The appeal, to me at least, is in the strong tempo and patterns that help with focusing on work or in the musical soundscapes that are not unlike those in post rock. EDM music can be melodic and satisfying rhythmically, but is generally simpler than prog metal or jazz fusion etc so it doesn't tax my attention when working. Frankly I listened to so much progressive rock and metal over the last 20 years of my life that I needed a progressive metal sounding music in a different flavor or style to take a break from the guitars.
Boris Brejcha
Autechre sounds percussion dense, high tempo and slightly psychedelic. What kind of jazz fusion are we talking?
This is great! Boris Brejcha is interesting. Metaprog is the best Goa Trance I've ever heard. 'My name is hardstyle' is the kind of hardstyle I was looking for. ANJ is really good too.
Try finding another Frank Zappa in any genre
, he is unique. The issue with "IDM" or "EDM" is that a lot of it isn't going to be like Zappa or Mahavishnu because they are at some level a form of dance music with a clearly defined, repetitive beat and structure. This is going to limit the amount of free form experimentation that you would expect from something "Zappa".Aphex Twin is experimental in a similar vein of Autechre so it's a good starting point. It has that Zappa rhythm going for it too sometimes.
so sticking to genre labels won't help much with discovering the most outlandish of outliers. My favorite experimental musician has to be Sevish. I'm curious what you think about the first two tracks.
Try finding another Frank Zappa in any genre
In a fundamental sense most pieces of music have a rhythm, harmony and melody. So complexity of any given track can be expressed with lots of layered tones making interesting harmony, advanced relationships between rhythmic elements or its sheer density or patterns and finally a melody can be extensively developed into phrases, motifs, counter melodies, storytelling, soundscapes and so on.
From what I've heard of Frank Zappa is an experimental musician. His music is very advanced rhythmically with many note subdivisions, polyrhythms and so on. His melodies are sometimes advanced and sometimes really basic and his harmony is super simple. Mahavishnu is characterized by very simple harmony, and more complex melody and rhythm. Some prog rock, some jazz and some psychedelic rock in there.
Based on Autechre, Zappa and Jazz you seem to be looking for fewer instruments, maybe 3-5 layers at most, complex rhythm and experimental artists. Things that could be completely absent for you are: structure, motives, melody or harmony. But at the same time I think you like new and unique sound and it doesn't have to be similar to what you are familiar with.
Aphex Twin is experimental in a similar vein of Autechre so it's a good starting point. It has that Zappa rhythm going for it too sometimes.
I think you're simply looking for experimental, unique music of any kind
Other cool finds
You're the second person I know who's at least open to listening Sevish and I tried quite a few people so you're definitely an experimentalistI'm finding Sevish more interesting so far and could see myself giving it more of a listen (I've got Rhythm and Xen playing in the background at the moment.)
That's fair enough. I'm not a musician and I'm not musically trained. So I'm sure when you say something is complex that's more in alignment with music theory. I think your assessment of my taste in music is right. Maybe it's more accurate to say experimental and novel rather than complex. I appreciate popular music that incorporates experimental aspects like the Beach Boys, Kendrick Lamar or Bjork for example. It isn't an edge lord thing so much as what excites me.
I definitely have a tendency towards complex rhythms and polyrhythms. I like other music as well though. Like these pieces for example, more ambient than dance, that are more about creating an atmosphere:
You're the second person I know who's at least open to listening Sevish and I tried quite a few people so you're definitely an experimentalistI'm finding Sevish more interesting so far and could see myself giving it more of a listen (I've got Rhythm and Xen playing in the background at the moment.)
That's fair enough. I'm not a musician and I'm not musically trained. So I'm sure when you say something is complex that's more in alignment with music theory. I think your assessment of my taste in music is right. Maybe it's more accurate to say experimental and novel rather than complex. I appreciate popular music that incorporates experimental aspects like the Beach Boys, Kendrick Lamar or Bjork for example. It isn't an edge lord thing so much as what excites me.
I definitely have a tendency towards complex rhythms and polyrhythms. I like other music as well though. Like these pieces for example, more ambient than dance, that are more about creating an atmosphere:
Sevish uses microtones to make music, which means sounds with frequencies outside of the western chromatic scale. It's an example of harmonic complexity, it leads to the creation of new groups of tones and new relations between tones. Most people become habituated listening to the familiar 12 tones (notes) of the chromatic scale and when they are presented with the Hindu Shruti scale which has 22 tones or something microtonal like Sevish they just hear it as noise and ignore it. A lot of brilliant new music can be made if the western scale is abandoned and musicians are only beginning to explore these things (It's a late 20th century and 21st century idea). Microtones take some getting used to, so if you don't get one track, you could try listening a few more times because your ear is unused to listening to sounds outside of the usual frequencies. Most people would need to be retrained to start recognizing this as music and not noise. It would be great to expand the audience for this music into the thousands as that would encourage more musicians to make it.
Re complexity. It's a subjective description, or at least something is complex in relation to mainstream music. Stuff that sounds "complex" to one person could be "typical" to another. Abstraction of ideas and quantity of elements both give rise to complexity, mainstream music generally has fewer elements and the ideas are also simpler. Music doesn't need multiple instruments to be novel. A solo singer could make complex music by jumping vocal registers, using different techniques to produce sound, changing the rhythm, dynamically varying the volume, producing a different timbre, texture of voice, making pauses, singing in microtones (singers frequently produce notes that are just a bit off pitch or slide between notes in a way no other instrument can). Music isn't done, we're just done exploring the western 12 tone canon of it, just a small fraction of stuff that's possible.
But I agree it can be hard for the public to make that transition, especially when people are accustomed to having short attention spans with music.You've adapted to Jazz. Jazz, especially Jazz avant-garde, is in itself a huge departure from popular and classical music, because it discards the structure, favors improvisation, solos and even does stuff like mimicking human speech, animals, noises and ambient sounds with instruments to create impressions of shouting, arguments or talking, street traffic and so on. There are microtonal elements to Jazz, first thing that comes to mind is the trumpet, it's a very flexible instrument that doesn't have to produce clear notes and often slides between sounds. Brass instruments in general do a lot of mimicry of speech and 'noisiness', as do the vocalists.Being honest there aren't any Sevish pieces I've heard that sound like noise or are inaccessible to me. It sounds like quirky dance music. By your logic I'm guessing I must've already heard a lot of microtonal music without realising it.
When I was 19 I first started training myself to like experimental music after listening to Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. After that a lot of things are easier to listen to, I'm curious if it has any microtonality or not
You've adapted to Jazz. Jazz, especially Jazz avant-garde, is in itself a huge departure from popular and classical music, because it discards the structure, favors improvisation, solos and even does stuff like mimicking human speech, animals, noises and ambient sounds with instruments to create impressions of shouting, arguments or talking, street traffic and so on. There are microtonal elements to Jazz, first thing that comes to mind is the trumpet, it's a very flexible instrument that doesn't have to produce clear notes and often slides between sounds. Brass instruments in general do a lot of mimicry of speech and 'noisiness', as do the vocalists.Being honest there aren't any Sevish pieces I've heard that sound like noise or are inaccessible to me. It sounds like quirky dance music. By your logic I'm guessing I must've already heard a lot of microtonal music without realising it.
When I was 19 I first started training myself to like experimental music after listening to Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. After that a lot of things are easier to listen to, I'm curious if it has any microtonality or not
This fragment is not even 'music' in a strict sense. It's a trumpet creating a voice that lies outside of the chromatic scale, it's speech and mumbling without planned microtones, but it is microtonal.
By broadening your tastes towards Jazz you've definitely made it easier to wrap your head around any other type of music. Sevish isn't that crazy rhythmically or structurally so I understand why it's no biggie when you're used to free form improvisation.
I like unstructured improvisation and stuff, but I also enjoy structure and tight repetition that EDM often does very well. One thing is certain though, we need an improvisation focused thread and some experimental threads to discuss this more
Can you listen to Frank Zappa or experimental things every day? For me it's something to try when I want to focus solely on the performance and have an experience. But when it comes to daily music habits I want music that is structured and fits a particular energy or mood that I want to enhance when I do something else.
