notesdontmatter

David Harris at the Music technology forum

My thoughts on the Music Technology Forum 23/03/2006
Elder Conservatorium of Music
Adelaide University
Guest Speaker: David Harris

For more specific info on David Harris check out: www.darwinguitar.com/2005/index.php?content=artprof_harris

I don’t know if David Harris himself remembers but I have experienced him as a lecturer in the past, way back in the 90’s. Well, 1999 at Flinders St School of Music to be exact. David was lecturing and running workshop type scenarios for a subject called Music Language Studies. The content of this subject was similar to that which we are experiencing in the music technology forums in the sense that it was generally non conventional music or composition that we were exposed to.

I was a little resistant to much of what I heard in the early stages as a lot of the material tended to challenge my long held assumptions of what music is and its place in society etc, etc. Although I maintain some of my adversity to some specific works which are revered by many people, I do believe that through studying with people like David Harris I have gained a certain degree of understanding regarding the necessity of non conventional approaches to music making for the purpose of breaking new ground. This is also essential for keeping the intellectual composing culture moving forward. As is necessary in any art form I whole heartedly support the need for artists involved to engage in the highest degree of self indulgence possible to generate real results from their work.

David Harris certainly seems to have spent a lot of his time as a musician composing given that the first piece he played for us at the forum was written fifteen years ago. This piece, which was played with only a handful of notes in the lower octave range of the piano (I think somewhere around C-1) produced some interesting harmonic results as it was played entirely with the sustain pedal pressed down (as far as I could tell anyway). Unfortunately with this type of approach to gaining complex harmonic results the new harmonics acquired are usually of low amplitude, which makes it difficult for them to compete with the very loud volume of the fundamental notes being played. This means that one has to listen very carefully to comprehend even some of what is going on at a higher level than what is immediately obvious about the piece of music.

I felt that Jack Vees piece (Surf Music 2) (www.leisureplanetmusic.com/composer/vees/bio.htm) achieved a more desirable harmonic result. This was due I believe to the bowed bass guitar producing long sustained fundamental notes that did not require a hard fast attack to produce volume. This is in stark contrast to David’s Piano piece in which he attacked the Steinway in the EMU recording space with intense ferocity (I was surprised at how long he could keep it up for). Some of the resulting chords in Surf Music 2 were very sweet sounding. There were even moments when I could hear an almost perfectly intonated dominant seventh chord (don’t ask me in which key) and was expecting the piece to resolve to the relevant tonic. Another interesting effect I suspect was coming from the scratching in particular areas of the bass strings by the violin bow. This started about halfway through the piece and sounded strikingly similar to Jimi Hendrixs’ Foxy Lady intro where Hendrix simply holds down the B and G strings of his Stratocaster at the 7th fret and applies savage vibrato without actually plucking the strings while slowly swelling the volume knob from zero to ten (or did his go up to eleven). Well apparently you can achieve the same effect by playing a bass guitar with a violin bow, who would have thought?

I could appreciate the effect that David was going for with his glissando obsession influenced compossible (I’m sure that’s what he called it, the dictionary meaning is: ‘Able to exist with another thing; consistent’ someone correct me if I’m wrong) but once again I did find it difficult to hear the full extent of the microtonal interplay from the two violinists duelling with their respective glissando techniques as lots of it is drowned out by the fundamentals involved.

I think it would be fair to end my comments by saying that I have not listened to a great deal of this kind of music as yet so I’m sure the sensitivity and interpretation by my own ears of these aural challenges at this stage will definitely have room for improvement. I look forward to hearing more of this diverse music and sound in the future and I’m sure my twentieth century hearing will get with the times eventually.

References:

David Harris. "Music Technology Workshop / Artist Talk – David Harris." Lecture presented at the Electronic Music Unit, EMU space, University of Adelaide, 23 March 2006.

Noah Porter. Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=Compossible

posted by David J Dowling @ 3:05 PM