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Listening with other senses

In the 20th century, the relationship between music and other forms of art – painting, video art and cinema most importantly — has become increasingly important. How do you see this relationship yourself and in how far, do you feel, does music relate to other senses than hearing alone?

The act of listening is rarely done in isolation, though we may think it is. How many of us deprive the rest of our senses when listening to music, even in the solitude of our home? We hear something for the first time, and our senses simultaneously register every aspect of the environment, imprinting the information in our memory along with the sounds.

Musicians who don't take the other senses into account in their work are not giving a full artistic experience to their audience. When I do a Potluck Percussion performance, where I only play objects that the audience provides, the results go beyond merely sound. For example, the visual element is clearly there as I attempt to play a package of wieners with a hairbrush, not to mention the smell of the raw food, the feel of it when it explodes into the audience, and the taste for anyone who dares to share a bite of it with me. 

Take the typical laptop performance, where the artists look like they're answering email. We'd all enjoy it a lot better if the room smelled of freshly baked cookies.

In how much, do you feel, are creative decisions shaped by cultural differences – and in how much, vice versa, is the perception of sound influenced by cultural differences?

The influence is great in both ways. A visit to the immigrant section of any city will prove it.

Do you feel it important that an audience is able to deduct the processes and ideas behind a work purely on the basis of the music? If so, how do you make them transparent?

I don’t think it's so important that you have to create only music that is transparent to the audience, unless you're doing music for film or some other narrative thing. However, I do think that listeners gain a greater appreciation of improvised music (as well as "experimental" or "avant-garde" music) when they are told what the musicians are thinking, feeling, or exploring.

I like to bring the audience into the music, and I find that even the most extreme sounds will be accepted by non-specialist listeners if I explain the reasons why I do what I do. The intense sound of bowed Polystyrene may still sound like noise to them, but at least they'll have some appreciation of it if they know that my motivation is to make music with commonly discarded household items.

Usually, it is considered that it is the job of the artist to win over an audience. But listening is also an active, rather than just a passive process. How do you see the role of the listener in the musical communication process?

Passive listening is perfectly fine, and there seem to be people that prefer that. My music is not for them. I prefer to play for people that are interested in sound, even if they decide they don't like the sounds I produce. If they deal with it and make that decision, that's okay with me.

The verb "to win" is an adversarial one, and I prefer not to participate in that kind of approach, musically speaking. I'm not there to conquer people, no more than I am there to fool them into liking what I do. I like to organize certain kinds of sounds in ways that I think are interesting and meaningful, and I like to share that with listeners and other musicians. So I try to put myself in situations where that happens. 

Music-sharing sites and -blogs as well as a flood of releases in general are presenting both listeners and artists with challenging questions. What's your view on the value of music today? In what way does the abundance of music change our perception of it?

Today, music is as valuable and as easy to get as tap water. That's a good thing. 

I teach audio recording classes at two colleges, so I meet about 125 people each year who are actively making music. At the end of every semester, I am floored by the level of musicianship and artistry that I hear from many of the students, some of it as profound as anything I've heard from well-known artists. It's a humbling experience and serves as a constant reminder that the hero worship that our culture practices is based on bankrupt hierarchical and consumerist models of seniority, canon, scarcity, and so on.

I'm happy that there is an overwhelming amount of music available, and I'm thrilled that everyone has the tools to make music and distribute it globally within a matter of seconds, whether they use an analog circuit, a computer or a mobile device for their creative endeavors. 

I'm not interested in gatekeepers deciding what's good enough to record and distribute. Sure, it's still valuable to have "Filters" that sort through things and help us find sounds we might like, but I'm just as happy to discover music being made by someone that the tastemakers haven't discovered, or worse, would denigrate because the musicians are unknown or don't work within the narrow purview of the critic's sensibilities.  

I'm convinced that listeners will appreciate the music you make when they have first-hand experience with music-making, themselves. And if we want to build an audience for the more challenging types of listening experiences, we need to get more people actively involved in the music making process itself, not just invite them to watch. 

Please recommend two artists to our readers which you feel deserve their attention.

Kyle Bruckmann is a composer/oboist/synth player who has done compelling work as a soloist, and with his band Wrack, as well as in the noise and rock scenes using analog synthesizers.

John Shiurba is a guitarist/composer whose non-idiomatic playing is some of the deepest I've experienced. Yet, his rock-guitar playing and composing is fresh and unique.

Read more about Gino Robair at his website, www.ginorobair.com

 

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