Allot of good postings have cornered the genre…“minimal”
Being a founding member of Experimental Products…
I have pondered… what is minimal ?
What is Minimal Wave…? think Queen Elisabeth
Cold Wave…? think Princess Di
OK…. Bad jokes tend to suggest “minimal” maturity…
but…. Defining plain old “minimal” is tricky…
Minimal anything can be subjective…
But as the word implies…. minimal means less…
There are traits that suggest… minimal.
A single trait can be all thats needed…
Here are some traits I link to minimal…
Song arraingment…
Songs with verses, choruses, bridges ect. do not suggest minimal…
A song with few progressions and tends to stay in a grove has
a minimal arraingment and thus… less notes to get wrong… ~
Young, minimal talent bands tend to keep things simple…
Instrumentaion and multi-track sense…
What is generating the sounds…? How many sounds…?
and how are they driven…?
If the choices are many and just a mouse click away… minimal
is still possible… but will take discipline to avoid excess…
When synths were synced to a running
drum-machine only a few sounds could be sequenced…
This forced a minimal approach for the low budget recording…
Don’t get me wrong… Midi and virtual synths are a miracle…
Neat and tighty…
It’s true however… minimal choices produce minimal results…
Musicianship…
Those clasically trained or with virtuoso talent tend to avoid minimal…
It’s not in their nature… So non-musicianship breeds minimal…
Keep it simple for simple people… ~
Experimental Products delt with early synth technology…
We worked with 8 track recording on our first two releases…
I can see how we can be labled minimal…
But… having delt with Mark Wilde’s song arraingments…
minimal did’nt always enter my mind…
His songs were written to exploit the power of note change…
I would struggle to follow his songs leaps and changes…
My chops were “minimal”...
I tended to write the minimal arraingment songs…
I would sway Mark into simpler parts for me to play…
or… ask his advice when I needed a nice change in a song…
Our music chemistry and technology combined to produce a
minimal flavor…
I really like big splashy tracks that are tasty… Dance, Rock or Pop…
They have always lured my attention…
It’s hard to resist the splash and keep things…. minimal…
Michael G.