Brian Eno

I really respect anyone who creates their own sort of style and can accurately as well as opinionatedly express themselves. I can agree with Eno's aspects of his form of music being improvisation mixed with collaborative elements. I think at times the best art is art that is developed right on the spot and is not planned out and when you can add other elements to give it a nice polishing

In repsonse to Mario's comments on Terry Riley

In response to Mario's comments on looping and vedic hymns, is that track from Bush of Ghosts a vedic hymn? I was wondering if that track held any great significance or if they just lied the sounds mixed together. It was very meditative sounding. But yeah.... just wondering.

Ambient and Generative music

Being in a society where most music I listen to is composed of organized notes with a consonant melody, the whole ambient sound is kind of awkward. Hearing some of Brian Eno's work my mind quite often feels like I'm on drugs, like I am sitting on a cloud. It's kind of creepy.But at the same time I think it allows you to be free and break away from tradition. Who says that music has to be something with a steady and rhythmic eight count?

As far as generative music goes I donot understand all four primary perspectives that characterizes it. I some what can understand the structural style of generative music and the creative style. I don't know if I understand the interactive style of generative music. I do agree with Eno's theory of music changing and evolving. Here are the the four theories in case someone's wondering what I am talking about:

Linguistic/Structural

music composed from analytic theories that are so explicit as to be able to generate structurally coherent material (Loy and Abbott 1985; Cope 1991). This perspective has its roots in the generative grammars of language (Chomsky 1956) and music (Lerdahl and Jackendoff 1983), which generate material with a recursive tree structure.

[edit] Interactive/Behavioural

music generated by a system component that ostensibly has no inputs. That is, 'not transformational' (Rowe 1991; Lippe 1997:34; Winkler 1998). Brian Eno's Generative Music 1 is an example of this.

[edit] Creative/Procedural

music generated by processes that are designed and/or initiated by the composer. Steve Reich's Its gonna rain and Terry Riley's In C are examples of this (Eno 1996).

[edit] Biological/Emergent

non-deterministic music (Biles 2002), or music that cannot be repeated, for example, ordinary wind chimes (Dorin 2001). This perspective comes from the broader generative art movement. This revolves around the idea that music, or sounds may be 'generated' by a musician 'farming' parameters within an ecology, such that the ecology will perpetually produce different variation based on the parameters and algorithms used

The Beat Generation- Spontineity

I think the beat generation has alot to do with the negative depictions in society today. This generation really pushed the envelope on the topics of sex, drugs and artying. You can only expect the generations that follows behind to top what was done in the past. The very art of music and the instruments that create the melodies aren't as important anymore, because the focus is put on valuables and sexual promescuity. I mean the beat generation brought forth some great talent but I feel like it is a contributor to the music industry's limitation of creative music topics.

Subterranean Homesick Blues

I think the video was really interesting. It kind of reminded me of Charlie Chaplin films, the beginning of filming. I think that connection made me connect with it as the beginning of an era. Rock videos...... I lost focus sometimes because I was trying to read the signs as welas keep up with the music. if I could borrow from this video, but instead of pairing up the signs with the lyrics, I would have it silent and have the viewers focus on reading the lyrics presented. I think something along those lines. But it might just be that I had a hard time focusing on the selected words from the song.

Erik Davis

My question here is: why are acoustic spaces so effective in this regard? What is it about sound that is so potentially immersive? I think it has to do with how we register it—how it affects different areas of the bodymind than visuals do. Affect is a tremendously important dimension of experience, and one of the most difficult to achieve in a visual environment. "Atmosphere" might be a good way to describe this aspect: sound produces atmosphere, almost in the way that incense—which registers with yet another sense—can do. Sound and smell carry vectors of mood and affect which change the qualitative organization of space, unfolding a different logic with a space's range of potentials. Ambient music, or an ambient soundscape, can change the quality of a space in subtle or dramatic ways.

Terry Riley

I grew up in India (89-96) and for me Terry's words are very familiar; the relationship between "looping" and "Vedic hymns".

In Ancient Vedic Texts you find the term "mantra-siddhi" mentioned frequently in relation to meditation and spiritual life (self-
realization). Mantra-siddhi (mantra a compound word meaning "mind liberating") and siddhi (perfection) implies that a prayer be repeated thousands of times in order to tune into a spiritual reality...

Anyway, it's all fascinating to me!!!