music and storytelling

[danbolton]

[anyone know the track????

ive not heard that mix but it sounds like your describing 'marshall jefferson - mushrooms' in one of its various forms.

some interesting points been made here. i know the initial topic was about the intention of the artist when producing a song, but one thing that i immediately thought of is what happens when all these 'stories' get played together, either as a liveset by the artist, or a dj set using other peoples music. starts to get even more complicated here and i haven't thought about it carefully enough to comment yet myself, just thought it might make for more interesting discussion...

[dan_g]

hi there

in the past years i listened a lot to atmospheric/intelligent drum'n'bass or what ever you call it (like ltj bukem, pfm, etc.). in this musical pieces there is always a story. i got a mix that was called "the art of story telling". and i think thats the perfect description. It's an Art to get your Music to a Level were it Tells a story of it self. Hard to explain. The Music tells it self as a story, but has no story behind it like you would tell somebody.

When i now look at the Techno side (i don't know much artists) its sometimes hard to find a story behind a track thats only a simple groove. But even then it tells it self as a story, willing to entertain you, an keep you dancing.

I hope somebody understands what i'm trying to say with my "almost" good english

greets and respect

dan_g

[Castronova]

I think in the most basic sense, most EDM songs follow Western storytelling structure whether they want to or not.

Introduction > Tension > Resolution > Aftermath

As far as the rest of the story goes (mood, characters, setting, conflicts), it just depends on where you are and how you interpret it.

[Atheory]

yeah nice post........ nothing to add really but sometimes the story of a track can be just about people dancing around and having a good time. a feelgood story if you will.

that said, art is very divisive and there is nothing to say it should all be conceptual. in fact, whatever your intentions they usually get distorted along the way, and when they meet the listener i doubt anything specific can be decoded from the original idea.

[4am]

castronova: good point! i agree!
and would like to add: music itself is not a story. it is a language (used to tell something or to describe our personal view of something). even if you don't want it, i think the way you work (workflow), you arrange, the phrases you choose, the harmonies, the rhythm the design you give to your sounds and the structure of the final track (or song or whatever) gives information about your personal story. i mean it is possible to get information about the mood, the musical taste and background and other details. this applies also to "groove based" music, in this case the story is told in the evolution of the track...
something similar happens with other artists or craftsmen when you recognize a style or a vocabulary.

it is just my personal opinion, but i'm convinced that we all make music because we want/need to tell stories

[Smear]

Yeah i have a bit of an issue with the 'S' word, heh. Things like Dylan, Johnny Cash etc i've never connected with at all. It's one of those concepts like 'groove' and 'funk' and the like which to me don't really mean much, but i suppose it depends on how abstractly you take the word 'story' to be. If you make a deliberate attempt to set out a series of mood changes that operate independently from how people dance to music, then i suppose that's a form of storytelling, if you like that word. I'd probably be more likely to call it 'design' or 'strategy' or something, but that's just me.

There's probably not much difference between approaching art as 'storytelling', 'confrontation' or mathematics etc, as long as it has a clear idea of what it's trying to do and achieves it then the end product should be good, it's just that some people will see it as more valid than others, depending on your angle.

[steevio]

thanks for your contributions guys.

I would say that storytelling is channeling information from one form to another. I don't mean storytelling purely in the most literal sense.

I was very curious to compare the approach of techno musicians to other forms though in this respect.

But perhaps techno is a unique form of storytelling, and comparisons to other forms are not particularly valid.

There isn't an obvious narrative or narrator to look for.

That unicorn pissing rainbows sums it up I guess.

maybe i was taking you too literally mate, i dont know, i was trying to give my point of view from my own experiences while writing edm.
i think torque's example of 'the rings of saturn' was where i was coming from, but not exactly. to me that was a description as opposed to a story, but i'm not sure where one ends and the other starts.
how do you tell a story about the rings of saturn ?, i suppose i feel that a story requires a timeline, i feel that i'm 'describing the universe' when i make music, i used the term delineating, maybe what i mean is that i feel i'm capturing an essence at a moment in time.
thats what i got the first time i heard techno, it's looped nature put me in the 'here and now' it's what got me hooked, and what made me want to abandon everything i thought music was.
previously when i was writing music for my band, there was almost always a storyline, not always with techno from my point of view.
for me its truly psychedelic music, how do you tell a story about an eternal moment ?

[AK]

sorry - you are correct - it is a bit strong

I don't really think mindless is bad, In fact I've enjoyed, played, and made some pretty mindless music in my time, it's always had it's time and it's place. And it's not that I don't like the stuff I've described as mindless, It has it's time and place and can be pretty amazing when done right.

Please, I'm not intending to be 'correct'. I think, as it usually the case with music, there is no right or wrong only opinions. Music is such a subjective thing that it really is in the eye of the beholder. Arguing over what constitutes good or bad music is a totally pointless exercise and something which I never intended to do.

I think in regard to your 'mindless' music, I think these moments are actually very 'truthful' and organic from an artistic perspective. You can certainly never accuse yourself of sounding contrived if you produced material from instinct. Maybe the production quality isn't so aesthetically pleasing but the raw ideas are 'innocent' and inevitably there is a lot of 'you' put into the resulting music through the spontaneity.

Maybe there isn't a 'story' there as such, at least in the literal sense of the word but I don't think it makes that music any less valid or credible. It's more honest that's for sure and this was really a point I was trying to get at.