How much is experimental music actually experimental nowadays?

[guga]

…the answer to someone that might occasionally ask me what kind of music i make, is usually: experimental music (to read: i would like to, jjust a bit more…trying actually, with the time available aand having to specify i’m not a dj as it seems like many making music nowadays, often fall into the ‘dj’ category…)

now, i’ve been thinking about this for a while and thought: well, with all the ‘experimentation’ that has been done in the past decades (and maybe more); with all the old and new tools that were/are available, being them either software or hardware; is it experimental music really experimental nowadays? and how much?

are there new techniques available to experiment with for sound design?

for those who start experimenting/haven’t used too many of those techniques already (including myself), i think it still is experimental in the sense that for those people it is ‘new’ but…it’s something that’s been done already and for which one somehow knows what the end result is/would/could be (just go on yt…look at some videos…oooh… ) …from recording ants talking to, i don’t know…resample a sample thousands times to hear what comes out, or knock on a wooden table while it’s burning…or well…you name it…

is it just me not spending enough time researching/experimenting as i used to do? or is it actually so that we’ve used (at least up until now) what was usable and there isn’t much left to experiment with?

edit: no ants or wooden tables were harmed for this post

[elenacortes]

I like this question.
I think that the thing that had permited experimental music was the gear use by musicians. During the long history of music, the payers seems to have always tryied to reach the limits of their gear.
With apparition of electronics instruments, we did the same during last 50 years. The last great inovation was imho the sampler.
Sory for these topoi, but they incline me to think that next step will arrive with electronic inovations (Guga, give us electronic device !

On the other hand, the term of experimental music, nowadays, seems to be more a kind, than a reality of musical production (due to the tons of music, and sound, experiences drove by our predecessors). Experimental, here, is to be eard as creation of “nouvelles perspectives”, new fields of investigation, new roads.
That does’nt mean that some artists don’t produce deep music R&D.

You’re right stating that the experimental music produce by musicians, specificaly begeeners, is the next step in their progression, kind of “new frontier”, a conquest of the musical skills, wich is not the same than the previous case.

As musician (amator), I do my little r&d with m’y gear, and i try to play experimental genre. But, it’s hard to obtain really good production that haven’t been eard before.

[thetechnobear]

an interesting topic for sure

I suspect there is more ‘experimental’ music than ever out there… in the sense more people are experimenting/playing with their setups and publishing on youtube (etc) than ever.

how much of this is new?
how much was new in the past… or just new due to less communication before (i.e. lack of information) - today, if you come up with a new ‘idea’, if you search on the internet, you are bound to find someone has done something similar? (record a sound of a banana hitting coconuts… there is probably a YT video already ;))

but that doesn’t matter, just because its been done, it doesn’t mean its been ‘explored’ fully.

and then is there genuinely new stuff… absolutely, as a ‘tech head’ myself, there are so many new things out there, so much open source code, all that can be twisted and changed in new ways… the opportunities are nothing less than bewildering - time is the only restriction, not ideas.

this itself raises an interesting question…
has the skill set required to experiment changed? or does is it just broadening who can enter the ‘discussion’?

one thing, I do think needs to happen more is collaboration… art n tech, I sometimes think are ‘uncomfortable bed felllows’.
some artists do not want to not worry about tech, its ‘uncreative’ - disturbs the flow…and techies are considered ‘non-creatives’.
but Ive a theory/belief this might be a new frontier, an area where only collaboration can explore, because neither parties, independently have the skills required (except perhaps a very small/select group)

[mokomo]

I expect musicians have been asking themselves the same question for the last 55,000 years.

Avant garde cavemen, banging their hideskin drums eventually getting disillusioned that all the sequences of beats and whoops possible to make have already been composed and thus time to add cave painting visuals and flame shadows to spice up their performance

[mattleaf]

I think theres a little sentiment in a book by thom holmes that says experimental music is dead, long live experimental music, type-thing. But it was kindve about its reintroduction into music itself. Because exp music is in many ways a discarding or rejection or an ignorance of the rules, structures and formalities of western tempered scale ie harmony, scales, melody etc. but also not neccesarily, sometimes its just about organisation, rather than sound. i think its inevitable that much of todays music, while much more abstract than music of say, 20 years ago, is in fact rather digestible due to the work carved out by exp musicians gone before. It may well be it is an era and a genre to be explored and participated in now and isnt as much a description of a way of working as it is, as you mentioned, a somewhat predictable sound set. theres still room for shifts tho i think, and artists will always look for, not neccesarily new sounds, but new ways of organising or eliciting them. By way of analogy you could say painters dont neccesarily look for new colours, its about pallette, additional materials, the canvas, what the painting is, composition etc…

[Open_Mike]

We won’t be done experimenting until every possible parameter combination of every synth/app/electronic device has been combined with every possible sound and every possible thing done to it, recorded in every possible way, done everything else possible to it, and then combined with every possible instrument played in every possible way in every possible combination, etc, etc…
After that you have to repeat with that as the sound source…
The possible permutations are increasing exponentially daily just with smartphone apps, that new instrument some woman just made today in the jungle, and that sound an undiscovered animal just made… .

No, but I see where your coming from. So much stuff has been done, but If we haven’t done it before we are still personally experimenting. I do a lot of experimenting with routing, fx, sequence tricks, OT stuff, cv, etc… But usually I have a banging beat and a catchy groove, so in the end I wouldn’t specifically call my music experimental, even if it’s background soundscape is some crazy multiple machine, sequenced gated, resampled, heavily effected, obscurely routed total experiment…

I think I would define a recording I make as experimental only if it sounds like nothing I’ve vet heard in my life. If I experimented a lot to make the recording but it still sounds like another genre, I would call it that…

Genres are funny. As a musician who gravitated to electronics, I don’t define myself in a genre because I like to play many of them. Coming from bands we would always play different tempos, styles, etc., but it was more the character of the sounds that define the bands style. As a band progresses, often they developed a signature sound that is recognizable no matter what type of song they are performing.
I don’t mind naming a genre to a recording to help folks have an idea of what it is before they listen, but my next recording might be a different genre…

I posted this the other day, but here’s how I best describe the type of music I would like to perform:

Consider the Earth as a living spaceship.
My electronic beats, baselines, and psychedelic fx represent the Earth blasting through space like a rocket.
The melodies of my guitar and vocals represent more the actual vibes of the Earth as a living being…

That’s what I tell trippy people if they ask, for more normal people I’ll say something like “I combine funk, rock, and world music, along with dancy electronic beats”…

[Open_Mike]

Oh, and I forgot my new genre…
I might start playing some “Other World” music…
Not sure though, I have to take a moment and planet out!

[thetechnobear]

Avant garde cavemen, banging their hideskin drums eventually getting disillusioned that all the sequences of beats

Nope, I suspect they lived in the moment, felt the excitement, raw energy - an idea it had meaning (against evil spirit/pleasing kind spirits).
it meant something to them, they didn’t care it meant anything to others …
I’d venture caring about it being new /important/ avant-garde , came very very late.
… so unless your trying to ‘sell’ your art? Is it important it’s got an experimental tag?

However we should/are experimenting on our own all the time? No?

[vantablack]

previous speakers point out many and different aspects which all are true. another aspect to point out is purpose, what is the idea, and semantics when we use the words “new” and/or “experimental”. i think we often take for granted that the readers has the same idea and gets the same mental pictures of what the experimentation looks like, how it is done and with what etc. i could argue that if i were to group my mother, a friend and one of my neighbours to collaborate and use whatever they want including my instruments, the outcome would be both experimental and new.

the experimental part would be that;
my mother has no formal musical schooling, still to this day she exclusively listens to the same old ska and reggae / trojan collections with Scooter as the only exception.
my friend is a devout black metal fan who is comfortably isolated in that community.
the neighbour, granted that any of them agrees, i know nothing about more than that all of them is older than me except one that is about the same as me 27≈35 and that they are polite.

the fact that they are their unique individuals with the complexity that means, in this particular constellation, are my agents in my idea of getting a result that differs from what would have been if i were to make the sounddesign, composition and mixing myself. despite the fact that many would be able to both point out specific instruments and maybe melodies and what not, it would still be both new and experimental. it would be new even if they decided to cover africa by Toto.

i hope i could make some kind of sense

[thetechnobear]

Good point @vantablack, highlighted today when my GF described the music my friends and I played recently as ‘sounded like they were trying to contact their home planet’

[Open_Mike]

I think that that falls under the “Other World Music” genre I mentioned…

[t3h]

Experimenting in music is for expanding the horizon of what is possible to say using the sounds and rhythms. We are not even scratching the surface of what is possible to communicate with music…

[mokomo]

you could be right … though I imagine early music and how it was performed also saw development of artistic ambition striving for more personalised expression in storytelling and mood-setting. The more impactful and emotive one could relay a tale through music, the more people wanted you to be the one to tell it. It may not all have been of a religious/superstitious vent.
However that is not about experimentation per se.

It is difficult to think, should you be writing a book about experimental music today and creating the table of contents by genre, that in 100 years time there will be unthought of chapters to be filled…

[digitalgeist]

“Avant Garde music is like research music. You’re glad someone’s done it but you don’t necessarily want to listen to it.” Brian Eno

[umonox]

For me Experimental Music is not related to the Sounds themselve - but to the combination of them! Experimental Music means for me: Combining things in a way that is fresh and new. No need to create something new!

Best example: A Synth with a Violin was surely nothing one wouldve thought about, few decades ago. Until someone just did it and noticed: Fu** yeah, they sound great together! This is experimentation the way it should be! There is no need to reinvent the wheel since, like you said, most Sound sources have been covered/sampled already. Instead: Focus on what you have and try to figure out how you could combine it in ways no one would usually think about. Whereever this will lead you to: Im pretty sure it can be called Experimental Music in the end

[umonox]

Very interesting approach! You should pack this into Tutorial Videos and start a Youtube Career with that As it would lead to literally infinite outcomes for one single Task. Which in turn leads to a literally infinite amount of Videos you could create - that would all be interesting in their own sense! Seriously - you should think about that!

[Yohon]

Yeah experimental as a genre can sometimes mean it’s going to be a rough listening experience! However unless you are a godlike genius experimentation is naturally a part of music making anyway. Like as you go you might experiment with different kick drums or different EQ settings on the baseline. For me a lot of music is guesswork I’m just trying to get better and faster at guessing what works and what doesn’t. I experiment to get to a place that works to my ears but it’s still somewhat subjective. Like someone can have a snare be 20 decibels too loud and say it’s experimental and some one else might laugh and say no it’s a snare that’s too loud to sound balanced! Lol. It can be tempting to call things experimental too if you ask me because I think sometimes we want use it so we don’t get labeled, judged, or put in a box because we are making a certain style and trying to change it a little. It’s one tricky work depending on how it’s used!

[Open_Mike]

This is reminding me that for a couple of years I played with two friends and their piles of electronics, me on guitar with lots of fx pedals, often tweaking knobs more than playing notes…
At every break I’d manually rewire the pedal order to get new sounds.

We’d play once a week or so from midnight to sunrise and beyond, we had no beats, just walls of experimental sounds for hours on end through the night. I guess I’ll add too that on break we usually aimed a five foot telescope to a random place in space, then we each would look and focus on that energy before we went at it again… (Other World Music)

We called it the Laboratory of Funk…
I’ve occasionally fantasized about performing in a lab coat and goggles, with bubbling beakers everywhere!

[vantablack]

that view is both legit and useful for us considering how biased and conditioned we are, regardless under which genre we label ourselves with.
speaking of bias, i remember a gig with a now disbanded band called Feindflug, i was checking out the venue right before it was time for action, and as i returned to the room i heard a hyped guy speaking to his friends about how brutal it was going to be, how the bass would scramble dna. then he saw the stage and the acoustic drums - the disappointment was on par with a child at x-mass. “wtf drums!? this is a electronic band wtf is this shit!?”

[vantablack]

hehe im just adding some thoughts yes that’s the point i guess, every variable counts and causality follows. you should by all means carry on with videos, the few elektron focused i found is a testament to quality over quantity