Music is Imperfect

Automation can serve music, but it can't correct it. Music has no correctable qualities. The air/ lilt/ light/ space adding color and vibrancy to sound are the gates by which the body and mind gain consciousness of the composition from the general flat line of noise. Historically, the math beat is rooted in the sad arts, hardly creative; a sonic shackle for marching orders.
 
Tonal auto correction seeks to uniform the path between hearing and thought into subservience - a vacuumed bow to the master, and a head slap from the next back-assed disaster. The thinking goes that music has to have enough familiarity - i.e. perfection - so as to not displease the ruling authority. There is no future in such impatient bitch mongering.
 
What is music? The answer doesn’t have to be strict. Music is meant to be imperfect! Keep it to the universal basics: Sonic expression, orderly noise, notable, rhythmic. Perfection seeks to reduce - if not eliminate - the possibilities in the answer. Perfection suits a limited kind of music. It seeks to establish a rule. The thought of bending music towards the ultimate accuracy confuses pride with awareness. It brings to mind a cave man, thick-between-the-ears, barking in the shallows of the arts.
 
Let people be with their music. Competition is fine, but it falls short in defining what and why. It can light the path of how to make music, but who is to say? Those who seek to evaluate the merits of music could and should do so with a spirit for freedom. Musical competitions acting on a norm of perfection are ignoring what we’re all really competing against: time. Too quickly do they abandon appreciation for the fight, struggle and grit required to shape sonic order from disorderly noise.
 
Perfection has no real authority over music, and as a concept, it might best act as a diversion from what is quite often hackneyed and common at the substance level. I reject perfection on the grounds of it being a pretentious conceit. I reject perfection on the grounds of it lacking humor and feeling. To paraphrase Miles Davis: “play it first and tell them what it is later.” 

1 comment