URI SALA

Some weeks ago a friend of mine tipped me about Venetian Snares (thanks Jason). I have always loved drum'n'bass, especially when the artist doesn't fall into formulas but has his breaks evolve constantly. Venetian Snares is an anomaly of an musician; not only are his breaks totally crazed, but he pretty much only writes music in 7/8 meter, which sets him apart of most electronica artists, slave to an exclusively binary conception of rhythm. I have been checking his discography and there are quite a few gems there. Last night I was a bit insomniac so I decided to program a generative system that generates a constantly changing stream of beats. I toyed around with some melodic / harmonic elements too, and the result was quite encouraging for only a few programming hours. Next step is to explore the constant change of meter, something dance music is pretty much alien to. This is the improvised, 9 min. session: This is only the beginning, more to come soon.

This essay reviews the historical confrontation between postmodernism and contemporary music theory and analysis. To this end, it reviews how some of the notions considered pivotal to music theoretical discourse, such as subjectivity, authorial intention, organicism and unity, etc., have been problematized by new musicologists. Additionally it argues in favor of the re-assertion of these concepts as valid heuristic tools, especially with regards to recent music. The second part of the paper examines the music of the Catalan composer Hèctor Parra, whose particular compositional method mitigates the tensions between postmodernism and contemporary analytical thought. Published in the Dutch Journal of Music Theory, Vol. 13, No. 3 (2008) Click here to download article.