repertoire from
Devon was there wasnt much in the way of
narrative song, there was some but not many, it
mainly consisted of cumulative songs. A
narrative style is quite intimate; the people that
sung these were quite convivial within
communities. The serious narratives however
were a completely different story altogether.
Walter Pardon almost destroyed the stereotype,
he was an extremely literate man and read
many books, yet he was hardly known in his
village as he kept himself very much to himself
and was quite reclusive, it wasnt until Sam
introduced other people to his music. Walter sung a song known as Van
Diemens Land was all about animal poaching; however there was something
quite unusual about this as the narrative was sung as if he knew the protagonist
of the song.
Sam never met anybody that played the Fiddle, however he did meet a Melodeon
player by the name of Bob Cann. There had been a local tradition of stepdancing up near Taunton, where they would put a board on the floor where you
would have to dance on the board, and if your feet left the board you would be
disqualified, the judges were old gentlemen that were step-dancers themselves
when they were younger, folk music almost always has an A, A, B, B structure.
There was an enormous amount of instrumental folk music such as music from
Harmonicas and Melodeons. Sam knew a lot of people in the same quest of folk
music as he was, and they told him that, if you want to find people that live
within the music and not just music from the older generations, you would have
to look into the music of gypsy travellers. Sam met a man named Sailor Jack
(Jack Packman) a man that worse an old sailors hat that used to travel around
selling logs from a van. He used to travel around with the gypsies and he told
Sam about a man named Bill Packman. After some trouble, Packman introduced
Sam to some traditional gypsy songs.
Listening: Sweet Willie
Sam found the narrative singers, and one of the occasions when he went to this
scrap site, one of the younger gypsies came over to Sam named, Nelson
Penfold who sung a traditional gypsy song. It became apparent how incredibly
well people were able to recall these narrative storys through these oral
traditions. The gypsy travellers also played Squeezeboxes really well and also
had a very large step-dance tradition. There was a real advantage at looking at
song and music looked in this way, it was a very communal thing, it was about
heritage. One gypsy lady that Sam encountered told him that she was quite
offended when Sam asked her to listen and record some of her songs as the she
felt the music was just for her family. Sam became more and more aware that his
values werent necessarily the same values as the folk performers that he
encountered. If youre asking people for information, in a way you encode to
them the kind of information that you are looking for, sometimes deliberately
such as Could I listen to OLD songs, so the value has already been set,

however sometimes they are done subconsciously. Sometimes, folk collectors

tend to go the older people as they are the repositories of the older generations.
There are different types of folk music, industrial, rural and communal for
example. Sam also got interested in the younger generation and what music
they were making, and he found a lot of links between the older generations folk
music and the younger band. Sometimes folk collectors can someway skew the
evidence and create it as they wanted to see it. It
became a matter of looking elsewhere than just the
rural folk music.

Listening: The Orchards Holsworthy Fair

Listening: Wendy Orchard Over Yonders Hill

Lesson 3
Composers Forum

In terms of tradition, American traditional music is a completely different kettle

of fish compared to that of English/European folk music as it deals with a
completely different set of troubles and problems.
The American Experience of Tradition
The problem is that America is a huge country and it depends on where you are
in America to encounter the difficulties and factors that are involved in American
folk. In America, if you go to train in Classical Music, it is very much linked to
Europe (albeit they have their own composers that they study). On the West
Coast, due to the distance from Europe, there is a lot of worship for composers
such as, John Cage, Lou Harrison, Harry Partch and Henry Cow. This is a tradition
of American innovators that are being revered as Beethoven and Brahms in
Europe. It seems rebellious and revolutionary however, it is the same as what
people did over in Europe.
Listening: Lona Kozik Dissertation Pieces
A lot of these compositions had a lot of influences from the traditions that she
heard around her, for example, the double stride in the compositions comes from
listening to that from a young age. The traditions that she was trained in seems
to be a withering trade, people were worrying more about the upkeep of an
orchestra and started to think about marketing to try and attract young people
into the traditions. A lot of Americans are very much focussed on identity and it
is important to them to keep traditions and inheritance, this is most likely due to
it being a massive country and it can often be hard to be individual.
There is always a spectrum within every tradition in terms of accessibility and
inaccessibility in terms of style and access, and this applies to European Classical
traditions as well. The two biggest barriers that Lona confronted in her times as
an American musician and musical academic was being a woman and working
class. Class doesnt mean money, but it has to do with attitudes, values and
what people expect from you. It appears that things are not very rigid in
America, as there is the myth that people can just work hard and succeed;
a.k.a. The American Dream.
The surface of sound is really important, especially when you take into account
the invention of Sound Recording. One of the main ways to compose music is to
focus on the Tonal Centre and to see how far away from this centre can one can
go and come back; this creates a form of narrative. These days we can stretch
these stories really far so it feels that this isnt new anymore. The Surface of
Sound is more important than harmony. Lona then talks about how there is a big
difference between composers a different nationality of composers, particularly
German as they tend to enjoy starting music with a big statement whereas some
French composers are a lot more subtle such as Debussys Prlude l'aprsmidi d'un faune.

Lonas mother was a Pianist, however Lona was a very different pianist, she
tended to have a very outside-of-the-box point of view. She views the piano,
basically, as a giant vibrating box whereas her mother was much more
conventional and played softly, and
purposefully. They used to often
argue about how the piano should be
played, Lona tended to utilize the
dampener and sustain pedal most of the
time and it is this unique way of
playing was the catalyst to the style
of music
that Lona mainly played.
One of the techniques that Lona
eventually started to really utilise
was, bowing a piano. This was
achieved by putting hair into the notes and
uses the dampener pedal to create interesting sounds. She put together a
performance using these ideas.
Listening: Lona Kozik Bowed Piano Piece
We then discussed different ways of composing and Sam discussed how hed
composed massive pieces that managed to blur the definition between audience
and performers. Hed also composed a piece in conjunction with Plymouth
Aquarium, whereby masking tape which is stretched across a fish tank in five
parallel lines, and wherever the fish swam was the notes that were played, this
was a very interesting method of composition and it a very unique way of
utilising chance music.

Lesson 4
Jazz Lab

We were introduced to members of Jazzlab; of which

specializes in freeform styles, the members are Mick
Green (tenor saxophone), Tim Sayer (trumpet), David
George (double bass), with occasional guests such as
Andy Visser and George on the bass clarinet. This lineup is known as "The Jazzlab".
Listening: Jazzlab Free Improvisation
The piece begins in Locrian Mode which then goes into
Mixolydian Mode. The piece doesnt have a strict time
signature, and all of the parts seemed to be very
independent. Half way through the piece the piece
seems to start following a strict musical structure and
time signature; this seems to happen when the piece
modulates to Mixolydian Mode. Then the bass
clarinettist changed to a soprano saxophone until the
piece came to a close.
Listening: Jazzlab - Pulcinella the Cat
It is based on the legend that the Baroque composer, Scarlatti had a cat called
Pulcinella and one day as he was composing at his harpsichord; his cat walked up
the harpsichord and hit certain notes. This piece began slowly and the piano
played the same arpeggiation throughout the intro whilst the trumpet, double
bass, and soprano sax were playing written melodic passages. The piano then
went into an improvisatory section whereby, the piano soloed on the mode of the
piece. At this point, only the double bass and the drums were playing underneath
to give the piece depth. This part of the piece would be described as some sort
of quasi-lounge jazz piece. The soprano saxophone seems to take a solo after
this. As soon as the soprano saxophone finishes the piece returns to the
arpeggiated piano scale and the written trumpet/sax parts. The piece slowly
comes to a halt on a jazzy yet dissonant chord.
Andys musical background mainly stems from playing classical clarinet, and
then he had to unlearn it all in Dartington when he got into Jazz music. He is
working as a sound designer at the moment as it is a lot more affluent than
being a performer unfortunately.
Tim started playing the bugle in a band and joined the Marines and then started
writing computer software, of which music started to overlap with this.
Dave came from a folk background; his dad was a folk musician. Dave started
playing the guitar and then drums, and he used to follow his dad playing folk
gigs and his teenage years he had a bit of a natural dislike for folk music but he
eventually got back into listening. He wanted to play the double bass so he
saved up and entered a big band playing the Double Bass.

George came from more of a Rock background and was in a few Rock bands in
secondary school and college, but then got into Jazz-Rock and through travelling
to the United States and Amsterdam he eventually became into Jazz
improvisation. One of the things that Sam struggled with for many years, if we
were born 100 years ago, we would be brought up in 1 or 2 types of music and
we wouldnt be exposed to any others, once a year if you had enough money you
might travel to the city to the music hall, but this was a rarity. One could look at
this as a narrow musical life however this is quite pejorative. The whole idea of
Jazzlab is a way of approaching music in jazz way but it means also that anything
gets thrown in.
Listening: Jazzlab - Sheep Crook and Black Dog
This piece is originally a folk song that was collected from a gypsy queen in
Dorset, it is a modal tune and very repetitive. At the beginning, the tune is very
repetitive but then the piece starts to go off in an improvisatory fashion.
Listening: Jazzlab The Cropper Lads
This is a song from the Luddites, workers who were seriously threatened by new
machinery. They were completely against the Industrial Revolution, which they
felt were leaving them without work and changing their way of life. The
movement was named after General Ned Ludd (or King Ludd), a mythical figure
who, like Robin Hood, was reputed to live in Sherwood Forest.
Free Jazz mainly belongs to the 1960s however in the 1949 there was a bebop
pianist called Lennie Tristano that had really gone way-out with his chords and
they decided in a recording session to experiment with this. However, around the
time of the civil rights movement, free jazz really came into fruition and some
seminal free-jazz albums came out, one of them was actually called Free Jazz
by Ornette Coleman.
Listening: Jazzlab Leap of Faith
Four different phases in this, as musical scores, all they have is the theme
written out that they play in unison and then there is nothing and then the next
bit is a riff, and after that there is a sort of improvisation as a cue for the
drummer to come in with improvisation.
In the second half of the lecture, Sam made a point that the instrumentalist tend
to stop for Bass solos more than any other instrumental solo. Why is this? The
tempo can often be different with people stopping and starting at different times,
however, it only takes one person to stop for the piece to completely change.
Every time they play the piece, they try to do something completely different in
terms of improvisation. It is one of the hardest things in improvising to just letgo and enter some sort of Zen-Mode when improvising.
Listening: Jazzlab Little Sally Racket
This song was originally a sea shanty; this free jazz piece is without singing and
the horn/woodwind take the role of the singer and crew. The piece began with a
structured piano part yt then it moves into more of a free jazz sound. There is
also a structured melody with the trumpet and saxophone until they all take in
turns to improvise.

Listening: Jazzlab Overtime

This was written by a truck driver in Milwaukee called Larry Penn. The way he did
was in a very laconic style yet the way that Jazzlab do it is in much more of a
reggae rhythm. In the piece there are very strong bass riffs along with prominent
trumpet solos in between the verses utilising the mute in hand to create the
desired sound. The Saxophone then took up the next solo where it improvised
along the melody line. The saxophone then dims out where the double bass
takes a solo whereby the piano accompanies this solo with quiet chords.
Listening: Jazzlab Pitchin Can
If you bought Sun Ras orchestra you wouldnt know how many people would
turn up, however they were much disciplined in the way that they rehearsed. He
was a genius at writing short little riffs that almost sounded trite, yet there was
this ingeniousness about it. The piano, saxophone seemed to harmonise each
other. The piano played the lower part of the melody whereas the saxophone and
the trumpet played harmonising parts over the top.
Listening: Jazzlab - Clap Hands
Listening: Jazzlab Improvised Sibelius Piece
A couple of them decided to then show that they could improvise on a classical
piece by Sibelius. The next song is an improvisation on the poem by Gil ScottHeron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.
Listening: Jazzlab The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Lesson 5
Plunderphonics

Listening: MC Shadow Endtroducing

Plunderphonics is a term that was coined to describe a piece of music that is
completely assembled in samples. DJ Shadows Endtroducing was far more
successful than John Oswalds Plunderphonics as he is still touring.
Eliot Wilder, Endtroducing:
When it was released in 1996, Endtroducing sounded like nothing
before or since an album of beats, beauty and chaos, a sound that cuts
to the very blue flame of the heart. Looking back, no other popular record,
to my mind, better summarizes the end of the last century.
In this book there is no musical analysis whatsoever however. There is some
discussion in this book of post-modernism but he basically says DJ Shadow is
not only a master sampler and turntablist supreme, he is also a serious
archaeologist with a world-thirsty passion (what Cut Chemist refers to as Joshs
spidey sense)
Plunderphonics was coined in the mid 1980s by the
Canadian Musician John Oswald. Oswald is an interesting
character as he was a saxophonist yet Plunderphonics
was really the opposite of his musical background
(improvisation etc.), this is because all music is preexisting sounds so there no room for improvisation.
Its not just fragments or beats that are sampled
however, it is full sounds and fully recognisable
sounds, he calls these macro-samples or electroquotes, there is no blatant attempt to conceal the fact
that he using other music. The piece will consist ONLY of
samples. John Oswald once said that he never used any sound that wasnt easily
available in the record store, during the 1980s where they were very prominent.
Listening: John Oswald BTLS (Sampled A Day In The Life - Beatles)
Oswald uses a sample from the beginning of A Day in the Life by the Beatles
and then allows it to fade out and he immediately brings it in again yet
transposed differently and then allows multiple samples to come in at the same
time
Listening: John Oswald Ebb (Sampled Elvis & Sinatra)
This song has seagulls and typical beach-like sounds within it, yet he also vocal
samples in the piece as well (very similar to Frank Sinatra), he then layers these
disparate pieces together to create something completely new.
The visual arts certainly seemed to have got to the collage idea first. People
such as Kurt Schwitters and William Burrows were prominent people that Sam

mentioned that delved into this style of art. In Music however, John Cage was
ahead of the game. He composed a piece called Imaginary Landscape which
was written for 12 Radios. Cage had been creating compositions by chance
mechanisms so that his own taste, ego and memory were kept out of the
compositional process; he only wanted a more objective composition.
Listening: John Cage Imaginary Landscape
John Cage has always provoked controversy with everything that he did. If you
look at the music establishment at the moment Cage still offends these peoples
sensibilities. As much as this is supposed to be completely random, he predicted
the texture that would happen. He chose to turn up the radios at certain times
and he chose the amount of radios to use. He had his own sound world and he
edited the parameters to get it.
Christopher Hobbs Aran
The world sample within music it doesnt really parallel with the meaning
outside of music. Only a little bit is taken in the meaning outside of music
(almost a try-out), but when passages of music are used as samples in the way
Oswald uses it in Plunderphonics it is not a bit of something else, it is used as
the new piece. The aesthetics of the word sample can be seen as being
incorrect due the fact that a whole chunk of music is taken (often as a whole)
and used as part of a new composition.
V/VVm is a an anonymous composer (similar to Banksy within the visual arts
world) whereby you never see his face. He composed a piece for 15 symphonies
and they are all played simultaneously it was called The Missing Symphony.
Listening: V/Vm The Missing Symphony
Each symphony dependent on length was either stretched or compressed to that
length, and the layered on top of each other to create a unique piece of classical
music. He used 15 symphonies and they are all played simultaneously. The
essence of experimentation is to experiment on all levels unaware of its
impending results. Banksy invents or alters his own images which he then
inscribes, whereas V/Vm samples music and doesnt use his own material,
however with both artists there is the feeling of trespass and invasion. We then
spoke about a man called Marcel Duchamp; a French artist that created a
painting called The Fountain where by a urinal was turned upside with the
initials, R Mutt on it.
Listening - Thomas Brinkmann - Record Players
Brinkmann took two turn tables and a stack of records and cut into them to
affect the needle. This piece was from an album called, Click.
Listening - Dally Proton Pretender
The only sound source that was used was Dolly Partons Great Pretender. He says
that he challenges the idea of originality. The composer/assembler doesnt do
anything in the way of inventing sounds; the whole interest in the piece is how
they are assembled. There are two basic forms of Plunderphonics:

1. Literalism where you hear the process of Plunderphonics and in some cases this
quite opposite to fooling the ear.
Listening: Sam Richards Stolen From Strauss
2. Disguise This is where you disguise the samples origins

Lesson 6
Making Instruments

Listening: MC Shadow Endtroducing

Todays lesson is concerning Making Your Own Instruments.
Percussion
We first looked at a drum-like instrument; Sawyer tends to borrow ideas from
existing instruments. For the body of this drum he uses a piece of gas piping, and
the reason he found that he could shoot staples directly into the piping as the
plastic isnt ultra-hard. The skin on top is held on by a cable tie. The goat skin is
soaked and the dropped over the head of the piping and then cable tie is
gradually tied until it fits into the groove. There are multiple grooves at the
bottom to enable the sound to go out.
We then looked at another percussion instrument that is a U shape that bends
back on itself, the length of the tube actually creates a fixed pitch as the head is
not under any tension.
The next instrument that we looked at his made of bamboo; it is known as an
angklung. The pitch is created by the length of the tongue on the end of the
bamboo tube.
The next instrument we looked at was similar to the angklung however, there is a
slot cut down the side of the bamboo with a wooden lever that would knock
against the resonator to create a pitch, we then looked at a metal version of the
same instrument; except that this one had a buzzer inside, the metal angklung
has a much slower decay because of its weight.
We then looked at guiro-like instrument which had another slot cut down the side
of the tube with grooves on the side.
The next instrument was a box like guiro that was hollowed out which can be
either struck or swung side to side where the wood balls on the side attached to
string would hit the block.
The next instrument we looked at was called a Genggong (originally from southeast Asia). There are two splits running down from the top down to two holes, the
split controls the quality of the sound, the holes are there to affect the acoustics
of the resonator.
We then looked at a percussion instrument that is a steel plate that has been
suspended in the air, these can be made at different sizes to create specific
scales.

The next instrument we looked was an azalea plant on the end of a stick that
was either plucked or bowed; it had a pickup to amplify the sound.
Pitched Percussion
Theres quite a business at arriving at specific tuning, the next instrument we
looked at was reminiscent of the Mbira (or thumb piano).
Blowing Instruments
We looked a conch shell that can be blown into. The shape of the instrument is
spiral and the mouthpiece was grounded out specifically but the shell is
completely ready to play.
The next one we looked at a cows horn that would be boiled and scooped out
and then the mouthpiece is grounded down again to create an ease of sound.
The next one we looked at was a makeshift saxophone. The mouthpiece is of a
saxophone, the stem is made of a cylindrical bamboo stem with half a coconut as
a bell.
The next one we looked at had a very thick cylindrical stem that had a
mouthpiece gouged out of the top which is played in a similar fashion to a flute.
Sawyer wanted to come up with a mouthpiece that would easy to play (similar to
a recorded mouthpiece rather than a flute). We then looked at an instrument that
had four bamboo-like stems that can be blown to create multiple notes.
String Instruments
The next instrument we looked at was a tin fiddle. It is known as a spiked fiddle
because the main point that takes the tension is passing straight through the
resonator (in this case a tin can). The string is then stretched from the top of the
tin can to the end of the main body of the instrument. The bow is also makeshift
from invisible thread and then covered in rosin.
The next instrument we looked at was a block of wood with another block of
wood that was stuck horizontally to the block of wood, then that stringed up in a
similar way to how a violins strings are held up.
The next instrument was a block of wood with piano wire attached to it without a
resonator but with a pickup, the length is pre-determined to have the same
tension on all of the strings.
Miscellaneous
The next instrument we looked at is an umbrella-like instrument that has multiple
sized metal bars stuck vertically at the top with two types of pick-ups inside the
instrument to pick up the sound, multiple balls are rolled around inside the bars
to create a chime-like sound, the bars can also be plucked, struck or tapped to
create a unique sound also.

Lesson 7
Time & Tradition

Time is fundamental to music; it is the medium in which music happens, and

some people might say well, what about sound? its not as basic as time, as
sound exists purely in time, but sound doesnt concern silence whereas time
does. Both sound and silence have duration, they both have time.
Listening: John Sibelius Symphony No. 5 (in E-Flat Major, Op. 82: III.
Allegro molto Un
pochettino largamente)
This example is the end of the 5th symphony by John Sibelius. The third
movement builds up incredibly dramatically, this sixth symphony ends with 6
massive chords, and the interesting thing about this is not the sound itself but
the duration of time that it is silent before the chords. Each of the chords actually
implies another one, there is a lack of cadence until the end and its almost as if
the mind anticipates whats going to come next, this is more of a contemporary
view of silence in comparison to the more avant-garde point of view.
Listening: Haydn Sonata Hob. 48 in C Major (played by Glenn Gould)
The interesting thing about this piece is the fact that you find yourself being
made aware of the fact that youre waiting for the next thing to happen. There
was a very famous saying by a medieval German mystic; Meister Eckhart, some
music obliterates silence and some cooperates with it. There is a lot of music,
particularly these days that attempts to fill silence. What were dealing with
these examples is time.
There are traditions of time in relations to music, such as the three minute popsong. The vast majority of pop songs nowadays last over 3-minutes but it was
easier to preserve sound quality that was printed on shell-out discs, this is a 20 th
Century invention and it really comes from about the 1920s. If you go back
before the advent of recorded sound (1870s), you can get performances that
can go on for a very long time. A storyteller would move from community to
community and they would offer to tell a story, sometimes lasting over a whole
week! Previous to this, songs could be of any length and there was no standard.
Another example is the traditional classical symphony orchestra; it is very
unlikely that you are going to listen to this for more than two hours. Another
example is the tradition band and/or artist at a concert. They all have an allotted
space of time to play in as its all to do with timings; there are a lot of constraints
on time, such as the backstage staff and the curfew to avoid the public in the
streets too late at night. Time seem to be established very easily.
Listening: Tom Waits Midtown
Listening: Lily Allen The Fear
Listening: Cornelius Cardew The Great Learning

Listening: John Cage 333

Each one of these songs was played to us for exactly a minute, and yet with
every single one of these songs, time is experienced completely different. There
are many different things that can give you a different experience of time, such
as genre, tempo, familiarity etc.
According to how time is filled, it has a
different effect on us, but also there are other
things; the silence for example. According to
what the piece/genre is there seems to be a
correct amount of time to allow listening to
it. Rapper Delight (one of the first hip-hop hit)
was about 15 minutes long was so prominent
in the time. Andy Goldsworthy was a British
artist who worked with nature and usually
outdoors.
"I make a work every day. Each work joins the
next in a line that defines the passage of my
life, marking and accounting for my time.
Each piece is individual, but I also see the line combined as a single work."
William Faulkner says, Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being
clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
Benjamin Franklin said, Time is money
Sir James Barrie (the author of Peter Pan) said, You must have been warned
against letting the golden hours slip by. Yes, but some of them are golden only
because we let them slip.
Music can exist without putting up any time tension at all, such as plainsong (or
any other liturgical song) does not use time as a regular dimension (it sort of
undulates in a sort of gentle landscape).
Listening: Howard Skempton Quavered
He uses a way of combining these sounds to stretch and contract time.
Listening: The Necks
This piece had a continuing drone in the background that repeated throughout
the whole song, there was a short echoed piano riff that was played regularly
throughout the piece. There was a repetitive whirling that seemed to keep itself
in its own time rather than with the other sounds. A bass guitar entered shortly
after this where the whirling slowly died out. This music is devoted to stretching
time.
Listening: Sigur Rs - Sigur Rs
What this piece of music does is to slow you down to be receptive to what
follows. These sort of musical gestures go a little bit against our everyday
conceptions of time. There are many different times that we experience. There
became a kind of industrial time during the Industrial Revolution, this gave us

a completely different conception of time and this does impact on music.

Industrial Time meant that everyone would clock in to work at a certain time,
breaks would be at the same time and you would finish at the same time, the
rhythm of machinery would be the same every day, so time would be completely
repetitive, compared to an agricultural life, they had a completely different
perception to time, things went on longer, there was no necessity for things to
start at specific times. When you listen to the way that these people sing, you
can hear how this time was influenced in their music, there was no pulse and
more of a wave-like conception. History has bequeathed to us the feeling for
time.
Theres mechanised time; how we measure time. The measurement of time is
completely objective rather than subjective; those experiences of time are very
different. There is Administrative Time, to do with the managing of an
organization or business etc. Another is, Commodity Time; such as shopping, the
whole experience of shopping is focussed on a magic moment; it is without
pretentions or retentions. Commodities seem to beckon us from an eternal now;
the time to buy is always right away and there is urgency to it. This contracts
time to a single moment. All of these times have an effect on music, as music is
within these times.
Listening: Meade Lux Lewis Honky Tonk Train Blues
This song articulates time in the way where by trains from the industrial
revolution influenced workmen to have this rhythm. We also have online
time/media time; time actually sort of disappears sometimes.
Albert Einstein said,
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful
servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has
forgotten the gift.
There is also something called Mythic Time, you lose the entire world around you
and focus purely on a piece of music to slow time down to get us into a different
mind zone. A myth is a sacred history, tells you where you came from, it takes
you out of mundane everyday life, that time that it was once a day upon is not
an ordinary time, it is a time in a different dimension. So much music actually
inhabits that mythic time. Mircea Eliade wrote about Myths of the Modern World,
Myths, Dreams and Mysteries. Music is traditionally one of the ways that we
can control time. Erik Fromm, Art of Loving, he used to say that there are two
types of time, all the time that happened before which we have no experiences
of and all the time that is going to happen after, which we have no experience
of, and within these two goalposts we have our lives of which we are able to
reunite with the infinite, such as achieving enlightenment, the experience of
love etc.
Listening: Nirvana Something In The Way
There is this tremendous awareness of time ticking away and the lack of control
towards time. Within the song there is a feeling that he wants something more
than what life is giving him, and there is this yearning for the infinite and to get
outside time. The delivery of the song (which if very subjective) contradicts the

message of the music as it is very repetitive. The raise in pitch usually shows a
development in tension however Nirvana seems to use this to show
determination to get somewhere different however he never gets anywhere and
goes back to the mundane dreary life. The decision not to use any functional
harmony is very important as well, it really adds to the repetition of the piece.
Listening: Nurse With Wound - Salt Marie Celeste
This piece is a time-based piece whereby it happens very slowly, no rhythm at all
but perhaps more in waves (which is very relevant). This piece is very outside of
time, the mind tends to latch on to thing that are actually only being done very
gently as if almost grasping for a pulse. This piece goes completely the opposite
to the way that we use time today.

Lesson 8
Retro-mania

Listening: Arial Pink

Simon Reynolds talks about Retromania in his book:
triple-down effect of the remix culture of the late 80s when cheap
Someone in his early 20s will tell me I dont know what Im talking about
and then Ill challenge that person to play me some music that is
characteristic of the late 2000s as opposed to the late 1990s. Ill ask him
to play the tracks for his friends. So far, my theory has held: even true
fans dont seem to be able to tell if an indie rock track or a dance mix is
from 1998 or 2008. Jaron Larnier
If you look at the 1950s at Rock and Roll, you can say that that was new,
however it had the historical precedent of Black Blues music. Most new-waves
of music are influenced from previous genres of music. Reynolds doesnt just
confine his opinions to popular music; he refers to experimental music,
underground dance and free improvisation. He mentions that, even within these
areas, they seem to have settled into a steady state. He speaks about common
approaches, theres seems to be a very settled style.
How do the 2000s measure up? Even the most generous assessment of
pop in the first decade of the new millennium must surely conclude that
nearly all the developments were either tweaks to established genres
(emo, for instance, is a melodic and melodramatic variant of punk) or
archive-raiding styles (freak folk, for instance). Two of the few arguable
exception were grime and dubstep: exciting sounds, certainly, but so far
they have proved to be contained explosions within the UKs post-rave
tradition, except for a few watered-down crossovers into chart-pop terrain
with acts like Tinchy Stryder and MagnetIc Man Simon Reynolds
In his first chapter he analyses why it might be that there seems to be a lack of
originality. He uses the word Hypostatis which he coined to mean, the idea that
things have reached a sort of plateau and things have almost reached a peak,
and if development is present, it is very slow.
To find something totally new coming from a commercial label is very rare
indeed. Large record labels seem to be seeking monetary gain rather than
musical originality. The mainstream (as represented by these TV talent shows) is
more conservative that it has ever been, it is far more concerned with
manufacturing a product. With these shows there seems to be a lot of referring
to old genres such as Classic Rock or Rock n Roll. There seems to be some
sort of attempt to flatten out any originality that an artist has. There seems to be
an extraordinary impression of attainability with these artists, as if to be like a
tonic for the audience to feel that they are much similar to them. Pop
artists/bands can also seem to be substituted as a religious idol as almost a
demi-god. Originality can sometimes be discouraged by the public, what is
mainstream and familiar is often welcomed and originality and novelty is

sometimes shunned, but even this mainstream familiarity had to had to evolve
from somewhere, so this creates an interesting argument. Cornelius Cardew said
that, the avant-garde is only there to feed the mainstream.

Why bother studying this talent programs? There are a few statistics shown
below:
Series 1 (2004), there were only 50,000 people that auditioned
Series 6 , there were 200,000 people that auditioned and over 20,000,000
viewers.
Series 8, had over 12 million viewers each week.
On the X-Factor, anybody can apply and/or audition however there is a very strict
process. If you get through the second round of auditions you get what is called a
gold card, which means that you MIGHT get through to the judges. The
televised auditions are thereafter, then to boot camp and then Judges Houses
and then Live Show. At the point when the Judges chooses, it is all fabricated as
Simon Cowell chooses the contestants to pass.
Listening: Joe McElderry The Climb
Listening Rage Against The Machine Killing In The Name Of
In 2009, X-Factor had hoped to have the Christmas No. 1; however, there was a
campaign on Facebook that got Rage Against the Machine to the Christmas No. 1
450,000 John McElderry
502,000 Rage Against The Machine
Sony Music Entertainment is currently the second largest, global recording
company. Whatever happens to SyCo happens to Sony as it is its parent
company; Epic Records are tied to Sony Records of which Rage Against The
Machine record under. The Climb, came from the Hannah Montana Movie, of
which is a Disney Movie. Matt Cardle released When We Collide which was a
cover of Biffy Clyro. In November 2009, Sony Corporation created a Network
Services, called Qriocity. There seems to be a massive tie-up between Sony
Corporation, Warner Bros. Matt Cardle, Joe McElderry, Biffy Clyro.
Where do Reality shows come from? There seems to be a massive craze in the
last 10-15 years. Talent shows go back to the 1930s, as far as the present reality
shows goes they spur up at the 1990s and 2000s. It was all to do with
restructuring television in the UK; it goes back to the rise of neo-liberal ideal in
the 1980s and 1990s, whereby they wanted to free up the markets.
Deregulation became very much the word of the day, there was the 1990
Broadcasting Act, which basically deregulated radio and television; this meant
that centralizing control was abolished also. OFCOMs instructions were to have a
lighter touch in comparison to what it used to have been. TV Companys then
became broadcasters rather than just the bigger ones, there then became an
enormous growth of television channels. The controversy that went on at this
time was, perhaps this would lead to a decline in standards, a fear of

American television standards coming to this country. Many people would argue
that there was a decline in technical standards. The most important thing about
this though is, for these independent channels to survive, they have to get
revenue from advertising, there are more stations but there is only the same
amount of new advertising clients to share around. The deregulation only applied
to broadcasting, not the financial world. In the 1990s they produced cheaper
programs, there wasnt much money so budgets were cut; and one of the
cheapest shows to make was a talent show.
The first talent show of this country was called Popstars and was created by
Simon Fuller. The first Popstars, was broadcasted in New Zealand and a band
called New Bliss won the show. The producers were trying to recreate the Spice
Girls. The talent show genre took off from here. The studio production seems to
get more lavish as the years go by. In 2004, when the X-Factor first started, it had
a wiped all of the other talent shows off of the board. Steve Brookstein that won
the first X-Factor series wrote a book about how bad the show was called, X
Factor Nightmares: The Manipulations. The Greed. The Deceptions. X-Factor
uses tabloids really cleverly by releasing stories and then hastily denying it, this
creates controversy and popularity. The idea of gender and sexuality is very
important as well, the men and women are manufactured to appeal to just above
attainability.
The myth-making in terms of the X-Factor is very prominent; basically we are
given a story which can be analysed in terms of a hero/heroin myth. If you look
back to classical literature/folk literature, there is a story of a quest where the
hero starts out as a young boy and has an extraordinary adventure but
everything settles down at the end. This transformation happens; an
anthropologist says how it is from the raw to the cooked. This idea transfers to
the X-Factor, the contestant transfers from being a regular person to a hero or a
super-person (rather than a god as losing all sense of normal life wouldnt be
interesting as there is no relativity).
In the structure of the show, we have a kind of parody of the democratic system
(a simulacrum), in which we are (supposedly) empowered by being able to vote.
However, this idea is false, as the voting is manufactured also; the way that the
choice is structured always ends up with the man (Simon Cowell) gets the
money.

Lesson 9
Playing Classical Piano: Integrity in Music

This lesson was introduced by Sam Richards and then before any introductions
Ellie Fruchter and Lona Kozik played a piece on the same Piano with interlocking
parts and movements, the sounds integrated with each other.
Listening: Ellie Fruchter & Lona Kozik Francis Poulenc 1 st Piece
Ellie said that a piece for one piano played by two people should sound as if it
was just one person on a Piano.
We heard a small recap of Lonas history from the previous lesson we have, she
grew up on a military base and her mother was a piano teacher. She studied in
quite an academic background within academic musical institutes to study
composition. Lona tends to prefer to play French music (in particular Satie and
Poulenc). Satie and Poulenc were very much against the typical romantic sound
of French Music; they looked a lot towards popular culture and citylife/urbanisation. Lona went to see an orchestra that was playing a Mozart piece
and the piece was played perfectly, however there was no life to the
performance, it was just a repetition. Lona felt that it was dying on its feet, and it
was quite depressing. So Lona felt that the way that she plays piano now was a
great way to revitalise this. As a pianist, there are many pianisms (a.k.a. ways
of making the piano speak). Lona stated her opinion on the Mozart piece that she
heard:
The Mozart piece that heard was perfect, but it wasnt wonderful.
Ellie started Piano when he was 7 and didnt come from a musical background;
they were quite discouraging about Ellie learning the Piano however, he was
quite adamant to learn. London College of Music where he wanted to study with
a singing teacher particularly and he also studied at the Royal College of Music.
He then became quite interested in Psychology which really made him think
about his musicianship in regards to the way people play and think musically, he
then became to study to become a music therapist which completely allowed
him to become free when performing. Ellie thinks of music rather than a strict
score, or a bible, but more as a starting point to improvise, however both Ellie
and Lona werent brought up to do this kind of thing, Ellies argument was
always, I want to be playing music that speaks to him personally. When a piece
is played straight from the score, everything is planned and it leaves very little
space for improvisation. It is important to note however, that the improvisation is
not just a gimmick, but it is played as if it could have been there when the
piece was written, and whether the music speaks to you.

There are very few performers in the

classical world that Ellie felt that
responds to their music emotionally. A
few of them that he feels/felt achieve
this are Martha Argerich , John Ogdon
and Glenn Gould.
One of the things that is interesting
about Classical Music tradition, it
becomes institutionalised in the 19th
Century, if you back before that
(Baroque) in the 19th Century, there is
Martha
a beginnings of a process of institutionalisation of music, Royal College Of Music,
Argerich
Guild Hall, Trinity etc. most of these were founded in the 19 th Century. At the end
of the 19th Century (1890s), a number of these colleges amalgamated together
to create the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music and thus the
graded exams were created. It is interesting that not all musical traditions do
this; Jazz seems to have gone in this way as well. In the last 20-30 years Rock
has gone the same way, with Rock Schools etc. What are the implications of this?
Lona and Ellie seem to be very kicking against the tradition of this music, yet
very much enjoying the music that it represents. The classical tradition seems to
be reaching out to grab an audience that it can, even with very provocative
billboards that are attempting to grab a younger audience. The main thing that
Ellie feels that is the most important part of music is the communication and
relationship with the music. Within his whole academic study of music, he
doesnt recall ever being asked what he feels about the music. People used to
have a very individual sound however; nowadays a generic sound is being
created. Ellie then said:
Art is not an intellectual form in itself; it is an expression of emotion.
Lona then stated:
A tradition doesnt live without people doing it.
Within the classical tradition (as it has become), it can often feel like the
performers have the burden of representing a tradition when they are
performing, how can this be applied to other types of music. Authenticity is a
very important, yet question-inducing, feature of classical music. If you took the
music of Mozart, some of the music was made for the court, you have probably
got more people today listening to that music than there was at a time; it was a
minority music, listened to only by a higher social class, but now the music is
trying to strive to grab the audience that it can.
Listening: Ellie Fruchter & Lona Kozik Maurice Ravel Mother Goose
Suite (3 of 5)
Ellie recommended a piece called, Gaspard de la nuit: Trois pomes pour piano
d'aprs Aloysius Bertrand by Maurice Ravel. Before Lona played a piece on the
piano, Sam decided to clarify the main theme of the lecture; integrity. How much
will it take for a musician to sell their soul?
Listening: Lona Kozik Phillip Glass Mad Rush

The piece was very repetitive (which was expected due its minimalistic
background), it contained small arpeggios that were repeated and changed
every so often, and the middle of the piece became a fast torrent of arpeggiation
that had some complex time changes. Philip Glass became quite prominent in
the 70s to 80s and was well known for his additive rhythms, cross rhythms etc.
If you take the elements of music (melody, rhythm, harmony etc.) and you think
of a modernist view on music, there was a deliberate attempt to be unorthodox
with these elements. When you get the beginnings of this movement (often
called minimalism), these conventional elements have been reinstated, but its
not functional (in the sense where it doesnt lead anywhere). Its not an
abandonment of these elements, but a complete reinvention of them. The idea of
repetition without variation and development was sort of the idea to kickback
against modernism. Ellie feels:
When you hear a piece of music, you dont look to listen specifically to
just the piece of music, you want to listen to the performers experience of
playing the piece.
Striving to be perfect, can often be somewhat dry, the effect of it however, is
that it creates a sort of demand and criteria to live up to. This idea has become
more prominent in the past 10-15 years since editing and music technology is
much more prominent.
A lot of composers were often known just as pianists rather than composers. The
idea of being re-creative and creative seems to have been washed about, and
now the composition seems to have prioritised over the musical world.
Listening: Ellie Fruchter Chopin tude Op. 25, No. 12 (Ocean Study)
A lot of embellishments and ornaments, this piece is made up incredible raw
emotion. Pieces gain nicknames over time (such as Beethovens Moonlight
Sonata, even though that was not the title originally intended by Beethoven);
this piece is known as Ocean Study. Ellie struggled to play the piece as it is a
piece of music that needs to be practiced and played often to be able to play
properly and completely. Tchaikovsky and Mozart wrote pieces in the minor key
and at the time, these were seen as quite vulgar, even though now we are quite
used to the shocking sounds that werent seen as shocking at the time. Ellie
said that he feels that musicians are athletes.
Parade is a ballet with music by Erik Satie and a one-act scenario by Jean
Cocteau. The ballet was composed 1916-1917 for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets
Russes. The ballet premiered on Friday, May 18th, 1917 at the Thtre du
Chtelet in Paris, with costumes and sets designed by Pablo Picasso,
choreography by Lonide Massine (who danced), and the orchestra conducted by
Ernest Ansermet.
Listening: Ellie Fruchter, Lona Kozik & Sam Richards Erik Satie Parade
You would not expect a singer to sing through someone elses vocal chords, this
should be the same for a Pianist.

Lesson 10
Freeform Improvisation: Half Moon Assemblage

The lesson began with an improvisatory piece of music played by Sam Richards,
Lona Kozik and Ellie Fruchter. The piano had been arranged beforehand by
having multiple coloured balls placed on the higher strings to give the higher
notes to give a much blunter sound. Ellie played the keyboard of which he used
a low string sound to keep a constant drone. Sam Richards had a multitude of
different objects such a bell, a dulcimer, a couple of Mbira, a compact
Glockenspiel and a standard sting bow that he used on the different instruments
such as the bell to give a very unique sound. The piece sounded very ominous,
and almost haunting, but it was very hypnotic as if the changes in the piece
werent changes at all.
Listening: Sam Richards, Lona Kozik & Elie Fruchter Freeform
Improvisation
First of all we went through the plan for the rest of the lecture, which was that
the three of them would give short presentations on their views and experiences
with improvisation and the lecture
Sam Richards
Obviously, one could make up a clear argument that improvisation is ancient and
basic to the music of mankind, and notated forms of music only dated from the
last 1000 years (in the western world). The Free Improvisation idea has very
ancient roots, and it was about the 1960s that Free Improvisation (in its modern
sense) came about. In the 60s, in terms of what we call high modernist classical
music, there is a school of thought that suggest that maybe improvisation was a
bit of a response against this, the loosening of the authority of the score took off
in a big way in the 60s. Free Improvisation was very influenced by Jazz (more so
with Free Jazz). In the US at the time there were a lot of free Jazz musicians that
were playing without chord charts and premeditation. Improvising sort of fits in
with the counterculture movement of the 1960s. The Beatles were very aware of
Free Jazz (John Lennon was very influenced by John Cage). Because improvisation
is free and uncensored, how can you evaluate it? How can you teach it? How can
you say that one improvisatory piece is better than the next? This is definitely an
attitude that you can find in regards to improvisation. Improvisation is the
authentic voice of the individual.
Some of these attitudes have a historical root, in the 19 th Century. Madame
Helena Blavatsky claimed that as a medium, she could channel the saying and
thoughts of ancient Tibetan Mahatmas (which was known as Ancient
Movements). The reason that this is relevant is because that, she had to try and
communicate the thoughts of the Tibetan Mahatmas rather than have her own
opinions within the channelling, her readings had to have been unfiltered and
unedited. Sun Ra put the idea around that he came from Saturn, and had a
similar mission to Stockhausen, this wasnt entirely channelling, but it is almost a
way of saying that they are indirectly channelling music. If you went to a more

secular basis in the late 19th Century, you would also find a psychiatric practice
of music. All of this is outside of the arts, but if you then look at the modern
movement within the arts, you can see a correlation with, going with the first
thought etc. You get the sort of Dadaist movement, where there were a lot of
spontaneous movements; this led to surrealism, which was based around the
unconscious and theories of Freud. Abstract Expression came from this as well,
such as Jackson Pollock, who became quite expert at creating wonderful patterns
and textures. There was a lot of improvised theatre; they would scare the
audience by going into the crowd and shaking things up by forcing audience
participation.
Many of these people dont believe in the psychiatric
Barry Guy is very much concerned with the internal, the biological nature of
music. The seemingly sourceless energy it evokes through human contact
enables us to question our own energy: whether it is divinely given or naturally
ordained. Barry Guy
Improvisation is more like Free Association in which ideas are allowed to express
themselves somehow avoiding the barriers erected by consciousness. - Fred
Jefsky
Many of the improvisers that came up in the 60s and 70s have a much more
political idea of improvisation (perhaps not anarchism and socialism), but the
idea is that basically, you create that basically when you play, you create an
ideal society; people are listening to each other, and giving each other space to
create music how they feel. Its worth thinking about what the motivation about
doing Free Improvisation is, and it definitely has right in the core of its belief
system, that the idea of the first spontaneous utterance is of some sort of
significance. Whether it comes from the cosmos, the subconscious or the spirits
is unimportant, it is highly important regardless of where it comes from.
Elie Fruchter
Elies presentation began by talking about his background. Between 92 and 94
he trained as a music therapist and went to the Nordoff-Robins Music Therapy
Centre, and this was founded by a com Paul Nordoff Clive Robbins and they went
to special education schools and worked with children with disabilities, a course
was then set up and Ellie worked at this centre as a Music Therapist. The
important thing here is that we call it Clinical Improvisation (literally
Improvisation within a clinical setting). The focus of improvisation in this setting
is the way that you listen, it makes you question about what listening means, it
doesnt just mean to listen to the sounds that they make, but listen to their
person (some people call it an aura/soul/being). The aim of Music Therapy is to
engage someone in creative shared communication; this is the difference
between self-expression and communication. In Music Therapy it is all about
getting them to communicate themselves, however the endgame is for them to
be able to communicate with other people.
There are many different approaches and courses in regards to Music Therapy
(such as Reflexology). The video extract that we are about to watch is concerning
an autism. The autistic spectrum is a massive spectrum, some people find it very
difficult to sympathise and empathise with another human being, whereas some

people take things very literal. This boy of 10 is on the autistic spectrum whereby
he has no speech, and the Music Therapys purpose was to try to achieve some
sort of communication with him at all, he was very much in his own world.
Video Elie Fruchter Therapy Session
In the video, Elie didnt give the boy a pitch to sing at as to let the boy reach a
level of pitch by himself. Leaving a lot of space with autism is very important.
This work changed Elies way of improvising; he started to think, What is Music
about? Elie believes that there is no such thing as a wrong note within
improvisation as the note came from the subconscious somewhere.
Sam then proposed a question, You can work for a long period with the client,
and how do you evaluate the progress in this time? Elie answered that, with this
specific boy it was by reaching a level of vocalisation, as before he never
vocalised at all. Elie came to Improvisation through Music Therapy when he had
sessions himself. Elie feels listening and thinking with a therapists mind, hes
always thinking, What do they need? within Improvisation he feels, What does
the music need in regards to the whole sound in the room?. Sam also proposed
the idea that surely that the musical communication would completely different
when you compare those patients that have no musical background in
comparison to those that do.
Lona Kozik
We looked at the idea of learning improvisation (which can sound a bit contrary).
There is an idea that Improvisation is very primitive and a very free idea. Most of
the Free Improvising that Lona heard before she heard Fred Frith play was from a
Jazz-based area. She became very interested in this sound world the Fred
created, Lona then found out where he was teaching and then set her sights.
Frith was a teacher then didnt give much direction and feedback. One of the
things though, is that he would subscribe to the view that beginners could be
fantastic improvisers. He feels that Improvisation is a technique of LISTENING
rather than PLAYING. Hes always looking out for the person that is knows what
to play at the exact right moment. Listening, not playing is the premium
importance when improvising.
Roscoe has the opinion that, it is not to say that your first utterance is the right
one, but it is very important that your first utterance is communicative with the
other instruments. One thing that needs to be taken away when improvising is
your ego, but it can be quite difficult when you compare yourself to such pianist
such as Liszt etc. Zeena Parkins (a harpist and very much in the New York scene),
she said that,
you are not playing in order to be the pianist or being the composer, you
are only there to investigate your instrument and that happens to be your
solo.
What Lona detected in all of her tutors playing, is that there was and is an
element of experimentation to what they are doing; this could be left over from
this counter-cultural thing from the 60s. It was one of the things that attracted
Lona to Freds playing; he was making such amazing sounds out of the guitar.
Lonas second year in college, she got a TAship and she was meant to teach

these undergraduates improvisation, she never gave them a list of rules or

regulations but they got to the point where they were about to deliver their final
concert and one of the violinists stopped and said, Were not supposed to be
playing any melodies!. This response fascinated Lona. This related a lot to what
was going on in the 60s etc. with musicians trying to get away from melodic
passages with Free Improvisation.
Notable Names:
Fred Frith;
Roscoe Mitchell;
Zeena Parkins;
Cornelius Cardew (AMM);
Alfred Nieman;
Pauline Oliveros.
These people represent Sams version of what Lona has been saying. It is
important to consider the merits of both approaches of the equation. Lona then
suggested a few films such as Touch The Sound and Step Across The
Borders.
Listening: Sam Richards, Elie Fruchter & Lona Kozik Free Improvisation
Piece

Lesson 11
Performance & Technology
Guest Lecturer: Tim Sayer

The lecture began with Tim having a 8x8 grid on the projector with squares that
constantly changed colour. Tim played a Muted Flugel Horn over the top of a
backing track that was controlled by a mixing desk that Tim controlled. It seemed
that Tim was playing and controlling the mixing desk according to the squares on
the grid. As the piece went by the squares seemed to diminish as they were in
the first place.
Listening: Tim Sayer Flugel Horn & Technology
The brief for the piece was that they wanted it to be unpredictable but still have
a way to decipher what was going on.
A lot of improvisers find improvisation worthwhile. I think, because of the
possibilities. Things that can happen but perhaps rarely do. One of those
things is that you are taken out of yourself. Something happens which so
disorientates you that for a time, which might only last for a second or
two, your reactions and responses are not what they normally would be.
You can do something you didnt realise you were capable of or you dont
appear to be fully responsible for what you are doing. Derek Bailey (1992)
Cognitive Limitations:

Music making like all other human activities has to exist within the
confines of available human resources.
Information that is being processed consciously at any one time is only a
small subset of the overall cognitive workload that is being undertaken.
Consciousness is a system that is fed information on which it acts and sits

Habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are
performed. James (1890)
What is there available to us within our cognitive mind?

Flash light analogy;

Whistle while you work;
Nestled foal states;
Neuro-evolution.

Readiness Potential
From Wilhelm Wundt is known today as one of the founding figures of modern
psychology. He is widely regarded as the "father of experimental psychology"
To Benjamin Libet was known as a pioneering scientist in the field of human
consciousness. He became very well known for his pioneering achievements in
the experimental investigation of consciousness, initiation of action, and free will.

Tim then ran a program that shows how quick the brain can realise an action
before you actually know that you are going to do it.
Cerebral initiation even of a spontaneous voluntary act of the kind
studied here can and usually does begin unconsciously Libet 1985
Why should I want to learn all those trite patterns? You know, when Bud
Powell made them, fifteen years earlier, they weren't patterns. But when
somebody analysed them and put them into a system it became a school
and many players joined it. But by the time I came to it, I saw through it the thrill was gone. Jazz got so that it wasn't improvised any more Steve
Lacy
It can make a useful change to be dropped into a slightly shocking
situation that you've never been in before. It can produce a different kind
of response, a different kind of reaction.- Evan Parker
Speeds of approximately 10 actions per second and either involve
virtually exclusively pre-programmed actions Pressing 1984
Distraction and Attention
If you give somebody something to look at, then you are giving them a focus,
and whilst you are giving them this focus, it is much easier for you to get them to
do other things. The first piece that we looked at was contained triggers within
the grid. Each of the channels had a sample bank and the lines denoted whether
the sounds change. This piece shows how it is possible to know the state of a
piece without predicting exactly whats going to happen.
We then looked at another type of interface, this time it was circle that contained
a sort of barcode like image in the middle that moved in accordance to the
sounds that were being made. These lines moved either, vertically, horizontally
or in a fragmented or collected way. The lines then made up a Piano Keyboard
that flashed colours depending on where
circles passed over the notes.
Ascenseur pour lechafaud (Elevator To The
Gallows) (1958)
Miles Davis was approached by a young film
director and was asked to construct a score by
watching the film.
Listening Miles Davis From the Movie
Ascenseur pour lechafaud
Stan Tracy was one of the most famous British
Jazz instrumentalists
I write far better stuff and more logical watching television. Y'know I'll take
down on a piece of manuscript.. take it down stairs and I can watch a television
programme and I'll drift off the programme in my mind on to the piece of music
I'm writing and because I'm not concentrating so hard on doing it ideas come

easier, better ideas come easier and a lot of the stuff I've written has been done
watching the television. It really works.. which is handy.
Musical Scoring definitely has the purpose to allow the player to read what
needs to be played, however, it seems to also have a meta-purpose that almost
takes your mind somewhere and allowing the playing to be freer.
Prosthetic Mental Functioning

Metaphoric Inside Cognition

Metaphoric Outside Environment
Metaphoric Stories
Hypnotic Scripts

The dynamic interrelation of cognition and art is now a new way to investigate
levels of perception or reality and will probably bring to light new
epistemological fields. Debono (2004)
For Tim, he believes that Improvisation is at its best when no one knows whats
going to happen next, which usually means that there are no recordings of it.
Tim then went through algorithms on his Mac on a program called Listening
Agent and Supercollider, which are programs that you enter parameters into
which creates a composition.
Listening: Tim Sayer Algoritmic Improvisation
The purpose of this is to try and get out of the subconscious mind, and allow
improvisation without having to rely purely on the cognitive mind.
When you go to an orchestra you listen to the whole sound and all of the
frequencies enter your ear at the same time, the brain then disaggregates the
information and makes sense of it. The brain is a very powerful organ that makes
up for a lack of things. The McGurk effect is a compelling demonstration of how
we all use visual speech information. The effect shows that we can't help but
integrate visual speech into what we 'hear'. Is there really a crucial relationship
between sound and visual?

Lesson 12
Engaged Rock: Singvgel

We wanted to look at our own history, and our own race having grown up in
Germany. Music never ever exists out of context. There are all kinds of
influences, if you play Rock music; you have reasons to do so. When you pick
things up subconsciously you dont realise that youve picked it up, we believe
that it is very important to become aware of this subconscious absorption. A lot
of people in the arts claim an almost pretentious originality, and yes we are
original, but we all have influences.
History
1959-1969
In West Germany, the country was pretty much flattened and we remember
ruins, the traces of the war were still visible. It was very different back then,
there was music and it came from the radio, there were only a few radio stations
throughout the country. Everyone was fed up with the war, so they swept things
under the carpet and wanted to look straight ahead. Because there were young
people growing up that came to realise that things hadnt always been like this.
They asked questions, Why did you elect Hitler?, Why did you do these
things? The parents wanted to forget about it, but the younger generation kept
going on. Eastern Germany had been occupied by the Russians, they claimed
that they were always the socialist so they covered up their dirty past as well.
Out of the difference between the East Germanic and West Germanic side, the
german language became utilised in Music much more. A lot of German folk
songs were used by Nazi, and a lot of people thought they should never be
played/sung anymore, yet most a few people thought, yes, they perverted it,
but didnt destroy it.
Schlager Music - The roots of German schlager are old; well-known singers during
the 1950s and the early 1960s included Lale Andersen, Freddy Quinn, Ivo Robic,
Gerhard Wendland, Caterina Valente, Margot Eskens and Conny Froboess.
Schlager reached its peak in popularity in Germany and Austria during the 1960s
(featuring Peter Alexander and Roy Black) and the early 1970s. During the 1980s
and early 1990s, Schlager was not popular in Germany and Austria. From the
mid-to-late 1990s into the early 2000s, however, German-language schlager saw
an extensive revival in Germany. Even reputable dance clubs would put in a
stretch of schlager titles during the course of an evening, and numerous new
bands specializing in 1970s schlager cover versions and "new" material were
formed. In Hamburg, schlager fans still (as of 2006) gather annually by the tens
of thousands and dress in 1970s clothing for a street parade called "Schlager
Move". This revival is associated with kitsch and camp.
There is a folk scene in Germany, but it is very regional. Bettina Wegner was a
german folk singer/songwriting and lyricist. Her music was very sparse but very
deep.
1970-1979

A lot of people were told what to wear and what to dress like, because a lot of
parents from the Nazi Generation thought it best that their family didnt stand
out, so people with bright clothes and long hair was shunned. There was a big
American influence in Germany, so there was a Rock & Roll, Pop etc. However, it
wasnt represented in the media etc., it was quite underground. These influences
brought on new forms of music such as Krautrock. In Eastern Germany, these
influences of the West were leaked over the Berlin Wall. In the East, they had to
learn Russian, but this music enabled them to sing in German. Musicians had to
take a test before they were allowed to play in public, and prove that both you
were politically accepted and that you could play. It is fascinating because the
Eastern Germans wrote phenomenal political music.
History keep repeating itself
Everybody was very afraid of terrorism in the 70s and it took years for punk and
new-wave to arrive in Germany, some people thought it wasnt much new, just a
little faster. The punk musicians wanted to sing about something new, and sing
about normal situations and not about the dream to be a rock star.
Listening: -Arwrts - Machenland
There was a group in Germany called, Einstrzende Neubauten (Collapsing
New Buildings), of which claimed that they had gotten rid of the drum set as they
have replaced it with electronics etc.
Carl Loewe wrote music to many famous German Ballads, it was storytelling and
was fascinating. German Youth Movements origin was very much about social
justice and taking responsibility into their own hands, once World War I came a
separate branch of the group came to be, Hitler Youth, of which used to dress
like the innocent scouts etc. which now meant that anyone that wore this was
penalised for being a Nazi.
1980-1989
Neue Deutche Welle is a genre of German music originally derived from punk
rock and new wave music. This genre of music was then taken by the music
industry and the originals were often forgotten. Although some of the music of
this time seemed apolitical it often contained some sort of political. In the 80s
Duke was an artist and actor, Sven was a drummer and Karan was a Music
student, but not yet creating original music, just recreated music. To get
published was a big thing, not which not being attached to the label wasnt a big
thing because it sure was.
1990-1999
In 1990, the Berlin Wall came down. In the 90s corporations took over.
Corporations in music, film, poetry etc. People stopped to think politically,
because those above us do what they want anyway, they had the feeling of
political powerlessness. This was a way of cocooning, people started to emerge
as different people with unique and free ways of expressing themselves.
2000-2012

Through the globalisation and connection of this world there are fantastic
varieties of culture that have been introduced, however it has spurred on some
people to have nationalist ideas.
Duke, after having worked as an actor for a long time, he came back to music
and came back to his roots. Karan and Duke then became a singer/songwriter
duo and then we found a drummer, and this drummer was Sven.

The band then played a repertoire of songs:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Listening: Pegasus
Listening: Under The Ashes Fire (Unter der Aschen Feuer)
Listening: Stasi 2.0
Listening: Wolves Of The Night (Wlfe der Nacht)
Listening Once Upon A Time (Es war einmal)
Listening: Give Me Your Hand (Reich mir die hand)

Duke spoke about how there was no need for poetry within songs in this
industrial world. When he sees great grey walls and grey walls, he will pot a
plant Metaphorically and literally.
The last words of the lecture, Karan encouraged us to look at our own
background and history and how it relates to our music and our musicianship.