Re: [情報] John官網公布新EP消息! 以及官方推特帳號!
John最新發文。講述他自2007年到現在對於音樂創作的體悟與變化。
非常長，嗯，有緣再翻 XD
http://johnfrusciante.com/2012/07/my-recent-history/
My Recent History
I started being serious about following my dream to make electronic music,
and to be my own engineer, five years ago. For the 10 years prior to that, I
had been playing guitar along with a wide range of different types of
programmed synthesizer and sample based music, emulating as best as I could,
what I heard. I found that the languages machines forced programmers to think
in had caused them to discover a new musical vocabulary. The various forms of
electronically generated music, particularly in the last 22 years, have
introduced many new principles of rhythm, melody, and harmony. I would learn
what someone had programmed but their thought process eluded me. Programmers,
particularly ones fluent on machines from the early 80s and/or tracker
programs from the 90s, clearly had a theoretical foundation in their employ
but it was not the theory I knew from pop/rock, jazz or classical. The hands
relationship to the instrument accounts for so much of why musicians do what
they do, and I had come to feel that in pop/rock my mind was often being
overpowered by my hand, which I had a strong desire to correct. I was
obsessed with music where machine intelligence and human intelligence seemed
to be bouncing off one another, each expanding with the incorporation of what
it received from the other.
In 2007 I started to learn how to program all the instruments we associate
with Acid House music and some other hardware. For about 7 months I didn’t
record anything. Then I started recording, playing 10 or so synced machines
through a small mixer into a CD burner. This was all experimental Acid House,
my skills at making rock music playing no part in it whatsoever. I had lost
interest in traditional songwriting and I was excited about finding new
methods for creating music. I’d surround myself with machines, program one
and then another and enjoy what was a fascinating process from beginning to
end. I was so excited by the method of using numbers much in the same way I’
d used my muscles all my life. Skills that had previously been applied by my
subconscious were gradually becoming conscious, by virtue of having numerical
theoretical means of thinking about rhythm, melody and sound.
Then I began a musical relationship with two friends, wherein I could do
basically the same thing I had been doing in my living room, only with other
people. This continues to be a band which is perfectly congruent with my
nature.
Right after we started playing together I started using a computer. Initially
it was just something to record what I was doing with hardware but it
eventually became one of my main instruments. I gradually built up a studio
ideally set up for the specific ways I work and think (this is a continual
work in progress). The music I did at this stage was a more adventurous kind
of instrumental Acid House than what I’d been doing onto CD, and by the time
I recorded my second song on a computer, I was aware that Progressive Synth
Pop was an accurate description of what I was doing. Acid was nevertheless
the central musical style involved.
After a year or so on the computer, I occasionally began using my voice
again. Prior to this, incorporating guitar and singing had posed a problem
because I wanted to make music based on the rules, as I perceived them –
inherent in the various kinds of electronic music I loved – and did not
want to blend this with what I previously did with songwriting and guitar
wherein many rules of pop/ rock music would then naturally be employed. If I’
d attempted to blend the two at that time my electronics would have served as
support to my songs, voice, and guitar. This idea was repugnant to me.
Because I was so much more developed as a rock musician, rocks
characteristics and rules would have dominated, thereby slowing down the rate
at which I was discovering new things. To be clear, when I say rules, I mean
the underlying principles and abstract phenomena which define a particular
style, marking its boundaries and limits, within which exists an area proven
to be worthy of human creative investigation.
I continued to write songs, but only when I had to out of necessity, because
something had to be expressed that way. I no longer looked at songwriting as
a craft to prolifically hone, as I had for so long. In these recent years, it
is just something that happens sometimes, a natural thing, like breathing. At
first, recording pre-written songs felt like a restriction, but I eventually
found myself having acquired enough new work methods of my own and enough
skill and speed at programming that when I recorded a pre-written song I had
as much fun as when I made instrumentals. This is the point at which the
tracks on Letur-Lefr were recorded. I was still steering clear of most rock
music characteristics, but R&B and Hip Hop were blending well with the
various types of music I was combining. R&B seemed to me a path through which
to integrate my songwriting with my programming, being that I could do it in
such a way that the song served as support for the things I was doing
instrumentally – and not the other way around – which was very important to
me.
As this phase passed, I began developing a concept for a new approach to
playing guitar, which required regular practice. For the preceding couple of
years, practice consisted of playing along with this or that Rave or Synth
Pop record or whatever. I didn’t see a point in developing my playing
musculature-wise because there was no call for that kind of playing in my
music. I originally was practicing in a disciplined manner because I wanted
to play a specific way on my wife’s second record. But I found an approach
to the instrument, which was brand new for me, in which I saw a lot of room
to grow. My main melodic electronic instrument being the MC-202, I had gone
through a long period where my knowledge of guitar informed much of my 202
programming. But I had now reached a point where I thought as much like a
202ist as I did a guitarist, and my guitar playing was now being informed by
my knowledge of the 202. I was using the muscles I was developing in a way
completely divorced from the way I used them as a rock musician, partially
because I switched to a different type of guitar (a Yamaha SG), but mainly
because my musical ideas stemmed from my understanding of an instrument on
which the choice of notes is not limited by the position of ones hand. So at
this point guitar became fully integrated into my music. The combination of
having a new approach to the instrument, combined with all the ways I was now
well versed at processing sound, resulted in my having the same excitement
about guitar that I had long had for my synths, sequencers and drum machines.
This, and other factors, resulted in my being able to pick and choose
specific musical principles from rock/pop to apply to my music, just as I had
been applying specific aspects of every other type of music I love. I no
longer had to be concerned with avoiding clichés because I just didn’t
think that way anymore. I had developed new habits which were taking me all
kinds of new places, and the old habits were now foreign to me. Also the
computer had now become an instrument for me, so Drum n’ Bass (as well as a
number of other styles I’d been reaching for) had now become fully
integrated into my music. At this point, I also had begun to grasp the
characteristics of engineering styles of the past, allowing me to combine
aspects of old and modern styles of production just as I’d been combining
different styles of music.
A few months into this period, I began the recording of PBX Funicular
Intaglio Zone. For years I had just approached everything one song at a time,
but my experience in production now allowed me to comfortably work within a
record concept while remaining completely absorbed in the process. By this
time, I had found the balance that I’d been searching for, wherein the
presence of a vocal and the structure of a written song actually provided me
with additional freedoms as a musician.
Aspects of PBX are the realization of combinations of styles of music I saw
in my head many years ago, as potentials, but which I had no idea how to
execute. I’m so happy that I’ve had the opportunity to focus exclusively on
music for music’s sake, and also so thankful that I got to spend all those
years active in the music business whilst keeping my head in music all the
time. I was free to spend most of my time playing along with records,
writing, and dreaming. I have so much gratitude for everyone who made that
possible.
In summary, Acid served as a good starting point for me, very gradually
leading me to be able to combine whatever styles of music I want, as a one
man band.
- John
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