on 7/6/02 4:46 PM, Bill Ashline at bashline@hotmail.com wrote:
Yeah I was thinking of Sachiko M and John Wall when I wrote that stuff before. How can one say that Sachiko M has great technique and is a "fine" player of the sine wave generator?
I think if you're figuring out where to stick that kind of sound, you're either doing it real good or not. It's more like arranging, and there's a lot of technique involved in arranging.
Or how do you account for the assemblages of Wall when he puts together snippets of Ryoji Ikeda and John Zorn into a new composition.
Assembling music is not easy. Doesn't matter if you're playing the phrases yourself or if you're using pre-existing material as your raw material. You've gotta make it happen a certain way -- with regard to time, space, and propulsion -- or it falls flat. You need precision. Constant precision -- regardless of media -- is chops.
The phrase "playing well" or "having technique" becomes a bit problematic in these areas. You end up saying something like "boy, that Sachiko M sure knows how to play that sine wave generator well." Somehow, misses the point. You need a new vocabulary. In Wall's case, you talk about the assemblage. In the case of Sachiko, you talk about her sensibility. Or some such vocabulary.
Anyone can assemble or project a sensibility. Putting it together well -- THAT is technique. I think the people who naysay the need for technique don't understand what technique is. They think it's speed on the instrument in the conventional sense. It's not. It's about hitting your mark reliably, and nobody ever had a better batting average for this than the Ramones, who I think had the perfect technique for all time. skip h NP: Li'l Kim mp3s