I’ve been really obsessed Mark Fell’s structure and synthesis. it’s made me think about how I approach electronic music and digital tools in different ways. Fell treats systems kind of like organisms that have their own internal tendencies and limitations, rather than robotic machines. I find that perspective comforting, especially as someone who often struggles with structure, time, and consistency. The book breaks down ways of thinking about systems, patterns, behaviours, and process in a way that is probably the most academic book I’ve really engaged with, but also doesn’t take himself too seriously, like he literally references Family Guy. He confronts the idea that a “composer” needs to have total control or a fully formed concept, and suggests leaning into emergence: the stuff that happens because of the system rather than because of you.
Reading Fell while working with Pure Data makes me feel a bit stupid to be honest, I wish I could pay attention and engage with his ideas better. it did reframe how I think about using the software though. I quite like how Pure Data is brittle and literal, soooo much debugging and lots objects doing slightly the unexpected thing for some reason, or the whole patch becoming more chaotic than you intended. A younger me would’ve seen that as failure and too scary to try and persevere. But having read this book and engaged with my course as best as I can, I feel like there’s permission to exploit misbehaviour instead of cleaning it up. There’s something quite freeing in that, especially as someone who is very prone to overthinking and perfectionism.
In a way, although he talks about having excellent time magement which I certainly can’t relate to, Fell’s perspective lines up with how my brain already functions in the sense that ideas spill, mutate, collapse, restart, they’re not particularly linear. When I make sound, especially when engaging with generative systems, the system and I are jointly responsible for the outcome. In a way his work offers a way to stop fighting your tools so hard and let the logic of a system stand in for the logic you sometimes lack yourself.
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