In response to your question Tomer... I think we're sitting on the cusp of ALOT of HUGE changes in the way we look at and address the creation and performance of music. Classical Music, in the sense of the modern orchestra has been around for 200 years (since the development of the instruments stabilized, but there has been alot of great 'art' music before then.) One need only listen to Bach (who was circa 1700) to hear the beginnings of modern musical ideas... hes really the first guy to have developed musical ideas into larger architectures... like his A minor Prelude and Fugue for the Organ... theres a larger drama to it... but then again, Bach was a figure who was part of a greater consolidation in music, all the instruments he used were pretty much well established, violins havent changed much since then.
Now though, I think we have a completely different dilemma, we have instruments that are PERPETUALLY changing... just look at the variety of synth architectures out there, from different takes on beat-slicing to subractive and additive synthesis, theyre all a slant on electronic music production of sounds at their most basic level, tones and overtones and formants and whatever scientific ways we happen to create in order to understand that mysterious thing known as sound. I think you raise a valid point, the whole development of the instrument is in a very embrioyonic stage... its just hatching really in my opinion. *by the way, these are things I think about alot... especially concerning instrument design and how to implement changes in extra-musical structures (such as a concrete thing as an instrument... or a more amorphous thing... musical notation.)
As far as the synth is concerned, I think that you can get sounds... the likes of which noone has ever thought possible before... we are not dealing with C major chords anymore... we're dealing with the pure production of tone (all this is just an outgrowth of Wagner's Tristan Chord in my opinion) and we are faced with the dilemma of how do we organize our instincts... because I think in terms which dont work when translated straight into my guitar / piano playing (Im classically trained on both, though I dont really care to play much Beethoven or Carcassi, as much as I might love them - Im more of a NIN man) and thus... when I think in a weirdo sound... how do I create it? how do I make it into a song?
These are the dilemmas we have... and I have a whole elaborate set of ideas on the topic, to keep it simply put... I believe that the twelve note scale is horribly inadequate for a musician who thinks in terms of a distorted saw signal run through a complex filter sweep and then through a digital delay that multiplies the original figuration of notes into something more amorphous and almost untranslatable into musical notation (because youd be having thousands of repitions, and it would take forever to notate that all)
The only great living composer in my opinion is Gyorgy Ligeti, and he had electronic instruments back in the late 50's and early 60's... and he felt that they were inadequate... and when you look at the RCA Mark II... you gotta admit... its got nothing on a violin for tone. He dealt with these questions of electronic versus acoustic instruments in such pieces as Lontano and the San Francisco Polyphony, in which he approaches musical sounds that rival the complexity possible in electronic music. I recommend a listen for anyone who is seriously interested in 20th century classical (the Ligeti Edition on Sony and the Ligeti Project on Teldec are marvelous recordings, and theyre existence is a real positive contribution to not only music, but human culture in general).
But to get to my point, Ligeti used acoustic instruments to get sounds he wanted to get with electronic instruments, but he couldnt do that back in 1961... hence he wrote Atmospheres (it was stolen by Stanley Kubrick without Ligeti's consent and used, along with the Dies Irae from his Requiem, on 2001 - A Space Odyssey). He used acoustics to mimic what electronic instruments can do now, like my Virus. Ive created several patches in which I imitate Ligeti's compositional techniques and I can pretty much improvise pieces which sound remarkabley like Lontano or the Requiem (except I lose the subtely of orchestrating 200 separate instrumental parts) But what I lose in the translation to my virus, I gain in ease of writing new music and not having to notate thousands of instruments doing what I can do by playing a few notes in succession.
This is where I believe electronic music should, and is, going. But I dont think that electronic music will be percieved as substative as opposed to 'canned' music, until we start performing on the instruments... and that is I guess the position I am coming from... I could write more on this, I have written more in my own files on it all... but I guess I'll leave my response with this question/observation?
Perhaps this is a better wayt to phrase my initial question; Im 23, are there any other kids out there thinking like me? I bought a new CD the other day, Frances the Mute, by the Mars Volta, they approach electronic / acoustic instruments in such a mind-blowing way, much akin to the way I approach my Virus... theres such a brilliant concentration of polyphonic ideas... its often bitonal (ie in two key signatures at once) and often goes into realms of electronic sounds that remind one of Gyorgy Ligeti mixed with Acid Jazz and Punk Rock... Anyways... thats enough I guess for now... looking forward to hearing others comments!
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