Aphex Twin Failure Is an Option: Why Music Students Are Jealous of Aphex Twin

[Capsaicin]

"Still, he's got a tank and lives in a bank, so i'll shut up."

 

Actually a great way of viewing Aphex Twin. He'll go ahead and do his own thing, and it usually ends up sounding pretty good.

[marf]

Glass did say so a looong time ago, but I guess his sound hasn't changed much since. Like his approach to melody at least

[marf]

I talked to Cylob and he said he thinks aphex has a very musical ear. Thats his only secret

[doorjamb]

I talked to Cylob and he said he thinks aphex has a very musical ear. Thats his only secret

 

did he mention whether it was the left or the right ear? or is that the secret?

[marf]

If I knew I would have stole it by now

[Guest hahathhat]

Listening to tracks like Backdoor.Berbew.Q, I'm not even sure if James knows the theory behind which notes go well together to form acceptable chords. But why should he? His mind, like everyone else's, has been shaped by listening to music his whole life. He has pretty much the same sensibilities when it comes to which notes sound good together and which don't, and if he chooses to play something that sounds hideously out of tune, it's probably on purpose.

 

I think you're right and you're wrong. He doesn't do theory in the music school sense, but without some sort of underlying architecture everything would just be goulash. You can tell Druqks was VERY deliberately composed... intensely dense and choc full of shit. Somehow I doubt he started off with a melody on every track. Maybe some, but not all.

 

In his interviews he often speaks of smells and sounds... WATMM is probably sick of hearing me babble about it, but I still feel synaesthesia is the first crucial pillar supporting his compositional style (notice how "Canticle Drawl" reminds you of licking a 9-volt battery? That sharp, bitter, acidic sound/taste). Detuning synths can give a sort of sour sound. To generalize this beyond teh afx -- Go listen to Chris Clark, he's much more about TEXTURE. Materials. Clark loves to build audio versions of dark warehouses, full of rusty metal and bits of wire mesh.

 

Second pillar is mood, emotion. A lot of his tracks give rise to intense nostalgic feeling. I would be shocked if that's not deliberate.

 

Then, finally, the actual equipment/software he uses is the third pillar, influencing his work style and how he actually puts the track together.

 

I wager any track he does starts from casual mucking about with one or more of these pillars:

 

- He stumbles on a synth patch that "tastes" weird, or has an interesting texture and builds a track around it, and variations of the patch

- He feels nostalgic, angry, whatever and translates his mood into music

- He has a new synth/plugin and makes a track with it just to for the pleasure of figuring it out

- Any sort of combo of the above:

---- The piano tracks on Druqks are moody exploration of some midi-controlled player piano he's abusing with bike chains or something

---- Calmer non-piano tracks on Druqks display a stellar knowledge of sonic tastes, textures, smells, whatever while being very emotional

---- Drill tracks are more a rush than emotional. Is "gurn" an emotion? In any case, they're more about having technical chops -- being able to put that many sounds in a short space, while still having it sound coherent. Millions of little tricks with gating, drum programming, whatever he's amassed over the years.

 

(Of course I am generalizing -- there are exceptions to all three of those Drukqs examples)

 

I love Backboor.Berbew.Q -- the bass and the kick give me a very definite sense of BRICKS, when I listen to the track I picture Richard and some mates out back of a brick building cooking some burgers or whatever -- those floaty pads simultaneously reminding me of occasional puffs of smoke, and a kind of overcast london day (but not raining). Of course this is influenced by the title of the song... curious what I would have thought if he'd named it something else!

 

With the analords, he's gone back to old equipment he knows super well, along with a few new bits to fill in the gaps. People here compare them to oil paintings, and that's a decent analogy... most of the equipment is old hat for him, there's a bit of technical showing off, but it's more about painting scenes and moods....

[Guest hahathhat]

The closest I've gotten to guessing how he approaches composing, is I think [Lichen] was probably a deliberate ripoff of Brian Eno's Discreet Music, at least in terms of the timbres used, as a sort of experiment to see if he could make something in the style of Brian Eno...

 

Yes, this is another angle he takes. Missed it in my post...

 

There's that analord, laricheard... I recall someone pointed out this is mashing "larry" and "richard" together as he does a track in the style of larry [forgot name]. It was a specific larry, though.

[Guest hahathhat]

I DO KNOW, aphex is a paranoid person. He thinks people want to kill him. Someone like that thinks people want to steal his ideas no doubt. So we will never get a true answer from him.

 

i steal his ideas all the time. i'm sure he steals other peoples' too. it's how music goes. not sure why anyone would want to off him

[Guest Babar]

The Aphex Twin has his fair share of quite chromatic melodies and chords—or maybe it’s just that he

doesn’t bother staying in the same key for more than a second or two at a time because he never

learnt about proper music theory. (Philip Glass said so.) Still, he's got a tank and lives in a bank, so i'll

shut up.

 

Philip Glass did learn musical theory but he's only making ultra repetitive stuffs. I prefer listening to some happy techno track rather than a grandiloquent album about the shoah.

 

 

Also i don't think synaesthesia is that important. Sure it can be useful to visualize patterns and notes inside patterns when you compose with machines that have a weak ui (such as the TB), but otherwise i don't think it's that important in composing original sounds.

[Guest hahathhat]

Also i don't think synaesthesia is that important. Sure it can be useful to visualize patterns and notes inside patterns when you compose with machines that have a weak ui (such as the TB), but otherwise i don't think it's that important in composing original sounds.

 

I was saying that musical texture/timbre is important, and synaesthesia is the "theory" of timbre. how else?

[ZoeB]

There's that analord, laricheard... I recall someone pointed out this is mashing "larry" and "richard" together as he does a track in the style of larry [forgot name]. It was a specific larry, though.

 

Yes, Larry Heard. :) So he does imitate others' styles occasionally, and should stop getting annoyed when others pay him the same sincere form of flattery. As long as they don't do it all the time, at least. On a side note, I never understood why everyone said Radiohead's Kid A ripped off Aphex Twin. It sounds like experimental electronic music with a good amount of variation, but it's not like RDJ has the monopoly on that.

 

I know he lies a lot in interviews, so fanaticism aside, I try to treat RDJ like a religion: proof or it didn't happen. I suspect he's just as methodical as other musicians and pretends to have synaesthesia because it sounds cool in interviews. I could be wrong, of course, it's hard to prove either way.

[soundwave]

another none theory based guide to composition

[Guest Masonic Boom]

I talked to Cylob and he said he thinks aphex has a very musical ear. Thats his only secret

 

did he mention whether it was the left or the right ear? or is that the secret?

 

The *WELSH* ear, clearly.

[Guest Masonic Boom]

Hey Zoe - this thread has provoked some really interesting debate, which is always good - but just a question, in case I missed something - what is this essay for? Do you have a specific audience in mind, is it for a publication or course, or just for your own pleasure? Curious, that's all, as to the tone.

 

Have the courage to break the rules; acquire wealth.

 

See, this is the bit that I really don't get ^^^^^^^^

 

It seems to imply a connection which really is tennuous at best.

 

Say, if you want to acquire wealth, become a banker (actually, not really since the crash), become a plumber or an electrical engineer, acquire a trade or skill which is in constant demand.

 

If you want to make an actual, reliable *living* from music, those session jobs and advertising jingles pay the rent. DJs in provincial clubs and drummers in wedding bands, they can pay their mortgages. The only really wealthy people I ever met in the music Bizzzz were the producers, they got paid whether the album was a success or not (and usually had points on the album so they got paid even more if the album sold).

 

People like Mr. D.James are the flukes, the majority of experimental musicians live in their mothers' basements, leech off their girlfriends (or government grants in Europe) or somehow manage to squeeze it in between dayjobs.

 

Selling this idea of creative rule-breaking on the idea of wealth-acquisition is really seriously wrong-headed. For personal satisfaction, for creative freedom, for self actualisation and a host of other really wonderful things, sure. But *wealth*? a) I don't think it's really a motivation for the kind of people who are willing to hear a message like this b) if it is, that's really wrong headed and not likely to work anyway

[Guest Lube Saibot]

Listening to tracks like Backdoor.Berbew.Q, I'm not even sure if James knows the theory behind which notes go well together to form acceptable chords. But why should he? His mind, like everyone else's, has been shaped by listening to music his whole life. He has pretty much the same sensibilities when it comes to which notes sound good together and which don't, and if he chooses to play something that sounds hideously out of tune, it's probably on purpose.

 

I think you're right and you're wrong. He doesn't do theory in the music school sense, but without some sort of underlying architecture everything would just be goulash. You can tell Druqks was VERY deliberately composed... intensely dense and choc full of shit. Somehow I doubt he started off with a melody on every track. Maybe some, but not all.

 

In his interviews he often speaks of smells and sounds... WATMM is probably sick of hearing me babble about it, but I still feel synaesthesia is the first crucial pillar supporting his compositional style (notice how "Canticle Drawl" reminds you of licking a 9-volt battery? That sharp, bitter, acidic sound/taste). Detuning synths can give a sort of sour sound. To generalize this beyond teh afx -- Go listen to Chris Clark, he's much more about TEXTURE. Materials. Clark loves to build audio versions of dark warehouses, full of rusty metal and bits of wire mesh.

 

Second pillar is mood, emotion. A lot of his tracks give rise to intense nostalgic feeling. I would be shocked if that's not deliberate.

 

Then, finally, the actual equipment/software he uses is the third pillar, influencing his work style and how he actually puts the track together.

 

I wager any track he does starts from casual mucking about with one or more of these pillars:

 

- He stumbles on a synth patch that "tastes" weird, or has an interesting texture and builds a track around it, and variations of the patch

- He feels nostalgic, angry, whatever and translates his mood into music

- He has a new synth/plugin and makes a track with it just to for the pleasure of figuring it out

- Any sort of combo of the above:

---- The piano tracks on Druqks are moody exploration of some midi-controlled player piano he's abusing with bike chains or something

---- Calmer non-piano tracks on Druqks display a stellar knowledge of sonic tastes, textures, smells, whatever while being very emotional

---- Drill tracks are more a rush than emotional. Is "gurn" an emotion? In any case, they're more about having technical chops -- being able to put that many sounds in a short space, while still having it sound coherent. Millions of little tricks with gating, drum programming, whatever he's amassed over the years.

 

(Of course I am generalizing -- there are exceptions to all three of those Drukqs examples)

 

I love Backboor.Berbew.Q -- the bass and the kick give me a very definite sense of BRICKS, when I listen to the track I picture Richard and some mates out back of a brick building cooking some burgers or whatever -- those floaty pads simultaneously reminding me of occasional puffs of smoke, and a kind of overcast london day (but not raining). Of course this is influenced by the title of the song... curious what I would have thought if he'd named it something else!

 

With the analords, he's gone back to old equipment he knows super well, along with a few new bits to fill in the gaps. People here compare them to oil paintings, and that's a decent analogy... most of the equipment is old hat for him, there's a bit of technical showing off, but it's more about painting scenes and moods....

 

stellar post. and you've (imo) totally nailed the faux-synaesthesia thing. I (non-pathologically) visualize stuff in pretty much the same way as you describe, but it extends to more than just AFX or clark and the more texturally involved. I mean I'm not going to see much listening to club stuff, yeah... most of it just feels/tastes like energy, nighttime, sweat, sex and bollocks. But stuff like Burial for example... To me Burial conjures up images of pipes speaking, if that makes any sense. It's most apparent on his Four Tet collab, Moth. There it's all like the pulse of an abandoned facility. Or warehouse again, yeah (which would make more sense considering his interviews).

[ZoeB]

what is this essay for? Do you have a specific audience in mind, is it for a publication or course, or just for your own pleasure?

 

Well partly I'm just trying to articulate things in my mind, and other people are kind enough to tell me when I'm being an idiot so I can be less of one, and have better, more refined ideas... This in turn should help me make better music because others keep me on a good path.

 

Also, I'm kinda compelled to write the same way I'm compelled to make music. It's just what I do.

 

Still, it's nice to talk about how how we think music like RDJ's might be made, no? I for one wish there was more music like (some of) his.

 

Have the courage to break the rules; acquire wealth.

 

It seems to imply a connection which really is tennuous at best.

 

Sorry, that bit was meant to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to a certain slogan slapped on top of a Joseph Ducreux self portrait. For what it's worth, the original slogan applies even less to my life and aspirations. :)

 

(I've now updated my essay's ending line. Thanks.)

[Guest Masonic Boom]

Zoe - That's cool! I was wondering if it was for a blog or something, thought it might be interesting to read, so thanks for the link.

 

Completely understand about the "being compelled to write" thing - you may have noticed I suffer from a similar sort of verbal compulsion (some might say diorrhea).

 

Speculation about how an artist like Mr D.James works is fun, but it's interesting how much it reveals about the motivations and beliefs of the person doing the speculation! (People do tend to project their own idealised personalities onto their heroes, it's funny how hero worship works like that.)

 

Bah, stupid me. Didn't get the pop culture reference.

[ZoeB]

I was wondering if it was for a blog or something, thought it might be interesting to read, so thanks for the link.

 

Ah, yes. I publish (if such a grandiose phrase is really warranted on the web) my ramblings on my own site and on everything2.com. My site is essentially a blog, but I prefer to sort things hierarchically rather than by date order as I like to keep track of all my thoughts as best I can, and link them in together like a wiki. My memory's quite bad, so I find it useful to have a publicly accessible catalogue of all my thoughts on things like music making. Plus I gather some of it actually helps other people, so yay!

 

Do you have a blog? I'd be interested to see it.

 

Completely understand about the "being compelled to write" thing - you may have noticed I suffer from a similar sort of verbal compulsion (some might say diorrhea).

 

Yes, but the good thing about the web is it has unlimited storage space. When I was trying to work out how to make some music in the vague style of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, for instance, searching through the archives of this forum was immensely helpful.

 

I guess in Wikipedia's terminology, that makes me an "inclusionist". I'd rather sift through too much information than not have the information I'm looking for because the author was too terse. Forums seem more like coffee houses than newspapers: where people get together to brainstorm ideas.

 

Speculation about how an artist like Mr D.James works is fun, but it's interesting how much it reveals about the motivations and beliefs of the person doing the speculation! (People do tend to project their own idealised personalities onto their heroes, it's funny how hero worship works like that.)

 

I try to separate the person from what that person's achieved. I like a lot of RDJ's music, but I don't care how he personally made it so much as how someone else might go about making something similar. (This is probably just as well given how little he tells the truth.) So the discussions of technique are much more valuable, I think, than equipment lists. Similarly, it's interesting to hear different people's approaches to music making, even if they're not how one successful person happened to personally achieve their own results.

 

Thanks for the stimulating conversation. :)

[Guest Babar]

Also i don't think synaesthesia is that important. Sure it can be useful to visualize patterns and notes inside patterns when you compose with machines that have a weak ui (such as the TB), but otherwise i don't think it's that important in composing original sounds.

 

I was saying that musical texture/timbre is important, and synaesthesia is the "theory" of timbre. how else?

 

I don't really think synaesthesia is that powerful. Maybe i'm not a top notch synaesthete but i think the global consensus among scientists is that synaethesia doesn't bring that much to the cognitive processes. I'm convinced it could be useful only if synaesthetic percepts were trained at a young age and were motivated instead of being arbitrary. If we'd teach synaesthete kids to see digits and numbers with specific colors they'd be able to operate mental calculus on the basis of how colors mixes with each other. Have you ever heard of Daniel Tammet ? Well he's autistic and he's developed a way to work out numbers and dates that relies on colors and landscapes. I think he owes it to his autism.

Now it seems that a significant part of musical synaesthetes have a perfect pitch ("golden ear" ?). Synaesthesia is quite like syntax highlighting. Not really necessary but still convenient. But the comparison is too strong. It's less useful than. Actually it would be more like a syntax highlighter that would mark forgotten line-ending semi-columns. half the time. Anyhow is a perfect pitch really useful when making music ? well not really.

 

 

 

Also mucho claps to the two recently-joined female members leading most of this topic's post (isn't it a sweet feeling being a female ?). I totally appreciate reading your posts and i'm glad you made the aphex's subforum look a little more intersting.

[marf]

fuck off you navel gazing cunts

[Guest hahathhat]

I don't really think synaesthesia is that powerful. Maybe i'm not a top notch synaesthete but i think the global consensus among scientists is that synaethesia doesn't bring that much to the cognitive processes. I'm convinced it could be useful only if synaesthetic percepts were trained at a young age and were motivated instead of being arbitrary.

 

How else can you talk about timbre but using analogies to our other senses? I think my Canticle Drawl / 9volt example is crystal clear... Unlike a true synaesthete, that analogy didn't just come to me... I listened to the track dozens of times, and THEN it just came to me. :) it seems quite obvious after a little mulling over the track. You could probably come up with other analogies based on vision or touch, too, but taste is what my mind came up with. However, true synaesthesia means having it come to you automatically, right off the bat, whether you like it or not! HOWEVER, I feel synaesthesia is a "spectrum" or continuum, just like autism. When I'm really, really high, images will just come to me, in what is likely the REAL synaesthesia... if I'm sober and I get deep into meditation, it will also happen. Some people don't have to have a smoke or meditate to trigger it, though, so I can only imagine how crazy it gets when such people smoke/meditate/both! Most of the time I do not get that deep into it, but I remember what goes on when I do... and once a visualization has come to me, it gets easier to generate it again. I've been working on it for years, and it becomes clearer as time goes on. It is almost like writing mental software.

 

If we'd teach synaesthete kids to see digits and numbers with specific colors they'd be able to operate mental calculus on the basis of how colors mixes with each other. Have you ever heard of Daniel Tammet ? Well he's autistic and he's developed a way to work out numbers and dates that relies on colors and landscapes. I think he owes it to his autism.

Now it seems that a significant part of musical synaesthetes have a perfect pitch ("golden ear" ?). Synaesthesia is quite like syntax highlighting. Not really necessary but still convenient. But the comparison is too strong. It's less useful than. Actually it would be more like a syntax highlighter that would mark forgotten line-ending semi-columns. half the time. Anyhow is a perfect pitch really useful when making music ? well not really.

 

It lets you use more of your brain at once to experience the music, and visualizations/tastes/smells/whatever provide a way to (more) meaningfully talk about the experience with others.

 

Of course I have heard of Daniel Tammet... he is IDM 9000

[marf]

Richard via analogue heaven on the Mc-4 sequencer

 

"Its a deep box when you get to know it,has loads of tricks up its sleeve..

Also when you are making trax on it ,it can make you think you are in a

weird taxi journey."

[marf]

It just comes down to good taste. Just opening the filter on a synth a little too much can ruin a track. Its having the judgment to know when something sounds good or bad. Like an artist using the color blue a little too much or using the right this or that to make a painting just work. Its taste and good judgment

 

who are the girls here? Masonic and babar?

[Guest hahathhat]

"Its a deep box when you get to know it,has loads of tricks up its sleeve..

Also when you are making trax on it ,it can make you think you are in a

weird taxi journey."

 

Yess, it can be a very personal thing, sometimes the analogies that surface don't mean anything to anyone but you. I haven't done much taxi journeying...

[Guest Masonic Boom]

Also mucho claps to the two recently-joined female members leading most of this topic's post (isn't it a sweet feeling being a female ?). I totally appreciate reading your posts and i'm glad you made the aphex's subforum look a little more intersting.

 

Women be shopping in your electronic musics fora subverting yr gender stereotypes!

 

Yes, but the good thing about the web is it has unlimited storage space. When I was trying to work out how to make some music in the vague style of Selected Ambient Works Volume II, for instance, searching through the archives of this forum was immensely helpful.

 

I guess in Wikipedia's terminology, that makes me an "inclusionist". I'd rather sift through too much information than not have the information I'm looking for because the author was too terse. Forums seem more like coffee houses than newspapers: where people get together to brainstorm ideas.

 

I really love this coffeehouse idea, and I think that is the interweb at its purest and best.

 

I'd always rather have too much information than too little - hell, half my job is making sense of huge amounts of information and spotting the patterns in it.

 

Speculation about how an artist like Mr D.James works is fun, but it's interesting how much it reveals about the motivations and beliefs of the person doing the speculation! (People do tend to project their own idealised personalities onto their heroes, it's funny how hero worship works like that.)

 

I try to separate the person from what that person's achieved. I like a lot of RDJ's music, but I don't care how he personally made it so much as how someone else might go about making something similar. (This is probably just as well given how little he tells the truth.) So the discussions of technique are much more valuable, I think, than equipment lists. Similarly, it's interesting to hear different people's approaches to music making, even if they're not how one successful person happened to personally achieve their own results.

 

I think I do care, though not on a technical level, so much of a process level.

 

But when someone who is not Mr D.James starts explaning or theorising how he makes his music, this is, basically, a piece of fan fiction. Because he pretty emphatically does not state what he does and how he does it, and deliberately obfuscates the issue with lies and disinformation. I get what you're saying - that instructions on "this is how to create a texturally similar sound" are helpful. (Though, really, why would one want to sound like someone else? I suppose it's like me and my drum sequencing questions, that I want to take something apart to see how it's made) But it's all speculation - which reveals more about the speculator than what is being speculated about. (Hence why books about "The Future" from 1950 look so strange, spaceships with fins and all that.)

 

Not that that isn't interesting in itself - I'm always fascinated to learn how other artists work. Not just the big Hero figures like RDJ, but other people one interacts with. Not that actual technical "I run this patch through this FX" but more, what they're trying to achieve and why, and how they express themselves and how they translate their creativity into work. (That's sometimes even more interesting than the work.) So I guess I *do* care about how he works, because I care about how everyone works. I just would like to hear about it from him, rather than the speculation and third hand fan fiction.

 

It's also another question entirely about whether one *can* separate the artist from the art. My ex partner (who was an experimental sound artist) used to spend great amounts of effort attempting to erase himself from his art, and used to go on at great length about "subconscious self expression" <-- the idea that an artist always creates self portraits in some way, especially the more that they try to remove themselves from the equation. And it will pop up in other ways if suppressed - for example that artists, when attempting to talk about other artists' methods will often project themselves into it. (See also: one hates most in others what one fears most in oneself.) Can you separate someone like Mr D.James from his work when he seems to put so much of himself, personally into it? (Even if it's just like a graffiti artist tagging things with his name.)

 

And that brings up another layer of identity - is this Artist concept yet another simulacrum of the human being? But that's a whole nother kettle of fish entirely and this is getting way too long and too many people have x-posted in the meantime.