This was prompted by a quote from a visiting composer who lectured in one of my courses yesterday. After listening to a piece of my music, he said, “Much of modern music hurts to listen to. Your music was not painful.”
In the field of computer music, we like to think our art is misunderstood, or just ahead of its time and therefore only able to be appreciated by an enlightened few. I'd like to go on record and say that I hate roughly half (if not more) of the experimental music out there. Why? Well...let's take a look at this edition of the webcomic Pictures for Sad Children for a succinct description:
'Nuff said. I personally believe that music shouldn't be painful unless you're trying to convey a sense of physical pain in your piece. I love noise-based music, feedback, and all the other tools of the trade...but if they aren't used well, I want to stick a fucking pencil in my ear. If that's MY reaction, someone who is used to this crap and trained to appreciate it, what the hell must a casual listener think? I've come to the opinion that people want to feel like the misunderstood artist, labouring against the constraints of society. You know what I think about that? You can send a message and rebel against the status quo without damaging our hearing and brains, you pretentious bastard. I get criticized within my field for my music being too “pretty”, or too “normal”. I personally think it's much more fun to work within the constraints that society gives us, slipping in the experimental things in a way that doesn't offend the average listener. I'd rather subvert the listener, presenting my experimental ideas in a pretty, unsuspecting package that they can appreciate, slowly opening people to new ideas. People don't like sudden, violent change. Most of the time it doesn't actually work. But sometimes...sometimes, I actually get through to people. And after all, what is music without an audience? Yes...I'm probably just as pretentious as everyone else. But at least I don't cause people pain in the process, right?
