While doing these pieces, I had also discovered some new music that good friends had done; music I didn't know existed. What I found interesting (besides the great music!) was how people talked about their music, the terminology used to highlight the aspects of the work that were obviously important to them. I have also noticed this in the graduate composition seminars we do at Columbia. Pieces under discussion often have a deep resonance with external models or aesthetic processes that seem so, well... important! And here I am, saying things like "oooo, I used this cool module to make these nifty sounds that I then added a buncha reverb to and drove them with some algorithm I was fooling with..." It all rings of triviality to me, especially when compared with the deep thinking that charges the rhetoric around other new-music creations.
But you know what? I think I like that trivialty. I remember
when learning about Schenkerian analysis that the musical 'surface'
was really nothing more than an inconsequential artefact growing
in top of the deep structure (ok, I'm exaggerating). The musical
surface is where I live, though! That's where the salient action
is in my book! I love shaping sounds with filters,
delays, reverbs, etc. I guess it was my recording studio past.
Whatever. I like the way things sound.
Piece website: