Gordon's Progress

I set off to see if I could confirm your quote, but I bumped into a load of interviews (http://music.hyperreal.org/artists/brian_eno/interviews/) with Eno on the way, and got all distracted. Loads of quotable material that would fit in here, but I couldn't choose. Perhaps my brains are old and scrambled.

I don't think there is any absolute right or wrong way to go about music. I think there are right and wrong ways for individuals - some people fit better with the status quo - probably most people, others with the fluxus quo. You gotta do what's best for you.

As long as you're enjoying it. And thinking about it. And feeling it.

:-)

Gordon,
Please, forgive a dusty old repetitive, key pounder. Piano technology has not really progressed in--- ooh, I'd say a hundred years.
I, being so married to equal temperament, had forgotten the formative tunings of Western Music, as well as the tunings of Asian and African Music.
I guess I was being protective of a me as process.
Everday, I try to give a pianist or musician a base-line to create upon, in a machine that Man has built the best he can, while Nature creates Her chaos.
teslatheremin

Not at all. It does me good to have my assumptions tested once in a while. Sorry if I trampled gung-ho over your livelihood.

Now please excuse me whilst I wax lyrical over one aspect of nature's chaos, namely the landscape of my place of birth, Yorkshire.

Outside of the cities forged in the heat of the steel and oil industries there are two distinct landscapes, the dales and the moors.

The dales are softly undulating and verdant, on sunny spring days the lambs gambol and icy water lightly trickles along brooks and rivulets. This is the stuff of picture postcards and chocolate boxes. If you are ever in Yorkshire, be sure to go to Hutton le Hole, home of the World Nine Men's Morris (http://www3.sympatico.ca/pesullivan/merrelles/English.html) Championship and populated by sheep convinced they have an inherent right to your sandwiches.

For those made of sterner stuff, however, nothing compares to the desolate grandeur of the moors. When the sky is leaden and oppressive, when the wind knifes icily through the stoutest oilskin and the locals wear their string vests and tell you the weather is reet bracin' and wait menacingly for you to mention Wuthering Heights then the moors are at their best. They are starkly abundant with heather and gorse, packed with infinite infinitesimal detail. The blustering gale plays the telegraph wires like an Aeolian harp. The isolated sheep are grim grey unmoving shapes.

There is nothing better than to take a wing-section kite with you and dig your heels in as you fly it, experiencing the raw power of nature first hand.

So I found my note, stomped on my delay boxes with almost all the slow wet feedback they would muster and stood as still as I could, letting the minute waverings of my hand colour the sound.

I was right there on the moors. Incredible. Playing drones is intense!

If I could sing like Julee Cruise (audio clip (http://www.davidlynch.de/02nightingale.mp3)) that one sustained note would be accompanied with a slow mournful "On Ilkley Moor Baht 'at (http://www.ilkley.org/iguide/baht.htm)."

But I can't. So I shall continue my experiments.


 

Gordon,

Your writing style and creative energy is always an inspiration. The following paragraphs that you wrote have enough material for a few essays:

"I don't think there is any absolute right or wrong way to go about music. I think there are right and wrong ways for individuals - some people fit better with the status quo - probably most people, others with the fluxus quo. You gotta do what's best for you.

As long as you're enjoying it. And thinking about it. And feeling it."

So, let's examine a few ideas one at a time...

"I don't think there is any absolute right or wrong way to go about music."

This is true if you are creating music for your own enjoyment with no specific purpose or audience in mind. Let's say though, that I (Kevin K) am asked to play music for a sci-fi event and the person in charge says, "Kevin, can you do music in the style of Gordon Charlton?"

Ah, now in order to get the "Charlton sound" I better do the "right" things -- I need historically correct instruments (twangulators), I need to study Charlton performance styles, watch the videos to learn the "proper" gesture/control techniques. I'd read all the Charlton posts to learn something about the man -- I would learn not to be overly-serious in my interpretations, for instance.

You (Gordon) have expressive freedom -- as for me? Well, I gotta learn the "right" way to do Charlton!

"I think there are right and wrong ways for individuals - some people fit better with the status quo".

Many of us, through the proverbial "school of hard knocks", learn that the music that people are interested in hearing (and paying for) is often at odds with one's personal preferences.

I'm not suggesting that one has to be unfaithful to oneself to be a professional musician, however, one must become "listener oriented" rather than "artist oriented". To deliver musically communicative performances -- to reach listeners -- can be just as satisfying as doing music for one's own pleasure.

For me personally, I revel in the notion that if someone asks for a specific kind of music, or atmosphere, or whatever, that I can do it. To have someone after an event tell me, "The music was 'perfect'" is very rewarding.

(Oh, and if I can't, I tell them... a couple of weeks ago, someone asked if I could provide a gospel piano accompianment and I told them that as much as I like Gospel Music, that I don't have a 'feel' for it. They brought in a different pianist -- and they still kept me anyway to play an organ postlude! And, they were very appreciative ;) )

"status quo (vs) fluxus quo."

Regardless of the musical genre, we are all subject to the same immutable laws of nature. All music making is subject to acoustical foundations.

"You gotta do what's best for you."

What works best for me is to acquire knowledge and then to find new and creative applications. Many artists listen, study, and learn and create their own styles that are a synthesis of many influences. For better or worse, I need a knowledge of harmony, rhythm, orchestration, and notation to do the kinds of things that I want to do. Thus, when I struggle to learn aerial fingering, that stuggle is my own pursuit of my own sound -- indeed, like you, I am doing what is "best" for me. :)

"As long as you're enjoying it. And thinking about it. And feeling it."

True, though sometimes there is a disparity between one's intentions and one's results.

I decided to add another classical work to my Theremin repertoire and it didn't take me long to memorize it. It is upbeat and fun to play -- and as it started coming together, I was really having a blast! I was thinking, "Wow, this is fun! This music will really thrill an audience!". Well, video tape told me that, while I was having fun, that the music needs more work before it is ready for public performance.

The experience also ma

Kev - I bet you never tuned a Bergholt Stuttley Johnson organ. :-)

You are completely correct. I'm going to switch to a photography metaphor, because I'm further along my quirky path with that, so feel more confident about what I can and can't do.

I would liken you to a photographer who, when asked for a picture of this landscape in the style of Ansel Adams and that woman like a Lord Litchfield might answer - I can do a landscape in any style you like, but I don't do portraits. Whereas I might answer - landscapes, portraits, I'll have a go at anything, but I don't do styles. You are familiar with my style?

I guess a classical musician has the training to turn his hand to anything, but if you ask the Residents to cover a Rolling Stones song you're going to get coconuts, not Keith Richards.

I like the idea of trying to recreate some of my pieces. I enjoy watching those documentaries where they try to reconstruct ancient artefacts...

"...and this week we will be looking at the works of Gordon Charlton, inventor of the cyranose-probosculonger, the extension worn by all serious thereminists for hand-free playing. In particular we will be reconstructing his original twangulator, very different from the modern twangulator but embodying the same basic principles..."

Of course they'll never get it quite right, because I didn't mention anywhere that I tightened the lashing with a kitchen skewer tourniquet.


 

"...if you ask the Residents to cover a Rolling Stones song you're going to get coconuts, not Keith Richards..."

I think every performer brings their own "flavor" to any performance -- I didn't mean to suggest that a musician is trying to impersonate another performer. (Unless you're goal is to be an Elvis impersonator or something like that.)

Rather, the point has to do with "informed performance". If I were to cover the Rolling Stones it certainly wouldn't sound like the original however I'd still want to familiarize myself with the original anyway.

As far as the future, there will undoubtably arise competing schools of twangulation. People, such as myself, that can claim ties to you, the master twangulator, will declare other offshoots of twangulation to be adulterations of the original. Someone will write a doctoral dissertation on the topic and then someone else will present a paper citing errors in the dissertation's scholarship. Researchers will attempt to unearth the original twangulator and will search for it as the "holy grail" of the Early 21st century English school of twangulation.

:)

Oh, no! What juggernaut have I unleashed? I see it all so clearly now, the disagreements, the arguments, the bloody noses, the rifts, the discord, the fracturing and dissolution of our once proud community.

Odds bodkins, can't these people see that the twangulator itself isn't important, it's just a metaphor, the instantiation of a koan - true twangulating is a state of mind. I shall immediately schism with myself and disown the corrupting influence of the literalist English school to form the Zen School of Ur-twangulation.


 

Back to Luminous Chickenwire. Not happy with the work-in-progress name. Have settled on The Medusa Plait.

For a couple of reasons.

Snakes for the subtly writhing lines of sound and panning to plait the sounds together, the Gorgon's brass hands for my immobility whilst playing.

The novel The Medusa Frequency by Russell Hoban about a man who takes his head to some very strange places in the pursuit of creativity.

"The world vibrates like a crystal in the mind; there is a frequency at which terror and ecstasy are the same and any road might be taken."


Plan.

1. Exploring different combinations of three notes and find a stance and hand positions that generate just the right amount of unsteadiness.

2. Record three tracks, one for each note. Duration of each to be until I can't stay still much longer. (About five minutes max.)

3. Explore variations in velocity and stereo spread of pans. Also try leaving in the hiss!

Might be a little while. Half term holidays next week. Hope I can recruit the kids to help me record video for The Plummeting Man.

Have a growing feeling that I need a third piece - no idea what at the moment, but I liked doing the three one minute pieces, so want to do three longer pieces.

:-)
 

 

Gordon,
You do your Voo-doo that you do.
We will all watch and enjoy! At least I will watch and enjoy!
I never thought anyone else but me knew who the Residents were. Heaven and Hell, yea!
teslatheremin

That's the great thing about the Internet for me - almost all of my interests are minority interests - it seems to me the 'net is directly responsible for the resurgence of the theremin and thousands of other things that could have died of isolation too.

I lost track of the eyeball guys after Eskimo, and only remembered them after I got my theremin and started thinking about musical diversity - it was a very pleasant surprise to find they were still going. I'm looking forward to River Of Crime (http://riverofcrime.residents.com/) and have been deliberately holding off finding out how they have progressed in the last 27 years, so I am in the delicious position of having absolutely no idea at all what I am letting myself in for!