#reading week 6

[pierre-d-blog]

Philip Sherburne - Digital Discipline: Minimalism in House and Techno

House and Techno clearly don't rely only on hardware, but also on musical traditions. Because these genres were pioneered by members of subcultures, relating to african music. The emergence of minimalism also comes from a political statement, a rebellion against rock and pop music invading the public, commercial space.

The result was a repeating sound, stripped down of any "superficial" additions, leaning more towards the drum-based pieces of African music. This seems to be the other pendant of minimalism, the hypnotic repetition of rhythm makes the drum sequence a bit more intense at each loop.

Starting from a statement, minimalist techno and house became a necessity when it started to put the listeners (often dancers) into some sort of trance. Minimalism then dives into a search for the most skeletal sound that would still be playable in clubs, walking the thin line of sobriety against mass appeal and crowd-pleasing.

[pierre-d-blog]

Steve Reich - Music as a Gradual Process

Steve Reich's idea of composing music as a process seems interesting, as he puts all of his agency, all of his control, ahead of the actual performance, without doing anything when the piece is played. When the music is played, then, the composer becomes a listener, experiencing the different results of what he has planned, both with his foreseeable outcomes as well as the unforeseen results.

The question, then, is how unforeseen are these results ? Can the music really differ from what has been setup, what has been planned ahead of its execution ?

The kind of pleasure one can get from knowing exactly is going to happen is intriguing. There is no space left for surprise, only satisfaction and control.