Rate: King Crimson - ITCOTCK

Hi,

And that, specifically your example, specifies that you are not into "MUSIC" ... you are into your idea of what "MUSIC" is supposed to be.

Over 50 years of seeing concerts, I would say that a lot of listeners are VERY DEFICIENT when they come to see YES, and all they want is CTTE and ROUNDABOUT ... or see another band and only want THIS or THAT ... which tells you that they are into something that relates to their personal lives, and NOT INTO THE MUSIC OF THE BAND at all. Specially when you consider 2 or 3 pieces as merely 1, 2 or 3% of their total cannon and output ... you are stating right there that you are not into the band's music at all!

As an example, you can hear and see in the material by MAGMA how this equation that you mention falls apart ... it does not tell you anything, and you pretty much have to close your eyes and allow your imagination to fly ... but rock audiences can't do that ... 

And worse ... we're supposed to be a bunch of folks about PROGRESSIVE MUSIC and we talk about it as some regressive piece of crap that belongs in the top ten every day ... not in "progressive music"!

After 50+ years of this, I really would like to state that too many people need some seasoning and some waking up ... you don't realize until 30 or 40 years later how much the whole thing meant to you personally, and on top of it, many folks are already dismissing it! And the fact/idea that you are cutting down your INNER experience by only listening to a few things that "you can relate to as a fan!", will not really help you learn something really precious and valuable about the human instinct and art!

Hi,

This changes over time ... sometimes something that didn't click before, clicks later ... and it would be too easy to say that a more mature look would be different, but I think that there are a lot of things that go into that equation, many of which are hard to distinguish.

I prophesy disaster wrote: ... When it comes to experimentalism in music, I do not think that it itself makes music worthy. If a piece of music is experimental, then the experiment has to work musically beyond its own terms for it to succeed in appealing to me. In other words, while I do like weird music, there is a limit to how weird music can be for me to accept it.

Experimentation in music is something that is an acquired taste and it does not go well with folks that like to have things "in the right order" in their heads. I think, after a lot of work with actors and actresses, that "experimentation" is something that you can work on, until it breaks what I fall the "last wall" of your senses ... so that when you are rehearsing, you can pick up the maximum attention possible, to give your ability to respond a much better focus and atmosphere.

This can be done in music, but there are too many folks that believe that it is all notes, and nothing else matters ... (it's why they listen for a "sound", right? ... BS ... ) and I have had the chance to do this with a couple of musicians and it works, but the ones that lean on knowing which chord you are playing, usually fall out of the equation really fast ... what matters is your "listening" and how fast your response is, to the music in the air ... not your idea, or the easiest chord you can play.

In listening to AD2, for example, try "Yeti" (the title cut) and then the "MM thing" on Dance of the Lemmings. You could say the guitar dominates "Yeti" but almost no other instrument is "there" to create a song, or a thread to go by, which suggests that John W probably said ... I'll just do this and continue, and you guys try to fit in as you can ... and it goes all over the place, and this, in theater, is called a "controlled improvisation" in that you are depending on someone to give you some space, but you don't know what that is, and will not see it, until AFTER ... the whole thing, IF YOU RECORDED IT. I recommend doing these at first without recording, so you only worry about listening, and not how you sound or don't sound, and then, after you feel more comfortable, try to record it once ... but you must look at it apart from it ... meaning a few days later, so you allow the playing feeling to grow inside, and then next week (so to speak) you finally listen to it and are more capable of comparing what you DID, to what you THOUGHT ... two very different things, that help your ability to work with someone else on stage, music or theater!

When you hear the MM thing" in DotL, you will find really quick that no one is trying to create a riff, or a piece of song at all, and specially listening to Lothar Meid, who seems to be the one "leading" the whole thing, but his bass playing is all over, and never breaks into something that would make ... a part of a song ... it comes and goes, and sometimes it thinks Michelangelo ... so to speak.

Improvisation is hard for most listeners ... because what is in front of you is NOT ORGANIZED ... and IT SHOULD NOT EVER BE ... so it can grow on its own two feet. Too much of the stuff you hear nowadays, is riff related, or solo related or simply sound related, and has nothing to do with improvisation as a natural process in music making ... and I don't even enjoy listening to these things ... and the difference, for example, check out some of the early jazz stuff by Jan Garbarek, and then go listen to Miles live somewhere ... the folks playing with Miles had no idea where he was going ... but none of them ever complained and they knew that the trick was to listen to him, and adjust the flow of what he was doing ... not a riff like something, or a splash on the drums, or something that would be "asking" to return to a normal "SONG" like process, which is way easier to do ... and you don't have to listen ... you just count!

You got to remember that RF is well aware of a lot of these things I am saying, based on his Gurdjieff studies and readings ... and his detail on rehearsal, included a lot of these things, and it is something that is really hard to describe and even discuss, because it is a "feeling" thing, and not a "word" thing, and this is where folks get lost and (probably) 90 out of 100 musicians fall out ... and my saying this has had a couple of comments from Berklee folks, that think all music is just a mechanical exercise, and they are afraid to even consider "improvisation", unless it is based on a chord or riff, something much easier to teach .. you can go here and there in this moment since it is a related chord and so on ... and sometimes, this tends to intimidate your ability to completely free form, without being tied up to a "process" that you will have to unlearn later.

sorry about the long bit

Enchant X wrote: I do have a problem with moonchild , for me it drags the album down to an 8

if ones listens to "Moonchild" with the right attitude one can't help but loving it. once again: the best track of the album! and I am absolutely serious about this

 

It's an interesting analysis, but it doesn't change how I feel about the track because it doesn't connect with me in the way it needs to connect with me, regardless of how clever it is.