Point of Discussion: "Experimental" Music - Music

Satie

Norman Bates wrote:

All music is experimental.

It can sound like a jest just thrown in for a little childish provocation, but ultimately I've come to believe it's true.

No, I agree completely. And that's why I find it to be a bad label. That was my point. Understand that this topic largely comes from a place of baffled head-scratching on the RYM genre pages where every fucking thing in the world is some degree of experimental because it's a badge of honor to be worn or something.

Norman Bates

Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France

Satie wrote:

[...]I find it to be a bad label. That was my point. Understand that this topic largely comes from a place of baffled head-scratching on the RYM genre pages where every fucking thing in the world is some degree of experimental because it's a badge of honor to be worn or something.

Oh I'm with you totally. Do you think some are using 'experimental' to mean 'avant-garde'?

Satie

Norman Bates wrote:

Oh I'm with you totally. Do you think some are using 'experimental' to mean 'avant-garde'?

Yes, and I think the latter term is also vastly over-used and becomes completely meaningless in a lot of contexts. In my opinion, the avant-garde is kind of the domain of formal music and its offshoots and seemingly intentionally opaque and meaningless when applied to popular music. For some reason, certain rock bands having louder guitars are avant-garde but black metal is regressive. It all seems to kind of step outside of what the music sounds like or functions as as art and turns into a valorizing label.

boyd94

Have to agree with the general direction of discussion so far.

It's like 'Post-Modern', which is not meaningfully different from 'Modern', it merely occurs in an artistic landscape that has previously been revolutionised by the Modern. It's just applied haphazardly to anything that's a bit weird.

Norman Bates

Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Paris, France

RE: Satie's point on 'avant-garde'.

Not sure I agree here. I will dub 'avant-garde' any artist that started something which was continued by an army of followers. Which means I won't dub any contemporary artist 'avant-garde': you can't know 'avant-garde' before you spot the 'troupe' or even the 'arrière-garde' coming in later. I think 'avant-garde' can apply to popular music (e.g. The Velvet Underground). Very much like 'scouts' if you will.

alelsupreme
Awful.

Gender: Male
Age: 27

meccalecca wrote:

Swans are obviously less experimental in context than they once were, partially because they opened doors in the noise rock world alongside Sonic Youth.

To use Sonic Youth as an example here to expand on a point (cos I'm utterly unfamiliar with Swans) I think they're a prime example of how a band that was once experimental can later on... well, not be. They were undoubtedly pioneering early on, being among one of the first (from my limited understanding - noise rock isn't exactly my forte) to integrate noise into rock music as more than a little ornamental flourish (i.e. people freaking out about the Beatles buzzing for a bit at the beginning of I Feel Fine) and this was genuinely rather new around the time they debuted. But using the label of experimentalby the time of, say, Washing Machine or Murray St. when such techniques have been readily absorbed and integrated into alt/indie/whatever rock scenes would be foolish - what was once experimental 15-20 years ago is not any longer.

To use another example, one could make a credible argument for Kraftwerk being experimental with the release of, say, Autobahn (I've not heard their work pre-Autobahn but from what I understand its quite different from the material that made them famous) due to the fact that, within the bounds of popular music, they were rather unique in their fully electronic sound (barring the odd novelty such as Popcorn or classical electronic such as Wendy Carlos and yes I am aware that there were musicians experimenting with electronic instruments all the way back to the 30's but these people weren't exactly well-known by any stretch of the imagination then or now) but to claim so in 1981, when they were making music not much different sounding from the likes of Gary Numan and the Human League who were dominating the charts would be ridiculous (though to be fair, no one does).

I suppose "experimental", to me, is a label to be used for an act that is significantly outside of the bounds of a genre, utilising sounds/techniques to create music that is outside of the typical bounds of a genre rather than an established aesthetic - in a world where Jazz had developed since the 20's to sound like Don Cherry or Ornette Coleman, a Brubeck or Evans could conceivably be legitimately called "experimental".
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Satie

Norman Bates wrote:

Not sure I agree here. I will dub 'avant-garde' any artist that started something which was continued by an army of followers. Which means I won't dub any contemporary artist 'avant-garde': you can't know 'avant-garde' before you spot the 'troupe' or even the 'arrière-garde' coming in later. I think 'avant-garde' can apply to popular music (e.g. The Velvet Underground). Very much like 'scouts' if you will.

That's an interesting application of the idea and one that I could get behind. Anything that is historically-minded and can be well-argued in retrospect (as opposed to sensational journalism of the moment) is something I think is workable. I guess my cynicism comes from the fact that in popular music, those armies of followers are sometimes gathered through big sales. I've stated my extreme skepticism and caution in doing anything that can conflate commercial success and aesthetic validation by default, mainly based on the premise that in many of the biggest sellers' cases, their success is as much a product of their music as it is of record company advertising pushes. I'm not against democratic evaluation of art right off the bat, but I think in the current climate, our metrics for democratic consensus are still too bastardized by capital to be very useful in doing anything besides spinning poetic about people who already have millions of dollars either in personal wealth or corporate backing. Though maybe this takes us a bit off the topic of experimental music in general.

Applerill
Autistic Princess <3

Gender: Female
Age: 30
Location: Chicago

I don't know if this has been already touched on/assumed without me realizing so, but I've always liked Scaruffi's definition of "avant-garde music", which compares it to academic writing. But that's "avant-garde", not "experimental".

But when people talk about experimental cinema, they mean things that are mostly non-narrative. Mulholland Drive may have a weird structure, but it has at least the pretense of a narrative. Stan Brakhage, on the other hand, normally doesn't, which is why most of his work is labeled experimental.

If we're going to do something similar with music, we need to define the medium's equivalent to narrative. If it's something like "melody" or "tonality" (I dunno, I know nothing about music theory), then Swans and Captain Beefheart are already ruled out in the same way Mulholland Drive is. When I think of "experimental music", I think of work that isn't composed for a group like modern classical is, but is still meant to be entirely non-commercial. It definitely wouldn't be used to describe a "rock band" as we normally think of the term.

Satie

Experimental isn't a very useful label if everything falling outside of traditional melody and tonality is automatically experimental. That boat was rocked in Western music in like the late 19th century and thoroughly tipped over with the Second Viennese School. That's why I think avant-garde is most useful in the context of examining academic music - academic composers usually take account of past composers, articulate their own visions, and have dialogues with the past that are much more clear-cut than random stoned foursomes muttering to a radio interviewer that they got turned on by a Pink Floyd song while they were tripping or something. Plus, if a goalpost is set as the irrevocable boundary between the cutting edge and the mundane, we have a problem once enough time elapses that there's going to be some new cutting edge.

Last edited by Satie on 02/22/2016 17:54; edited 1 time in total

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Norman Bates wrote:

RE: Satie's point on 'avant-garde'.

Not sure I agree here. I will dub 'avant-garde' any artist that started something which was continued by an army of followers. Which means I won't dub any contemporary artist 'avant-garde': you can't know 'avant-garde' before you spot the 'troupe' or even the 'arrière-garde' coming in later. I think 'avant-garde' can apply to popular music (e.g. The Velvet Underground). Very much like 'scouts' if you will.

Excellent point made here.

I think we're all also pretty much on the same page in regards to experimental. It's all relative, the term is overused, and essentially all music is experimental in some way.
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