| Boundaries Contemporary electronic music is plagued by near-universal adherence to boundaries and rules: the 4/4 dictum, standard half-dozen effects, groove fascism, dumbed-down melody and harmony, limited sonic palette, and so on. Trembling before rules stifles compositional chance-taking, which causes the dreaded ‘same old, same old’ effect. It's too rare these days to listen to a new track and think, ‘I've never heard anything like this before.’ That's because e-musical creators have become too proper and boundary-kowtowing. Don't fall into the well-behaved composer trap! You and your listeners deserve better. Cultivate, instead, a healthy disrespect for boundaries. 1. Identify your musical boundaries and know thine enemy. 2. Cosy up to your boundaries. Tease them, experiment with the place of great power that exists at the interface between what's acceptable and not. 3. Make forays into the taboo realm that's just beyond your boundaries. See how it feels, what musical treasures it offers. 4. Dare to go deeper and deeper into this forbidden realm. Remain patient and open-eared; the further you go, the greater the treasures, but the harder they are to find. The ultimate goal is attaining a boundary-less approach to music. Most boundaries don't really exist anyway; they’re really just
conventions, like borders between countries, and limits of style and taste.
Far more exciting is to think in terms of constant exploration of new,
uncharted, unbounded territory. |