Music is Sculpture
by Aidan Carr
Writing music before the 20th century was a lot like painting—you had certain colors and certain brushes, and you painted certain things. Like painters, composers outgrew these boundaries—painters stopped painting things, composers stopped writing tonal music, etc. But we still think of most music as having a pretty narrow set of ‘brushes’ or ‘paints’—the Beatles used guitars, classical composers write for the symphonic orchestra, Miles Davis played the trumpet.
You’ll notice I’ve neglected electronic music. This is for a reason. Electronic music and the thinking that produced it does not work this way. It does not have a palette; its palette, rather, is sound itself, the physical vibrations that make noise in your ear. Electronic sound is not paint; it is clay, clay under the hands of the most impossible alchemist, capable of morphing into literally any substance imaginable. Writing music on the computer is not painting, it is sculpture.
More on this to come, but for the time being, absorb this ‘sculpture’ by a British artist who produces under the name Four Tet. Like the work of Michaelangelo, its detail is pristine, exact; every sound is there for a reason, every detail contributing to the whole. It repeats, endlessly—accept this. Let what sounds the same wash over you—I promise you, if you do so, it will not be boring, it will be beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYXdeFm2jfc