An Approach to Introducing Ambient Music
John Cage (1912-1992) presents an attractive challenge to a music GSI teaching a class of non-majors. As much an idea man as a pen-on-paper composer, Cage proposed through his writings and artistic approach that all sound, whether deliberate or accidental, whether inside or outside of the concert hall, is in fact a macro-series of musical events. In effect, according to this way of thinking, all ambient sound is music. Considering the way most of us have been brought up to think about music, this is a significant imaginative leap as well as an important door to open for those who might not come across the idea elsewhere.
It began on a whim during one particular session: while the students were busily at work on an unrelated quiz, I took dictation from the auditory environment in the classroom. That is, I wrote down (as one might write down music) the inadvertent sounds made by the students as they wrote the test. This is a sound world familiar to all teachers: the students, suddenly resolute, are anxiously scribbling away and producing involuntary sounds: sighs, grunts, low moans, inhalations, ruffling, pencil-clicks and chair-squeaks. Incorporating the low hum of the ventilation system, I compiled the sounds into a neat musical score by drawing the sounds as they occurred over a twenty-second time span. I then titled my piece "Twenty Seconds of Music 20A Taking a Quiz."
The following week, at a strategic point in a discussion on Cage's works and ideas, we listened as a class to the ambient sounds surrounding us in the room. As always, the variety and richness of these sounds was surprising. I asked them: "Is this music?" Most said no. I then handed out photocopies of my score discussed above and posed my question again. At this point, there was some discussion: now that there was musical intent in my creating a piece, about one third of the room felt that these sounds were in fact "music". Finally, we recreated the ambient sounds I recorded by "performing" the piece as a class. Dividing the parts up as one would for a choir, we assigned some students as the "chair-squeakers", some as the "sighers", some as the "inhalers", and one (who had been the student who had clicked his mechanical pencil during the actual dictation) as the "pencil-clicker".
A Bedouin is a nomad and a nomad a wanderer. Nathaniel Mackey seems to wander far and away in his Bedouin Hornbook, a series of fictional letters addressed to an “Angel of Dust” and signed by the ambiguous “N.” N. interprets passages of improvisation, analyzing others’ musical expression in surprising detail to the point that his unquestioning sincerity and self-assurance are almost laughable. That N. can glean meaning from music in such a direct and certain manner is problematic because his tone implies that there is only one correct interpretation of music. In addressing the issue of how music conveys meaning, Mackey seems to wander in two disparate directions. After asserting each seemingly contradictory view, first that music and speech are simply ends in themselves and second that they are means to a separate end, Mackey reconciles the question through his motivic discussion of absence and essence.
A human being begins from one of the smallest cells in the body. We then, grow and evolve into extremely complex mechanisms made up of individual parts, such as the brain, the bones, and the heart. However, no matter how complex, a human is only one work, with individual parts working together to make it functional. Similarly, a work of art is composed of individual elements collaborating to create the overall work. Beginning with the colors chosen, to the way the artist swipes their brush in specific directions creating distinct textures, the work would not be complete without its most minute component. The same concept can be applied to musical pieces. A great musical work would not be complete without the original combinations of musical instruments, voices, lyrics, and meaning. Two examples of this idea are “Classical Gas” by California Guitar Trio and “Cat’s in the Cradle” by Harry Chapin.
The idea of silence explains that there is nothing to hear, nothing to create vibrations for a person’s ear drums to feel. ‘Silence’ only occurs in space where there remains no medium for the vibrations to travel through. However, here on Earth, air and water remain the mediums, therefore, I can concur with Cage in that there exists “no such thing as silence”. Comparing this philosophy with the definition of what music should be, then “Mr. Cage’s work fails totally” (Rockwell). Several of Cage’s works were just long periods of silence. If you played a John Cage CD, you might as well have put it in the machine and not even pressed play (Rockwell). Music is supposed to entertain people with its lovely melodies and colorful moods. However, John Cage’s music did not entertain people, it allowed people to entertain themselves. Listening closely to what surrounded them, people need to work for their entertainment, not mindlessly listen to music somebody has already composed. In a way, Cage created an entire new perspective on the way music is seen and
In Steven Connor’s ‘Ears Have Walls: On Hearing Art’ (2005) Connor presents us with the idea that sound art has either gone outside or has the capacity to bring the outside inside. Sound work makes us aware of the continuing emphasis upon division and partition that continues to exist even in the most radically revisable or polymorphous gallery space, because sound spreads and leaks, like odour. Unlike music, Sound Art usually does not require silence for its proper presentation. Containers of silence called music rooms resonate with the aesthetics and affects on the body of a gallery space; white walls, floorboards to create optimum acoustics, and an ethereal sense of time and space. When presented in a gallery space, sound art’s well-known expansiveness and leakiness can be more highly articulated.
The proliferation of graphic scores emerging in Europe and America from the mid-1950s has had a profound impact on musical thought, broadening links between performers and composers, audiences and art forms. Exploration of notational methods based on graphics flourished rapidly and diversely during the fifties and sixties, primarily as a trend amongst young radicals. So many composers producing scores of this kind used a personal vocabulary of symbols – often creating different notation systems for each work – that the effectiveness of their approaches in realising a sonic concept can be assessed only on a case-by-case basis. But the significance of early graphic scores does not depend entirely on how they sound; rather it lies in their capacity to accommodate or even to generate new forms, techniques and mediums, and to challenge notions of what constitutes a musical composition. In addition, these works demonstrate that notation can extend beyond instructional functionality to allow for prominent interpretive and aleatoric elements, and can harbour an intrinsic aesthetic value of its own, apparent before a single note is sounded.
On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court, made decisions of Roe vs. Wade and declared all state abortion statutes to be morally wrong. The majority of the Court first found that Jane Roe, had challenged the Texas abortion statute, even though she already had given birth. The Court then later found that women and doctors had a right to privacy and it interfered with meaningful state regulation of abortion. The majority saw this and studied this for the history of abortion and ...
Basic terms are often confused when describing an individuals musical sense. Microsoft Encarta World English Dictionary defines an artist as somebody who does something with great skill and creativity, and a musician is a music maker who plays, performs, conducts, or composes music, either as a hobby or a profession. The focus of this essay is not the plausible crime of a solely techno creator, or in contrast, the soaring melodies of a humans voice. Technology has tarnished the value of pure talent of music's original creation for the sake of popularity, riches and unnatural perfection.
Clark, Charles S. "Teenagers and Abortion." CQ Researcher by CQ Press. N.P, n.d. Web. 03
Music, quite obviously, is a fantastic medium for telling long and winding tales. However many simply regard music as ‘entertainment’, something that can be put on at a party to fill in those awkward silences. However,
mestizos. Mestizo , then, has become a synonym for culturally Mexican, much as ladino is used in many Latin American countries for those who are culturally Hispanic. Members of indigenous groups also may be called (and may call themselves) mestizos if they have the dominant Hispanic societal cultural values.
What would the world be like without music? The world would be a very silent place. Music is in many ways the material of our lives and the meaning of society. It is a reminder of how things were in the old days, a suggestion of how things are, and a view of where society is leading to. Music is the direct reflection of the picture of art, music, and literature. Music can be a way to deliver messages, being poetic, a fine art, or it can just be for entertainment. No matter what it is used for, music is the perfect art there is and there are various types of music; such as classical and romantic. This paper will discuss how classical music and romantic music had a turning point in humanity’s social or cultural development, and how they have
Wharram, Barbara. Elementary Rudiments of Music. Ed. Kathleen Wood. 2nd ed. Mississauga, Ont.: Frederick Harris Music, 2010. Print.
“You can’t touch music—it exists only at the moment it is being apprehended—and yet it can profoundly alter how we view the world and our place in it” (“Preface” 7).1 Music is a form of art enjoyed by millions of people each day. It is an art that has continued through decades and can be seen in many different ways. That is why Ellison chooses to illustrate his novel with jazz. Jazz music in Invisible Man gives feelings that Ellison could never explain in words. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, the narrator’s search for his identity can be compared to the structure of a jazz composition.
...nd was his nervous system operating and the lower pitched one was his blood circulating. The realization of the impossibility of silence led Cage to the composition of his most famous piece, 4’ 33”, in which the musician sits at the piano in silence, lifting and closing the lid ever so often while watching a timer. Cage said after his experience in the anechoic chamber, “Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music.” (1)
By as early as 1937 Cage was introducing the use of intentional and unintentional noise and electrically produced sounds in music. He did this by using your everyday household items such as pots and pans even brake drums to produce sounds and turn them into music. He was the first composer to give noise equal status to musical tone. He is said to have created an early piece "Imaginary Landscapes No. 1" by using muted piano, cymbal, and frequency test recordings. As if this doesn't sound weird enough the frequency test recordings were played on variable speed turntables. This was John Cage's style. He later went on to use the sounds of percussion on household furniture, he used various items such as the human body, conch shells, and kitchen sounds like chopping vegetables. He was also known for using amplified sounds like a crumpling paper, e...