In February I said:
For me, the reviewer: this is the kind of thing I'm waiting around for: use of sound to unearth unexpected beauty. For programmers: if you're programming classical music, and/or serious contemporary music, you probably have listeners that remember vinyl - or younger ones that know about the difference it made. A built-in talking point. This is an hommage! Sounds like a rainstorm, sounds like a symphony of ants, sounds like: listen and see!
Notes added on 13 March 05
I recently played this piece for 12-year-old French students (fans of Hip Hop and Destiny's Child) in a sound atelier. They were fascinated -they understood instantly that there was something to listen to. I was alittle shocked by the review by the PD who wrote it off as "a first attempt at Cubase, etc." He should really know better - of course it's not made that way. It was a painstaking analog composition effort.
I understand as well as anyone else the problem of survival - and the PD doesn't have to run it -but this does not excuse highhandedly snickering at people who experiment. Especially if you're taking public funding for what is supposed to exist as an alternative medium. Public radio's quest to be above all popular usually ends in a kind of mediocrity that can't compete with the big bucks of popular entertainment. The lovely things come from going another way
Especially in this case - because it has been done with technique, substance and talent.
Also - as a reviewer - am I just patting the back of another producer? Perhaps. I listen to lots of stuff I don't review. I'm a producer too - feels like bad luck to trash someone else - so I'm a "surfacer of work" only, I guess.
I can handle scratch scratch
Marjorie Van Halteren
Posted on February 16, 2005 at 10:04 AM
About the piece Vinyl by Jonathan Mitchell:
In February I said:
For me, the reviewer: this is the kind of thing I'm waiting around for: use of sound to unearth unexpected beauty. For programmers: if you're programming classical music, and/or serious contemporary music, you probably have listeners that remember vinyl - or younger ones that know about the difference it made. A built-in talking point. This is an hommage! Sounds like a rainstorm, sounds like a symphony of ants, sounds like: listen and see!
Notes added on 13 March 05
I recently played this piece for 12-year-old French students (fans of Hip Hop and Destiny's Child) in a sound atelier. They were fascinated -they understood instantly that there was something to listen to. I was alittle shocked by the review by the PD who wrote it off as "a first attempt at Cubase, etc." He should really know better - of course it's not made that way. It was a painstaking analog composition effort.
I understand as well as anyone else the problem of survival - and the PD doesn't have to run it -but this does not excuse highhandedly snickering at people who experiment. Especially if you're taking public funding for what is supposed to exist as an alternative medium. Public radio's quest to be above all popular usually ends in a kind of mediocrity that can't compete with the big bucks of popular entertainment. The lovely things come from going another way
Especially in this case - because it has been done with technique, substance and talent.
Also - as a reviewer - am I just patting the back of another producer? Perhaps. I listen to lots of stuff I don't review. I'm a producer too - feels like bad luck to trash someone else - so I'm a "surfacer of work" only, I guess.