John Cage is the subject of a new museum exhibition in Barcelona. The exhibit looks at Cage’s works in various media and his impact on all forms of contemporary art.

The New Yorker’s Alex Ross shares his thoughts on the highlights of the exhibit – but also raises this conundrum:

The great oddity of twentieth-century art history is that while Rauschenberg, Jackson Pollock, and other radical postwar painters are almost universally hailed as masters, their works drawing huge crowds in museums, Cage is still often treated as a freak or a charlatan.

The distinction makes no intellectual sense, but there it is.

It is striking that someone as influential as Cage – as a composer, author, electronic music pioneer and artist – hasn’t found an audience that reflects his influence.

Ross is right. Many people that might appreciate Rauschenberg or Pollock would cringe at the idea of sitting through a concert of Cage’s works.

Maybe the answer to Ross’s conundrum is as simple as this: you can’t close your ears.

If you see a painting that’s confrontational, ugly or incomprehensible, you can close your eyes or walk away. You are in control of the experience.

At a concert of music by an artist like Cage, you can’t close your ears or move on to the next thing. You aren’t in control of your experience – you can just react to it.

This seems to be a fundamental challenge of electronic music (and to a certain degree, music in general); when anything is possible, how do you create music that is original, yet still has the power to seduce someone’s ear?

via disquiet; Image: fallwithme

In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls.

It’s made up of a collection of YouTube videos, all featuring musicians playing something in Bb major. The videos can be played simultaneously and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.

Anyone can participate. Here are some guidelines:

• Sing or play an instrument, in Bb major. Simple, floating textures work best, with no tempo or groove. Leave lots of silence between phrases.
• Record in a quiet environment, with as little background noise as possible.
• Wait about 5-10 seconds to start playing.
• Total length should be between 1-2 minutes.
• Thick chords or low instruments don’t work very well.
• Record at a low volume to match the other videos.
• You can listen to this mix on headphones while you record.
• After you upload to YouTube, play your video along with the other videos on this page to make sure the volume matches.

The concept of In Bb lends itself to ambient music, because of the lack of sychronization between the videos, but it’s open-ended enough that you could add a drum and bass track to the mix and it could work just as well.

Check out In Bb and leave a comment with your thought!

The P22 Music Text Composition Generator is a free online application that turns text into music.

Paste in text, select a tempo and select an instrument and the Music Text Composition Generator will turn your text into music that you can play online or download as a MIDI file.

Description:

A short text may be best at a slow pace (IE 10 BPM) whereas a longer text may prove more engaging at 1200 BP. Texts where phrases are repeated often (like P22 Music Text Composition Generator) provide recurring musical phrasing that is truly astounding. Length of visual score is limited and longer text may not render onscreen or print to full capacity.

In some browsers (Safari 2 or greater), the ability to play real time multi-tracking can allow for complex compositions. Simply follow steps 1-4 repeatedly altering instrument and BPM rate. For browsers that do not allow simultaneous midi files to be played, multiple browser windows can be opened and “performed” at the same time.

The generated musical text does not claim copyright nor imply any rights from the text used. Creative Commons copyright is granted for all musical compositions generated by the P22 Music Text Composition Generator.

via Presurfer

Cut-up text

It was used notably by William S. Burroughs in the late 60’s and early 70’s, and influenced the work of David Bowie, Curt Cobain and others. More recently, cut-up text has been used by email spammers to create text that will get around spam filters. Because of the huge volume of spam that is generated, some interesting examples have emerged, which are called “spamoetry.”

Here’s an example:

Then, from sea to shining sea, the God-King sang the praises of teflon, and with his face to the sunshine, he churned lots of butter.

The Cutup Engine cuts up text and makes something different out of the pieces. You can provide the text directly, or URLs of things on the web.

Here’s a randomized chunk of a recent Synthtopia article:

more occupied the time, including DJs, as the one we DJs, promoters and camera men doing it, but in pretend to the head in promoters and with her dancing two CDs, and she was when she involved in any kind crowd that she was really DJ, when she just acting. to get in fact the movements the mixer to pretend the DJ box at the use in the movements to get involved the time, including DJs, promoters in the DJ box at DJs, promoters and camera set from one or two music set from one or her dancing movements real, just acting.

an already pre-mixed music at the time, including she was faking the movements of beat-matching or mixing. for real, just acting.” she was really any kind mixing the from a tiny CD wallet as the one and was just movements to get we use box at the and was just making purely a fraud. 

via strangeattractor

The Dipping Duck Orchestra: Music randomly generated by dipping ducks (AKA happy birds, drinking birds, dippy birds, happy ducks… etc) Using the basic parts of a keyboard, each duck is hooked up to a note of the octave. As their beak touches the water in the glass the circuit is completed and the sound is produced.

Remote Controlled Hand – A hybrid of a remote controlled car & mechanical hand generates random music.

The car is controlled by an altered remote, which is triggered by 2 desk fans. When the fans are directed at the remote, contacts are blown together and the circuit is completed, sending the car up and down the keyboard in random directions.

You can also see her artwork at flickr.

via todayandtomorrow

GeeksDreamgirl has an interesting take on using Dungeons & Dragon dice to stimulate your musical creativity.

Here’s her take on two of the more important dice:

d8

The d8 is perfect for learning scale degrees and practicing sight-singing.

Your first step is to grab a piece of staff paper and write out the scale you’re going to sight-sing in, numbering your scale degrees:

1. do
2. re
3. mi
4. fa
5. so
6. la
7. ti
8. do (upper)

Now, throw your d8 several times, writing down the resulting notes on the paper. You can start on do if you want. Once you’ve gotten a line of notes, sing it! Add rhythms or alternate octaves if you want to add a challenge.

d12

The d12 is Schoenberg’s dream die. Music majors, rejoice! Now the dice gods can determine your tone row for you.

The d12 is also excellent for all you wind players who have to do scale competencies in order to pass band. Pair it with the d4 for maximum torture… I mean, practice value.

1. C
2. C#/Db
3. D
4. D#/Eb
5. E
6. F
7. F#/Gb
8. G
9. G#/Ab
10. A
11. A#/Bb
12. B

Roll for your key!

Aleatoricism may have had its heyday in the 60’s, but it’s still an important tool for many electronic musicians. I like the idea of bringing more ideas from gaming into electronic music.

Image: Hugh Nelson