Aphex Twin horizontal music/

[Guest Deslouriers]

Sorry, back to standard WATMM fare.

 

Poop

Boobies

LAWL URBAD

internets

I like my music not yours

 

Better?

 

[Guest hahathhat]

Sorry, back to standard WATMM fare.

 

Poop

Boobies

LAWL URBAD

internets

I like my music not yours

 

Better?

 

absolutely not. i wasn't complaining, just explaining

[essines]

i listened to naglfar earlier today and my dick got hard. is that horizontal or vertical? cause my penis went straight up, but it hit my desk and wound up sitting horizontal for a while. i'm confused.

[Guest Benedict Cumberbatch]

this is a great thread but i'm too stupid to understand it

[GORDO]

I like to tilt my head and make both diagonal.

[Squee]

I... I enjoy all kinds of music. I like them all. I like everything.

[OneToThirtySix]

kaini, are you talking about the difference between, say, a piece that is composed of various melodies layered to create a song, versus a song with a hook melody and clever lyrics?

[kaini]

i'm sorry if my initial description was a bit nebulous, it was late.

 

it's difficult to describe what i'm talking about even if i know what it is. it's textural vs melodic music, but it's more than that.

 

zaphod, what i was on about with coltrane "sculpting realms of possibility using sheets of sound" - those words were carefully chosen. "sheets of sound" is a description often used regarding coltrane's modal, albert ayler-influenced improvisation technique adopted late in his career. it uses very rapid workouts through many scales and modes off those scales (the "realms of possibilty" being "sculpted") in very rapid succession. it's often very difficult to tell what key it's in, and it sounds, essentially, a lot like ornette coleman's free jazz - but the improvisation is still constrained by a set of rules, which is what makes it different from coleman. it's good you brought this up, because it actually helps to highlight exactly what i'm on about.

 

this coltrane stuff is horizontal - it might sound like chaos, but there is a melody in a scale confined by a set of rules, and a progression of chords, however vague. take something like 'doe a deer' - this is also horizontal. there is a definable melody that goes somewhere and can be written

 

C D E D E D E/D E F F E D F/E F G E G E G/F G A A G F A
etc

 

now, can you do that for brian eno's '1/1'?

 

i suppose technically you could, but it would be a pointless exercise. it would be drawing a black circle on a white background on the screen, then taking down the hexadecimal color values for every pixel on a screen by hand into a notepad. far easier to say 'circle of diameter n and color #aabbcc centered at x/y on a background of #ddeeff'.

 

what you could do for brian eno's '1/1' is transcribe the lovely little melody that's the only melodic information in the rather long song. and next to it, you could transcribe the process eno used in making the track.

» Click to show Spoiler - click again to hide... «

aside: in fact eno did this for us on discreet music, and there's a diagram of the setup on the back cover. you can, and i have, recreated the setup, or the process (buzz is ideal for it, actually), and make your own discreet music

and this i guess is another thing that differentiates vertical from horizontal music in my head. if it has key changes and a melody and chords, it's probably horizontal. if it's a process or textural or a combination of techniques like that, it's probably vertical - but these are only sorta examples. i hope you have a better idea what i'm on about now.

[kaini]

Horizontal music (western) being music that has a perceived goal within the piece of music. It's the whole resolution of chords and feeling that music has 'accomplished' something, if you get what I mean.

 

Vertical music (eastern) being music that just is, which I think he was trying to say SAWII was trying to do. Like, the music is there, and it just sit there and, well, is. Imagine the Tao of music.

 

this is also sorta partially it, but the fact you derive this into an east/west thing makes you look like a hippy. lamonte young is very vertical music by my definition, and ravi shankar follows very strict melodic rules (the raga) in his improvisations.

 

edit: although they are improvisations. hmmm i was a bit wrecked when i made this thread lol.

[OneToThirtySix]

this is also sorta partially it, but the fact you derive this into an east/west thing makes you look like a hippy. lamonte young is very vertical music by my definition, and ravi shankar follows very strict melodic rules (the raga) in his improvisations.

 

edit: although they are improvisations. hmmm i was a bit wrecked when i made this thread lol.

 

So horizontal music is along the lines of "Ta-Da!  It's a song!", but vertical music is just music for the sake of music?

 

edit: I don't mean "Here's a shitty track for the sake of making a song" type, but by layering elements, the song improves.

[kaini]

the beatles' 'when i'm sixty four' has a progression you can write down. the bass is

 

verse made of parallel fourths following the chords

chorus based on root, fourth, and fifth

verse, optional modulation

bridge which is in a related minor key

verse

chorus

 

within this structure, there's a vocal which has a melody which further refines exactly what direction the music is going in.

i suppose what i'm trying to communicate is that there's lots of music like this and lots of music which is completely not like this.

[Guest ms-dos]

i don't know... kaini's posts make good sense to me. although i'd stress that nearly all music falls along a vertical/horizontal continuum, with very few pieces neatly fitting at one end or the other of the binary distinction.

 

kaini: out of curiosity, where would you place most NEU! ? or maybe clark's "matthew unburdened"?

 

[chim]

its so funny when nonmusicians try to label musical expressions

 

thats how you wind up with terms like horizontal/vertical and afx fades

[chenGOD]

and this i guess is another thing that differentiates vertical from horizontal music in my head. if it has key changes and a melody and chords, it's probably horizontal. if it's a process or textural or a combination of techniques like that, it's probably vertical - but these are only sorta examples. i hope you have a better idea what i'm on about now.

 

Oh I get what you're on about now.

So like Basinski's Disintigration Tapes would be vertical for you.

Interesting...where would you put say...Take Five? The main section has only two chords (E♭m and B♭m⁷ ) and the solos are all done over top of that with those hypnotic piano chords running through it...

I always think of stuff like that as vertical cause you have to work with in this vertical structure...

[Guest ezkerraldean]

lateral music/

[chenGOD]

its so funny when nonmusicians try to label musical expressions

 

thats how you wind up with terms like horizontal/vertical and afx fades

 

it's so funny when people make assumptions.

[gaarg]

Where does Alberto Balsalm go? Both in a way, right?

 

My opinion is that since a lot of electronic artists explore sound combining articulation that kinda makes them vertical. A track like Tetra-sync seem however very horizontal. Nice thread, makes thing to think about!

[pcock]

as far as i can grasp you are talking about progressive vs set form?

[Guest dese manz hatin]

i like minimal

 

WAT KAN I SAY

[gaarg]

Me, kaini or everybody in this topic?

[OneToThirtySix]

within this structure, there's a vocal which has a melody which further refines exactly what direction the music is going in.

 

This is vertical?

[Guest my usernames always really suck]

its so funny when nonmusicians try to label musical expressions

 

thats how you wind up with terms like horizontal/vertical and afx fades

 

If music theory didn't sound like postmodern psychobabble then maybe nonmusicians could use actual music theory phrases instead of having to come up with phrases that are equally inaccurate but at least make some intuitive sense to English-speaking listeners.

[pcock]

if you actually tried a bit of music theory you would realise its actually quite fascinating and enlightening, rather than 'postmodern psycho-babble', whatever that means.

[Guest my usernames always really suck]

if you actually tried a bit of music theory you would realise its actually quite fascinating and enlightening, rather than 'postmodern psycho-babble', whatever that means.

 

If music theory text came with audio that gives fucking examples of what it's talking about, sure.

[Dan C]

lol.

 

This thread delivers.