2018-08-19
We now think of the sound of recordings when we think of a song or piece of music, and the live performance of that same piece is considered an interpretation of the recorded version. What was originally a simulation of a performance – the recording – has supplanted performances, and the performances are now considered the simulation. It seemed to some that the animating principle of music was being replaced by a more perfect, but slightly less soulful, machine.READING NOTES FROM:
How music works
2018-08-19
Powerpoint presentations are a kind of theater, a kind of augmented stand-up. Too often it’s a boring and tedious genre, and audiences are subjected to the bad as well as the good. Failing to aknowledge that these are performances is to assume that anyone could and should be able to do it. You wouldn’t expect anyone who can simply sing to get up on stage, so why expect everyone with a laptop to be competent in this new theatrical form?2018-08-19
The Western emphasis on pseudo-naturalism and the cult of spontaneity as a kind of authenticity was only one way of doing things on stage.2018-08-19
A good singer will often use the “grid” of the rhythm as something to play with – never landing exactly on a beat, but pushing and pulling around and against it in ways that we read, when it’s well done, as being emotional.2018-08-17
Serious music, in this way of thinking, is only absorbed and consumed above the neck. The regions below the neck are socially and morally suspect.2018-08-17
Separating the body from the head seems to have been an intended consequence – for anything to be serious, you couldn’t be seen shimmying around to it.