Sound Dust

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max/msp seems to be really turning into the new acoustic guitar, but also it lends itself to be the new drawing/painting as well. So much work with max deals with visual/physical elements as catalyst for sound. I have been using max/msp live to sample nintendo games played by the audience and create a sound piece that includes the audience is specific to each performance. Yes, this is a lot of fooling around, but as it is a newer program, i find it much more tolerable than the guy at the county fair noodling around on his guitar(which can be nice too). so hooray for those who are trying to make something interesting, it will take a while of goofing around, making work that will be extremely dated, but think of what could happen!

David Holl, Friday, 20 December 2002 17:50 (twenty-one years ago) link

Hey Momus,

which is your favourite track on the current Scratch Pet Land record?
you have mentioned it many times i remember...

Peter Lersch, Friday, 20 December 2002 19:07 (twenty-one years ago) link

sound dusters,

it is of note that only the most pedestrian of discourses, commentaries, and scrawlings on this topic focus on things like simple chronologies and histories of laptop usage (a kind of technological frontiersmanship). ("mr. so-and-so was doing this back in 19xx and so therefore, anything momus has to say must be trainspotting." or something to this effect, as we can observe in the postings above by mr. Mike Taylor) these are to be ignored.

far exceeding these trifles in depth of meaning, the actual aesthetic/s being employed and their relationship to the technology is sadly and too often ignored. but even this is old hat, when we cite the piano-forte's precident as an example. a vast improvement over the harpsichord (in terms of dynamics, hence the name) the piano was hands-down a more advanced technology. however, the possession or usage of this tech. one became quite interesting when composers like beethoven (not the first to write for this instrument, mind you) began to take full "advantage" of the increased dynamic range of the instrument, and give us both the poundings and gentle strokes of his music for that instrument. this was the breakthrough in terms of musicality, composition and aesthetics.

and so it is, and so it goes with the laptop. the "hybrid" lappoppers (tsujiko, momus, and a few others)are the sound du jour because theirs is an aesthetic that makes use of laptop's true nature...that is to say that the laptop doesn't care what kind of sound it actually makes (the piano does, the guitar does...their bodies prefer certian scales and intonations, or they quickly come to be in a state of disrepair) and they interpret this not a kind of post-digital enslavement, a binding to the "limitations" of the machine, but as a kind of free ticket to be so "bold" (refreshingly novel) as to "return" to pop (of course they never left) by lucidly hacking their way through the dense, almost impenetrable forest of error the seems to surround most stupefied laptoppers, to their art, which in later times, might even be regarded as beautiful in its intransitiveness.

momus is part of a group of thinkers who's musings thankfully transcend (but still make use of) the cult of the laptop.

merry x-mas from tokyo, momus!
robert
http://www.tognet.org

robert duckworth, Tuesday, 24 December 2002 08:11 (twenty-one years ago) link

oh, and i should also say that max/msp isn:t a program, it is more of a programming language.

robert duckworth, Tuesday, 24 December 2002 11:33 (twenty-one years ago) link

Well, I think Max is a program really, isn't it?

OCP (OCP), Tuesday, 24 December 2002 12:53 (twenty-one years ago) link

In questions like this I always turn to Googlism, the repository of all received opinion. It tells me that

'supercollider is an environment and programming language for real time audio synthesis'

and that

'msp is a visual programming environment for building real'

Alarmingly, it also tells me that

'msp is a psychiatric disorder which involves caregivers intentionally harming children so that they can bask in the attention they receive for their own'

Momus (Momus), Wednesday, 25 December 2002 01:00 (twenty-one years ago) link

has it struck anybody that this whole "sound dust" messiah thing seems a bit absurd. in my opinion, it is just another step toward fleshing out the outer reaches of music theory, a universe already dismally spent. no amount of maybe-it's-the-way-you-misunderstand what's-going-on-that-makes-you-original holden caufieldisms will alter this fact. music is an old dying language.

jeremy may, Wednesday, 25 December 2002 07:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

I can hear is Andreas Tilliander have somthing to say about the Lil Kim rumour...

Jens (brighter), Wednesday, 25 December 2002 08:54 (twenty-one years ago) link

the dust will suck itself like a re-maxed cage 4'33'' behind bars.
so i drag my ugly djx down the empty streets of ubud to play plastic satie to children with wide open eyes. a copy of 'cent mille millards de poemes' bound in banana with its pages of its hinges falls apart in front of my eyes in monkey forest road.

forum!!!! u can all cum on my glasses.

vincent tuquedenne, Thursday, 26 December 2002 11:23 (twenty-one years ago) link

A non-ironic question from an inadequate: can anyone tell me how I can get hold of Max/DSP? It sounds like just the ticket for me - someone with originality and electro-apolmb, but a limited technical ability.

Keither, Thursday, 26 December 2002 19:47 (twenty-one years ago) link

sound dusters

hmmm

I wonder if they sit down with 'failing in an interesting way' as a goal?

Is traditional indie music 'succeding in a boring way'?

I have to hear some of this shit.. (I mean stuff)

Julian Standen, Monday, 30 December 2002 04:52 (twenty-one years ago) link

Something bizarre has just happened. I put on Dat Politics after reading momus' essay. Then I engaged once again in the neverending discussion with my mother about generation gaps and the evolution of aestethics. Nothing fancy, she was once again complaining about my hairstyle and I wanted her to understand that kids today have fuzzy hair like mine, and girls do like it even though she doesn't. As an example, I asked, do you like this music?She always whines about my music sounding too 'metalic' and unlike 'real music'. 'Where's the melody?',she wonders.
But then about Dat Politics she said, with sincerity: 'I like it. It's got something...it's touching'

Damn!

mario 3 (mario), Wednesday, 1 January 2003 01:13 (twenty-one years ago) link

Besides, aren't sound dusters renewing R'n'B's face?people like The Neptunes and stuff. I haven't heard much of that stuff but I know a hardcore sound duster (a fan of mego, childisc and the lot who disses Momus for writing about that music just for the hip factor) who is getting heavily into that stuff

mario 3 (mario), Friday, 3 January 2003 00:30 (twenty-one years ago) link

one month passes...
If sound-dust is the current trend, isn't this charging a reversal in the arc of sampling & electronic music? From my experience, the 'glitch' was all the rage around the late 90's, as seen in contemporary albums such as Bjork's 'Homogenic' (1997) to Kid A(2000), yet this changed to a more natural expression of sampling, incorporating electro-acoustic influences with Matmos 'A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure'and Bjork's 'Vespertine'. Recently, the movement to more organic sounds continued with the minimalist micro-beats of Mum; but there has also been a retro attitude opposing this, such as the ressurgence of garage-rock in pop music, this has affected electronica too, with the sudden popularity in electroclash artists such as Fischerspooner, Peaches and Dot Alison. Though where as the continous evolution of the organic natured micro-beat movement is healthy, seemingly incorporating elements of folk and more classical musical forms, the more digital trends seem to be incorporating a more postmodern form - contemporary dance music elements with dated equipment (Casio drums, C64 SID Chips/ZX Spectrums), creating a trendy pastiche. Surely this end of the electronica spectrum can't just continue to jump from one trend to the next, some thread of progression surely has to be made, artists such as Faint who incorporate electroclash into their garage rock sound are getting pretty popular at the minute, also the Yeah Yeah Yeah's new album is supposed to have electroclash elements in to, with this progression, it will at least have some progressive form, even if it is still looking backwards to a retro style.

The reason I'm interested in the progression of the 'glitch' and 'blip' is for this is related to my current dissertation on bjork, where I'm relating the path of Bjork songs/albums to display the merging between technology and nature/organic, using the metaphor of the cyborg and the goddess, with the outcome being the cybergoddess; the musical outcome is still inconclusive, Bjork's Vespertine certainly incorporated the best of both world's, in the usage of electro-acoustic samples, but is it possible for the organic and digital to be entirely combined in a musical form?

BTW this is my first post, so go easy! ;)

Robert Price, Thursday, 13 February 2003 11:44 (twenty-one years ago) link

what defines organic. literal matmos organ-ic, evocative organic (farben -> foot falls asleep, spreads to whole body), sample jargon organic "raw vinyl" or live instrumentation or etc etc. digital is less ambigious, the apex being maybe pan sonic/vaino/cascone and some of mego and stuff, but organic...anyway there aren't as many intestines to go around as laptops.

despite the 'all if full of love' video, i'm not sure how much bjork wants to do the cyborg persona thing... esp. on Vespertine she seems more concerned w/ bio-strangeness, psychadelic runny noses and stuff. or... the electronic angle of it seems to efface its technological implication for bodily fx. organic?

Honda (Honda), Thursday, 13 February 2003 19:47 (twenty-one years ago) link

I can see a thread through the last two bjork albums - Vespertine was very literal way of percieving technology - influenced by the digital glitchs, cyborgs, the nature/tech dichtomy. Rather than move away from tech, she seems to have taken it up a notch on Vespertine, with post-humanism. Taking the human form to another level, the post-human form of cocoon, the usage of the abject (non-human/human boundaries) with self-mutilation (Pagan Poetry) and the abject goo of Hidden Place.

I guess at the very least, the digital manipulation of organic sounds could be seen as forming a link to the metaphor of the cybergoddess, I guess like the cybergoddess metaphor, the merging of the technological and organic/natural can take many forms.

Robert Price (Robert Price), Sunday, 16 February 2003 13:59 (twenty-one years ago) link

five months pass...
ten- second samples of each of ten tracks are available here:

http://www.cafeshops.com/graywyvern

graywyvern, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 19:06 (twenty years ago) link

excuse me-- 60 second samples

graywyvern, Wednesday, 23 July 2003 19:07 (twenty years ago) link

one month passes...
Huh?

Sspeedy, Saturday, 30 August 2003 21:35 (twenty years ago) link

http://www.imomus.com/thought091202.html

Link updated

Off, Saturday, 30 August 2003 22:02 (twenty years ago) link

one month passes...
I think it's not anymore a talk of "trend".
I'm into electronic since a long time and I work as a sound engineer.
Believe me, I'm getting bored of electronic musicians who declare "this is passè" "yes, cute but we where doing this in 1800"..
Sound Dust is a quite new way of thinking music, that's it!
Believe it or not, people is doing dance music the same way they do in 1980 so what? I do not see why be disappointed about sound dust and momus article (wich I find truly inspiring).
Break beat is very passè but I do not think people can't make anymore good records with such techniuqe..
Anyway, to think of sound dust as passè trend is just tipical of DJ culture..sorry but I've noticed that DJs only USE music and then thorw it away..."passè..not trandy anymore..I don't need it"
At last we can see there is not a mainstream in sound dust and people gather toghter with laptops doing things.

so go out plug MAX/MSP, Metasynth, Supercollider, PD, SMS, KoanPRO
or write your software and do some dust!

Giorgio S, Tuesday, 7 October 2003 23:45 (twenty years ago) link

one year passes...
Momus spells millennium wrong in that essay.

RU, Tuesday, 9 August 2005 10:30 (eighteen years ago) link

What? Are you a time travelling english teacher or something?

Jarlr'mai (jarlrmai), Tuesday, 9 August 2005 13:28 (eighteen years ago) link

"Are you a time travelling english teacher, or something?"

There should be a comma before "or something".

RU, Friday, 12 August 2005 07:43 (eighteen years ago) link

thirteen years pass...

A military regime in democratic disguise
That lies in all impunity
That takes apart what it took
People years to build
Public institutions
That promised a decent life

reggie (qualmsley), Sunday, 14 October 2018 19:50 (five years ago) link


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