45 Conrad - Garza

Tony Conrad was bord in 1940. He is a vilonist and a member of the Theatre of Eternal Music.

The begining of the article is Conrad recalling his first lessons as a violinist. He hated playing violin, and the teacher knew it. He teacher, Ronald Krudsen, then tried to get him to focus on moving slow, and focusing on intunation. He eventually started playing bach, which introduced him to double stops and harmony. Conrad learned if you play slow, it leads to playing fast.

Soon Conrad was exposed to Indian music. This led to his fascination with the drone. He claims it has the same driving factor that the V-I has in western music. It's all about listening. This was very different from his computer music friends. They went in the more modal and rhymic route. But Conrad like to story telling quality of the drone. This led him to experiment. He saw a completely improvised concert with a drone voice, and this got him thinking and breaking down what he knew. He concluded that this was great because it puts the composer in a whole new field. Composing is performing. He also heard a mix of diferent culture in the sounds. This was big for him to hear. The third thing he learned from this performance was the importance of "cool".

All of this led to him helping to create the "Theatre of Eternal Music." Everything was about breaking down the classes and the norm. Everything needed to change in Conrad's eyes. This was the "underground" scene of the day. This led to the idea of in the moment compostion. More about the here and now then the later. They then moved away from scores and used tape recorders. This broke things down again to the point that they were back to just listening.

He then started adding more notes to his drone work. Making it slightly more complex and move a bit more. He started to think he was living inside the sound instead of outside of it. Breaking all of the musical boundries of his time.

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