Song of 7

This is music for synthetic piano and some bells and strings.  The synthetic piano might come from a Yamaha Motif synthesizer, which doesn’t sound bad.  Or the piano might be generated out of Csound to get something different.  In this case, it’s Csound.

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Song of 7

I have to think of a genre description for this music because people expect it.  But that gets to be tiresome.  I would like to say impressionism, but it doesn’t really stand up to that expectation.  The old fallback in this situation is to say “experimental,”  but the word experimental is usually misinterpreted.  Experimental music doesn’t mean that you are playing around to see what it sounds like, like when you try something different in your cake recipe to see what it tastes like.  Experimental music is a catch-all phrase for describing the vast musical possibilities that do not conform to the list of 100 genres in the drop-down list of you music website.  It describes a musician’s creativity that lies outside popular expectations.   There are many people who will stare at the above statement the way a cow looks at a hundred-dollar bill.  So I will reach for a quote from drummer Bill Bruford,  “Explaining jazz to prog-rockers,”

The rock musician devises a music that he thinks the audience will like, or may be persuaded to like.  The jazz musician is involved in a life-long process which the audience is warmly invited to observe. If they like the process, great; if they don’t, fine, the process is going to continue that way anyway, not out of sheer obstinacy, but because the jazz musician can only play it one way… [the rock musician] needs audience approval to validate his efforts.  Without their appreciation as reflected in the market, (big sales, chart places, etc) his music is literally invalid. It has no value in and of itself.  The jazz musician is on safer psychological, if not financial grounds, because the process he’s going through may/should/usually does have value for him personally, irrespective of outside approval.

I find the quote appropriate, although this music has nothing to do with either prog rock or jazz.  Music doesn’t have to be liked by an audience.  And music doesn’t have to fit a genre description.

Song of 7

song_of_7.ogg

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