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Steve Reich's getting some well justified criticism nowadays for his cultural attitudes (edited to add, it's probably just clearer to say he's made some racist comments, or been reported to), but nonetheless I found myself ripping him off this evening in a jam for a friend, give it a listen here:
Lots of clipping, probably needs editing, the levels are all off, but somehow it comes together pretty ok, at least I think so! Like a lot of my other tunes lately I'll probably re-record it, we'll see if the vibes remain.
No @Kel_, I meant Steve Reich, one of the pioneers of minimalist music in the US, who this piece is ripping off quite a bit. I'll have to edit to make that clear.
It's an interesting question for me as the times progress and our sentiments change... how do we keep our connections to the icons of the past who don't meet the standards of the present day (and who should've known better back then TBH)? For myself I'm choosing the path of valuing the art, acknowledging the importance of these people in history, but moving along and maybe this is part of that, the future has plenty of great tunes yet to hear.
Oh... that is indeed very disappointing, but you raise an excellent question. I am a fan of Mr. Reich's music, have been for a very long time, one of the best concerts I have ever been to was a live rendition of Music for 18 Musicians - which was absolutely out of this world!
Generally, I think people need to be a lot more forgiving, these days it's like you say one thing wrong or make one mistake and it's like you are the devil incarnate.
Attitudes and appropriate behaviour change over time and are different for different people, hell - cannibalism is accepted in some cultures, marriage of young children in others, etc. It's not that long ago that full on racism was pretty much fully accepted in western cultures, even deemed absolutely necessary for survival by some! I have talked with some people in Africa that I would consider to be extremely racist, yet when you hear the stories that led them to have these beliefs, it's understandable on some level. They are prejudiced literally because they believe their lives depend on it. Would I go wandering around the streets at night in some SA townships? Er... not a hope in hell! Is that prejudice or just not being insanely stupid and reckless? I could say the same thing about certain areas in Manchester, UK while I was growing up, possibly still true to some extent.
So it is only when someone absolutely insists on being severely nasty despite being asked to reconsider that I ever speak out about these things.
I am definitely in the camp of well, come on, give them time and show a little tolerance, you know, have a conversation. How can you expect anyone else to show tolerance if you show none yourself?
Otherwise we just end up in a situation where it is "us and them", and without wanting to be over dramatic, that's literally how wars start!
It's not like anyone who grew up with certain cultural beliefs and a lifetime of experience is suddenly going to wake up one day and for no reason at all suddenly become a completely different person is it... these things take time, patience, effort, understanding and forgiveness.
I am not making excuses for whatever they said, I am trying to add a certain element or rationality to the situation. I realise there will be people out there who will show me no tolerance or understanding for saying these things... but such is life!
Do we destroy all the Egyptian artefacts because of Egyptian slavery? Probably not... although I guess some people would!?
Art is art. Acknowledging it's context and cultural relevance is important, but by no means required, or even possible in any meaningful sense in many case.
To the question about Reich and progress, I have kind of mixed feelings about all this. On the one hand, I think holding people accountable for their behavior is critical, but on the other hand we (here in the US) live in a very punishment oriented culture and seem to prefer to hurt people rather than to help them grow and work through their issues. On the other other hand, abusers or racists are often great at playing the game, so protecting people from harm can very much be in tension with the desire to help others improve (rather than just be cancelled).
It's a pretty tough nut to crack, the solution I aim for is a bit of a "not OR, AND" and accept that Reich has issues and probably caused harm in his own community, that I should not be buying his music and should support other folks instead, but that I can also acknowledge he made some great songs and that I can continue to enjoy them, just maybe not so much from a "He's an Icon" perspective. Everyone will of course have a different perspective on this though, and I think the next few years and decades will definitely be interesting in how we keep working through all this as a people.
Hi Troux, (I will avoid Steve to avoid confusion ;-) )
Oh yes, that's a nice drone! I am glad it's at least 18 minutes, first you think 18 minutes, long time to go! But before you know it's over and pressing the play button again to listen at it just one more time to enjoy!
Nicely done, also like the sound that kicks in around 10:00. It's a nice gift to give a friend! :-)
Kind regards, Garfield.
For review reports of Eurorack modules, please refer to https://garfieldmodular.net/ for PDF formatted downloads
Yeah...I get the Steve Reich issue, mainly from having studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen right around 9/11. Stocki made this statement that was 100% a self-boobytrap, stating in a presser that he thought that the 9/11 attacks were "...the greatest work of Lucifer's art perpetuated upon mankind".
Self-boobytrap? Yep...because there was a axe-grindy reporter there from the Hamburg (I think) newspaper who quoted all of that EXCEPT the mention of Lucifer. Still a quote, if you're willing to go with the definition of "that came out of Karlheinz's mouth" alone. As a result, there was a MASSIVE surge of people condeming Stockhausen for "celebrating" the 9/11 attacks as a "greatest work of art". Which, natch, isn't what was said (thankfully, there WAS tape of this fiasco!). But it harmed him, and the reporter got the dig in at Stocki that he was apparently looking for. This did get straightened out...eventually...after it resulted in cancellations of concerts of his work in the USA that had been scheduled for 2001/02.
But yeah, I get it...there are definitely reasons to be skeptical of what figures of this sort are "saying", which might NOT actually be what they said! After all, Steve Reich's not the first people to make off the cuff moronic comments like that; I recall Elvis Costello's nasty, alcohol-fueled comment about Ray Charles while EC was on his berserk and bizarre "Armed Forces" N.Am tour. And yes, he caught a raft of crap for that...rightly so...but then, was it Elvis talking or the booze, tour-strain, etc? Eventually, it turned out that those were the culprit, and not Elvis Costello himself. So you have to take what musicians do/say with a grain of salt about the size of a cattle block sometimes. We're a strange lot.
@GarfieldModular, glad to hear you enjoyed it and thanks for listening as always. I realize 18 minutes is quite an investment, but I'm happy it paid off, this time at least! Now, when're we going to hear some more tunes from you? It's been too long.
I do remember that about Stockhausen @Lugia, what an interesting, crazy guy. You do make a fair point about context, but overall I think the bar's being raised for what we expect from people, which is necessary and even rather late, but also lots to figure out about how we reconcile the past with our vision for the future. The 21st century will be interesting I think. Re: this tune @Lugia, it's the patch I was working on the other day where we were discussing envelope followers: the HP and LP outputs each go into one of the DUSG inputs (whose fall CVs are tweaked by the Ochd), with the HP Envelope set to control the filter cutoff in reverse, basically setting the HP and LP filters up to fight over the cutoff point. I'm looking forward to more experiments like this... #modularrocks
Must've missed it @GarfieldModular, I'll give it a listen now! BTW, the tones that come in later in the piece above are field recordings of bells from the Netherlands, funny that you'd especially appreciate that part 🇳🇱🇳🇱🇳🇱
Oh interesting those field recordings of bells from the Netherlands :-) I felt that sound gives the track a nice (unexpected) touch, yes indeed I liked it!
Kind regards, Garfield.
For review reports of Eurorack modules, please refer to https://garfieldmodular.net/ for PDF formatted downloads
Speaking of Dutch bell recordings, I really wish I could find some off the air recordings of various shortwave interval signals. So many of these seem to be disappearing (along with shortwave programming in general). The Dutch one was really striking, too...field recording of a carillon in (I think?) Hilversum. Add the static and fading, and it sounded MAJESTIC!!!
I googled around a bit, I'd guess it's out there somewhere @Lugia but you'd have to hunt a bit. If you're into shortwave though I check in on this site now and then (also funnily enough based in the Netherlands), plenty of weird beeps and boops. http://websdr.ewi.utwente.nl:8901/
Oh thanks that's a great suggestion, happily I already have this lovely little module!!
It's surprisingly useful as a noise source, even when there's nothing juicy to pick up :)
I think I could setup a huge SW antenna where I live now, I might look into doing that next summer when the weather is a bit better...
I also keep meaning to look into a little transmitter for it, send some sounds through the air and pick them back up again with that little dark black cauldron!
Yep, an RTL-SDR dongle is very much on the "need to implement" list here, but I want some way to address the SDR software via Ableton FIRST. Two ways come to mind...
1) Build an SDR demodulator into a VST. Basically, a stripped-down implementation of typical SDR software, but missing some of the more typical bells-n-whistles in favor of having direct connectivity to the DAW. Or...
2) M4L object that's been programmed to address an existing SDR software package from inside Live.
I don't know of either of these existing at present. Which, frankly, is a bit surprising...
EDIT: Oh, as for shortwave antennas that DON'T span your entire yard (which I have, but then...de WX9T, so...yeah), I suggest a WIRE VERTICAL!
What you need is as follows: wire (duh!), one of those steel screw-in yard stakes for large dogs, a couple of egg insulators, a screw-in hook, eyebolt or some other top support, solder, and something to solder with (I use a cigar torch lighter when out in the yard...works like the blowtorch it really is!). You can also add a matching balun, but since the frequency use will be all over the map, that's not apt to be that useful all the time.
So...right outside a window or something else you can get a wire out of, screw the pet stake into the ground. Then attach a loop of wire to the top of the stake with an egg insulator at the end. This is your bottom anchor. Once that's in place, get up higher from this (about two stories is all you need, but longer is better...typical for a lot of things, really) and attach the hook to something. Put another loop and insulator on that, then attach the long length of wire that serves as the antenna itself to the other side of the egg. Drop the long wire from there, then go back down to the base. Tension, then attach the antenna wire to the base egg by wrapping the wire back onto itself and soldering the twist. Oh, yeah...do that at the top, too, if you can manage it.
Now, run two wires from the radio or whatever to the base of the antenna. One of these should be the ground, and this is what you'll attach to the metal pet stake. Solder this to the ring that you'd attach a leash to, then solder the other wire to the bottom of the antenna wire itself. Connect this wire to the ANTENNA terminal or whatever you use to get a signal into your receiver. And that's IT. Takes up about a square foot of space, but performs like it occupies 50+ feet. I used one for quite some time with my Icom 731S (Japanese-market 10W version of the Icom 735 amateur transceiver...I like a challenge!) and managed to work about 30 states and two provinces with that and only 10 watts of phone signal. The key is in the vertical element...it has a very low "angle of incident" (also the title of a very insane Van der Graaf Generator track), so distant signals come in better. And also, this won't work as well if you try it upside-down...that feedpoint MUST be at ground level.
Anyway, this is a solution for anyone who's got a tiny yard or has to deal with HOA types who also want to use a shortwave receiver in their work, or for those using the Evaton RF Nomad, the receiver in the Koma Field Kit, etc.
