...just one more thing

So it’s taken me a month’s worth of snatched 20 minute sessions in lunchbreaks to collate my thoughts in response to Rouge’s Foam’s response to my response to his initial post. It comprises replies to two of Adam RF’s two main complaints: a) that it is not often easy to translate ideas that relate to one culture to that of another, in this instance from performance-based music to electronic music; and b) that ideas of the Human and the Machine are too subjectively charged to have a great deal of use value. I’ve responded to and challenged these ideas, drifted off on new tangents, waffled a bit and generally talked about everything other than Wonky itself. So as much as this is a response piece, it is also (perhaps more so), a repository of fairly free-flowing ideas which I may well return to at a later date.

It’s quite long. Sorry.

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Ethnomusicological Approaches to Electronic Music – The Participatory Discrepancy

I don’t know that I made any particularly universalising statements although some of the Keil quotes may have been presented as such. This idea bears some further qualification though.
What is being identified is not a West–Non-West/Us–Them dialogue of alterity. I share Adam’s hope that we have left behind that inclination to romanticise the Orient and I have read and been in conversation with enough of those who offend the little ethnomusicologist on my shoulder (“oh that’s so Eurocentric” being a particular bugbear while at Uni) to want to sidestep such pitfalls.

It is, more simply, two poles of a spectrum quantifying musical perspective. The one pole imposes or locates itself within a fixed rhythmic ‘grid’ and the other is oblivious of that grid. The logic of the former approaches an ideal while the logic of the latter is that of deviation from the ideal. We might reconsider again in the context of Cartesian mind/body dualism – the mind typically seeks to discretely represent, quantify and explain things that it encounters whereas the body has no such need, it is able to exist and respond to continuous flow in time and space. Again, this distinction is not mutually exclusive; there is dialogue, interaction and a certain amount of dependence between the two. We might further ask if, as it might seem, the mind component maps onto the ‘Machine’ and the body the ‘Human’ but more later.

This kind of dialectic [Occident/Mind/Machine/Grid vs Orient/Body/Human/Free-time] is clearly (and somewhat deliberately) dangerous territory, particularly if we start excluding the mind from the Orient, or the Human from the Occident and the implication of the above, I understand, may be that the body (the suggested “non-West” component) has been privileged in my reading. But this response is surely culturally-conditioned on the part of the recipient. For me, the most interesting music occurs when this dialectic is shown to be inadequate and this is what my reading is about (though I recognise that it presupposes some dodgily colonial principals).
I should say at this point that I don’t consider myself able (or perhaps ‘ready’ would be the better word) to think ‘outside’ of the grid, though I have frequently been asked to (“you cannot understand this music using the tools provided by a Western upbringing”), and I have never encountered any real grievances. Either I am able to fit the music I study within my West-raised grid-concept, or I consider how it stretches or fits outside of it (in ‘free’ time for example). But there is always some sort of relation to the idea of the grid, and – for me – this has always worked just fine (admittedly, this has always been at a relatively low level of proficiency).


What is the grid that I keep referring to? Obvious on one level – in electronic music production it is the sequencer, the place where you position the notes. This could be a step sequencer, commonly 16 step, typically found on hardware drum machines from the classic Roland x0x machines, to more recent devices like the Monomachine or Machinedrum. We are now used to the piano roll sequencer in most software packages, like Reason’s below, which plots time on the horizontal against pitch on the vertical. Reason’s sequencer even has a quantise function which says ‘Snap to Grid’:


The piano roll sequencer in Propellerhead Reason


On another level, the grid is also found in Western notation. For what else is the musical System – the staves, barlines and time signatures – but a method of quantifying sound; in effect, snapping them to the grid?
Underlying both of these (there are plenty more but these will suffice for now), however, is the idea of the grid as a method of conceptualising and representing divisive rhythm. It is a means of understanding the ways in which we group sound which informs how we listen to music at the most basic level.
Generally speaking, this means divisions of 4 – as above in the piano roll and in the hardware sequencer (16 steps = 1 bar, 4 beats, 4 subdivisions of each beat). It is the subdivisions which are important here – each time you subdivide, usually it is by 4, allowing for perfect, symmetrical (un-wonky) patterns. This is what causes the even-ness of rhythm which we commonly hear. It is possible to play around with this in a sequencer of course, in much the same way as you might in a classical score; certain sequencers will allow for odd groupings of rhythms, of 5 and 7 notes for example, to be squished into the space of 4 or 8 divisions of the grid and I have experimented with overlaying different time signatures at different tempos (try 5/4 at 150bpm on top of 4/4 at 120 for a start), with pleasing results. But the fact remains that a certain degree of experimentation is necessary and neither these devices, nor classical notation is really up to the task of representing much beyond the grid (Messiaen’s birdsong transcriptions being a case in point)


This is where the Participatory Discrepancy comes in. The main objection to the PD as a tool in critical toolbox is that we can’t ethically apply it to electronic music because the “metrical essence…built into the sequencers and softwares that electronic musicians use” is unreconcilable with “musics that are performed in a more directly biological way”. This seems to misread my approach as the distinction between these two processes is exactly the distinction I was getting at. My argument was that Wonky processes deliberately move outside the electronic “metrical essence” (the ‘grid’ that I referred to above and in the previous post) by employing technical procedures that ignore or subvert the inbuilt (preset) rhythmic structures of machines.

Adam mentions that there are many ways of “getting ‘wonky’” aside from the shuffle button and in no way was I trying to suggest that this was a prime component of the new rhythmic style when I drew attention to the apt use of the word. As Woebot has proposed, a lot of these rhythms are not programmed at all but are the function of certain algorithms and processes which can be adjusted in milliseconds (i.e. continuous time), rather than (discretely) ‘snapped to’ (or ‘humanised’, away from) the grid. There is also the technique of creating rhythms by sight in a waveform editor. Burial has talked about using only Soundforge to produce his tracks: “If I used a sequencer my tunes would sound rubbish. Because I don’t have a sequencer…I got to shove it together and vibe off it.” These techniques exist outside the grid – unlike me, they don’t refer to the grid, either by adhering to it or breaking away from it.

Naturally, you argue that the ‘continuous’ time I boldy propose is still embedded within the (soft-)circuitry of the programme and is therefore explicitly dis-continuous (and ethnomusicologically exempt) but in reality you are limited only by your sample rate (or by the millisecond), providing as much depth as you could reasonably hope for, as far as the ear (and the body) is concerned. So I think the PD is applicable to musics based in electronic production – albeit with a little licence – and certainly no less than terminology traditionally reserved for Western Art music. Pleasingly (and independently of my knowledge when I wrote the original post), Keil actually agrees on this point: “I must be doing something very consistently in my writing that sends a wrong signal that PDs (Participatory Discrepancies) are strictly organic, live, in the moment and never techno or digital. Not so.” Amusingly (but not unjustifiably) he then goes on to suggest that someone should interview the guys at Roland as part of an enquiry into the relation between PDs and machines.


Although I had never intended it as such, Adam is right to dispute the direct connection between Wonky and dancing that, looking back on it, I probably did clumsily imply. I certainly didn’t intend to suggest that the music was designed with this specific function in mind – just that the unbounded rhythms present in the music remind me of rhythmic structures which are more closely tied to bodily movement, though they have clearly twisted or mutated (as Kode 9 might have it) far, far beyond that functional level. Rather than the music being the driving force behind dance, it is better understood as a faulty simulacrum of bodily movement (consider that ‘broken shuffle’ element) – perhaps a caricature of dance – or a phantom of dance music (certainly in Burial’s case). The latter certainly captures that ‘after the event’-ness of Kode 9’s reading – he makes it clear he’s talking about some sort of nuclear explosion but I prefer a reading that doesn’t ask what the event was.


Human vs. Machine

I’m glad this was picked up on (how could it not have been?) as it’s a distinction whose currency I’ve been mulling over for some time, trying to decide how best to apply it to musical examination. It’s problematic, as Adam has deftly pointed out, but richly so and, I think, quite a valuable field of inquiry.
The first thing to say is that it is no longer adequate, as we have plenty more than these two categories to consider: we might also consider from the perspective of the Human/Machine hybrid (Cyborg/Android) and the Mutant (the Human ‘gone wrong’) and the Alien (the advanced species/unknown/Big Other(?)); but we might also consider from the perspective of the Animal (the primal/tribal/simplistic); and how about the Spiritual (omnipotent/rapturous/unknowable)? Each of these (and there are many more) is flawed as a concept and each overlaps with other categories in their symbolic remit (the primal, instinctual, ‘animal’ aspect of humanity, for instance, or the Spiritual consideration of the Alien – a New Age reading of cultural product).

All this is well and good and potentially lots of fun, if you have enough time on your hands. But let’s get concrete. We should really quantify the relationship between signifier and signified; between terminology and musical practice. Adam writes:
“the simplistic, abstract categories of ‘human’ and ‘machine’ are ultimately so broad, relativistic and internally complex that any aesthetic perception of them or their supposed (but thoroughly problematic) dichotomous relationship is unlikely to be experienced on a practical level.”

I would argue that the relationship between the idea of the ‘Human’, or the ‘Machine’ and the aspects of the music I identified in my previous post is a lot more direct than Adam is prepared to grant me. Ideas of what constitutes the Human and the Machine in music can surely be quantified to a greater degree than simple subjective opinion (indeed much more so than terms like ‘cool’) with the application of some Peircean semiotics. In his response to my discussion, Adam’s allegation was that the terminology was too reliant on a symbolic exchange of ideas to be an explicit influence on the way an audience receives and interprets the music. On the contrary, my reading is reliant on a much more overt, causal (Iconic or Indexical) relationship than that of a culturally constructed signifier/signified. In the below examples, the musical features denote a real-world human/machine cause, rather than connoting an idea or concept of humanity/machinery.


- Loops (i.e. exact repetition) – Indexically linked to machine timecode.
- Stark tone/geometric waveforms – Indexically linked to oscillators/synthesis.
- ‘Live’ sound – Indexically linked to human performance. (Voice as Index of the larynx)
- Sample – Iconically related to human performance/original.

If we loop a sample of the Funky Drummer break and use that for the rhythmic basis of our track, we might end up with something like this:



We have a recording of a human drummer, stripped from its original contexts (firstly – through recording – as a one-off, non-repeatable event and secondly – through sampling [i.e. selection/application] – as one component of a specific musical whole). While the sound that was produced by Clyde Stubblefield is an Index of his performance (i.e. directly caused), the sample as used in Lyrics of Fury is only an Icon of that sound [the sample is not caused by the performance/sound, nor is it an exact copy – it is a representation of the sound created in that instance]. Both the sound and the sample are semantically linked to a human origin.


Ceci n’est pas Clyde Stubblefield

These couple of seconds are then repeated (potentially ad infinitum), occasionally silenced and combined with other elements from disparate sources. This technique does not represent any human practice – there is no variation in rhythm, feeling, energy or tone, no fills and no flourishes. It’s plausible that the producer might intend the loop to stand in place of a human drummer but, in this case at least, it is very unlikely that the listener will hear it as such. Right away, in the opening few bars of Lyrics, we hear what I believe to be an explicit, though basic, occurrence of the Human/Machine conflict – even if we may have internalised and subjectivised these codes to the extent that we can easily divorce them from their origins.

Picking up on the other example in my original post, 2step/bassline vocal science operates in a similar way, with the human voice, perhaps the only pure Index of humanity, often charmingly imperfect in its girl/boy-next-door-ness, chopped and aligned to the grid in a way no human is capable of. In the context of the voice, it is interesting to compare the vocoder with Autotune: in their general usage, the former shapes synthetic waveforms using human vocal formants, while the latter analyses vocal frequencies to find their fundamentals, compares them to a preset scale (a pitch-grid, if you like) and then ‘snaps’ the imperfections to that scale. It is interesting to note how the vocoder transforms the Machine-Index using patterns which are only found in the Human, while Autotune transforms the Human-Index using patterns only to be found in the Machine.

So, ideas of the Human and the Machine can be directly and causally related to humanity and machinery, and it is for this reason that I have prioritised these categories in my discussion. Though I emphasised the presence of other readings (the Animal, the Alien, the Cyborg, the Mutant etc.) at the start of this section, it is only these two categories which are directly related to the end-sound that we hear, whilst the others are more visibly symbolic constructs. As far as I am aware, there is no direct Alien influence in the music we listen to, for example – though once again, perhaps we should interview Roland to see if there was any Alien intervention in the conception of the TB303…


In the oral cultures to which the Participatory Discrepancy is most commonly applied (and on which I commented in the original post), the rhythmic unorthodoxy is an Index of bodily movement (through performance) which, in turn, directly influences further movement (through dance). So the idea of the PD as a signifier of the Human is not so problematic; evidently this is not the case in much electronic music (including Wonky) where rhythms, harmonies and timbres are generally programmed in advance rather than performed in the moment (though the use of external MIDI controllers and automapping technology blurs that distinction).
So, in the context of the above, it seems as though there is a little backtracking, or rather, ‘reformulating’ to be done regarding the PD. there is clearly no Indexical link but perhaps there is something of the Iconic about the electro-PD in Wonky. In the case of Wonky, these rhythmelodic deviations are deliberately exaggerated way beyond any concessions towards the Human and I fancy that there is something of an Expressionist representation of the human PD in Wonky tunes (and judging by his original ‘Loving Wonky’ post, Adam may agree), though this is ultimately far more subjective. Really though, I suppose what I was getting at was indeed far more of a Symbolic relationship in that, through (what? 30 odd?) years of using machines to make music, rarely have we stepped outside of the grammar they impose upon us (the rhythmic ‘grid’, machine timing, tuning systems etc.). By deliberately exaggerating these ‘errors’, a generation of producers that musically reject the cultural grammar of the Machine has emerged.
Rather than ‘reasserting the primacy of the Human’ perhaps I should say that, for me, Wonky symbolises a movement away from the primacy of the Machine.


Moving from poiesis to esthesis, how do we interpret this dialogue in our listening? Adam is convinced that there are “so many multifarious interactions between what we might choose to decide are signifiers for ‘the human aspects’ the ‘machine (aspects)’, each perceived and understood differently according to the listener, that it’s impossible to play referee.” Although I have tried to downplay the significance of choice in the matter, the fact remains that if we cannot hear these aspects at work within the music, then the discussion is moot. My personal feeling is that, while we may not consciously or deliberately visualise this conflict, it is a constant, conspicuous presence, operating at the lowest and highest levels of the music.

It is at continuous play in all sample based music - looped breakbeats in hip hop and the HCC always make me feel slightly uncomfortable as there is that undeniable feel of a funk drummer existing in a context which no drummer could ever be a part of (i.e. perfect, exact repetitions, forever), especially if the loop is slightly ‘out’ (as it often has been). This is emphasised in SL2’s DJ’s Take Control where a sample is dropped in exactly on the second subdivision of the 8th beat of the loop, so that it falls just outside the feel of the groove (in the video below, 0:15, 0:18, 0:22, 0:26 etc.). As an aside, this effect also reminds me of jazz drummers dropping bombs, adding a further (esthesic – though it may be compositionally intentional) layer of human/machine complexity.



It is for this reason that I described this conflict as “the force which drives much of its inbuilt sonic energy,” in the first post. It can be described as the actual, tangible presence of the Human/Machine, as heard in the music. This necessitates both a poietic and esthesic analysis of the music; sometimes these do not match and we hear a human-caused element as mechanical or vice versa. Electroacoustic ‘gestures’ may be automated or shaped by hand-drawn curves in advance, but unmistakeably heard as a human element – hyper-human perhaps? Conversely, how many drummers compare themselves to machines? The constant practice involved in achieving excellence at a musical instrument, to perfect tricky passages, to embed the necessary actions involved in producing certain sounds in muscle memory – is this not just a form of automation? If it is possible, even desirable, for humans to be misheard as machines then how does this affect our understanding? Of course, all instruments are machines anyway, even the body itself is a machine of sorts, so can there be any music that is untainted by the aural stench of the machine? The dialogue is complicated and flawed, naturally, but I do contend that it is valid and vital to understanding the music of our age, if not all ages.

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P.S. - Perhaps we can reconsider it in Simon Reynolds’ familiar “roots ‘n’ future” structure – the idea that the Hardcore Continuum “simultaneously casts backward to the past and forward to the unreachable horizon of the future” – to suggest Wonky recognises that so-called futuristic music of the last quarter-century often settled for simplicity and conformity in musical expression, even when its ideals pointed towards complexity and progress (a lively topic recently, it seems). I get the feeling that certain Wonky tracks again inverse that tendency and, in giving off the air of (backward-looking) tech-nostalgia – 90s computer game references (1 Up, Rainbow Road, Bubble Bobble etc., Sonic the Hedgehog samples and remixes) and Raymond Scott remixes (Lightworks, Melonball Bounce ) – somehow carve a path into the future with sounds and rhythms with which we are not yet comfortable (1000 Names – Melonball Bounce seeming to me the prime example of this).

P.P.S. – Adam suggests I am more at home with the post-Dilla style of Wonky, rather than the dubstep-oriented end and he’s probably correct. If I were to do a Rouge’s Foam – Kaliko style analysis of a Wonky track – I’m not, but if I were – it would be Melonball Bounce. Because:
At the time of composition, Raymond Scott was at the forefront of music technology, employing state of the art technology, as well as electronic instruments of his own design, to make futuristic incidental music that, musically speaking, relied on nostalgic ideas of childhood. There is now a cultural nostalgia attached to the sounds used; that cheery advertising bounce, the vocal timbre and the quality of the recording. Adam, in his most recent post, claims that “‘Nostalgia’ in art is often a futurist opinion”, which I think is true. But it’s equally true that futurism in art is often a nostalgic opinion. The nostalgia in Melonball is apersonal, as surely the two Bulgarian producers involved are sufficiently removed enough from 1960s American pop culture (more so than Dilla anyway) to not be conjuring up any private associations from their own childhood. What they are doing then is (as with the old-school computer game references) tapping into a cultural ideal from a previous age that is now indelibly marked with future-nostalgia, caught between two mirrors as it looks backwards and forwards simultaneously. I don’t know of any Wonky tunes that sample the Radiophonic Workshop (please correct me if I’m wrong) but, for the same reasons, I can’t see it being far off.
By allowing the sample to play out in its entirety at the start, we are taken behind the producers’ curtain and you can hear exactly how the initial tempo has been cut up to fit inside the slower tempo. This creates an awesome swing. Listen to how the skewiff hi-hat trips over itself while the vocals from the Scott sample constantly lurch forward in quite a different way from 2step vocals, as they try to escape the sluggish tempo. It’s quite lovely.

P.P.P.S. - Proto-Wonky

Couple more inappropriate examples of Wonky in action:

David Bowie – What In The World
featuring a decidedly 'gloopy' synth pattern throughout.

Paul McCartney – Temporary Secretary
another arpeggiated synth line which doesn't quite match. the 'broken' notes in it, where the synth tones briefly splinter apart are like little capsules of sublime.