Why is Good Electroacoustic music So Good? 
	Why is Bad Electroacoustic music So Bad?

	Stephen Travis Pope
	Santa Barbara, California USA
	stp@create.ucsb.edu

	Originally in Computer Music Journal 18:3 [Fall, 1994]
	Reprinted in YLEM Newsletter 15:4 [July/August, 1995]

    In this Editor's Note, I would like to return to the tone and format
of a previous series of Computer Music Journal Editor's Notes (see
below), and discuss basic "dilemmas" and questions related to our art.
    Many of those active in creating or consuming contemporary music have
commented that truly "good" (in their subjective opinions)
electroacoustic music can transcend the boundaries of traditional music
and provide exciting new definitions of what musical expression and
communication can be. At the same time, many of these same members of
our community find that the less-highly-valued examples of
electroacoustic music can indeed be significantly "worse" than even
very "bad" traditional music. 
    What is it about computer music (and electroacoustic music in
general), that leads to this? How is the process of composition and
performance different--technically and aesthetically--in ways that
effects the listener's perception of quality? In this note, I will
offer several of my own observations on this subject, and solicit
reader responses.
    I believe strongly that there are several musically significant
differences between electroacoustic music and instrumental music, and
between contemporary (late 20th century), and historical music. I would
like to outline a few of these below and invite your comments.

    In the last 350 years of Western musical tradition (which serves as
the basis of most electroacoustic music of the last 40 years), the
roles of composer, performer, and audience were relatively static and
well-understood. The few cases of people who were known primarily as
performers, and secondarily as composers (e.g., Paganini), are
generally viewed as exceptions that have lead to extreme composition
styles. For a good many composers/producers of electroacoustic music
(this editor included) the possibility to play the role of "composer as
performer" is has a non-trivial--if not central--importance in their
practice of the art. Is it really the case (as often cited in
discussions of "bad" pieces), that performers frequently "save"
intrumental compositions in their interpretations, and that no such
option exists for the composer/performer of electroacoustic music?

    The increasing use of computers in structured real-time
improvisation--some call it "interactive composition"--leads to another
set of issues. Instrumental composers such as John Cage and Karlheinz
Stockhausen have long written "composed improvisational" music, wherein
the score gives the performers abstract instructions with much less
detail than the traditional pitch/time/articulation information
captured in common-practice Western music notation. The debate about
where improvisation ends and composition begins is taking place in
instrumental as well as electroacoustic music, though the participation
of computer programs in the form of "active" instruments or automatic
accompanists provides for new situations. The two basic questions here
are whether it is even relevant to differentiate between improvisation
and composition (I believe it is), and whether there are
musically important differences between "static," "procedural," and
"intelligent" or "adaptive" computer-based instruments (I believe there are).

    It is both a blessing and a curse that the new instruments of
electroacoustic music (and modern recording studio technology), have
allowed many composers who are not schooled in the classic/romantic
Western music tradition to create "serious" musical works. This has,
however, lead to many compositions that bring up the "question of
musical structure"--pieces where listeners ask the question of what
"good" musical form is, and how "musical dramaturgy" is different from
"theatrically structured music." I would contend that there is indeed a
fundamental difference in how listeners perceive structure, repetition,
time, and thematic development in theatrical vs. musical forms. It is
taken as obvious--based on the many differences between our visual and
aural perception channels--that thematic development in music is quite
different from character development in theater, and that the many
aspects of structure that influence the audience's perception of
tension and relaxation and their perception of time are quite different
among the various "interactive" art forms (music, theater, cinema,
installation art, etc.). To what extent is this a factor in "good" and
"bad" electroacoustic music?

    There has already been a lengthy and complex--though
unresolved--discussion of the aesthetics of the use of 20th electronic
media in live performance situations. This discussion will continue in
several articles in our current series on "composition and performance
in the 1990s." In answer to the questions that are the title of this
note, I would simply say that "good" (in my humble opinion)
electroacoustic music succeeds in creating a listening space all its
own, independent of the hall or room in which it is played, and
conversely that "bad" electroacoustic music can be flat and
"space-less" in the best hall with the best projection equipment and
personnel. Just as one would (or should) never play a simple recording
of acoustical instruments over loudspeakers in a concert setting
(trying to deny the technology, as Roger Johnson would point out), one
can fail by producing electroacoustic music that ignores the
performance space. I am most intrigued by several pieces that I have
heard in the past that introduced themselves as specifically intended
for performance over home stereo systems, or via headphones, or solely
for performance in large halls with expensive sound projection systems.

    Michel Waisvisz and Joel Ryan, who worked together as instrument
innovators and performers at the STEIM Institute in Amsterdam, have
both frequently pointed out that there is an important role played by
"effort" in most traditional musical instruments-a role that is often
completely ignored in electroacoustic instruments, especially those
that adopt the organ (rather than the piano) keyboard as their
performance interface. How relevant is this in the listener's
perception of the music? Can it be that our new instruments are "too
easy" to play?

    To get back to the two questions that serve as the title of this note,
I believe it would be interesting to think of electroacoustic music as
"post-modern" art-to think of music in the late 20th century in
relationship to the other arts of our time. The thoughts of Dominique
Richard on this subject lead one to contemplate whether we--as
practitioners of that art--are acknowledging or denying the
relationship. The recent interest in Jacques Derrida's deconstruction
theory (which now seems to have reached its apex and to be slowly dying
out), shows that art theory and aesthetics can change radically in a
relatively short period of time. The intense application of
deconstruction theory to several other art forms-especially those
based on the word and the image such as literature and cinema-has been
all the rage in academia for the past decade, and has had no
significant parallel (to my knowledge) in music theory. What is the
reason for this?

    I would like, with this note, to return to the discussion that took
place in these pages in 1991 through the start of 1993 ("Computer Music
Journal" 15:3-17:1, see the list below). I invite all readers of this
note to respond with succinct comments on any of the questions posed
above, or any of the topics of the seven editor's notes in the
previous series.

References: Topics of Editor's Notes for Computer Music Journal 15:3 - 17:1

Computer Music Journal 15:3 (Fall, 1991) "The First Dilemma: The
    Marginalization of `Art Music'"
Computer Music Journal 15:4 (Winter, 1991) "The Second Dilemma, or
    Tape Music--the Poor Cousin"
Computer Music Journal 16:1 (Spring, 1992) "For Lack of a Better Word
    by Any Other Name"
Computer Music Journal 16:2 (Summer, 1992) "The Composer and the Computer"
Computer Music Journal 16:3 (Fall, 1992) "Performing with Active Instruments"
Computer Music Journal 16:4 (Winter, 1992) "New Music Delivery"
Computer Music Journal 17:1 (Spring, 1993) "Dancing about Architecture?"

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Responses

Why is Good Electroacoustic music So Good? Why is Bad Electroacoustic music So Bad?

These are good questions, but trying to answer them through musical
criticism will, I believe, be fruitless. When we ask why "So Good" or "So
Bad," we imply that there is an experiencing subject who FEELS the goodness
and badness. Arguing musical aesthetics without being grounded in FEELINGS is
rather like reciting the lyrics without singing the melody. Try it sometime,
it's quite instructive.

I believe the real answers emerge from reflection on our own experiences.
Here's a good place to begin digging out the answers. Where were you when you
first heard a piece of electroacoustic music that was so good that you knew
you had to learn how to do this yourself, no matter what the personal cost?
How did that feel? Where were you when you first felt offended by what you
believed was the artistic misuse of a technology you cared a great deal
about? How did that feel?

Gareth Loy
San Anselmo, California, USA
DGL@netcom.com

One reason bad electroacoustic music can seem "worse" than bad acoustic
music is that every tone produced by an acoustical instrument is physically
complex and richly evolving in time. Each tone is also just a bit different
from its neighbors. This stimulates the listener's cognition; there's always
something fresh happening in and between sounds, no matter how impoverished
the compositional ideas that brought them together. On the other hand,
electroacoustic sounds tend towards similarity because of the way they're
produced; along every parameter, there's an entropy that needs to be overcome
by work, work, work. The irony is that professional instrumentalists spend
their lives trying to smooth over timbral differences, while professional
electroacoustic composers struggle to overcome such regularity.

Bill Matthews
wmatthew@abacus.bates.edu

I enjoyed your Editor's Note in the most recent issue of Computer Music
Journal regarding good/bad electroacoustic music. Especially noteworthy was
your reference to the ideas of Michel Waisvisz and Joel Ryan with respect to
the important role of physical effort in musical instrument performance. I
agree that this is very important. It is with the effort of the body that the
soul comes through in music (at least in part). The electronic music that I
enjoy the most has some quality of the person performing in it. I suppose
"effort" has something to do with this. Effort can form the material as well
in some situational/compositional stratigies. Thanks for bringing these
issues up.

Joe Catalano
Berkeley, California, USA
JCatalan@Library.Berkeley.edu

I just saw your Editor's Notes in Music-Research Digest, and wanted to raise
one point which is very close to my current concerns. You write that the
roles of composer, performer, and audience were "relatively static and
well-understood" in the 350-year tradition of Western music. I may have been
reading this the wrong way, but I came away with the impression that
composers were ONLY composers under this WELTANSCHAUUNG. Needless to say,
nothing could be further from the truth. Just about all the composers we
accept as part of our tradition were practicing musicians in a manner which
involved skills other than composition. You dismiss Paganini as an aberration
because he was primarily a virtuoso performer, but what about all the
composers who spent much of their time conducting orchestras or choirs? This
goes back to Bach, but it is as valid for Berlioz, Brahms, and Mahler.
(Ironically, there seems to be little record of Stravinsky conducting for
Diaghilev; I wonder how much of it he did.)

The point I am making is that I doubt that you will find very many composers
in our tradition for whom the PRACTICE of music consisted solely, or almost
entirely, of composition. Composition in our traditional baggage was built on
an infrastructure of other forms of practice. I think much of that
infrastructure is lacking in electroacoustic music, and I suspect it lacks
more in computer music than in other forms. There are, of course, notable
exceptions. Merce Cunningham created a situation for John Cage and David
Tudor in which performance was an important element of their work, perhaps
even more important than composition. On the other hand, there are too many
other environments in which it is just too easy to practice composition in a
vacuum, and I think this isolation of composition from other forms of musical
practice has a good deal to do with the aesthetic clash which you wish to
make the theme of your editorial discussion.

Stephen Smoliar
Kent Ridge, Singapore
smoliar@iss.nus.sg

Essentially, dilettantes are in control of the medium. Artists without
anything significant to say, technologists without any real reason to use the
technology. I feel that once quality computer instruments such as the new
Yamaha physical modeling systems [see the product announcement in this issue]
are available to composers with imagination, this will change. Until then, we
will continue to hear the same old electroacoustic piece--a few bell tones,
scampering Tibetan horns at breakneck speed, drones of infinite length, etc.
The electroacoustic music I have heard fails in many areas; there is little
performance fire or flair, there is no room for musically sensitive timing or
dynamic attenuation, the colors are often lacking in subtlety, either being
inappropriately dull or inappropriately bright.

I would submit that these problems are found in all of the arts today. Most
people who have degrees in the arts have nothing to say and yet they produce
the same amount of art as those who do. This produces a glut of art. The
process of filtering out the wheat from the chaff becomes incredibly
burdensome, if not impossible. So, committees judging from grants or awards
settle on norms of mediocrity. Ultimately, electroacoustic music is bad
because electroacoustic artists are. Hand me that hissy Varese record,
please. Good art is a miracle we'll just have to patiently await. 

Jeff Harrington
idealord@dorsai.dorsai.org

Composers working in the instrumental realm must convince performers of the
value of their music prior to it ever being heard in concert. Generally
incompetent and illiterate music will not pass through this filter. Early in
their training, composers make many of the necessary mistakes, witness their
colleagues in university ensembles wrestle with their problematic notation
and unclear music. If they have talent and determination, they will learn how
to make their ideas clear to the performers who have to project their
understanding to the audience. As the size of the forces the composer wishes
to use increases, so must the composer's craft. Professional orchestras will
not commission or perform works by composers in whom they do not have some
fundamental belief. None of this guarantees that the work will be good, or
that it will endure. It only serves as a force to ensure that the work will
at least be competent. The feedback from this type of collaboration is the
most important factor in he development of composers.

A computer or a tape machine does not reject musical illiteracy and
aesthetic tedium. It only rejects computer or technical illiteracy. Feedback
to the composer comes only after performance. No computer ever says, "I do
not understand this passage." But many 'cellists will. The electroacoustic
community is more egalitarian by far than the instrumental community. Perhaps
the price that is paid for that honorable approach to music making is having
to listen to more bad music before encountering the truly transcendent. In
closing, I must correct your contention that the role of the composer, the
performer, and the audience has been fixed for 350 years. It is only in the
late 19th century that the composer stopped being an active performer in some
capacity (including conductor). It is the post-World-War 2 era that saw the
unfortunate creation of the composer-academic. But that creature is changing too.

Allan Gordon Bell
Calgary, Alberta Canada
agbell@acs.ucalgary.ca

I agree to the editor's opinion, "that there are musically-significant
differences between electroacoustic music and instrumental music." The
differences go far beyond the facts that electroacoustic music is just played
by electroacoustic instruments while instrumental music is performed on
physical instruments.

A hint for the difference between those two kinds of music can be derived
from their current situation in the music scene. The support of electronic
music in the media seems to be very weak which surprises one in the context
of the historical connection between radio stations and electroacoustic
music. Electroacoustic is composed for loudspeakers, which makes radio ideal
as a medium to carry the already-electric signal through the air. This
historically made electroacoustic music part of research sponsored by the
communication companies like Bell Telephone Laboratories in America or the
WDR in Cologne, Germany, but today the presence of electroacoustic music
(popular music excluded) in the media seems to be rare in Germany while
contemporary instrumental music continues to be widely available.

Radio stations like the WDR-with their long tradition and support of
electronic music-might not be the only initiators of missing programs with
electroacoustic music; some stations broadcast only their own productions and
ignore the rest of the scene. Instead it shows to some extent the preferences
of the listeners. In addition to this, electroacoustic music is not a usual
part of concert programs, so could we consider that electroacoustic music is
in a crisis? The background of the problems seems to have something to do
with specific aspects of electroacoustic music. In the beginning of
electroacoustic music, musique concrete and electronic music developed a
style of their own with a separate esthetic while there was no acceptance of
this within the established contemporary instrumental music scene. This
changed in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s as electroacoustic music became a part
of the contemporary scene as composers discovered the compositionally
expressive potential of electroacoustic technology. A number of aesthetic
paradigms, such as composing with series, increased evaluation of timbre and
noise, and the growing necessity of non-stereotypical complex parameter
control let electroacoustic technology seem to be a tool with which to exceed
the instrumental limits. It was natural for composers like Luciano Berio,
Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gyorgi Ligeti and John Cage to compose for and with
electroacoustic and acoustic instruments, where "composing for and with" does
not mean an instrumentation of an instrumental score with electronic timbres
(as is frequently found).

This situation changed in post-modern age. The electronic music scene is
separated from the instrumental music scene, composers are specialized to one
of these fields. Instrumental music stopped to use results of acoustic
research and trigger the development of instruments. Instead, electronic
music takes extensive advantage of the results found in acoustic research,
and faces rapid development of their instruments-computers, software, and
synthesis techniques. Because of the internationality of the hardware market
and research, the electroacoustic scene is a small but very international
community, while a strong national style and aesthetic has developed in
instrumental music. The tendency to exceed limits of perception in whatever
way seems not to be true anymore for instrumental music. Was the alliance of
instrumental and electroacoustic music led by the intention to destroy the
romantic aesthetic and create a totally new music and society? If we remember
the flower power, love and piece movement, we can consider that this alliance
does not exist anymore. Before the background of a-at least in
Europe-conservative atmosphere, it is easy to imagine which of both
esthetics-the "fast developing, complex and strange one" or the
"back-to-the-roots sometimes neo-romantic or neo-classical one" is preferred
by the vast majority of contemporary music listeners. Is a fast
changing-style of music with fewer pre-defined timbres using extremes in
speed, pitch and musical language (algorithms, fractals) preferred by the
audience in a time of economic problems, growing population, growing
pollution and political conservativism? Or is a traditionally valued music
with clearly defined timbre ideals (presets), performance traditions, and
player limitations of more interest? Making electroacoustic music more
interesting just by including instrumental p layers in a composition or by
creating new instruments for a better imitation of acoustic instruments is
not a solution for this problem. It is more likely helpful to define new
instrument-player interactions instead of reproducing the traditional ones.
New ways of interaction might create a new aesthetic. But is this wanted by
the listener?

In the context of human interaction between composition and
performance we can identify fundamental differences between electroacoustic
music and instrumental music that cause the problem of why
"less-highly-valued examples of electroacoustic music can indeed be
significantly 'worse' than even very 'bad' traditional music." A bad
composition is, when performed by a good performer, still an interesting
experience because the performer modifies the information of the score by
applying interpretational habits and the timbre of a good instrument. He/she
would shape the results in electroacoustic music as well by his/her personal
view applying an interpretation language to the formal structure of the
piece. This helps the listener to perceive a complex musical structure or to
enrich a poor structure, since a personal interpretation adds a common
grammar to the piece and eases the process of understanding, or adds some
good qualities to the otherwise bad piece. Since electroacoustic music does
not go through this process of modification, a bad piece will be played as
poorly as it is, and even a good piece has more problems in the process of
communication because no common interpretational grammar helps in the
communicative process. Live interaction may supply a solution for this
dilemma in electroacoustic music as mentioned above, but do they deliver
something equivalent to the positive effect of the "stereotypical"
interpretational habits or timbres if they are not reproducing instrumental
performance behavior? 

I think composers should place more emphasis on the development of
expressive grammatical elements in their compositions, and that radio and
television stations should broadcast more electroacoustic music and support
the discussion of technical and aesthetical concepts in the program as a part
of music perception. Composers of electroacoustic music should include more
of the left-out visual sphere into their compositions-light, movement, space
(not only in the acoustical sense), visual art, and others. Otherwise, the
continuation of conservative aesthetic will lead electroacoustic music to
become a "corner of the corner" art.

Ludger Bruemmer
Essen, Germany

Conclusions

In the introduction to this discussion, I posed several questions and made
several opinionated statements about contemporary (and electroacoustic) music.
Each of the respondents chose to single out a different issue from among these.
D. Gareth Loy asked us to focus on the results--the feelings--that are the
central reason for making music in the first place. His comments remind me of
the title of another of the notes in this series, "writing about music is like
dancing about architecture." In his comments, Bill Matthews brought up the
important issue of the sound generation, and the difference between virtuoso
performance on a traditional instrument--being able to play a smooth, steady
tone--and on an electronic one--being able to play an interesting, textured
tone. Stephen Smoliar made an important clarification of the historical roles
of composer/performers, and his points are well-taken. I am in strong
disagreement with both of Jeff Harrington's statements that "dilettantes are in
control of the medium. [ . . . ] I would submit that these problems are found
in all of the arts today." Neither of these opinions can be demonstrated on the
basis of contemporary art practice. The final comments, from Ludger Bruemmer,
echo many of my own sentiments.

Craig Harris commented in a personal communication that, "one theme that moves
through has to do with the nature of the interaction with the medium--as
composer, as performer, as spectator. This theme runs very deep into aesthetic
issues." I believe that this is indeed the crux of the dilemma. The new media
do effect some change in the roles of composer, performer, producer, and
consumer; they allow anyone--whether trained as a musical creator or not--to
participate more actively. They also allow composer/performers to relate to the
audience in a much different manner than was possible before the advent or 20th
century electronic technology, and the use to which a creative spirit puts this
is determined by purely aesthetical considerations. Taking another quote as the
closing comment, we can see in all of the above evidence of the now-old truism
that "the medium is the message." Electroacoustic music delivers a different
*message* than instrumental music.

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