Well produced but uncreative (sound design?)

[Dusk]

not too sure what you mean by dissonant here. I would say dissonance is defined by it's opposite, consonance (and vice versa), and the 2 can loosely describe certain relative usages of pitch & timbre.

Using the word to describe conceptual features in the study of music seems weird to me, but maybe if you could explain what would be consonant in this usage I might understand a little.

Dissonance to me is the contrast of two things that don't compliment each other. Friction. Intervals that don't conform to pleasing mathematical relationships. In terms of aesthetic approach (what Im talking about) its the willingness to try things other than those you already know "sound good".

[oblioblioblio]

'experimental' now simply refers to an aesthetic and not an actual departure from any convention. The entire spectrum of sound possibilities has already been mapped out in theory and in practice, many decades ago. From silence to ear-splitting noise, just about every sound has been contextualised and framed as music.

I dunno man, I think the entire spectrum of sound possibilities isn't anywhere close to being mapped out. Technology is opening up all sorts of new potentials, and there are always gonna be all sorts of unique people around to use them.

You can learn everything you need to know about consonnance vs dissonance:
- in the equal temperament (regular piano notes) by studying the evolution of western music, from Renaissance music to 12 tone composition.
- micro-tonality (between the notes, but still with fixed pitch) in eastern musics and western experiments, Ligeti, Xenakis
- in concrete sound, from Pierre Henry, Stockhausen to Francis Dhomont, Dennis Smalley

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but I don;t think you can ever learn 'everything you need to know' about consonance and dissonance. They describe a very unique and personal phenomenon, and even though on a personal level they can kind of be reduced to 'good sounding' versus 'bad sounding', this can be a very relative thing, and there is a lot of music that can find consonance in dissonance and vice versa. So for me, I like to keep them as very open terms, and definitely not objective

I would definitely agree though that listening to music and fucking around with tunings and timbres can help inform your own personal approach towards these matters.

There is also the idea of rhythmic consonnance/disonnance:
On one end of the spectrum you might have an unmetered pulse, on the other end of complexity you might have Nancarrow and Xenakis. Try to found out where you want to play between those two extremes.

Rhythm, to me, is in a different catagory to consonance and dissonance, it's more about predictable versus unpredictable. But my understanding of rhythm is far from spectacular so I wouldn't like to comment so much. Actually maybe this is what is at the core of consonance and dissoance in pitch and timbre.

The only thing that can be 'experimental' is one's personal discovery of musics that you had been up until then unaware of. The best thing I can recommend is to study music and learn more about you like. Try to figure out what YOU want to do. Imitation and reproduction of tracks you like might be a good idea at this point.

About the experimental part I'd agree (partly), but for certain people (like me at the moment) it is more beneficial to try to become more experiemental with my own methods, and where I'd have to agree with Dusk about trying to mess around with things outside of your musical comfort zone.

Actually maybe that's what this whole things boils down to, familiar versus unfamiliar? I remember a video that was posted here with a guitarist saying a particular interval was the sound, wherever you are from in the world of 'returning home'....

[AK]

not too sure what you mean by dissonant here. I would say dissonance is defined by it's opposite, consonance (and vice versa), and the 2 can loosely describe certain relative usages of pitch & timbre.

Using the word to describe conceptual features in the study of music seems weird to me, but maybe if you could explain what would be consonant in this usage I might understand a little.

Dissonance to me is the contrast of two things that don't compliment each other. Friction. Intervals that don't conform to pleasing mathematical relationships. In terms of aesthetic approach (what Im talking about) its the willingness to try things other than those you already know "sound good".

I agree but I think the effectiveness of dissonance is better appreciated with a contrasting consonance, tension and release is, and always will be a very expressive thing in music. Creating dissonance for the sole purpose of creating dissonance without any context, is for me, a way to arrive at a musical piece which sounds a little contrived and unemotional.

I think we ( westerners ) are slowly coming out of the idea that dissonance is bad, you probably wont be hearing a lot of it anytime soon on MTV but I think some of the intervals are beautiful. The tritone is one of my favourites, as is the use of chromaticism in diatonic scales. You get a much more varied and interesting musical idea when you are open to experimentation.

[stanhope]

As fas as i'm concerned, the essence of minimal techno lies on the basis of suspense. The overall sound, on one hand, and the progression and the melody, on the other, rely on the fact that you don't give everything right away to the listener. Philip Sherburne wrote about this issue in an article sometime (sorry, don't have a link). Minimal music is powerful because it is built upon suggestion, not obviousness. The sounds are stripped down through a certain obscurity, and the musicality, through the melody and whatnot leaves a part of the completion to the listener. Minimal techno sets a tone, captures a moment. The listener will have to work the rest. I dont't know about music theory or anything, but i've noticed and aknowledged this throughout lots of time spent listening to this kind of music.

For example, one of my ultimate favorite minimal tracks is Estroe's Driven; simple, loopy and reserved, it only gives its climax for 30 seconds out of 7 minutes, then lets it fade away.