one very important thing has been overlooked here I believe:
the real minimal music lacks goal-directed motion in its structure, events don’t follow previous ones
I think the nature of minimalism is often misunderstood. It’s not necessarily about having one or two things. It’s about stripping away anything that doesn’t provide value. That can result in owning several synths, or having sixteen tracks playing — it’s different for everyone. For me, I’ve been satisfied with combinations of A4, DN, phone (samples), and laptop (Ableton). Einstein articulated the idea best, “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
That’s just not true at all. Music is linear media. Events follow previous events in time, whether you like it or not. Everything you hear in a piece of music is contextualised by what came before it. Unless your entire track is a 1ms beep, your ‘events’ are very much sequential.
Key aspect of their point being, imo, ‘goal driven’. While time ofc gives a de facto temporality to all music, some (lots of) music has a sense of temporality where aspects are understood to be driving towards some kind of culmination.
Eg compare Also Spracht Zarathustra with Eno’s ‘Reflections’ (generative non-repeating infinite app) and we’re clearly dealing with a different understanding of the place the music takes within time.
Well yeah, that‘s just the fundamental essence of music and sound in general.
But in a more artistic way of framing things, describing music as „static“ or whatever is in my opinion a very valid argument.
I would love to hear more about this… personally I don’t agree, but maybe I don’t know enough.
It would be cool to hear “real minimal music” as well or to know if there is an exact definition. I feel like “minimal” can be interpreted in different ways.
When I think minimal music, I just think of music without an excess amount of sounds or change ups… but would never think of it as lacking goal directed motion in it’s structure all though I’m sure there are tracks out there that are like that.
Goal directed motion in it’s structure - Motion in the structure with a goal… what’s the goal?
“Leonard Meyer described minimal music in 1994:
Because there is little sense of goal-directed motion, [minimal] music does not seem to move from one place to another. Within any musical segment, there may be some sense of direction, but frequently the segments fail to lead to or imply one another. They simply follow one another.”
To those that what to know more… You can find more of the same or similar and much more about minimalism in general here:
On the general theme, Line is having a 40% off sale. Line’s byline (there’s some minimal repition for you) is: “Richard Chartier’s LINE publishes editions documenting compositional & installation works by international sound artists & composers exploring the aesthetics of minimalism”
Really like that - will look up some more Mars89.
The repeated vocal hook made me think immediately of Untold (might be straying away from the minimalism theme here!):
One of the youtube comments: “Eating a lobster” - so funny!
Sometimes I get the feeling that in aesthetics “minimalism” only means knowing clearly what you want to express. This realization might render a lot of noise redundant, and what looks/sounds stripped down might just as well be called precise.
I remember having this experience subjectively. I was listening to one of Mick Turner’s solo records (guitarist of the Dirty Three) and thinking ‘this is more like looking at a painting than listening to a song’. Meaning the whole piece had to be considered or ‘taken in’ simultaneously, or in a non-linear time frame. It was as if the whole piece “landed all at once” despite the fact I was listening to it over a duration of time.
No illicit substances were involved in the experience or the account thereof.