What is Creative Music?
A Tentacle Survey

How best to characterize the wildly divergent musics championed by the Tentacle -- musics ranging from rigorous composition to open-ended improvisation, and employing everything from state-of-the-art computer technology to conch shells to industrial detritus?

"Tentacle music" may seem resistant to easy labeling in terms of style, approach, and substance, but we nevertheless believe there is some elusive quality that distinguishes the music we promote from commercial categories such as rock, jazz, classical, and their derivatives. In searching for a unifying descriptor for these polyglot offerings, we settled after much deliberation on the term "creative music" as the best of an admittedly inaccurate lot. Other commonly used terms such as "experimental" and "avant-garde" were passed up because of the frequently negative, outdated, and off-putting connotations with which they are laden. Our choice was also informed by the long-established use of the appellation "creative music" over the past several decades by such artists as Chicago's Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM); the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, New York, a nexus for many pivotal figures of "the new thing" in the 1970s; and in our own region, Portland's adventurous music presenters the Creative Music Guild, among many others.

Many months ago we slated this edition of the Tentacle as the "polemic issue" to address the question that's come up time and again with regard to our publication's purview, namely, what is "creative" music, anyway? As the Tentacle strives to be a community voice, we asked people inside, outside, and around the adventurous music community to respond to the questions "What is Creative Music?" and/or "Does Creative Music Matter?" or share general thoughts on the place (or lack thereof) of adventurous, experimental music in society. A hearty tip o' the Tentacle to everyone who responded. We're sure you'll agree that the responses are provocative, stirring, and in many cases quite surprising.

Stuart McLeod

Stuart McLeod curates, performs, and composes for Strategic Labs 2000 (SIL2K). He is also a member of Gamelan Northwest and the downtempo group Sub_Sonic.

First define music. I'll accept Edgard Varèse's definition -- music is "organized sound" -- and add "with intention." (Street construction is only music if the road crew says it is, or someone records it and presents it as such -- it's all in the naming.)

So what makes music creative? All music is creative at some level; it's a matter of degree. At one end of the spectrum is music that is simply named in the Duchampian sense and presented without any more human meddling. Borrowed music. This can include field recordings, Cage's "nature" music (the sound of conch shells, plants, drinking) to pop songs that sample other pop songs without changing the original much, or musicians who never play outside of a given genre.

At the other end of the spectrum is "developed", "original" or "intentional" music (more developed, more original, more intentional). No music is purely original, as all we know is culturally inherited. But we can all put our own spin on it. Music of effort. Music of changes. (This would include much of Cage's written music. As much as Cage tried to do away with human intention, there is nothing "natural" in his techniques nor the resultant music.)

How to create something "original" if all we know is culturally inherited? We must rely on what many call inspiration, the will, the uncertainty of the unconscious. To make something our own we need to transcend, descend, or somehow get past what we know to get at the "other." André Breton called it a "systematic derangement of all the senses."

The word "systematic" is important here. Too often, writing or playing "free" music relies on bad habits, learned patterns, stock phrases, riffs. A system can steer us in a direction we wouldn't have otherwise gone. A teacher of mine once had me write a piece using Schoenberg's 12-tone method for the simple reason of finding sonorities I wouldn't have thought of normally. Of course I never stuck with that method of composition, as I'd prefer to design my own arbitrary rules than use Schoenberg's.

So we design systems that will create music that bypasses our bad habits and borrowed ideas. But even in the designing of the system, we are caught up in bias. Where did we get these ideas? Does it matter?

This is something that makes music so interesting. We can't separate what is ours from what we have assimilated. We can't pin down what the "will" is.

I have defined music as "sound organized with intent" and "creative" music by saying "the more intentional, the more creative," and mean our intent not another's. But we cannot really "create" music at all. We can only change sound from one state to another. The more we change it, the more it is ours. And we don't have to know where these impulses come from. It is enough that we work hard to produce works of great beauty and enjoy doing so.

Roger Downey

Roger Downey is a senior editor at the Seattle Weekly.

Creative music is music created to answer musical questions. Questions like "How can I sell more records?" or "How can I get more babes to think I'm cool?" may be important to the creator, but to the listener the questions that matter are more like "How can I move in the most interesting possible way from a G minor 7th to an E triad with a flatted 9th?"

Or more briefly:

Creative music is music that risks being no good, because being just "good" is just not good enough.

David Knott

David Knott is a Seattle-based musician, instrument inventor, and music therapist.

While I am naturally inclined to think that all music is creative, that the very act of engaging in a sound-producing act is creative, a closer examination may reveal a bit more. Creativity has fascinated many people for some time, notably one Silvano Arieti, who wrote Creativity: The Magic Synthesis [published by Basic Books, 1976]. Arieti states that "Creativity is one of the major means by which the human being liberates himself from the fetters not only of his conditioned responses, but also of his usual choices." Creativity here allows liberation from the rut--a break from "usual choices" or one's own standard patterns of activity and decision making. As the steps in the music making/production process require certain repetition of conditions--practice, the systems of getting and performing "shows," the mechanics of recording and distribution--creativity is in finding new ways to do one's thing, or in finding a new thing with the same old ways. Nevertheless, creative music must in some way be an act of liberation.

Arieti makes creativity out to be a process of originality, spontaneity, and ultimately "an adding or uncovering new dimensions of the universe," and stresses that creative work cannot be separated from its impact on the doer. That the creative one "will be able to experience these new dimensions inwardly" implies that the creative act has as much influence or impact on the creator as the one or ones experiencing the process or product of that creativity.

Improvisation, or playing in the moment, is an excellent example of spontaneity as a requisite part of a musical experience. And along with originality, the two become cooperating inspirators for the player(s) to interact, create, and indeed "uncover new dimensions of the universe" in time.

Environment, or the "audience," has a tremendous role in allowing the emergence of originality. A test of originality in undergrad students (Dentler and Machler, 1964) found that "social and personal determinants such as a climate of indulgence, safety, friendliness, cooperation, permissiveness, and so on, increase the originality of students." Do social and personal environments that embrace these determinants help to produce originality in a community of musicians? From my experience in ad-hoc and regular sessions of improvised music, I would say yes. I would add that many creative music events that I have attended (Seattle Improvised Music Festivals, Olympia Experimental Music Festivals, SIL2K, and the Other Sound series to name a few), while not categorically satisfying every condition, have felt friendly, permissive, and safe. I would also add that music sessions I have experienced that were marked by imitation, heavy pooh-poohing of other's ideas, and strict adherence to a routine felt very uncreative and restrictive.

As we can see, creative music is a difficult label and can only be applied by an audience and musician in agreement. It touches on concepts such as originality, spontaneity, and discovery. While it may be used as a label for some specific musical experience, it is perhaps best regarded as a concept for musician and greater community to strive for in listening and playing.

Stuart Dempster

Stuart Dempster is a "Sound Gatherer," trombonist, composer, and didjeriduist; Guggenheim Fellow and Professor Emeritus at the University of Washington; and founding member of the Deep Listening Band.

Creative Music: Sound invention in real time, or including real time, performed through the act of listening.

Stanley Jason Zappa

Stanley Jason Zappa is a musician-composer living in Portland, Oregon.

Given the scope of events covered under the heading "Creative [Music]," I (apparently like many others) am unclear of the Tentacle's "purview." Often the only apparent link between the listed events is the fact that none of them are getting any attention elsewhere. Is "creative" (like "interesting") synonymous with "of no commercial potential" and "of marginal interest to society?"

Does "creative" music matter? When measured economically, the answer is clear: "Creative music" doesn't matter, because "creative music" doesn't exist. Paradoxically, careerism and all its attendant vulgarities thrive within this area of music despite this withering economic reality. Any critical thought about this area of music must not ignore this fact (unflattering as it may be), as it suggests a universality that all those weird sounds may have otherwise obscured.

Who is being served by this semantic differentiation? Is the musician the beneficiary? Is the listener? Does this semantic differentiation inform the socioeconomic realities facing this music and its musicians?

Using "creative" as [part of] a proper noun (as in "creative music") changes the meaning and function of the word from an assessment of a methodology (from a musical standpoint) to a vague summation of the end product (from a marketing standpoint). Further, the title "creative music" may ultimately be to the detriment of the music as well. Specific titles in general suggest a need for qualification, protection, and a dedicated (i.e., soon to be obsolete) set of criteria for judgment. Like "jazz," "creative music" dooms the music and the musician in pursuit of it to forever be "creative" and nothing more.

Creative or not, it is interesting when one chooses to dedicate one's energy and resources to the conceptualization of a unique, personal sound and the creation of a proprietary methodology for its realization.

Regardless of what that music is called, it is hard to imagine it being confined to an exclusive set of procedural and aesthetic norms--and certainly not for any extended period of time. Yet it may be at this juncture in our culture that every other "type" of music has aesthetically capitulated to the demands (or the myths) of the market and (even more distressing) "The Biz."

In that light, the title "creative" might not be so inappropriate after all.

Tom Baker

Tom Baker is a composer and guitarist who is also concerned with the question: what is creative fly-fishing?

"What is Creative Music?" is a precarious question. Who is to be the judge? Me? You? Everyone or No one? What is the point of the question? To distinguish between Creative and Drivel? New and Un-New? To figure out who gets to be "out" and who doesn't? Perhaps it is a question that doesn't actually need to be answered, or already has.

The "creative" (read: new, modern, contemporary, and other co-opted adjectives) music scene in Seattle is a perfect example of a complex system. It is made up of several interdependent parts that are largely self-organized. A dynamic complex system can evolve to a state of criticality, wherein a seemingly small disturbance can have profound reverberations (such as when one of our most innovative composers moves to Oklahoma!). But a system in the state of self-organized criticality is also a system that is vital and alive, where almost anything can happen and surely will. It self-organizes. Elements emerge and the system functions without an overarching guiding hand. It is not as weak as its most "un-creative" link; it is instead as strong (and stronger) than its most daring and adventurous artist. The scene itself will coax out the most innovative and creative work; the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts. Honest and intentional work will fuel the complexity; the drivel will pass and fade like the latest fashions. Truly creative and innovative work will outlive its "new-ness" and sustain the (r)evolution.

Jimmy Ralston

Jimmy Ralston is a film composer and a scotch drinker.

"Creative music" is like pornography: It's hard to define, but you know it when you see it.

Paul de Barros

Seattle based music writer Paul de Barros contributes to Downbeat, Coda, and other jazz publications, is a co-founder of Earshot Jazz, and is author of the acclaimed Jackson Street After Hours: The Roots of Jazz in Seattle.

"Creative music," as I'm sure anyone who has to deal with the language of categorizing music for a living knows, doesn't mean anything, any more than "Great Black Music, Ancient to the Future," "avant-garde," or "progressive" mean anything, per se. All music is creative by virtue of its artificiality -- i.e., that it was in some way "created." And if one means "creative" as a synonym for "original," or "imaginative," it's actually a rather odd term for contemporary art. My mother, for example, who is 79, uses the word "creative" (with the accent on the first syllable) as a warm-and-fuzzy word to describe people she considers "artistic," particularly gays.

In any case, when I read the Tentacle, I understand "creative music" to mean a broad range of music from many genres -- jazz, classical, world, and folk (forgive me for invoking more meaningless categories) -- that in other places or times might have been called "avant-garde" or "experimental." But since the roots of the term "avant-garde" are political and military, deriving from a false Marxist analogy suggesting that art, like society, progresses from bad to better to perfect forms, and "experimental" derives from a progressive infatuation with science that came to a similar disillusionment, one is at a loss for a new term to characterize the new work one prefers.

So the real question is not what the term "creative music" means, but, rather, what congruity with my own views, or coherence in general, I find in the Tentacle's circumscription of what it takes to be important. I take it to be this: That "creative music" addresses form, procedure, process, and practice in innovative ways, no matter what the perceived or historical genre, with the object of reflecting, or reflecting upon, reality as we actually experience it. And while I honor and love much music that is creative within already established formal practices -- Bartók string quartets and straightahead jazz, for instance -- I find stimulation in music that, much like contemporary visual art, locates and/or articulates mental and emotional states that have not been articulated before. If "art" were not such a loaded term, and if history had not already arrogated the term, I would call what I have described "art music," because it suggests the kind of wide-open approach to sound that visual artists take toward the visible world.

Doug Theriault

Doug Theriault is an improviser and music and social-change organizer living in Portland, Oregon.

I'm tired of musicians having to legitimize their existence by saying that they are more creative or special than any other person. This separates "Us" from "Them" and further divides people, turning them against one another. Personally, I'm the product of musicians or sounds that I hear and feel comfortable with. Whether or not others like them doesn't matter to me very much. What matters to me more is giving people the power to get involved in an art form. What better way than improvisation? It crosses every boundary in music. I have heard recordings of 5-year-old avant-garde musicians that sound just as great as Han Bennink. I think what we need to look at when we say "creative" is giving the gift of art to others and teaching them that they can have this power, too. If we don't understand that by being creative we can help others, then it just turns into a big ego trip that we will never get out of.

Of course I know that being involved in music is different for every musician, as they bring with them many different angles and opinions. I respect anyone's opinion about what they do, even if it excludes others that "might" want to be creative also. I know we only have so much time to devote to our pursuits, and this will eventually exclude others. All I'm asking is that if someone really wants to learn how to do something, then we need to nurture this. Otherwise new music will fall by the wayside and musicians (like us) will be the last of the few.

Ian Rashkin

Ian Rashkin composes (often experimental) music and plays bass, often with the Young Composers Collective (aka Degenerate Art Ensemble). He also runs Un-Labeled Records, an independent label that is currently trying to discover some way to make a living giving music away for free.

What is creative music? . . . and does it matter?

Well, all music is inherently a creative process, and like any other creative act, some [musicians] create using well-tested and easily understood tools, while others must invent new tools to capture the images they seek to express. And either way, it's all about expression. See, art expresses things which language cannot; and music is in some way closest to speech in that it is transmitted from the creator to the receiver through aural vibrations, so that even those who do not respond to paintings, or literature, or architecture will often be moved by music.

And as with speech, music can discuss many different things in many different ways; from mathematics to aesthetics to history to deep, unspeakable feelings. For those who cannot put into words the beliefs and emotions they need to share, music can provide a necessary outlet for interaction with other members of what is an inherently social species. For humans are social by nature, but in a very complex way, and there are as many thoughts to communicate as there are people to have them. For many, the most important feeling to express is one of belonging, and usually the best way to express this (in any medium) is to use tools widely accepted and understood by a large number of people -- thus "popular music." For others, though, the drive to express individuality is paramount, and these people must invent new sounds, new shapes, new voices.

But even in their uniqueness, these voices reach out to other members of society to share their differences and to be accepted, or at least be recognized for them. And this is why I do believe in the importance of fostering experimentation in music. It is not that experimentation necessarily makes music better, or even good. And it's not that I care to hear everything that people have to say. But by supporting -- through listening, discussing, presenting, and creating -- experimental music, one helps to provide a voice to those who need to be heard; and I find that if one listens to enough voices, there will inevitably be some that say what one needs to hear. This, I think, is as valuable as any other form of social interaction, and should be encouraged to the fullest.

Does this negate, or stand above in any way, the voices of those whose ideas are expressed through more conventional means? I don't think so. Again, what an artist has to say determines the importance of their statement to any particular person, and the nature of experimentation is almost as obscure as the nature of creativity. Is it experimental to see what the millionth performance of the "Moonlight Sonata" is like? How about to explore the tiny variations that appear when you play the same REO Speedwagon covers every night for a month? What's important, in my view, is to say what you have to say and hope there is someone there to listen.

Bill Horist

Bill Horist plays guitar with Axolotl, Ghidra, Tablet, Renderhorse, and Zahir. He has recently been invited to appear in the 2000 edition of the International Executives Who's Who directory for some reason.

A freelance writer for a weekly periodical, in this city, which is as myopic as it is prominent (the periodical, certainly not the writer) once took issue with this paper's use of the term "creative." It was considered presumptuous to regard the music covered in these pages as being any more creative than more mainstream music. I don't think that its use made any presumptions to that effect. After all, does "Rock" presume that Jazz can't rock? Does "Electronica" presume that anything outside dance music is "acoustica," and not electronic at all? Is "Doo-wop" racist? Does "House" music imply that all other music is homeless? Certainly not. Why should the use of "creative" be different?

Concerning ourselves with the actual connotations of a descriptive term is something usually reserved for brainstorming sessions in boardrooms. It's a good idea, sure, but the reasons for calling something by such names will soon be forgotten by many users of the term. With its inception into the public consciousness, the term usually sheds its actual meaning and denotes nothing more than a type, genre, style, or product. Most people don't struggle trying to figure out why Punk Rock is viable. But if you think about it, how could one practically manage to heat stone to the temperature it would require to start other things on fire? Who cares? It does its job denoting its genre. Even the word improvisation doesn't carry enough meaning on its own terms to prevent composition from creeping up in its domain (and vice-versa).

A lot of music covered here is about rearranging or smashing idioms. Maybe the music has posed a problem for language. Description is buckling at its subject. After all, there's been a lot of time and thought put into ascertaining the sounds with a tidy term.

Maybe someone will pick something that'll stick. Use the word enough and people will forget about what it means. These days it would only take months for people to forget the actual meaning of a term, once it firmly denotes the rubric. "Creative" works; "Out" works, too. Whatever you wanna call it, it's still exploratory-electronic-acoustic-often improvised-sometimes composed-noisy-quiet-rhythmic-arhythmic-antithetical-consonant-dissonant Rock-n-Roll to me.

Dennis Rea

Dennis Rea is the Tentacle's Helmsman and a guitarist with Axolotl, LAND, Stackpole, and Eric Apoe.

The creative musician:

• Is not satisfied with hand-me-down cookie-cutter templates for music-making: "standards," prescribed chord progressions ("the changes"), 12-bar form, patented licks, factory-designed sounds, and so on.
• Values empirical knowledge more highly than rote learning and canonical doctrines passed down from on high.
• Does not believe there is a "right" or "wrong" way to compose music or play an instrument, or that one musical culture (or one genre within a musical culture) is inherently superior to any other.
• Rejects shopworn notions of what makes music "beautiful"; what kinds of rhythms "swing" or "groove," or what passes for "danceable" music; what qualifies as "heart" and "feeling" in music; what makes music "in" or "out" of tune; what is considered an acceptable musical instrument; what distinguishes "music" from "noise."
• Respects musical traditions without slavishly reproducing or enforcing them.
• Does not place a higher value on appearance, presentation, fashion, sex appeal, awards, remuneration, or the desire to be popular than on the music itself.
• Does not fetishize technique at the expense of imagination.
• Recognizes that "mistakes" often yield more interesting results than intentions.
• Would rather play his/her own music imperfectly than regurgitate the Real Book or the classics flawlessly.
• More often than not, finds fixed periodic rhythms (thump-thump-thump) a crashing bore.
• Embraces an expanded conception of harmony/tonality.
• Chafes at performing the same music night after night, year in and year out.
• Does not feel threatened by collaboration; is deeply suspicious of musical authoritarianism.
• Questions the long-entrenched patronage form of relationship between audience and performer.
• Believes that the musical journey is at least as important as the destination.
• Believes that political, social, and spiritual ideas can be articulated through sound, with or without words, and inversely, that music can be misused by those in power to enforce social control.
• Believes, in all seriousness, that music can be an effective force for personal and societal change.

Aiko Shimada

Aiko Shimada is a Seattle-based singer, songwriter, and guitarist.

To me, all music is creative. It's both a question of degree, and of what one might think "creative music" is. It's subjective to say a particular music is creative or not, since it would be hard for us to know what kind of subtle personal nuances and ideas the musician might have embedded in his/her music. Music might be superficially "usual" sounding, and yet there might be many hidden surprises. By the same token, something labeled as "unique" may be only superficially so.

I'm a guitarist/singer/songwriter. I want my music to be creative. For me, however, being creative is not a final goal, but a way or process which allows me to write songs that are true to me. It is my strong desire to explore and find out more about myself through music, and I feel that by understanding myself more, I will eventually become freer of those things I wish to be free of.

The limitations of words, my technique, musical instruments, in fact, any restricting factor will end up forcing me to be creative, just as we are all forced to be creative and imaginative when we don't seem to have every tool we need for doing a specific task. We all need these limitations to open our minds, to search for other possibilities. I think that when we are open and willing to explore these different possibilities, instead of taking the obvious routes, our music is creative.

Mike Marlin

Mike Marlin, the Tentacle Submariner, is a musician, librarian, and a bard at large who despises redundancy and hates it when he repeats himself.

Accepting the use of the term "creative music" as an apt descriptor for the Tentacle's purview, and resisting the temptation to launch into a sidebar about the paradoxical nature of classification systems, I turn to the question "Does creative music matter?" Well, yes and no.

Creative music matters to thousands of musicians and listeners who continue to shun conventional music paradigms and perform, compose, or seek out new modes of musical expression. Creative music does not matter to most commercial (and many noncommercial) media -- the music press, the recording industry, governments, arts councils, radio stations, music clubs and performance halls -- and to the majority of the world's casual and serious music enthusiasts. It may be that, as is the case for many notable barrier-breaking musicians throughout history, society spurns them, and their historical importance is only recognized posthumously and after a long period in which their radical aspirations have been assimilated into commonly shared musical knowledge. Whether or not you buy this argument -- that creative music matters inasmuch as it is a driving cultural/historical force -- it still does not answer the more urgent question at hand. If creative music does not matter to most people or institutions, why set it apart as anything other than "deviant" or "marginal," and why all this fuss?

Why does any minority of a population believe in its own legitimacy? And how is it that a movement, no matter how large or small, unified or fractious, poses such a threat by defining itself as a vehicle for drawing in like-minded participants and raising others' awareness of its existence? If the Tentacle's motto was "Sounding the Depths of Northwest Mainstream Music," we'd probably be so fat from advertisers' and underwriters' contributions that we could publish a 100-page glossy color magazine every month. I'm sure some people would complain that we were stepping on their turf, but I doubt that anyone would feel threatened. Is anyone really threatened by the naming and proclamation of the existence of "creative music?" Aside from a few defensive music critics in our region, my hunch is that, on the contrary, creative music does not matter to most people and therefore does not threaten the traditional role and conventions music has assumed in our time.

I did not intend to sound so gloomy. I have no intention of losing my interest in or passion for creative music, and I am assuming that neither will the thousands (millions?) of unheralded musicians and fans who will continue to persevere regardless of lack of financial success or society's musical hegemony. Some have raised the issue that if creative music mattered, the Tentacle would not have to live by its bootstraps because the community would recognize the necessity for such a community voice and respond to our constant pleas for money and volunteers. I don't pretend to think that such a simple corollary is fair; but one has to wonder whether live music is taken for granted by its proponents or simply does not matter in today's channel-surfing universe. For now, creative music in the Northwest seems to matter just enough that like-minded individuals and musicians are seeking each other out, taking risks, and venturing forth solo and in collaboration with others. And, for the most part, this outreach is taking place with little or no proselytizing. When it comes to creative music, striving to maintain, define, advocate, promote, and reach out without preaching is what really matters.

Gavin Borchert

Gavin Borchert is a Seattle-based composer and writer.

What is creative music? I'm not sure I can do any better than circle around the answer. In the July issue of Harper's, I came across a quote which might make a good starting point: "David Foster Wallace once usefully defined popular culture as 'the symbolic representation of what people already believe.'" It's evident, then, how creative music would stand in opposition to this: anything that offers a listener something experientially new, or alters that belief system. Of course, there's familiar mainstream music that does this (certain pieces, like late Haydn symphonies or the Berg violin concerto, that renew and expand your appreciation of the composer's genius every time you hear them), and avant-garde music that doesn't. (I've heard complacent free-improv performances that were the epitome of what people, both onstage and in the audience, "already believe[d].")

But maybe the real key is not always to think only in terms of what's new for someone else. Maybe the label "creative" can best be applied to any music that leads its maker into unexplored territory, not just its audience. (University of Illinois composer/gadfly Herbert Brun addressing young composers: "Write a piece that you don't like yet.") If expanding your own horizons is your priority as a musician -- over money or fame or showing off or getting laid or even over expanding a listener's horizons -- that might be a useful way to think about the word "creative."

Eric Fredericksen

Eric Fredericksen is on leave from his position as senior writer at The Stranger, where he writes about art and architecture. He is currently a fellow at Columbia University's National Arts Journalism Program.

The main problem with the tag "creative music," as used by the Tentacle, is its underlying presumption: adventurous forms are "creative," and thus traditional forms are not. The term venerates novelty while denigrating pop. Satisfying, living music needs both.

It's true that most great composers or musicians have seen their work as progressive, building on tradition while breaking new ground. Jobim invents bossa nova, the new beat, on the back of samba. Caetano Veloso et al. Invent Tropicalia on the back of bossa nova, and so on. But what is powerful and lasting about Jobim is the same thing that is powerful and lasting about Veloso: good songwriting, good arrangements, good musicians, good performances, a sense of joy, a sense of sexiness.

What went wrong in jazz during the late '60s and the '70s? Musicians and current fans blame fusion for jazz's near-death (before its resuscitation as government-funded and academy-sponsored chamber music). I blame art. There's a telling moment near the end of the movie Jazz on a Summer's Day, a documentary of the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival. The movie has shown us a succession of wonders: Chico Hamilton's quintet featuring Eric Dolphy, practicing in a Newport cottage with sweat dripping from them in the afternoon heat; the crazy teeth and precision tongue with which Anita O'Day made an art of enunciation; Louis Armstrong joyfully deploying his pure bandstand shtick. But now it's night, and Chuck Berry's onstage playing one of his hits, and it's terrible: he's playing that dull rock riff where you alternate between a root-fifth and a root-sixth, and even that he's fucking up, missing the fret, slopping up the rhythm. And the kids just love it. They're dancing, they're happier than they've been all weekend, they're probably going to go home and have sex. It's the beginning of the end. And it's incomprehensible.

The moment would seem to indict popular tastes, to prove that only the crudest, most primitive art can gain a mass audience. But I don't read it that way. I see that there was an opening, and Chuck Berry happened to be the guy to fill it. The guys who had made jazz a popular music were old; a kid wasn't going to get into Louis Armstrong. The younger guys, Gerry Mulligan, Eric Dolphy, and so on, were serious. They were making art. It was good art. But it wasn't exactly fun anymore. Chuck Berry, he was fun.

But so are many others. Here are some twentieth-century performers or composers I love who are fun and sexy, at least part of the time: Louis Armstrong. Louis Jordan. Kurt Weill. Cole Porter. Rogers and Hart. Jacques Brel. Blossom Dearie. Bing Crosby. Frank Sinatra. Antonio Carlos Jobim. Charles Mingus. The Beatles. The Rolling Stones. Johnny Cash. Caetano Veloso. George Jones. Burt Bacharach. Prince. De La Soul. The Magnetic Fields. You will notice that this list is entirely made up of geniuses of music. They are all "creative musicians." They are all rooted in pop traditions. And they stand above both talentless pop hacks and bold adventurers in the pantheon of great music.

Mark Sullo

Mark Sullo is founder of Wall of Sound at Second and Bell in Seattle, established in 1990 to provide a place to find uncommonly creative recordings.

To those who say, "I know, because I was there": It's a notorious exercise which matches a prayer or heated conversation in dedication to the chainsaw hum of corporate downsizing, perhaps a cleansing of the air or some such mysteriously motivated musing.

In fiery decay these times come across as traceable outburst for a world restored or renewed.

Three Questions

by Christopher DeLaurenti

Destroying the past is a losing game; the past cannot be
destroyed; it merely wears out.

-- Virgil Thomson, 1971
American Music Since 1910, page 80
Holt Rinehart 1971

What Is The Tentacle?

I always try to take a few issues of the Tentacle to new-music shows. Sometimes during intermission or between sets or amidst a fervent post-performance discussion, I'll ask an unfamiliar face, "Do you know about the Tentacle?" When the answer is "No," I'll hand over an issue and mention the calendar, weekly T-mail, and Web site. In response to the inevitable amazement that a free new-music magazine can survive, I quickly confess that the Tentacle perpetually teeters in a precarious financial position.

Anyone who has read the Tentacle for more than one issue knows that its slender bank account, usually measured in double digits, offers scant cushion for future issues. Yet as the printer's deadline looms, a last-minute advertiser comes through or a donor's $20 check appears in the mailbox, and thus we print the magazine. Terminal patients resigned to an imminent end often reflect on their lives and oncoming death; after serving a year aboard the Tentacle and coping with the magazine's perpetually desolate finances, I began to ponder: What is the Tentacle and what will happen to the magazine?

Recently, a wizened new-music warrior asked me, "In your heart of hearts, what do you want the Tentacle to be?" Sonically and socially, my wont is to dream of empires, so I replied, "The greatest music magazine in the world: the standard bearer for new music which aids and abets the creation and dissemination of adventurous music. Bound into the monthly full-color magazine, there would be an audio compact disc and a locally produced, region-specific 16-page insert created by each centre of new music around the world. Then..." Sagely, he cut me off. It is too soon to unfurl big dreams and speak of "centres" or mere centers of new music. Obviously, the Tentacle is no new-music empire. So what is the Tentacle?

The Tentacle is more than a magazine, a Website or a weekly e-mail calendar. In a culture hostile to free thinking and nonconformity, the rag you hold in your hands quietly challenges the tenets of music journalism and suggests a subversive musician-centered model for promoting adventurous music.

The core of the Tentacle is the calendar, whose unifying purview of avant rock, out jazz, free improv, noise, and other challenging musics declares that sonic explorers of all stripes merit attention and investigation. Admittedly, our calendar coverage is not omniscient. We need to track down the few adventurous DJs who work in dance clubs. Other gigs do slip through the cracks, too. Musicians forget to send us listings, and occasionally we make mistakes, but considering that the calendar is compiled and updated daily by one or two people, its catholicity verges on miraculous. Additional volunteers would enable the Tentacle to divide calendar duties into "beats" like a newspaper, as well as harass the often-derelict PR departments at local colleges and universities.

The calendar also confirms that innovative music occurs in several arenas: in dingy clubs, at cafés, and amidst the oft-blighted groves of academe. A smoke-sodden free-improvising clarinetist may feel no aesthetic kinship to a bleary-eyed Csound scholar, but both have been marginalized sonically and socially by the mainstream media outlets of newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and public education. Both artists feel the same desire to get gigs or at least share their art.

For many, making exploratory music is lonely, socially debilitating work. While fomenting collaborations may be unrealistic, the Tentacle calendar offers an opportunity for musicians to absorb or even exchange ideas, techniques, and information. Merely knowing that other adventurous musicians live in town offers an escape from the isolation that artists of all disciplines endure: Heck, you can always go to the gig and introduce yourself. Building a community does not mean that everyone should like everyone else's work, but entails creating an awareness of the possible paths of sonic exploration. I may deplore the lollygagging neo-minimalism of Jooren Fig-Blythe, but having heard his work gives me a basis to reject, revolt, and, willingly or not, broaden my horizons. If you have no inkling of what is out there, how can you discover adventurous music?

In the twentieth century, recordings remain the chief vehicle for disseminating difficult music of cult musicians such as Warren Burt, Derek Bailey, Iancu Dumitrescu, and even more obscure unknowns. The LP, mail-art cassette, compact disc, and CD-R have spread the music of sound artists who could never garner the support needed for a live concert in East Kufmub, Iowa, to the corners of the earth. Yet recordings are only part of a music lover's diet. While some music may sound better on a good home stereo than under the duress of FM radio compression, or in a room aurally clouded with coughs and rustling programs, music should be experienced in many acoustic contexts. Recordings cannot duplicate the acoustic space of a live performance. Also, recordings cannot equal the post-performance social atmosphere of concerts, where listeners may rant, revile, or rhapsodize. So if new-music concerts are so important, how does one discover live adventurous music?

The Northwest's mainstream media offers scant help. To preserve precious and profitable ad space, most periodicals only offer skeletal music listings: performer name, venue address, time, and price -- unless the magazine maintains an embargo on your choice of music genre. If you're lucky, a "Preview" will focus on one artist (or a group), though such items confiscate column inches from other exploratory performers and often deflate the impetus to discover the unknown, unsung and un-Previewed. By contrast, the Tentacle's performer-submitted descriptions entice or at least try to convey what a listener might experience at the gig. If the performer does not have their PR together, we will add a blurb, though if we don't know the act, we will reluctantly leave it blank.

Ideally, every calendar item carries equal weight, but the varying quality of the descriptions and the placement of calendar photos inevitably skews the listings. Given a solid collection of photos, the selection of artist photos should be randomized, but finding and collating photos of underground musicians is not an easy task. Are all of the acts in the calendar congruent with our purview? No. There are too few of us to go and hear everyone, but it is better to trust musicians and err on the side of caution than exclude an adventurous musician from the calendar. Do we guarantee that every listed artist offers outstanding exploratory music? No. Mozart can be poorly performed and so can free improv. All performers have "off nights," too.

Alongside calendar listings, the Tentacle brims with articles, polemics, reviews, tutorials, and humor, which offer diverse viewpoints and perhaps arouse an interest in the technical aspects of adventurous music. A notable policy is our editorial blockade against "advertorials" -- articles that publicize an artist's recent album, tour, signature trumpet mouthpiece, and so forth. Late-night talk shows are advertorials par excellence, though TV, unlike a low-circulation bimonthly magazine, is too expansive to neglect the famous for too long. Dead or alive, Robert Conrad will turn up eventually. Running advertorials in a locally produced magazine such as the Tentacle foments the inevitable grumbling: "When are they going to interview me?"

Some of the articles are overlong (mea culpa) or otherwise flawed, but if someone objects to an article, they can fire off a reply -- or write a polemic. Rather than consign reader discontent to a tiny letters section or a no-profile Soapbox column, we provide substantial column inches to contrasting and opposing viewpoints. The Tentacle should always serve as a community voice, no matter who publishes the magazine.

So who should publish the Tentacle? Too many reviewers and other scribblers erroneously impute intentions, apply irrelevant social contexts, and parrot inane jabber ("rock and roll saved my soul") about music, which is why adventurous musicians, who are more likely to recognize and abominate such tripe, should make the magazine. Ideally each issue should be staffed by a consensus-driven rotating crew to reduce the inevitable risk of personal attacks, slanted coverage, advertorials, and compromising the purview, but four or five e-mail-savvy idealists have served with passable results. Musicians rarely become great writers, but when obligated to their peers in the community, musicians stand a better chance of serving adventurous music and avoiding the loathsome practice of profiteering.

Profiteering means sacrificing standards to earn the almighty Dollar. Granted, we don't pay contributors, but then, we don't pay ourselves either. If the Tentacle ever pays anyone, all should be paid fairly and openly and not belittled by the paltry sums spooned out to freelancers by other publications. Money already manufactures too many hierarchies, which is why the Tentacle is a free publication. Sometimes writers contact the Tentacle and, proclaiming their love for adventurous music, eagerly propose an article then deftly ask "how much do you pay per word?" Our stock reply, "remuneration is the satisfaction of aiding and abetting adventurous music," weeds out those would-be writers who love money more than the music.

As a community endeavor, the Tentacle's finances should be public and open to anyone who wants to peruse the tattered ledger. Keeping our finances transparent affirms that the Tentacle exists not to compete but to serve; and if someone comes along and does a better job of honorably promoting adventurous music, let them! Striving to subsist instead of profiteering also helps the magazine adhere to its mission. Most publications fear offending their readers or looking foolish by articulating political, social, or aesthetic ideologies. What is an ideology? A connected a group of ideas, a consistent exhortation to action, and, alas, an identifiable label. Does "Creative Music" suffice? It must. The Tentacle's motto, Sounding the Depths of Northwest Creative Music, offers a sense of the magazine's mission, but what is "Creative Music?" A few music writers in other publications complained about the Tentacle's use of the term or, when mentioning "Creative Music," quarantine the words in quotes. The question should be asked and answered in order to clarify the Tentacle's mission and awaken the sleepwalking conservatives.

What Is Creative Music?

Aside from the homage to the Chicago-based musicians who founded the exploratory Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the motto decisively throws down a gauntlet. "What is creative music?" is a qualitative question, which suggests that those not making Creative Music are not creative. No one wants thousands of dollars and years of hard work invested in a groovy world-music record to seem laughable and irrelevant, but asking qualitative questions will invariably trample someone's feelings.

Some may complain that delineating creative music is elitist, but if you are reading this in the United States, count yourself among an elite who enjoy the benefits of paved roads, disease-free sanitation, and plenty of food and shelter for you to purchase, scrounge, or steal. An elite is a small self-selected group who place their interest to be above and superior to those outside the group. Most elites exact a substantial monetary or at least a sartorial toll for admission, but entering the world of creative music merely demands an ability to listen, sustain attention, and challenge your own conceptions of music. Like any quest for an uncommon pleasure, the quest to experience and understand creative music is not easy; indeed, it is a lifetime struggle against cultural forces (such as TV and McDonald's), which by continually proffering the latest product, erode our attention span and seduce us with ephemeral crap.

Paradoxically, the twentieth century has been the most radical and most conservative musical era in history. No one can dispute the astonishing legion of radical compositions that have transformed the context, identity, and essence of music, as well as the inexorable profusion of that most conservative of musical forms, the song. Forgive me if I refer to song-based musics such as the blues, rock and roll, pop, R&B, hip-hop, et al., as "rock," but since these genres all suffer from statically deployed periodic rhythms and the formulaic prominence of words, as well as the predictable repetition of certain sections, timbral aggregates, and pitch sequences, the rubric of "rock" suffices. Rock has been accused of being the music of old men, but too many old men and old women have made music that outshines that of their younger colleagues. These conservative musics are really the music of old minds in thrall to old ideas.

Rock musicians are the Pat Buchanans of the music world. Pat Buchanan and other conservative politicians of his ilk, despite being sincerely patriotic Americans, persist as unwitting fossils of an earlier, antique era. Yet in all forms of music, we need antiquarians: Mozart on period instruments in a small hall, the reunited Temptations at the local Bijou, punk rockers cavorting on a beer-glazed stage, and for lack of a better term, "heritage" or "world musicians" who perpetuate traditional music. Unfortunately, some of these artists need to be reminded who they are: skilled, invaluable, yet deeply conservative musicians who, by failing to acknowledge and address the musical issues of our time, remain doomed to conserve and perchance propagate -- not create -- the music of the past.

Creative music is not conservative. Composed or improvised, creative music grapples with the unresolved musical issues of our time: polyphonic and polytemporal rhythm, the movement of sound in space, the social context of performance, redefining or attacking the traditional parameters of music (form, melody, harmony, etc.) from moment to moment, the identity of musical instruments, and so on. Elaborating my abridged list would devour hundreds of pages; to define them here might suggest a Canon Law of Creative Music, which as a young composer might only be useful to me. Creative music stands in essential opposition to the dominant sonic and economic practices of our time. Creative music is the subversive, creative spark cupped furtively in one's hands, a shield against the deaf and dumb bluster of society.

For the Tentacle, I think the definition of creative music should remain inchoate or at least murky. Retaining a protean and collectively subjective definition will ensure against ossified dogma and stimulate a dialogue so essential to the exploration of music.

It is foolish to proclaim one form of music as universally superior to another, just as it is outrageous to expect someone to choose between conservative or creative music. Adventurous musicians, unlike many of their conservative comrades, should be conversant with all forms of music. I believe that, compared to conservative music, creative music offers a deeper, richer experience. After hearing Igor Stravinsky's Movements (or even the Rite!), Alice Shields's Transformation of Ani, Sun Ra's The Magic City, or any among a mile-long list of creative music, most mainstream music sounds laughable, irrelevant, and emotionally feeble. No prose can prove my point. Exploration and experience of all music is the only path.

Where Is the Tentacle Going?

Assuming that the magazine survives financially, the Tentacle should follow an entropic model: Those who serve aboard the magazine eventually debark and welcome aboard new blood. And, aside from improving the previously mentioned shortcomings, the Tentacle needs to inspire you, the reader. Unless others who know, love, and make adventurous music come forward and inject a new perspective and share the sometimes punishing workload, the magazine will wither and die. Along with volunteers, the other crucial component of the Tentacle's survival is a healthy creative music scene in the Northwest.

I cannot report on areas outside of Seattle, but it seems to me that support for creative music in Seattle remains minuscule: Attendance at new music gigs ranges from fair to criminally poor. Despite the increasing numbers of adventurous musicians, fewer and fewer of us are showing up at new-music gigs. Non-musicians don't seem to be showing up as often, either. I doubt price is an obstacle. Rock-concert tickets cost more than seats at the Seattle Symphony, yet admission prices for creative music have stayed the same since the mid-1980s.

Seattle's purveyors of adventurous art -- CoCA, ConWorks, and On The Boards -- occasionally present adventurous music, but the two longtime presenters, CoCA and OTB, have substantially scaled back presentations of adventurous music in recent years. Other Sounds survives, too, but with diminished attendance. Yet there is no dearth of gigs in town. Indeed, while the number of new-music venues has shrunk and so-called "artist access" prices remain laughably out of reach, Tentacle back issues show a steady increase in the number of creative music listings, most of them in smaller venues.

My own few experiences staging new-music events has taught me that audiences will show up en masse for either a spectacle (such as Electromuse One at CoCA in 1997) or a big name like Philip Glass, though sometimes big names can't fill the house. So excluding price and the availability of new music, intangible factors should be examined.

I doubt the spirit of discovery has been so quickly crushed, but audiences appear increasingly risk-averse, which is fatal to local music: Judging any musician from a single gig abets the masterpiece culture and demotes risk-taking to a foolish pursuit. Has the profusion of television channels, magazines, small record labels, and the Web eroded the audience for live adventurous music? Maybe music is too common? I can count several friends and acquaintances, all of them new-music aficionados, who are quite content to stay home and listen to good-to-great composed and improvised music on compact disc. Should the Tentacle fold and let adventurous music reclaim its deeply underground sub rosa cachet?

While I continue to search for answers, I console myself with Classical scholar and pianist Charles Rosen's insight that it is musicians who keep music alive. Mendelssohn revived J.S. Bach, many too-quickly forgotten stalwarts championed Schoenberg, and doubtless those dedicated to adventurous music will persist also. Creative musicians have one path to pursue: Attack! Attack! Attack!

Davy Jones' Locker

Alan Hovhaness, 1911 -- 2000

The Tentacle is saddened to report that prolific composer and longtime Seattle resident Alan Hovhaness passed away on June 21 at age 89. A proponent of lyricism in an age of musical abstraction, Hovhaness eschewed the severity of serialism and other prevalent twentieth century musical movements -- he once declared that atonality is "against nature there is a center to everything that exists" -- instead favoring a highly personal approach to tonal composition that yielded deeply affecting works of great beauty. Of mixed Scottish and Armenian descent, Hovhaness had a seemingly inexhaustible creative drive, producing a vast repertoire of more than 400 opus numbers, including more than 60 symphonies. He was a pioneer in incorporating non-Western -- and particularly East Asian -- musical concepts into a Western musical framework, and was deeply inspired by nature, composing a work that incorporated whale songs and another that sonically evoked the eruption of Mount St. Helens. His career received a boost in recent years due to the patronage of conductor Gerard Schwarz, who made the composer's works a staple of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra repertoire. Hovhaness had resided in Seattle since 1962, composing in his home in the south end within sight of his beloved Mount Rainier.

Dear Lucy

Dear Lucy,

What's the difference, if any, between jamming and free improv?

Gone Phishing in Mukilteo

Ahoy Gone,

The term "jamming" commonly refers to situations where two or more musicians get together to play unrehearsed, spontaneous music. The term gets bandied about so loosely that it is difficult to pin down. If it were not for self-proclaimed "jam bands" whose modus operandi entails improvising in a given key or mode within a repetitive structure, perhaps the word could have remained a vague descriptor for completely unfettered and untethered musical brainstorming. Such is not the case.

Although the exact origin of its usage remains unknown to this mollusk, the term "jamming" seeped into popular music lore decades ago and has mistakenly come to denote free improvisation. Whether focusing on individual solos by trading bars or other preset blocks of time among instrumentalists, or intensifying a pattern, a rhythm, or volume in an attempt to conjure excitement, jamming does not accomplish the same goals as free improvisation. Simply put, jamming rarely leads one to the same sort of epiphany that may result from the raw and risky act of freely improvised music. Jamming fails to question traditional instrumental techniques; and silence, that unsung element of music, merely means "laying out" instead of staying silent and listening.

Free improvisation requires listening intently to oneself and to other musicians polyphonically. Unlike "jamming" or chord-dependent straight-ahead jazz or Baroque-era continuo playing, any and all musical parameters -- melody, harmony, rhythm, timbre, form -- may change at any time in any fashion. The free improviser creates music from scratch and draws from the depths of the unfamiliar to achieve liberation. Some improvisers find it valuable to strive for a conscious mindset of non-intention or maintain an ever-erasing tabula rasa, while others simply seek to supplant their own assumptions and limits with new musical ideas. Generally, it seems that improvising requires more mental and/or spiritual energy than jamming.

The difference between jamming and improvising is not qualitative; one method is not superior to the other, and both can succeed or fail from the vantage point of musician, collaborator, and audience. But I am tired of players who say they're improvising while re-treading well-worn musical conventions. Too often, jamming literally jams up the possibilities, and I find myself swimming frantically to my remote grotto, even though the safest haven from a redundant string of sloppily strung together rock-style solos is exposure to the masters of free improvisation.

Some of the earliest preserved examples of free improvisation are the Lennie Tristano Sextet's Intuition and Digression, recorded in 1949 by Capitol Records. Other good starting points include AMM's Generative Themes (Matchless MRCD06), The Music Improvisation Company (ECM 1005), the Spontaneous Music Ensemble's Karyobin (Chronoscope CPE 2001-2), and the Peter Brötzmann Octet's Machine Gun (FMP CD 24).

Lucy

Dear Lucy,

Maybe I've heard too much. These days when I go to see freely improvised music, too often I hear what might be called "serial improv," where the performers grind through a sequence of techniques on their instruments, each lasting for about thirty seconds. Thirty seconds of overblowing a reed, or bowing guitar strings, or rubbing a ball against a snare, and then some other sound or technique occurs to them and they move on to that one -- it's like watching a freight train go by, except that trains have an itinerary and a destination. There are always brilliant exceptions, but sometimes I feel like I'm poring over a catalog of extended techniques instead of listening to music. There's more to free improv than that, right?

Bored with Moment Form

Ahoy Bored,

While free improvisers and post-classical composers deserve a great deal of credit for investigating and collating extended techniques (e.g., Stuart Dempster and the trombone, Joan LaBarbara and the voice, Eddie Prévost and percussion), fusing the essentially disparate elements of free improvisation remains a daunting task. Failure and incoherence continually threaten improvising musicians who relentlessly quest to create something from nothing.

Whether you listen for extended structures or prefer to glide from moment to moment on the gossamer wings of spontaneous composition, I can only encourage you to keep listening; free improvisation is not only risky for the player but for the audience, too. Like all music, free improvisation is prone to failure, but good free improvisation opens the ears and nourishes the soul.

Lucy

p.s. Some readers might find it interesting that the "moment" in Moment-form, as defined by composer Karlheinz Stockhausen, does not refer to objective durations such as seconds, bars, etc., but to common musical characteristics that sustain for any duration: second(s), minutes, hours, days, and so on.

Ink Tank

While music itself remains the best gateway to musical ideas and inspiration, books on music and musicians offer invaluable guidance for additional exploration. From time to time in this space, members of the Tentacle Collective and the Northwest creative music community will briefly describe some of their favorite musical tomes. Your suggestions and contributions are also welcome.

American Music in the Twentieth Century
Kyle Gann (Schirmer Books, 1997)

As the author admits in the opening pages, writing a comprehensive book on American music poses a Herculean task. Confining itself to what can be loosely described as the offshoots of Classical Music, American Music in the Twentieth Century profiles composers, cultural shifts, and musical trends in American music with astounding clarity. In chapters such as "Forefathers," "Ultramodernism -- The 1920s," "Minimalism," "Post Cage Conceptualism," and "Interfaces with Rock and Jazz," Gann encapsulates composers and their ideas, illustrating key works with score examples. Gann, a composer and music critic for the Village Voice, includes a hefty chapter on electronic music and also addresses performance art. New music fanatics will no doubt espy and descry assorted omissions (such as sound sculptor Harry Bertoia), but within the book's 386 pages, readers will discover a highly readable and invaluable trove of ideas and information on American music.

Note for Seattle readers: Some marvelous soul at the Seattle Public Library has requisitioned fifteen copies, so if you are an impoverished musician, visit your local library!

-- Christopher DeLaurenti

Sturgeon's Log

Members of the Tentacle Collective seek out CDs of interest to friends and fomenters of adventurous music. Unlike other publications, we will profile any release relevant to the Tentacle's purview, regardless of release date. You can obtain these releases from stores, specialty houses, or on the Web. Note that the Tentacle does not solicit review copies, so please do not send CDs to us for review.

All reviews by Christopher DeLaurenti

ohm: the early gurus of electronic music 1948--1980
(ellipsis arts..., 3-CD set)

Aside from the near-mythic 100-CD IDEAMA (International Digital Electro-Acoustic Music Archive), which multi-CD set has attempted to cover electronic music so broadly? Ohm features excerpts by many of the major innovators of electronic music including John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Vladimir Ussachevsky, Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick, Alvin Lucier, Steve Reich, Charles Dodge, and a raft of egregiously unheralded composers. Usually excerpts make me cringe, but ohm is a good set: Along with many of the classics, a spiffy booklet sketches a thumbnail history of the medium. Purists, however, will grouse about the surfeit of excerpts, minor textual gaffes, and the perhaps strange choices of recordings, as well as descry absent favorites (where's Michel Chion?). Indeed, the booklet has a few piddling oversights, but currently there is no better introduction to electronic music. Incidentally, the IDEAMA remains under lock and key, imprisoned by a copyright tangle rivaling the Gordian Knot.

Cecil Taylor: Conquistador! (Blue Note, CD)

While Blue Note dredges its vaults for funky hard bop, it is easy to forget that the label did record some of the out-jazz innovators during its heyday in the 1960s. Of the seminal Blue Note releases, most Cecil Taylor fans I know prefer the superb Unit Structures, but Conquistador!, originally comprised of two side-long pieces -- "With(Exit)" and the title track minus the exclamation point -- remains a barnburner. The bonus track, an alternate take of "With(Exit)," was a revelation for me back in the 1980s. Contrary to what my prog- and bop-sodden peers at the time claimed, the alternate take confirmed that the Cecil Taylor Unit's vertiginous music was not the luck of clumsy, overtalented instrumentalists but masterfully created spontaneous composition by musicians who, in the heat of creation, retained "the long ear" -- an unerring sense of overarching structure.

Philip Glass: Violin Concerto (Naxos, CD)

First, a history lesson: Until the mid-1990s, a single pricing structure governed the record industry. Most of the major classical and jazz record labels released back catalogue in three tiers: full price ($13.99+), mid-price ($9.99 to $12.99), or budget (under $9.99). Why the .99 price points? Ask Fernand Braudel. Price proved an astonishingly good indicator of the remastering job -- or lack thereof -- and reliably reflected the quality of the accompanying documentation such as liner notes and performer credits. The majors also hatched the clever scheme of releasing an avalanche of vintage recordings at budget price, letting them lapse out of print, then remastering and repackaging the music at full price. Then, in the mid-1990s, the classical and jazz budget tiers were substantially crippled by the flood of indie and small-label CDs, especially those issued by Naxos. Refusing to pay big-name performers and big-name orchestras superstar prices (e.g., the Berlin Philharmonic charges $100,000 to record a symphony), Naxos finds good to stellar unknowns, pays musicians flat fees, and sells their releases for under $7. As with any label, not every recording is outstanding, but this CD is an excellent entryway to the chugging arpeggios of Philip Glass's post-"Einstein on the Beach" music. Good liner notes, recordings, and performances. A bargain for under 7 bucks!

Annea Lockwood: A Sound Map of the Hudson River
(Lovely, CD)

Sound pioneer Annea Lockwood trekked to the beginning of the Hudson River and made field recordings downriver to the Atlantic Ocean. More than a documentary, Lockwood's piece gradually immerses the listener in a hallucinatory rhythmic and timbral latticework of rippling, creeping and rushing water. Unforgettable.

Raymond Scott: The Manhattan Project, Inc.
(Basta, 2-CD set)

Chiefly remembered for writing oddly sectioned tunes like "Powerhouse" which Carl Stalling orchestrated for Warner Brothers cartoons, Scott was also a pioneer in electronic music. Alas, he kept many of his bold ideas such as sequencers, multitrack recording, Futurist-style sound objects, and composing machines to himself, and devoted most of his time to scoring high-tech commercials. This set contains Scott's commercials ("Bendix -- the Tomorrow People!"), music beds, kooky versions of a few of his "cartoon hits," and a few slivers of sonic weirdness. The documentation offers an invaluable glimpse of Scott's work area, and the inclusion of backing tracks and other incomplete pieces almost invite using the release as a construction kit for further sound exploration. Unlike most box sets and retrospectives, the schematics, interviews, and astounding liner notes in this release capture its honoree's genius, quirks, and profligate invention succinctly. Any posterity-pondering composer would be grateful for such deluxe treatment.