Music is quite possibly the most culturally universal thing on the planet. Every known culture has music. A lot of people have this idea that western music is “modern” and other cultures’ music is “primitive”, this is of course horse-figs. Music made in China or Tobega today is as contemporary as music made in the West today – they are both made today.<\/p>\n
So Bach got it wrong when he used tribal music as the intro to “The rites of spring” to give it a “primitive feel”, the reality is that music he took inspiration from was just as contemporary as the music he was creating (for that time), this doesn’t change that he created one of the better symphonies, it does mean that what he intended to achieve with it was impossible in that way.<\/p>\n
Music is a universal, but there is no universal music. Every culture has a different musical scale. Music notation as we know it, can in fact only be used to write down western music, and even then only those newer than the 1500’s or so.
\nThis is because for starters, western music before that used completely different scales (which ones we don’t know for sure, but some of them like Gregorian chants still survive). And worse, it cannot even truly represent all western music since then.
\nA good example is guitars, notation can and does efficiently encode most known classical guitar pieces (with only a few exceptions like some Spanish balads that incorporate moments of using the guitar box as a percussion instrument – slapping it – in between the notes). Classic guitars however have only two ways they can be played, strumming or chords, both of which notation knows about.
\nElectric guitars on the other hand add several other techniques. For starters there’s “choking” (what Hendrix invented), where the guitar is played like usual, but the notes are pressed right up against the guitar-base – this doesn’t work on classical guitars because the notes would be too soft, but electric guitars have amps. Notation has now way of indicating -play this A right up against the head, yet it gives your songs a very different emotional feel.
\nAnd that’s not the worst of it.
\nNow try sliding, sliding is a technique where electric guitarists press the strings flat using a hollow object of some sort, a short metal pipe can work but beer-bottles are often employed. Sliding causes the slide-object to vibrate a note in harmony with the chords played – effectively you’re playing two instruments at once in harmony now – try writing notation for THAT one.
\nAnd that’s not even the most important electric guitar technique of all – what electric guitarists are most famous for is the “rapid strum” where the same note is played over and over so fast that it sounds like it lasts for a very long time, usually introducing a “howl” sound into the note.
\nMetal-players particularly love the howl as an emotive expression. But notation has no idea what to make of that, since no other instrument can be played that way, a a violin with a six meter bow would maybe come close.
\nSo guitarists, especially rock-guitarists tend to prefer writing their songs down as riffs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Music is quite possibly the most culturally universal thing on the planet. Every known culture has music. A lot of people have this idea that western music is “modern” and other cultures’ music is “primitive”, this is of course horse-figs. Music made in China or Tobega today is as contemporary as music made in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20,6,10,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aj-venter","category-art","category-music","category-uncategorical"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9blZT-dY","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":867,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2005\/10\/27\/whammy-bar-part-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":866,"position":0},"title":"Whammy Bar – Part 2","author":"AJ","date":"27 October 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Now if notation cannot even handle one of the most popular present day western instruments, imagine how bad it gets with other cultures. Bach tried to emulate tribal music - he was even further off than he thought since their entire scale system was different, he could get a near\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "AJ Venter"","block_context":{"text":"AJ Venter","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/old-categories\/aj-venter\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1254,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/07\/03\/rbs\/","url_meta":{"origin":866,"position":1},"title":"RBS","author":"nathaniel","date":"03 July 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the most fascinating discussions that emerged from the iCommons iSummit, at least for me, came out of the presentation by Israeli rock stars RHYTHM BEATING SILENCE aka RBS. Their fascinating story is of a band who \"made it,\" but in a small scene driven by virtually one label\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1288,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/02\/skatesonic-cobi-hits-cali\/","url_meta":{"origin":866,"position":2},"title":"Skatesonic – Cobi hits Cali","author":"nathaniel","date":"02 August 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"via networked performance (who got it from we-make-money-not-art - even tho Cobi actually sent me an email which I accidentally deleted... cobi, could you send me that again?): Skateboard music interface Cobi van Tonder, author of the brilliant Ephemeral Gumboots, has been commissioned a new work for ISEA2006. The project,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"vanTonder250x.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.turbulence.org\/blog\/images\/vanTonder250x.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1465,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2007\/05\/09\/laura-bush-music-video-liberals-just-another-word\/","url_meta":{"origin":866,"position":3},"title":"Laura Bush Music Video (Liberal’s Just Another Word…)","author":"nathaniel","date":"09 May 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":46,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2003\/03\/01\/mianet\/","url_meta":{"origin":866,"position":4},"title":"mia.net","author":"nathaniel","date":"01 March 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"I just realized that it is nowhere mentioned on my site that mia.net is my hosting service, which was recommended to me by my buddy josh. In his words, \"Jeremy Kinsey deserves all of your money.\" But the reason Jeremy deserves it is that he does not take it all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "technology"","block_context":{"text":"technology","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/technology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1895,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/18\/milwaukee-first-upgrade-sunday-april-19th\/","url_meta":{"origin":866,"position":5},"title":"Milwaukee first Upgrade! Sunday APril 19th","author":"nathaniel","date":"18 April 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"Upgrade! Milwaukee presents Patrick Lichty and Christopher Burns! Sunday April 19, 7 - 9 PM MOCT, 240 E Pittsburgh Ave Milwaukee, WI 53204 Please come to our first-ever Upgrade! Milwaukee, featuring Chicago-based Patrick Lichty and Milwaukee\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own Christopher Burns! patrick lichty Patrick Lichty (b.1962)\u00c2\u00a0 is a technologically-based conceptual artist, writer,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"patrick lichty","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/digiwaukee.net\/upgrade\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/picture-1-390x272.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}