RE: PERSONAL CONTRACT FOR THE COMPOSITION OF MUSIC (PCCOM)my own personal attitude toward herbert's "contract" is to applaud it! At the very least, setting some rigorous rules in this way saves the listeners from the ubiquitous sounds that exist in nauseating quantities in genres such as trance and hard house where one can hear the same breaks, breakdowns, vocal samples, choral soundbites, drumulations and "weird" sounds over and over again. While I do still enjoy some of this music, I far prefer the music that people on this board subscribe to and it is people like Herbert who go quite way toward making this more interesting in many ways. the DJ's that one finds in some of the "harder" genres are almost interchangeable and the music they play meanders on and on without any really interesting developments. I applaud the establishment of some rules even if they are just in people's heads about the creation of music and kudos to Herbert for daring to say what he has and further kudos for actually implementing the "contract".
leslie/The Power of Sound
----- Original Message -----
From: Philip Sherburne
To: 'Elson Trinidad' ; Shane Schaetz ; acid-jazz@ucsd.edu
Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2001 2:35 PM
Subject: RE: PERSONAL CONTRACT FOR THE COMPOSITION OF MUSIC (PCCOM)
Elson,
I think you're being a little harsh here. Herbert's not trying to get all highfalutin on people who operate in other ways; he's limiting himself to a kind of constraint-based system (cf. Oulipo, Dogme95) as a means of escaping certain technological traps (eg, the ease of using presets) and also as an ideological choice, privileging the "mistake" (á la John Cage) as a resistance to the fetish of technological perfection which pretty much defines late capitalism...
I realize this is shorthand, but mainly I'd encourage you not to be so quick to slam him for incorporating a theoretical strategy with his music-making. Having spoken at length with him, I believe that he's neither being coy nor snotty. If you're interested in reading further, he elaborates quite a bit in the recent article I did for XLR8R.
Cheers
Philip
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Elson Trinidad [mailto:elson@westworld.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 08, 2001 2:06 PM
> To: Shane Schaetz; acid-jazz@ucsd.edu
> Subject: Re: PERSONAL CONTRACT FOR THE COMPOSITION OF MUSIC (PCCOM)
>
>
> At 11:09 AM 4/29/01 -0700, Shane Schaetz wrote:
> >interesting stuff from www.matthewherbert.com
>
> WTF?
>
>
> >1. The use of sounds that exist already, subject to article 2, is not
> >allowed. In particular:
> >
> > 1.. No drum machines.
>
> Oh come on, no one uses drum machines anymore! It's all
> sequenced drum hits
> now...
>
> > 2.. All keyboard sounds must be edited in some way: no
> factory presets or
> >pre programmed patches are allowed.
>
> "Gasp! You used patch A62 on the Roland JP-8000! You should
> be sentenced to
> death for that!"
>
>
> >2. Only sounds that are gernerated at the start of the
> compositional process
> >or taken from the artist's own prevously unused archive are
> available for
> >sampling. The use of, ordering and manipulation of
> noise-sound/found-sound
> >is to be held as the highest priority in composition.
>
> Okay, I'll admit, sampling yourself is a cool idea.
>
> >3. The sampling of other people's music is strictly forbidden.
>
> "Uh! Hitmeh! Yeahboyyyee! I know yo gonna dig this!"
>
> >4. No replication of traditional acoustic instruments is
> allowed where the
> >financial and physical possibility of using the real ones exists.
>
> But if the financial and physical possibility DOESN'T exist...
>
>
> >7. All fx settings must be edited: no factory preset or
> pre-programmed
> >patches are allowed.
>
> "Oh no!! Not that Lexicon "Hall Reverb 3"! Anything but that!"
>
> >8. Samples themselves are not to be truncated from the rear
> since extra
> >audio and recording information is often heard at the end.
>
> <click! pop!>
>
> Well, I guess he doesn't do 2-step garage then.
>
> >9. A notation of every sound, its source and a full
> description of all
> >technical equipment used per track to be taken and made
> available at a
> >future date.
>
> So where can we see this?
>
>
> >10. Remixes must be completed using only the sounds provided
> by the original
> >artist including any packaging the media was provided in.
>
>
> And the horse they rode in on.
>
>
> Elson / e:trinity
> Hey, I've never used an "Amen" break on any of my recordings.
> Should I put
> that in writing too?
>
>
>
> - 30 -
> : . elson trinidad, los angeles, california, usa
> : . elson@westworld.com : www.westworld.com/~elson
> : . groove to the futurethnic beats of e:trinity at
www.e-trinity.org and
www.mp3.com/etrinity
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