What is experimental music?

metrovelvet

First of all, I never said jazz wasnt good. There are so many variants of jazz these days, Im not going to come out with a statement like that. Where did you read that? No its that theorists have found some common "theoretical" heritage between classical and jazz [which is debatable but its a discussion nonetheless], which may have contributed to it becoming more "high brow".

Think about jazz and how it moved from being scandalous to elite and how and why that happened. Why did this genre which was once scandalous and full of earth and sex, now sits on the shelf of every yuppy intellectual.

You got me so so wrong. You have no idea how much.

And by the way Dadakopf there are plenty of people in music departments across the US anyway studying Zappa.

dross

ah, i was mistaken in thinking you meant good when you said legitimate, i should have payed more attention to your inverted commas.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

metrovelvet wrote:

Think about jazz and how it moved from being scandalous to elite and how and why that happened. Why did this genre which was once scandalous and full of earth and sex, now sits on the shelf of every yuppy intellectual.

What? Is this not the way of all genres of music? Look at Elvis Presley and the Beatles...music of the establishment, music of our parents and even grandparents nowadays.

metrovelvet

Sure but the academy hasnt quite adopted Elvis and the Beatles they way they have with jazz or people like Glass and Cage, and Im not saying whether they should or shouldnt either, Im just noting that academy backing has a lot to do with it.

ZWEI_VIER_ZWEI

metrovelvet wrote:

Sure but the academy hasnt quite adopted Elvis and the Beatles they way they have with jazz or people like Glass and Cage, and Im not saying whether they should or shouldnt either, Im just noting that academy backing has a lot to do with it.

Very true

JC 2K3

Experimental music is music that glorifies the chromatic scale and minor 2nd intervals.

Ghost Rider

Now we're gettin' somewhere! En garde!

JC 2K3 wrote:

Experimental music is music that glorifies the chromatic scale and minor 2nd intervals.

sonic juice

I suppose it might be the music that challenges the musical conventions-though I admit that is quite nebulous

Ghost Rider

I think it's a relative definition, rather than a nebulous one. It's not all that hard to say to what musical conventions exist at any given time (for many conventions don't disappear, even after being "challenged"). There's not much that's nebulous about identifying what's currently out there.

What is hard to say is whether or not a piece of music that was once experimental will continue be. Beethoven's symphonic innovations don't sound experimental now, but they were once.

So I'm inclined to think a definition of the experimental will always be a relative one.

sonic juice wrote:

I suppose it might be the music that challenges the musical conventions-though I admit that is quite nebulous