NOISE IS OKAY WITH ME, AS LONG AS IT'S NOT BORING

http://sonicmassrecords.com/02buddingpeonies.mp3

I'm listening to some solo "experimental" music by guitarist Anthony Pirog. It's excellent. Anthony is using a pretty broad palette here. Many sounds on here have wandered far away from traditional notions of what "music" is; lack of clear pitch identity and use of unorthodox sonic sources (plus no doubt some other things I didn't notice yet!) Many would hear this recording and dismiss it as bullshit for these reasons. I wouldn't, though; nor do I dismiss music as "not music" if it doesn't check every box on the list of what music "should be."

On the other hand, I don't question the idea of a check list of desirable musical elements. I use one myself when evaluating music. Everyone does this, including people who say they don't. It's just that different people have dramatically different checklists. Most people have a fairly short list, I imagine, but the crucial difference between mine and those of "most people" (an assumption, of course, but it's definitely based on data I've observed), is that we weight certain items very differently.

For instance, traditional indicators of competence such as intonation and tuning have remained in place in the culture regardless of certain significant factors. These factors include the shading and blurring of intonation used in African-American blues idioms (in fact, a highly complex, if mostly intuitive, system of expressive devices) and the reality of keeping stringed instruments in tune in weather-affected environmental conditions.

Whether you're talking about the blues (with its unorthodox use of rough timbre, between-the-cracks intonation, etc.) or "twentieth-century classical" compositional innovations (unorthodox musical sources such as devices not designed to produce music, alteration of traditional instruments such as Cage's prepared piano, etc.) it should be clear that music has been made that deviates from long-established norms. The only real issue is how to evaluate this music. I argue that music avoiding "standard practice" in some areas should be evaluated on its achievement in other areas. I would further argue that, in many cases, inability to evaluate music this way reflects a lack of knowledge of the other areas.

For example, Pirog's piece "Budding Peonies"

http://sonicmassrecords.com/02buddingpeonies.mp3

has a large variety of timbral mixtures and dynamics. It's an example of my view that music trafficking in so-called "avant-garde" sound should demonstrate mastery of other musical and structural elements. The balance of colors and textures here is complex. There is a variety of register as well, and dynamics shift from one color to another quite often. It seems to me that much "avant-garde" music is, once you can accept radical notions of the use of sonic textures, actually pretty bland and dull. When formal considerations are ignored, even the craziest use of sound can be as boring as beer-commercial music.

In short, I am happy to listen to music both traditional and not; this is because, for me, an ability to play traditional instruments with some basic level of competence is not, in fact, directly connected to a mastery of music itself. There is a difference between a writer and a typist; an orator and an auctioneer are masters of unrelated arts. The issue is your material, not your instrument. I admire techical mastery of any instrument, but it's a non-musical achievement; it's more like learning to climb a ladder without falling off, or driving a stick shift. Technique should always be in service of the idea. When technique is allowed to dictate musical decisions, artistry flags.

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