this may have belonged on a best of list c. 1967, but, in 2017, fifty+ years after this was novel, it just sounds like an untrained child messing around with a piece of gear she doesn't understand - which is undoubtedly what it actually is.
agustin muerto
strange you say this. have you ever had the chance to play a modular synthesizer? it takes a lot of knowledge to make stuff like this, and she's a great arranger. I'd understand your comment from someone who isn't into music very much and for who it is just "bleeps and noises", but you seem some who actually knows and makes music, so I really don't get it.
deathtokoalas
see, as somebody who is into music, and who has written hours of electronic soundscapes, this is what my informed perception is: that it is, actually, just a lot of 'bleeps and noises', and that the only way you could try and assign order to this, which does not really have it, is if you're being overwhelmingly pretentious to hide your own ignorance.
the buchla is usually associated with the work of morton subotnick in the mid 60s. i'd point you in that direction to hear an example of somebody that knows how to use the device.
i just want to address a point about synthesis, though, because the idea that synthesis is something you study, or that it takes some kind of knowledge to operate a modular synthesizer, is fundamentally a misunderstanding of what any kind of synthesizer is. i guess that, for an uninformed person such as yourself, you might just see a bunch of technology, and assume you need some kind of degree to operate it. it's a big, complicated machine, right? but, the sum total of the actual theory behind how a modular synthesizer operates would be about ten pages long: you just need to understand what each of the components do. after that, what operating the machine actually means is a process of experimentation, until you get what you want.
you can study algorithms to get sounds, if you want. doing these steps would produce a bell-like, or string-like tone. but, why use this device for that?
rather, the device is capable of a far broader palette of sounds than she's utilizing here, which is merely scratching the surface. and, that's what i'm getting at, here. she's using parallel computing to play pong.
and, no, the arrangements are not interesting, either.
agustin muerto
you know you sound kind of pretentious yourself, right? and there's no need to insult me.
deathtokoalas
no.
pretension is an idea that, ironically, not a lot of people understand well. people seem to think that pretension refers to a concept of arrogance, or an air of superiority.
pretentious has the same root as 'pretend', and quite literally refers to the tendency of people to fake knowledge, or project a greater air of understanding than they actually possess or a deeper artistry than they've actually accomplished.
it has historically been used in the rock era to refer to records and bands, and fans of those records and bands, that have inflated their own artistic value beyond what is actually grounded in any reasonable argumentation. prime examples of pretension in the rock era have come from led zeppelin, peter frampton and pink floyd around the release of the wall. the entire metal scene was ridiculously pretentious from the start. and, i'd label a lot of what edgar froese was involved with as beyond pretentious, as well.
so, in context, being pretentious would be holding this up as an opus - when it clearly isn't. i didn't point out that there's literally thousands of records of comparable writing and abstraction up on bandcamp, and that this has been true, now, for years.
the record is really defined by how unremarkable it is.
on the other hand, i am not being pretentious because i actually know what i'm talking about - unlike yourself, who just tried to come down on me, before i put your back in your place. so, if you don't want to be insulted, you should watch your fucking mouth, huh?
