From a musical point of view, what is the definition of drone?

Why do you not look on wikipedia just like everyone else on here does?

yes yes, the more abstract the artistic expression the more overt the philosophy needs to be . . . a point in art where the idea is far greater than the product . . .

. . . is the actual artwork greater because the idea is great? . . . . i don't know.

i like some good noise. but the problem is that the genre has become like punk. they found one way that works, and almost nobody leaves that fit form structure. i find noise musicians to be much more interesting when they mold different elements into the mix. for example, i saw a live eric copleand show, and what he does is really cool. he does loops of feeback and rythm ala' merzbow, but then adds these simple melodies on top that add a very beautiful contrast and make the listening experiance, even though it is loud as fuck, very much enjoyable.
that is also why i really like the whole "new weird america" scence, because they take elements of noise and drone and different sounds and mix them with a more folky groove. and it makes the music much more interesting.
i really like hair police and wolf eyes and a lot of other stuff though, even if it is more "noise".
but my favorite kind of noise is free improve.
peter brotzmann
evan parker
derek bailey
borbetomagus
zorn
etc

Because I have more respect for you than i do for wikipedia.

Eh? "Let me elaborate", I guess: I'm referring to droney noisescapes... you know, feedback skronk drone tones that you can time stretch and pitch shift any number of ways and maybe add a few effects to or whatever and seriously manufacture the shit in 5 minutes and make the running length about 60. "DRONE" itself is a different style of music but that's obviously not what I'm referring to on this, a noise thread. I don't need to be schooled on what "drone" is. When someone is talking about droning, that doesn't necassarily refer to the musical genre known as "Drone".

A drone has rarely got any of the fragmented sounds that you would find on a noise piece of music, where the general idea that a musician wants to give to the listener is that of full-frontal assault, rather than creating a prolonged and trancey state of the mind, which is the main aim of drones. I'm much more a fan of repetitive sounds than I am of noise and that is because you're more likely to end up listening to something that can be both freeform and concise at the same time. Drones operate more on different tonalities, so that makes them more assimilable for the brain, whereas a lot of the time noise is a hit and run kinda thing, at least for me. Merzbow is particularly good at what he does because he manages to give his noise the right sophisticated licks, depending on the subject that he is making music for. Take all this as a generalization, though, as I'm sure there exceptions to the rule. Wolf Eyes have taken me by surprise sometimes because they upped the stakes in terms of how the chaos gets channeled into what's creating it in some really interesting ways. They also happen to crack your skull open in a more of rockist way, rather than stopping at being some random noise merchants.

Thank you. I was going to make reference to seeing a Yellow Swans show, and wasn't sure whether genre-wise they are noise or drone, or indeed neither. I suspect that they're actually neither, but they do include elements of both in their music, which was why I was looking for a definition of drone.

when I saw yellow swans, they were playing straight-up drone. however, they've explored MANY different styles -- ambient, electronic, industrial, noise, drone, etc. -- on their recordings. but they're typically just listed as a "noise" band because that's what most of their stuff is rooted in, at least.

To the extent to which it's possible, though, I'd almost call them (Yellow Swans) pop-noise. They certainly don't come at things from a Throbbing Gristle angle.

"Yellow Swans: The acceptable face of noise"

It's definitely the easiest listening of the 'popular' noise bands. And they're nice dudes too. Talked to Gabe for a while. He gave me a cherry point/yellow swans split, I gave him a Scissor Shock/Roxanne Jean Polise tape. Totally good guys, great set, Jamie from Xiu Xiu watched em and almost smiled (mostly brooded). Fun night.

by reading the answers, i don't want this to be interpreted as a fight cry, but a) i'm one of the very few people to listen to a lot of noise in here and b) most people haven't heard a lot of noise, something that can be tricky since, as noted, there's a lot of crap to get to the good stuff, but a lot of people seem to give up too easily. noise isn't for everyone, granted.

Okay, a small challenge for the noise fans: Please post a beginner's guide to noise - a top ten noise recordings for the novice listener. A brief description of each would be appreciated too.

Thanks.

there was a thread of favorite noise albums awhile back that degenerated into "post covers of new age albums", but there's awesome mentiones there. not many descriptions though.

I think Controlled Bleeding's "Body Samples" is pretty great (this is way before they got into doing dancey stuff), and I also think a lot of NON's early work has yet to be surpassed.
Just a nod to some of the older crowd.

Can't you make it a bit easier for me than that? :o

Pagan Muzak.

hmmm...i've also started to think about the "beginners" part of the beginners guide you mentioned...if someone came from listening to anything remotely discordant and then faced with an incapacitants record, they probably would not listen to a single sound without covering their ears.

most people begin listening to dissonant rock or free jazz and at some point get plugged to noise. i don't know how a harsh-harsher-harshest scenario can work; in my case, i liked noisy rock for a long time, then listened to other stuff that was kinda ok (wolf eyes, sightings) but it wasn't until i heard merzbow's veneorology that i really got excited about this, mainly because how opressive and 'unlistenable' it was.

therefore, i would recommend to anyone getting into noise to get straight to the harsh shit (masonna, merzbow, incapacitants, hiyokaidan, etc.).

one album, though, that's probably the best introduction and not because it's soft enough to be liked at first listen, it's hard as fuck, but at the same time it's well arranged and executed it's one of the best albums from start to finish. kevin drumm's sheer hellish miasma.

Borbetomagus is free jazz that gets "straight to the harsh shit."

nice, a good crossover band, and citing the reason i love them.

Just listened to some samples on juno.co.uk. I think I may be a lost cause as far as noise is concerned, I just wanted it to go away.

Can we bond over the new Sugababes instead?

I prefer noise rock to flat out noise

bands like early sonic youth, polvo, parts & labor are my cup of tea.

I own many noise records, but I can only enjoy the lightning bolt and the free jazz type stuff. the wolf eyes is hit or miss.

merzbow - rainbow electronics (the old "classic" merzbow)
merzbow - yoshinotsune (the new style merzbow)
merzbow - aqua necromancer (merzbow almost doing "normal" music)
merzbow - pulse demon (full on harshness)
merzbow - 1930 (quiet merzbow)

these records cover various different aspects of merzbow's music

of course some odd seconds sample is going to sound like crap! that record is supposed to be taken as the sprawling epic monster it is.

seriously, you need to hear those pieces revealing themselves to you.

Yeah, but all the stuff that you mentioned is:

- From people who turned noise into an art form, complete with its own aesthetics. Note that all the musicians that you have mentioned happen to be Japanese, who remain the true masters in this field.

- Sonic Youth get tagged as noise rock all the time, and for a reason too, but I doubt that they would have been able to make the records that they have made if noise was the sole influence on their music.

- Not exactly everyone who listens to free jazz is automatically into noise music. There's noise in free jazz but it's generally created by people who can also play conventionally, as well as non-conventionally, thus giving the listeners much less of a hard time trying to work out why someone is (non)playing like that.

The only noise gigs I really enjoyed recently were Sutcliffe Jugend and Jazzkammer full Metal Music Machine line-up. Especially the last one was really fantastic, although not everyone would really considerate it noise I guess.

John Wiese on the other hand would've bored me to tears if it wasn't for the fortunate fact that he played so short. And several more (especially laptop and/or delay pedal) noise dudes and dudettes have kind of bored me recently, so I definitely recognise the feeling of getting bored with noise. When you first start listening to it there's interesting stuff to discover, but sooner or later it definitely gets samey and I hardly buy any of it anymore. I've never participated in getting all those limited-to-23-self-released-cassettes-of-such-and-such band or all the weekly CDRs by the usual suspects that appear on places like Volcanic Tongue etc, but nowadays I tend to skip the merch tables at live shows too, sometimes even if the band were good. Because whenever I buy some noise album there I listen to it like 2-3 times at most and then it just ends up collecting dust in some random pile of unlistened stuff... that pile is getting too big now.

1) i gave the most famous examples of harsh noise there which happens to be by pioneers of the sound which are japanese. and yes, they are some of the best noisers ever, but it's not the end all be all of noise. i could definitely say lasse marhaug (although his stuff is all over the place) or perhaps leslie keffer, fe-mail or metek.

2) yes, but that's sonic youth and we're discussing noise, not them. i totally agree on this point, though.

3) you misinterpreted the "most people begin listening to..." thing i typed, i meant "most people WHO GET INTO NOISE begin listening to dissonant rock or free jazz...". of course it's not a rule.

1,2,3. Let's Go!!!!!

1 - Sure, there are certainly other noise merchants out there that don't happen to be Japanese ( NON was mentioned on this thread and me and you seem to share a fondness for Pita, to name a couple of the good ones), but the Japanese have an amazing arsenal of artists in that field that put a lot of the others to shame. They also tend to use imagery that gels well with all the crazy racket.

2 - I've just thrown that comment in before someone was going to mention the omnipresent ones like it happens often on noise threads.

3 - Ok, I must have mis-read as it was the other way round. My bad.

This makes complete sense.

definitely, i'll get into the japanese discussion; pita i consider is more electronica than anything, with a lot of noise elements. i admire peter a lot, actually, i reviewed a bas... for the magazine i work and i made the point that he is one of the few electronic artist to not work in a fixed genre and that there's to explore sound more than anyone in their field.

now, yes, i agree with your point on the japanese artists, definitely but a crucial point is that they pioneeered this shit and that's why they are THE people for many and rightfully so.

actually, i had this talk with someone here, who started noise, he said it was whitehouse and the whole power electronics crew in england and i said it was hijokaidan and merzbow and all the harsh people in japan. sure whitehouse, sutcliffed, ramleh, etc. started before-ish the japanese and influenced those guys but they worked in very fixed parameters all of them and their focus was in the vocals and the lyrics more so than the music. the japanese on the other hand, shifted the attention towards the sounds and expanded upon them, making them more brutal but also covering more ground.

of course, this is a debate on par with who started punk.

ps: i think rob instigator beat you to name the omnipresent ones.

I agree its like the bands notorious for have put out a boatload are Wolf Eyes, Dead Machines, Hair Police...etc to me only have a handful of listenable well done works not that they are bad groups but that also feel that they can release a recording of some throwdown of tom-foolery in their basement recorded to some mini-cassette recorder, where i could go toss the same recorder next a garbage truck on trash day as it stops to churn all the crap from the neighborhood and it would sound the same. so to me these types of groups are more about marketing themselves for "what they do" without regard to "what they sound like" which in my opinion is unfortunate. agreed i respect more those bands that take some care in what they put out but they are few and far between...

I still enjoy noise but not as much as I used to, musicly because lately I've been making real melodic music. But I think where the hate for noise lies is that fact that there is nothing for the listener to sing or hum along too. I can't really explain it but I think some will get what I'm saying.
I also think noise is for the more "advanced" listeners. I much prefer noise music and noise rock any time of the day though.
It's just another form of art. Oh and telling an noise artist to make music not noise is kind of like telling a grave digger to kill a man, maybe? I don't know. Yeah. I'm sure it's all been said already.

I can relate to that. Very much so.

Some of it is shit. I agree. However, bands like Yellow Swans certainly don't do the same shit every release and they're one of the greatest bands around today. Don't judge a genre by the shit they produce. Judge it by the beautiful releases they put out.

Bring the Neon War Home is one of my all-time favorite records.

thinking about the beginner thing for a second...

I got into noise because I started out by screaming into a microphone and posting it on mp3.com when I was in 8th grade.. recording feedback and stuff.. you know, "Revolutionary" shit, haha.. I wasn't even aware that people did that for a living.. someone reccomended merzbow, and I heard "soft water rhinoceros". I think that the idea that people were making noise never surprised me, but it was initially difficult to approach as a listener. I completely immersed myself in it for a while, you know, and I listened to the Merzbox in 2 whole weekends about 3 or 4 years ago.

Quite frankly, I think immersing yourself in noise is the best way to go. Let it soak in. I dont' know if there really are "Beginner's" records, since noise itself is so broad and there are so many directions you can go in. Just get used to enjoying and loving sounds. Someone once said to me that noise is the sound of life itself. I hit him and kissed him.

http://www.ctheory.net/articles.aspx?id=314 <-- that is quite interesting

excellent!

I got into noise because of Sonic Youth, Throbbing Gristle, Nirvana and Shonen Knife.

I goty into noise because of the second half of MOTE

I got into noise because I was a teenager.

I got into noise to be cool.