Listening and Reading Response 10

For Listening and Reading Response 10, the final focus that was introduced was regarding the aesthetic of failure that has become a focus in the digital music industry. Rather than exploring texturally stable compositions, the digital music revolution explores the unstable, the unplanned, and the unknown of music. From the glitches to the bugs to hacking CDs for creating skips, the exploration of digital music revolved around rebellion against classical music. When I first read all of that, I felt that it was actually very holistic concept about the development of music and art as a whole. Having studied some art history before, the approach of evolving art is to stray away from the standard. This approach of creating the unstable through embracing failure is also something I believe is normal as many art movements that have occurred are a reaction to the past aesthetics that aren’t liked. When I heard the music, I couldn’t help but think that the sounds are very static in nature and that the glitches weren’t really “glitches”. Due to the prevalence of implying glitches, the aesthetic of sound in this case becomes a sound of constant change rather than something that’s truly unplanned. Personally, I think that this style is very dull as the uniqueness of sound qualities just becomes messy without much purpose other than mimicking glitch sounds. Of course, when I listened to this and referred to the readings, I do see the connection between utilizing more fluctuating noises as an aesthetic of glitching, but I don’t find this truly aesthetic when it isn’t unique anymore. Furthermore, I feel that this could also be a reflection on my own work that I have created before where I would be improvising and using strong tones/sound sequences that would appear to busy in the composition. This would create a sort of deflection towards the music as I experienced with this piece that’s too busy. Also, from this final response, I found that I would prefer minimalism style more as it allows time and space for the listener to experience the sound rather than hear and forget everything that happened from the business.