Autechre Autechre class

sounds awesome! dont take it personally if Sean gives you the brush off or acts like a dick if you get in contact with them.

  On 10/27/2010 at 12:05 AM, xxx said:

I'm troubled that if tuition at UB is nearly $5,000 a year without books, fees or keeping yourself clothed, sheltered and fed, then a single 3.0 credit hour semester long class like this should hover around the $400 mark without materials.

 

Students could have bought Autechre's entire catalog including tracks on compilations and remixes for well under $200 on iTunes, grabbed a used copy of "Generation Ecstasy" by Simon Reynolds and gotten up to speed on basically everything related to the inception and development of Autechre. They would still have plenty left over to get some Stockhausen, David Tudor, Iannis Xenakis and really dig into it. All the Autechre I own (which is everything--remixes, live sets, JP exclusives and even WATMM fakes lol) is 2 days and 14 hours of listening. Taking 16 weeks to analyze it--even pulling on the predecessors and contemporaries of Autechre--seem s like a stretch.

 

Good for you for offering this class and it would be fun to take but it's symptomatic of larger problems of American university. If we got partially or wholly subsidized like most of the Europeans on this board, then it would be a non-issue. But the American kid, barring grants and scholarships, is running the tab of a lifetime. I'm afraid that since tuition has increased by 458% since the 90's while wages have either stayed flat or dropped dramatically and unemployment clinging to 10% and higher in some areas, an 18 year-old-kid is ill-informed as to what the best things are to order on the menu when they know the bill will be 20,000 or more. In the case of University of Buffalo, you could be staring down $70,000 for a 4 year degree.

 

As a liberal arts graduate, I never thought I would say this but go to Tulsa Welding School or get a $6,000 Associates in nursing, ultrasonography or network administration and bust $30K minimum a year the minute you walk out of the doors and rise steadily from there--the seniors in my nursing program have a job waiting for them upon graduation. Buy all the Autechre you want including the hardware and software to make music just like it. There's a reason why I have a Ph.D English professor in my nursing school cohort. She's there for the same reasons I am...no one is tending the light at the end of the lib. arts tunnel unless you can get in on the actual racket itself.

Jesus.

Maybe the OP should move to Ireland and do it. Dont think I'm rubbing it in xxx, but my reg fees are about 1.5k. Im in 2nd year and Ive never had to buy a book, some people I know have. But if youre on the ball the library has a few copys of every popular book, and if you let them know that a lecturer has made a recommendation on a book, they'll order in copies. You can also take books out for 2 or sometime even 3 months at a time. You need to renew it but you can do all that online.

But most lecturers but their notes up in digital form onto the college website where you can access them at anytime from any computer. Some lecturers are cunts and dont but hey thats life. I've looking for something like this in my college for a while. Its our college policy that you have to do 2 electives every college year. You can pick any course from the whole college, provided it fits your timetable and that you get a place (over populated modules are decided by a lottery, except of course people who are doing it as a core (major?)).

Since I started I've tried to do an elective in music but they didnt fit my time table. I wanted to do something in relation to music composition, I think "Music and Tonality" was what it was called. The rest of the music courses aren't very music making specific. I think there is a "Music of Opera", dont mean to sound close minded but bleeeegh. Something like this would be absolutely brilliant, I wonder if I could make a recommendation of it to some department.

By the way, the elective that fills up fastest is always "Massage". I mean the exam is half giving a massage and half getting one. Who wouldn't like to fondle a girl(or boy) for half and hour and get credit for it.

how many students are in the class?

if I were sean or rob finding out that this class existed would freak me out.

Despite what xxx said regarding Ae's historic reticence to discuss their work (which is true), I seem to recall in a recent (Oversteps) interview one of the guys saying half-jokingly that they might retire and teach at some Uni? I seem to recall that. They might not be as averse as you might think...

Wow, thanks for the responses! I must say I didn't quite anticipate comments like these, which is great.

  On 10/26/2010 at 10:49 PM, Spittal said:

This is so awesome, but I think it might be a little bit of a bad idea, just because I don't think you should consider ONLY Autechre for experimental music. I mean they are amazing, like super super amazing. but It might be a better idea to just parallel Autechre's career and the changes thorough the experimental music scene in the 20 some years they've been around...

 

I suggest you read this as well

 

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/58184-why-do-we-love-autechre/

You're right it would be a bad idea for the class to only be about Autechre -- but I've included many other composers and artists as well (Aphex, Kraftwerk, Cage, Varese, Reich, etc. etc.). The whole idea is that Autechre is a great springboard for people who have no experience with experimental music to learn more about it without being completely overwhelmed.

  On 10/26/2010 at 11:23 PM, mcbpete said:

Woah that's pretty awesome. One minor criticism (and it is minor) - the required reading on the first week is their Wikipedia entry which seems a little lazy. Plus ol' wiki isn't known for its reliability either - for instance the section:

 

"Autechre sometimes use generative techniques,[4] most notably on Confield and EP7."

 

whereas in fact they've said:

 

"We do celebrate the futurism of that behaviour, but we’re here, it’s 2008, and kids might just presume the requirement to be hit with loads of detail and overlaid effects is there just to be valid – and I think that’s where it goes a bit wrong and people miss the point. We’ll get hit with, “oh it’s all random, algorithmic and generative” and if somebody can’t work out its metric arrangement, and can’t worked out if it’s looped or not, then they’re going to hit it and say it’s random twaddle. And that’s quite hurtful in a way, we don’t really get too upset by critics, but it just means that some people have missed the point." ( http://www.barcodezine.com/Autechre%20Interview.htm )

 

You might want to contact ~ism as he did this interview with Sean - http://forum.watmm.com/topic/30687-interview-with-sean-booth/#soundbite

You're absolutely right about the Wikipedia -- definitely taking that out next time. At first I thought it would be a good comprehensive bio/discography, but I think there are other sources that are more reliable.

  On 10/27/2010 at 12:05 AM, xxx said:

I'm troubled that if tuition at UB is nearly $5,000 a year without books, fees or keeping yourself clothed, sheltered and fed, then a single 3.0 credit hour semester long class like this should hover around the $400 mark without materials.

 

Students could have bought Autechre's entire catalog including tracks on compilations and remixes for well under $200 on iTunes, grabbed a used copy of "Generation Ecstasy" by Simon Reynolds and gotten up to speed on basically everything related to the inception and development of Autechre. They would still have plenty left over to get some Stockhausen, David Tudor, Iannis Xenakis and really dig into it. All the Autechre I own (which is everything--remixes, live sets, JP exclusives and even WATMM fakes lol) is 2 days and 14 hours of listening. Taking 16 weeks to analyze it--even pulling on the predecessors and contemporaries of Autechre--seem s like a stretch.

 

Good for you for offering this class and it would be fun to take but it's symptomatic of larger problems of American university. If we got partially or wholly subsidized like most of the Europeans on this board, then it would be a non-issue. But the American kid, barring grants and scholarships, is running the tab of a lifetime. I'm afraid that since tuition has increased by 458% since the 90's while wages have either stayed flat or dropped dramatically and unemployment clinging to 10% and higher in some areas, an 18 year-old-kid is ill-informed as to what the best things are to order on the menu when they know the bill will be 20,000 or more. In the case of University of Buffalo, you could be staring down $70,000 for a 4 year degree.

 

As a liberal arts graduate, I never thought I would say this but go to Tulsa Welding School or get a $6,000 Associates in nursing, ultrasonography or network administration and bust $30K minimum a year the minute you walk out of the doors and rise steadily from there--the seniors in my nursing program have a job waiting for them upon graduation. Buy all the Autechre you want including the hardware and software to make music just like it. There's a reason why I have a Ph.D English professor in my nursing school cohort. She's there for the same reasons I am...no one is tending the light at the end of the lib. arts tunnel unless you can get in on the actual racket itself.

The American university system is fucked in the ways that you describe, and in many more. However, I'm being paid to teach a class, so I may as well do one that I'm interested in, and they're required to take an Arts elective, which my course satisfies. And while in theory I agree with you that simply acquiring music of this sort and listening and jump in, I think this only works if you have a temperament that inclines you towards more difficult music, which (as has been mentioned on these forums), is not applicable to 99% of listeners. However, I can argue that those who don't have this temperament can be taught to open their minds and be taught certain ways of approaching and listening to this music.

P.S. Cool that you're from Kansas City. I lived there for two years while getting my masters at UMKC.

  On 10/27/2010 at 6:02 AM, nene multiple assgasms said:

how many students are in the class?

 

if I were sean or rob finding out that this class existed would freak me out.

I have about 30 in the class, and surprisingly, not a single one had heard of Autechre before this class. While I can't honestly say they've gained 30 fans, they have gained 30 people who know their music quite well and can say intelligent things about it (which is more important to me).

HAHAHAHA. Yeah, 40+ year old teachers can do that. Ae, well, to us this sounds modern. But hey, what about the young people today? Is Ae just another granddaddy music style? ;)

This sounds kind of cool but what's the point? I can't see this being helpful at all in terms of academia. I'm a huge Ae fanboy, true, but this is a bit much even for me.

One part of me is thinking why not use Autechre for a small course especially being one of the most influential and radical artists of the past 20yrs.

The other part of me is thinking that there needs to be more technology study in this course to warrant a true insight however that could be more for the PHD and at the end of the day getting a load of Emo's an metal heads to open their musical perception in any way can't be a bad thing.

looks awesome to me; ive long thought about doing the same! the only thing i would add is that you could easily do a single week on confield, draft, and untilted each (or perhaps a single week devoted to those three considered together). the aesthetic and structural changes between them are really fascinating. of course, that might be more of a "grad" level course on ae, rather than the overall review/introduction you're doing.

I would love to do a thesis on ae

My 3rd year engineering project was entitled "spatio-temporal intermittency in coupled map lattices" and yielded some awesome chaotic images, it was around this time I started listening to autechre and i'm sure their music helped me to come up with the goods my tutor was after seeing.

  On 10/27/2010 at 7:35 AM, jacobg said:

The American university system is fucked in the ways that you describe, and in many more.

tri repetae

  On 10/27/2010 at 8:36 PM, soundwave said:

One part of me is thinking why not use Autechre for a small course especially being one of the most influential and radical artists of the past 20yrs.

 

The other part of me is thinking that there needs to be more technology study in this course to warrant a true insight however that could be more for the PHD and at the end of the day getting a load of Emo's an metal heads to open their musical perception in any way can't be a bad thing.

I agree that you'd need to study some music tech/studio to get a sense of HOW they're making their sounds, and to recognize certain kinds of sounds and techniques ("Gantz Graf uses extreme phase vocoding," or "The percussion in 'Pir' uses harsh noise reduction," etc.), but that's not possible to do in this class, unfortunately. What I'm mostly going after is to teach them how to listen, and what to listen for, how to focus on musical details, get a sense of the form, that sort of thing. And I don't think you need to know how the sounds are made necessarily to perceive those aspects.

  On 10/27/2010 at 9:39 PM, bardamu said:

looks awesome to me; ive long thought about doing the same! the only thing i would add is that you could easily do a single week on confield, draft, and untilted each (or perhaps a single week devoted to those three considered together). the aesthetic and structural changes between them are really fascinating. of course, that might be more of a "grad" level course on ae, rather than the overall review/introduction you're doing.

Definitely agree -- I could (and would love to) do a whole semester on just that period!

  On 10/27/2010 at 9:47 PM, feltcher said:

I would love to do a thesis on ae

 

My 3rd year engineering project was entitled "spatio-temporal intermittency in coupled map lattices" and yielded some awesome chaotic images, it was around this time I started listening to autechre and i'm sure their music helped me to come up with the goods my tutor was after seeing.

 

 

  Reveal hidden contents

stuff like these

 

These are great! I have no idea what "spatio-temporal intermittency" means, but they're very reminiscent of sonograms and spectral analyses. It would be interesting to use these as a "score" or to pull an Aphex and convert these images into sounds.

  On 10/28/2010 at 6:45 AM, xxx said:

By the way, I'm a total cunt...I really do wish you the best of luck and hope that you'll "turn some heads" on to what I (and the rest of us) think is some of the best music to come out of the late 20th/early 21st---electronic or otherwise.

 

I'm actually from Springfield--I graduated from Drury University. It went something like this:

 

graduated high school: "mom, dad, I wanna be a doctor, Drury is going to give me a few scholarships"

 

middle class parents sacrifice everything: "go to Drury, it's the best pre-med, don't worry about the cost"

 

meanwhile on campus: took psychology, neoclassical literature, a class called "the mind-body problem", philosophy, electronic music

 

"screw medicine, I want to live in ideas!"

 

graduated in 5 years with a double major biology and psychology--too distracted to do well enough in my sciences to make it to med. school, too scattered elsewhere for any graduate program, settling for nursing school currently--something I could have done 10 years ago for a fraction of the cost

 

*shakes fist in air when student loan bill comes every month*

 

No problem, no offense taken. I think your experience is sadly really common in the university system -- it's almost as if you have to treat universities like they're vocational schools, knowing exactly what you want before you get there being laser-focused on that while you're there. And that's not always a reasonable expectation for an 18-year-old straight out of high school.

honestly I wouldnt worry about there not being enough academic integrity or anything like that...i think everyone who takes the class will take something from it and I know that I've taken very "academic" sounding classes that I've taken nothing from

You should probably include some examples of Balinese Gamelan, Bernard Parmegiani and Coil as ae have often spoken of them as major influences, particularly Love's Secret Domain

Oh and you missed Quadrange in your discography

Saying "intelligent things" about other peoples music is for wankers and Wire journalists (same thing)

  On 10/30/2010 at 1:57 PM, Greg Reason said:

You should probably include some examples of Balinese Gamelan, Bernard Parmegiani and Coil as ae have often spoken of them as major influences, particularly Love's Secret Domain

add morton subotnick and aphex twin to that list as well (yes autechre was inspired by aphex twin, sorry)

  On 10/30/2010 at 1:57 PM, Greg Reason said:

You should probably include some examples of Balinese Gamelan, Bernard Parmegiani and Coil as ae have often spoken of them as major influences, particularly Love's Secret Domain

I was going to use portions of Parmegiani's "La Creation du Monde," (a great piece if you haven't heard it!), but couldn't manage to fit it in. Maybe I'll take out some of the other music to try to fit it in next time.

  On 10/30/2010 at 2:00 PM, Greg Reason said:

Oh and you missed Quadrange in your discography

You're right about this. This wasn't exactly intentional, I simply couldn't find any tracks that were obviously good for classroom discussion, but I think for completeness' sake I'll add it next time.

  On 10/31/2010 at 7:22 PM, Awepittance said:

  On 10/30/2010 at 1:57 PM, Greg Reason said:

You should probably include some examples of Balinese Gamelan, Bernard Parmegiani and Coil as ae have often spoken of them as major influences, particularly Love's Secret Domain

 

add morton subotnick and aphex twin to that list as well (yes autechre was inspired by aphex twin, sorry)

I was going to include some Subotnick in our second class, the history of electronic music, but thought Cage was more appropriate philosophically and Cybotron & Kraftwerk aesthetically. I didn't really address Autechre's direct influences in this class, but I think it would be good to do so the next time around.

yeah ae's influence on current music is sort of hard to analyze but an obvious place to start would be radiohead.

i just wanted to pop in here and say i met with jacob yesterday and he's got his shit together. he's got the music/theory chops to know what he's talking about but isn't overly technical.

though i would give him some suggestions as far as academically interesting gescom/remixes :)

  On 11/1/2010 at 2:06 PM, jacobg said:

  On 10/30/2010 at 2:00 PM, Greg Reason said:

Oh and you missed Quadrange in your discography

 

You're right about this. This wasn't exactly intentional, I simply couldn't find any tracks that were obviously good for classroom discussion, but I think for completeness' sake I'll add it next time.

What? Perlence Subrange 6-36 has a good potential for that doesn't it? You can talk about the effect of making such a long track, and crafting such a huge space in it. All that stuff about sound crafting an atmosphere and whatnot.

  On 10/27/2010 at 3:06 PM, thehauntingsoul said:

This sounds kind of cool but what's the point? I can't see this being helpful at all in terms of academia.

i think it can be just the same as taking a lesson on classical music.

  Quote

Narrative vs.

non-narrative treatments of time (goal-oriented vs. “architectural”).

i really like this concept

yooo... jacob gotlib. did you go to oberlin? i did a summer camp there a while back and i swear you played us something off of untilted during a listening session

stockhausen and autechre are very comparable. i had to write a paper about some piece and i used stockhausen as an example of the more extreme end of this sort of music and tried to make the claim that autechre were working in that same field of extremity while also combining those elements with popular music. i dunno.