'We don't write songs, we write records': a compositional methodology based on late 20th century popular music

摘要

Leiber and Stoller are often quoted as having famously stated "We don’t write songs. We write records". This paper discusses an evolving methodology that is crystallizing out of my composition practice and my ongoing research into the art of record production and popular music performance practice. The methodology takes aspects of performance and technological mediation from selected styles of popular music and combines them with nonstandard (for the style) melodic, harmonic and metric practice. The technological mediation can take the form of a generative Max/MSP patch, an electronics performance using gesturally generated MIDI control of a Max/MSPpatch or a combination of electronic processing and more conventional recording studio techniques. The resulting pieces are suggestive of the gestural shapes and record production sounds that are characteristic of the styles. The paper will also discuss some of the forms that technological mediation and performance practice can take in popular music styles and the cultural context that produced them and endows them with meaning.