awkwardness
Awkwardness,
used positively, more
a quality than a thing. It comes in part from pushing against my own comfort
levels in the creation of music. It relates to the degree to which I can
remain surprised at my own work. It is a sense of unfamiliarity shading into
rejections
of "the rules". It is also an undefinable "feeling" in
the music, a subjective pleasure which may be brought about, in part, from
things
such as:
- sounds that are too brief or loud in relation to their context,
- recordings that are distorted, warped or noisy,
- backgrounds or environments for recordings which are filled with low-level
noise,
- long pauses,
- and sounds which are too "human"/"animal"/"organic"/"artificial" in
relation to their context, at times creating a contrast between natural and
artificial.
Awkwardness may also linger atmospherically from the use of real acoustic
spaces, echoes and reverberations, and especially the confused layering of
multiple reverberant
signatures.
Awkwardness could be opposed to a cool, refined or machine-like texture,
though I intend that it be elegantly awkward and intentionally
accidental.
Awkwardness leans toward an incorporation of humor, oddness and drama, but
without specific referent.
It is a floating term, attaching itself on various levels of the work.