Seriously thoughtful What Does Bliss in Music Mean to You?

[Prestidigitweeze]

Bliss in music means different things to different people.

I happen to be a studio arranger and keyboard player, which means my euphoria is conditioned by my search for perfect sounds. To me, bliss is the slow opening and closing of a comb filter over a deep sine wave bass. It means a touch of soft analog distortion added to individual tracks within a digital mix. It means the magical flaws of real oscillators rather than the wave-drawn kind. It means slow-motion pads evolving over fast tempos and relentless drum programming. It means synths and strings instead of guitars and brass. It means major scales with raised fourths and minor scales with lowered sixths. It means no lyrics and only the occasional vocalise. It means suspensions and passing tones that linger like a last long look at a secret crush from childhood. It means tracks that sparkle, drone and thunder all at the same time.

What does bliss in music mean to you?

[phenomshel]

I can answer that in one word: harmony

[Shimarenda]

For me, it's playing with other people who are all enjoying the experience as much as I.

[beppe]

Interesting question.

I listen more to music that I know that to new music. It means that bliss comes when I am very familiar with that particular piece.

I rarely have bliss from other music than classical. I love jazz but I do not loose my self in it.
Probably is the unraveling of the voices, in elegant and complex ways, ever changing, always a new reference, something on which I can lean upon but that changes before I feel solidly planted. That surprises me with unexpected equilibrium. I find it easily and almost always in chamber music (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, their quartets), or with piano. Strangely I do not trip with organ, while the same music adapted for piano makes me trip (Bach-Busoni stuff), the same with harpsichord. So the sound is essential, I should become more abstract. But I can trip also on simple apparently linear stuff like Sati.

The juice of it? who knows.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Though I, too, love chamber music best, I associate it with a fuller range of emotions than visceral bliss (Beethoven's Op. 132 has moments of resonant zen never quite achieved by anyone else). My favorite composers are probably Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith, Anton Webern (my best friend, who is never sentimental, cried when he heard the structural revelations in Webern's arrangement of the Ricercar from Bach's Musical Offering), Bartok, Monteverdi -- the most tasteful and literate opera composer who ever lived -- Johannes Ockeghem, Josquin, Artur Honneger, Stockhausen ("Gesang der Jugend" was the first music I ever heard as a child), Faure (his settings of Verlaine), Scriabin, Hans Werner Henze, Penderecki, Lutoslawski, Alfred Schnittke, Carlos Gesualdo, Machaut, late Mozart (and any of his more contrapuntal experiments), Henry Purcell, Buxtehude, very, very late Liszt, Stravinsky for his chamber music (particularly the Septet), Corelli for his suspension chains, Samuel Barber for his art songs), Robert Schumann for his Piano Quartet, Ravel for his String Trio (the only instrumental piece I know of that contains a villanelle), Thea Musgrave -- when people say there have been no great composers who were women, I always cite her -- and of course, Mahler for his Kindertotenlieder, Ruckert Lieder, Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth Symphony.

There's also jazz (Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Bill Evans). Beside these, other kinds of music seem apt but short-lived soundtracks.

[Xenophon]

Here's one example. For me, bliss in music is the perfection of Mozart. Or a small Early Music ensemble on stage, with each musician catching fire from the others. Or that perfect Jazz solo. Or "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun." Or a really good traditional Celtic music group -- search for the "Chris Norman Ensemble" at the iTunes store, and listen to the samples.

Or even the album "The Art of the Bawdy Song" by the Baltimore Consort (yes! the whole album!). That one is music from the taverns of Shakespeare's time, performed by one of the world's finest early music groups... and the first classical album ever to wind up with a Parental Advisory sticker for lyrics.

Xenophon

[desertblues]

Some music speaks to my mind, touches a cord of things I thought forgotten.
Some music makes me feel I am still a part of the universe, although it doesn't tell me why.
But bliss: I would use another word for such an experience.....

[covingtoncat73]

I "bliss out" to Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album and some Enya.

[beppe]

Originally Posted by desertblues

Some music speaks to my mind, touches a cord of things I thought forgotten.
Some music makes me feel I am still a part of the universe, although it doesn't tell me why.
But bliss: I would use another word for such an experience.....

I think I agree with you. this is wikipedia
Bliss can be a state of profound satisfaction, happiness and joy, a constant state of mind, undisturbed by gain or loss.
With music I just experienced the profound satisfaction.

although it doesn't tell me why. Often the how is plenty enough . what a nice experience.

I do not appreciate particularly when music becomes too imitative, or too real.
Although I remember to have listened at the radio an example of "static music". At least that is how I thought of it. There was no tempo, no rhythm, just an almost continuous rasping sound from a stringed instrument, in the lower key. Not disharmonious, not just a noise, but not harmonious in any recognizable way (by me). The sound changed gradually to a different one a small number of times. It was Japanese and representing a dead tree in the forest. It touched me and had me completely, for the 5 minutes it lasted.

[The Terminator]

99 luft ballons

[The Terminator]

And no I'm not German.

[Prestidigitweeze]

For me, classical music offers a different kind of fulfillment than simple bliss, as it involves the full range of emotion, intellect and physical sensation. I think of it as transcendent rather than blissful.

Nuanced electronic music is one of the forms I associate with bliss.

Years ago, two naive music journalists cornered Karlheinz Stockhausen and played him a few tracks by Aphex Twin and Ritchie Hawtin. They assumed he'd enjoy these because, to said neophytes, all electronic music was equally strange and futuristic and because those two artists cited Stockhausen as an influence. Predictably, K.S. hated it all because, as a trained composer of a particular vintage, he found the repetition and simple content numbing and deadening, actually calling one track "not music but kind of drug" (quite accurate in terms of the music's purpose), which of course he opposes to the kind of rhythmic and contrapuntal through-composed content that signifies life and vitality.

I understand that concept -- the whole trick of composition is to learn how to make your individual lines breathe and change, to use balanced ideas in an ever-changing context to create something that is both surprising and inevitable.

When Stockhausen condemned that music I could hear the chorus of my composition teachers saying something similar -- though they, unlike Stockhausen, were not avant garde composers and world-altering technical pioneers.

=======

Still, I find there is a place for loops and repetitious music. Certain repetitive and carefully mixed tracks perform exactly the function for me that definitions of Bliss describe.

Arovane, Herrmann & Kleine, Transient Waves, Thomas Köner, middle-period Boards of Canada -- this is the sort of narrowly defined thing bliss means to me personally (when I'm not improvising and/or tracking such myself).

============

A few examples:

Monolake - "Ionized"

What resonates for me are the precisely placed sounds in their frequency ranges and in the stereo field, with one of my favorite sounds -- the comb filter -- rising periodically from the lower register up. Generally, I find in Robert Henke ("Monolake") a level of finesse in terms of sound design, engineering and minimal arranging that I've always found lacking in most others who work in that style. The purpose is to create static sonic objects -- the sound equivalent of Calder's "Stabiles" -- but to do so as precisely as possible.

=======

Here is Transient Waves using traditional instruments and a layered vocalise to create a track that makes more subtle use of a drone with glittering resonance filter sweeps:

Transient Waves - "Paradise"

=======

Ulrich Schnauss - "Wherever You Are"

Ulrich Schnauss has a more mainstream style than I prefer, hasn't attained a certain sophistication in sound design, and is even primitive in terms of harmony and structure (as much of the shoegazer-influenced plinkerpop from that period tends to be), but this track has a lot of the characteristics I'm talking about:

1. Pandiatonicism, the use of diatonic scales in non-tertian ways that form clusters. Arovane does this systematically from the beginning, but in Schnauss, it's the slow accumulation of parts that changes the harmony from tertian to pandiatonic, and whether he knows it or not, the simpler harmonies toward the bottom and their slow clouding with dissonance is a mirror of the overtone series.

2. The entire arrangement is structured to imitate the slow opening of a cutoff filter. Doing that literally is almost a cliché in post-Basic-Channel dub and techno, but with Schnauss, the literal opening is only period, and what creates the sound is the constant addition of higher frequencies and registers with each added part.

3. The use of droning and clusters to create the sound of shifting overtones and mild dissonances that rub ever-so-gently, creating a sense of warmrth

4. The deliberate addition of soft analog distortion to digital signals to give the overall sound that characteristic warmth.

I also have wistful memories of listening to Schnauss in 2001 before the second WTC Tower literally fell in front of me; I came face to face with Shiva devouring the blesséd fallen ones; before New York ceased to be one of the world's most vital centers of the arts when, all around me, galleries, museums and music stores closed, and musicians, artists, choreographers and writers moved to Montreal, Berlin, Paris, New Mexico City and Denmark; before the world divided into factions, erasing for decades that feeling of euphoric potential, which had fueled and galvanized our lives the moment before.

=======

Here are Ryuichi Sakamoto and Fennesz employing a repetitive but more sophisticated version of that idea almost ten years later:

Fennesz, Sakamoto - "Abyss"

Those who wonder how conscious the two collaborators were of attempting to evoke a sense of blissful and poignant sacrifice may watch this short video.

=======

Here's a far more sophisticated track by Arovane, who works with pandiatonicism almost exclusively, not only in terms of harmony but in the melodic tendencies implied by linear parts:

Arovane: "Pub - Summer - AMX 1"

Do overlook the asinine image and description attached to the track, as this was the only instantly playable copy I could find short of uploading it myself.

This piece is most effective for me because it avoids cliché tropes of happiness and opts for a self-sufficiency that has its own trajectory, which renders the bliss it induces (for me) more intelligent, and freer of the shallows and gaudiness of post-Love-Parade euphoria.

=====

This track is even simpler and more repetitive than the Schnauss, but Hermann & Kleine are more eclectic and tasteful than he (and better musicians, as those who have heard Christian Kleine play guitar will attest):

Hermann & Kleine - "Wonder"

=======

Two last tracks:

Much less repetitive from bar to bar, more minor in sonority, and more advanced harmonically, melodically and aesthetically, but still essentially loops for piano and string-reminiscent electronics:

Sakamoto and Fennezs - "Mor"
Arovane's last composition as of 2004: "Goodbye Forever"

§*§*§*§*§*§

As a young classical musician, I couldn't have listened to any of this without wincing or seeking silence, but as a studio musician changed forever after playing with PIL, I'm able to enjoy certain kinds of repetitive music according to their function and absence of parasitic hooks. I don't want to remember the ideas, which are perhaps too simple to think about, involuntarily. I want only to enjoy the shimmering static landscapes while they last.

[HarryT]

Wagner's "Ring Cycle"; for me, surely the ultimate work of art ever created by one man. I could (and do) listen to it endlessly.

[Prestidigitweeze]

I perceive blissful music and transcendent art as different things (see above). I suspect that Berg's Violin Concerto and Piano Sonata, Bartok's last Violin Concerto and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis do for me what the Ring Cycle does for you, which is different from what I mean by the specific word bliss.

Not to invalidate your point, though, since your interpretation of bliss is certainly valid.

Beppe touches on what I mean with the above mention of having enjoyed "static music."

[beppe]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

For me, classical music offers a different kind of fulfillment than simple bliss, as it involves the full range of emotion, intellect and physical sensation. I think of it as transcendent rather than blissful.

Nuanced electronic music is one of the forms I associate with bliss.

Years ago, two naive music journalists cornered Karlheinz Stockhausen and played him a few tracks by Aphex Twin and Ritchie Hawtin. They assumed he'd enjoy these because, to said neophytes, all electronic music was equally strange and futuristic and because those two artists cited Stockhausen as an influence. Predictably, K.S. hated it all because, as a trained composer of a particular vintage, he found the repetition and simple content numbing and deadening, actually calling one track "not music but kind of drug" (quite accurate in terms of the music's purpose), which of course he opposes to the kind of rhythmic and contrapuntal through-composed content that signifies life and vitality.

I understand that concept -- the whole trick of composition is to learn how to make your individual lines breathe and change, to use balanced ideas in an ever-changing context to create something that is both surprising and inevitable.

When Stockhausen condemned that music I could hear the chorus of my composition teachers saying something similar -- though they, unlike Stockhausen, were not avant garde composers and world-altering technical pioneers.

=======

Still, I find there is a place for loops and repetitious music. Certain repetitive and carefully mixed tracks perform exactly the function for me that definitions of Bliss describe.

Arovane, Herrmann & Kleine, Transient Waves, Thomas Köner, middle-period Boards of Canada -- this is the sort of narrowly defined thing bliss means to me personally (when I'm not improvising and/or tracking such myself).

============

A few examples:

Monolake - "Ionized"

What resonates for me are the precisely placed sounds in their frequency ranges and in the stereo field, with one of my favorite sounds -- the comb filter -- rising periodically from the lower register up. Generally, I find in Robert Henke ("Monolake") a level of finesse in terms of sound design, engineering and minimal arranging that I've always found lacking in most others who work in that style. The purpose is to create static sonic objects -- the sound equivalent of Calder's "Stabiles" -- but to do so as precisely as possible.

=======

Here is Transient Waves using traditional instruments and a layered vocalise to create a track that makes more subtle use of a drone with glittering resonance filter sweeps:

Transient Waves - "Paradise"

=======

Ulrich Schnauss - "Wherever You Are"

Ulrich Schnauss has a more mainstream style than I prefer, hasn't attained a certain sophistication in sound design, and is even primitive in terms of harmony and structure (as much of the shoegazer-influenced plinkerpop from that period tends to be), but this track has a lot of the characteristics I'm talking about:

1. Pandiatonicism, the use of diatonic scales in non-tertian ways that form clusters. Arovane does this systematically from the beginning, but in Schnauss, it's the slow accumulation of parts that changes the harmony from tertian to pandiatonic, and whether he knows it or not, the simpler harmonies toward the bottom and their slow clouding with dissonance is a mirror of the overtone series.

2. The entire arrangement is structured to imitate the slow opening of a cutoff filter. Doing that literally is almost a cliché in post-Basic-Channel dub and techno, but with Schnauss, the literal opening is only period, and what creates the sound is the constant addition of higher frequencies and registers with each added part.

3. The use of droning and clusters to create the sound of shifting overtones and mild dissonances that rub ever-so-gently, creating a sense of warmrth

4. The deliberate addition of soft analog distortion to digital signals to give the overall sound that characteristic warmth.

I also have wistful memories of listening to Schnauss in 2001 before the second WTC Tower literally fell in front of me; I came face to face with Shiva devouring the blesséd fallen ones; before New York ceased to be one of the world's most vital centers of the arts when, all around me, galleries, museums and music stores closed, and musicians, artists, choreographers and writers moved to Montreal, Berlin, Paris, New Mexico City and Denmark; before the world divided into factions, erasing for decades that feeling of euphoric potential, which had fueled and galvanized our lives the moment before.

=======

Here are Ryuichi Sakamoto and Fennesz employing a repetitive but more sophisticated version of that idea almost ten years later:

Fennesz, Sakamoto - "Abyss"

Those who wonder how conscious the two collaborators were of attempting to evoke a sense of blissful and poignant sacrifice may watch this short video.

=======

Here's a far more sophisticated track by Arovane, who works with pandiatonicism almost exclusively, not only in terms of harmony but in the melodic tendencies implied by linear parts:

Arovane: "Pub - Summer - AMX 1"

Do overlook the asinine image and description attached to the track, as this was the only instantly playable copy I could find short of uploading it myself.

This piece is most effective for me because it avoids cliché tropes of happiness and opts for a self-sufficiency that has its own trajectory, which renders the bliss it induces (for me) more intelligent, and freer of the shallows and gaudiness of post-Love-Parade euphoria.

=====

This track is even simpler and more repetitive than the Schnauss, but Hermann & Kleine are more eclectic and tasteful than he (and better musicians, as those who have heard Christian Kleine play guitar will attest):

Hermann & Kleine - "Wonder"

=======

Two last tracks:

Much less repetitive from bar to bar, more minor in sonority, and more advanced harmonically, melodically and aesthetically, but still essentially loops for piano and string-reminiscent electronics:

Sakamoto and Fennezs - "Mor"
Arovane's last composition as of 2004: "Goodbye Forever"

§*§*§*§*§*§

As a young classical musician, I couldn't have listened to any of this without wincing or seeking silence, but as a studio musician changed forever after playing with PIL, I'm able to enjoy certain kinds of repetitive music according to their function and absence of parasitic hooks. I don't want to remember the ideas, which are perhaps too simple to think about, involuntarily. I want only to enjoy the shimmering static landscapes while they last.

Thank you. Food for thought and enjoyment! Karma to you.