Chapter 1: What's the Point?

Before we get started on how to make experimental music, I’d like to provide a little insight into what it is, why we make it, and whom we make it for.

What follows between the lines is the original 2015 text of chapter one. I’ll expand a bit on the popular highlights afterward.

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Before we get started on how to make experimental music, I’d like to provide a little insight into what it is, why we make it, and whom we make it for. I feel it’s important to have a clear philosophy and foundation before pouring countless hours (or years) into an endeavor. With that foundation in place, you’ll find it easier to make decisions about what apps to buy, which workflows to explore, and how to spend your time productively.

What It Is

All art has purpose, but the specific purpose differs from style to style, and even from artist to artist. Generally speaking though, the purpose of a work of art is to communicate something: a viewpoint, a vision, an idea, or maybe an emotion. Perhaps the artist just wants to make someone think, or laugh... or dance.

For non-experimental artists, the goal of engaging in art is to produce a finished work. While a piece may evolve during the process of creation, the artist more often than not will have a vision of the end result they intend to achieve. This is true whether they’re painting a landscape, directing a horror film, or writing a country song.

For experimental artists, the goal is often quite different. While the process of creating still ends with a finished work of some sort, the end result is generally unknown. It’s often more about exploring a specific concept, technique, or tool, as opposed to constructing something the artist has envisioned. There are exceptions, of course; this is experimental art, after all.

Why We Make It

Because experimental art is more about doing than making, more about the process than the product, it might actually be considered the purest form of art; art for art’s sake, if you will. The job of the experimental artist isn’t to create a specific work of art as much as it is to create a new way of making art.

There are lots of reasons an artist may be drawn towards experimental art. Many encounter another artist or work that inspires them. While emulating experimental art or music isn’t the same thing as making it, it can easily lead to a more experimental mindset as the artist progresses.

In some instances, an artist may get tired of producing in a particular genre, or bored with the standard options. Looking to do something different, or to combine something new with what they already know, artists can easily find themselves in relatively uncharted territory... at least for them.

Finally, some artists naturally adopt an experimental approach from the very beginning (or at least the beginning of a particular creative phase). Like a child with a new toy, some of us may tend to toss the instructions and just see what happens when we bang on it a little.

Who Cares?

Even if you lock yourself in your room and never share your work with anyone else, you still have an audience: you. There’s a difference, though, between the role artists themselves play as observers in experimental art, and the role they play in more traditional forms and genres.

It’s necessary when creating art or music intended for sale, display, or performance to understand the potential audience. Even if you’re just doing it for yourself, following conventions or established styles introduces a filter by which to judge the quality of your work.

If you’re writing a pop song and the chorus isn’t coming together right, you won’t be happy with the result. The work won’t be finished until you are at least moderately satisfied. On the other hand, it’s completely possible, and fairly common, to create and finish a well-structured piece that fans love and critics rave over, but that you don’t personally like, or even secretly hate.

However, with experimental art, this is not the case. When making experimental music or art, the artist will intuitively make creative decisions based upon either the aesthetics of a work’s current state, or the perceived success or failure of the process being explored. Unless the goal is to create something you absolutely hate, it’s extremely difficult to consider an experimental work to be finished (or a performance to be successful) if you, the artist, are unsatisfied.

Beyond the artists themselves, the main audience for experimental art and music differs from more conventional forms in a big way. While pop music, still lifes, and mystery novels are directed at an external audience (consumers, as opposed to producers), experimental art is generally more appreciated by other artists than by the public at large.

For experimental musicians, other musicians (experimental or otherwise) will generally make up a high percentage of their fanbases. Beyond that, digital artists, abstract painters and experimental filmmakers are definitely more likely to tune in than the average music fan.

There are, of course, plenty of listeners with a passion for the experimental who lack the time, money, or motivation to create music themselves. There are the serious listeners and audiophiles who may be into the edgier stuff. And there are a good number of hipsters who may latch onto experimental music just because they found it first.

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This chapter has withstood the test of time because it’s not really saying anything that is confined to the time period and doesn’t include any technical details.

One of the best thing about publishing on Kindle turned out to be the ability to go back and see the popular highlights from my book, the little snippets that a notable number of readers found interesting or helpful. Here are the most popular highlights from chapter 1:

This is really the beauty of experimental music for me, especially improvised music. The journey to musical discovery is what brings me back to the studio again and again.

To be fair, I do think some artists outside of experimental music go through this process to a lesser degree, especially early on as they’re finding their voice and perfecting their style, and sometimes later while reinventing themselves or catching up with what’s current.

However, for experimental artists, this is the daily practice: discovering and inventing new techniques, exploring them, proving them out, iterating upon them, and carrying them forward or letting them go.

This thought may seem unfortunate, but it’s really as it should be. Understanding and appreciating fringe music usually requires context and breadth of exposure that the average listener is unlikely to possess. There are those music fans who will latch on to something because it’s weird, absurd, or unusual, but the general public of music consumers tends to drop out after a few seconds of unstructured sound, and will rarely invest the attention required to explore durational works.

Thanks for following along on this journey. Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts.

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