Good or Bad?

 

Collage Culture: Nostalgia and Critique:
http://designobserver.com/feature/collage-culture-nostalgia-and-critique/38187

 

For me, it's more like herding clouds; all that lovely ephemera gets blown away in time. Catch it while it's fresh!

Who knows, tho, maybe all those clouds seem faint & beautiful because they're memories of childhood songs, maybe all music is a collage we make subconsciously? Or while we sleep? It certainly doesn't seem to be as solid as gluing actual things together, tho, in any sense.

It still surprises me, tho. I still say things like "that shouldn't work at all, technically - how does it?!, "I did that completely by accident and it's the best part" etcs. I dunno if u can copy / paste those kinda moments.

 

thnx famous....... you just gave me a title for my new album ....HERDING CLOUDS" lyrics for the hooks in 6 tunes....... and a concept for how to put it together...cheers

 

Every artist would dream of their own works being eternal but today's culture has turned desires for datelessness to a futile hope. I always have struggle with that and my threads are for showing the uneasiness inside me about that.

Affluence of materials has caused something like Collage to emerge. Someone can specialize in montage but his/her works can not be alleged to be original. I'm not a bulwark against lack of originality in art but accept that collagy obscure works truly make a shield for unreal artists to disguise themselves as real ones and it puts art in danger.

PS:
The question is:
Is bowing down to the collage a foredoomed predestination or it's just a simple technique being dictated by market demands?

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 18, 2017

This track is roughly more or less a collage. I just joked about the danger because there is no danger.
https://clyp.it/j0bhppte

 

Last edited by a moderator: May 18, 2017

I think art will survive the assault on its delicate sensibilities!

I dunno. For me, the interesting stuff is usually the mistakes & accidents. It's difficult to know where the line between collage & art lies; does using a preset make ur playing a collage? Does ripping off a chord progression? Using drum grooves? Using arpeggiation? Doesn't this make (ie) forming a band just mere collage? An orchestra, even moar so?

It sounds quite derivative, but it's difficult to know which bits are true collage. To me, it doesn't rly matter if all of the elements were just prefabricated / loops / whatev. I guess I would assume that they weren't? But I wouldn't choose to listen to this kind of thing, anyway.

 

Speak for yourself.

 

You know, there is a fact in general and it is: Repetition Legitimizes as this guy says:

It seems quite true in every part of our lives even you can examine its verity in the whole nine yards of history. Suppose the onset of sampling that was being considered gloomy but after a while, sensitiveness towards it scotched.

I don't know which one of these agents have to have the greatest importance for an artist. 1-Self satisfaction, 2-The work itself or 3-The audiences? For an artist perhaps 1 and 2 and for a producer maybe 3. I'm not so sure. BTW, do you consider yourself an artist or a producer? and what is art? and is there something bad in your musical life that you escape from it?

 

@foster911 You been droppin' acid, bro?

 

It is what it is. If you enjoy it, or make a living from it, or understand it, doesn't matter if it isn't exceptional and a work for the ages. We can't use masterpiece, magnum opus or even call someone a chef d'œuvre anymore because the terms have been so tarnished as of late that they mean nothing.

If you are having fun, so what.

 

We're talking composition, not invention, right?

 

If You see it as a collage, than there must be something wrong... are You sure that You are talking about music ?

 

XD I guess what I mean is that I'd cut most producer (wannabes) a lot of slack using optimism. I think @foster911 and his collage thing falls down cos it assumes that nobody ever develops beyond this early stage. Or that he can empathise & look back on a time when he knew nothing about producing? Maybe it's just because he sees a tide of this kind of thing? I dunno.

I guess I'd just hope that some (one?) of these millions of musical sperm become embryonic virtuosos some day? I mean, where else will they come from? I'm also hoping that no part of that terrible sentence will end inspiring a prog rock concept album >__> I feel guilty enough already <__<

I'm not sure how long Soundcloud will be around, but maybe all music is for the ages, now? :/

 

foster911, your threads are interesting because you demonstrate an aptitude for wanting to explore ideas and themes. You ask yourself good questions but because some of your questions are philosophical or on the level of academic enquiry, you need to adopt new ways of thinking to takle them. This is evident in the way you 'think out loud', throwing this possibility and that possibility out there, and you are asking everybody else to answer your questions for you; because you lack the 'thinking tools' to do it yourself. You need to challenge yourself with degree-level studies. Degrees are a way of aquiring new ways of thinking. In fact all learning is in essence about learning new ways of thinking, and as you progress up the levels, even in school, starting with copying and trying to comprehend other peoples' writing, then onto bringing in your own ideas, opinons and writing about your own experiences, this makes you learn new ways of thinking and you learn new ways of organising your thoughts and writing them down in coherent ways. What you're doing every progression is acquiring new ways of thinking. So up to Master's and PhD levels you're dealing with ever more philosophical questions, or academic enquiries. This needs even more complex ways of thinking because there is a set of rules by which academic thinking has to be written and presented. So you learn more complex research mothods, you have to quote your sources (state who said what and where you read it etc.). You have to state your question and then 'discuss' the balance of views. If you don't do this, you would be demonstarting that you have not researched and thought about the topic deeply enough to consider the various opinions on the topic, and your conclusions have no value. You realise that there are no set facts about anything; there are only opinions, some popular, some held by a few scholars and some ony held by one person. So, I hope you understand how you need to acquire new methods of thinking about your excellent questions.

On the topic you have posed in this thread: if you had done some prior research you would have realised that (1) every generation thinks that they are inventing or changing the world in ways that have never been done before and (2) all the copying, collage, sampling, rebelliousness, decadence and even drug-taking that we see in today's society has all been done centuries earlier, going back to the classical composers of centuries ago! It was all done in different ways, a pen instead of a mouse. The ONLY new thing that the human being has done happened way back in the ancient Greek times when philosophers emerged with the new 'logical' ways of thinking and academic enquiry that truly challenged the world and sought to chellenge the matriarchal, Goddess-centred ways of seeing the world and our origins. They invented sciences too. But even earlier than that the ancient Indians (from India) and the Babylonians (from ancient Iraq) were inventing measurement sysytems (Maths) and mapping the heavens. The only other truly revolutionary things that people have done is discover fire and invent the wheel. Learn new ways of thinking and reasoning!

 

blame DJs and Samplers if today's music is mostly a collage and a ripoff of classic stuff.

and to top it off the average Joes see nothing wrong in all that, actually they like it as long as it's pumped up on every radio and discos.
normal people dont give a shit about our rants, they cant even know what we're talking about, they probably never heard the classics too so how could they ever spot an obvious ripoff or copycat ?

we can blame the market and of course the DJs and all but ultimately there wouldnt be all that shit around if the commoners had better musical tastes.
i dont think the situation can improve, it's going worse and worse.

 

This used to be a major stumbling block for me writing and composing new material. I'd have a guitar riff and think in terms of what I'd already heard in some popular music and decide I wanted my music to go in that same direction. Then I fell into the trap of "does this sound like some other riff/song" then throw it all away and accomplish nothing.
Or worse, play a piece for someone and they would say "that sounds like x" and end up throwing it all away.
Fast forward 20 or so years. Now when I write, I don't think about other music (consciously). I don't question if something sounds like something else. If it does, so be it. Just let that go and keep pushing the composition forward. Only by continuing to compose will you get better at riding that bike. It's more about learning to complete what was started and not give up for a trivial reason like it sounds like something else. I don't purposely try to plagiarize riffs or melodies, it just sometimes happens, and I've come to a point where that's ok. As a result, my output (completed compositions) has greatly increased, and while some might not get used because they sound like something else, most are good solid ideas that I can work into something of my own.
In essence, if you are trying to compose, just push forward, complete it, and analyze it after it's done. You'll get more done, and have that satisfaction of actually finishing something, useable or not.
Don't worry, be happy!