Lumpy Gravy (not really a point?)

I cant bring myself to find any reason to the point of Lumpy Gravy. It seems to be a disconteccted collection of random bits of music with dialgue that mimics people being high on drugs and discussing random things. Im having trouble pinpointing the relationship between granular synthesis and this. I understand making "art" just for the sake of doing it, but usually someone has to enjoy it. I also watched/listened Poeme Elecrontique and was just as disappointed. I have no music background or skills but I do believe that it's a far cry to call this music. The use of the technology that far back is amazing but It may have been squandered in the name of art. I had to fight to listen to both the whole way through and couldnt really grasp the point.

Cecilia issues

I will give windows users the opportunity to use a MAC at Digital worlds or let yo into the lab [they still have not fixed the swipe as the Windows7 version of Cecilia is not working as i had hoped. Please contact me @ pat@digitalworlds.ufl.edu to setup a time.

If you have linux you may use the older version of Cecilia.

Let's see some chapter summaries and blog posts SOON!

pp

Cecilia sounds

WG-Reverb by alexahenderson

ResModes by alexahenderson

PV-FreqShift by alexahenderson

PV-Addsyn by alexahenderson

MultiModeFilter by alexahenderson

Chordmaker by alexahenderson

Plunderphonics..... my thoughts,

While the essay may seem a little convoluted with the 2 billion comas, I was very impressed by the topics.

What is considered "illegal" and "legal"? What should be considered "copywriting" or stealing someone's creative genius? I felt like the whole essay was coming down to the conclusion that all of "sound" and what is "Music" is built on it self, making the idea of "copywriting" almost non existent. One example that he used (or eluded to) was the idea of the piano. The piano has 88 keys. Who owns those sounds? Is it the manufacturer of the original piano and thus any sound/ song produced from it would be copywriting/ stealing his sound? Essentially, the piano gives us 88 tones, specific in timbre, shape, dynamic etc. So in essence, if a person uses a combination of those 88 keys (in what ever fashion) to create a song/ melody, that would be stealing the sounds of Bartolommeo Cristofori, the creator of the piano. (1655-1731). Essentially this is the same as a person sampling a few sounds or parts from a Kanye West sound and putting them together in their own creation. They are taking the sound that Kanye has created (think of the different parts of the song as the 88 keys on the piano), and have made their own creation. Yet society today tells us that this is illegal.

I can relate to this argument and theory and see the validity in the point. To me, what I took away from this essay was the fact that plundering sounds (plunderphonics) isn't simply a black and white issue, there is a lot of middle grey. The only counter argument I would have would be to reference writing literature. Essentially you can relate the alphabet to the 88 keys of the piano and say that anything written from the alphabet is illegally copywriting the original works of the alphabet creator. I know this is far fetched seeing as the meaning of those letters only comes from the integration of them into words, where as the musical notes can stand alone and still create a musical understanding, but you get the idea I am hinting at.

Again, I think this discussion/ argument is very interesting and one that goes far beyond the polarized black and white.

-Tim

Cecelia Windows wiki help

go here and see if this helps
http://code.google.com/p/cecilia4/wiki/Install

Lumpy Gravy by Frank Zappa

Lumpy Gravy seemed to bounce between 3 emotional states to me. Between the dialog and the sound I found bits uplifting, humorous, and bothersome (there is a better word here but the only other one I can think of right now is horrific but thats far too strong). The music achieves the 3 emotional states by melody whereas the dialog achieves either humor or horror by the subject of the dialog. The monologue about wearing out women was funny while the discussion about being attacked by unicorns while giggling as if smoking a large blunt was a bit terrifying. With regard to the dialog I think the effect comes from the ability to relate to the state of the speaker - which is why people on drugs are often avoided and do not mix well socially with sober people.

Lumpy Gravy, however, still does not present content I would choose to listen to when I want to listen to music. The ever changing melody and content feels more like an audio track that has lost its movie than a piece of content meant to be enjoyed on its own. I suppose that actually raises an interesting question: why do we enjoy movies with such quickly changing contexts and perspectives while we (or at least many of us) abhor the idea of music which is always changing and presenting conflicting melodies?

Frank Zappa Interview

Here is an interview with Frank Zappa: