I have so much respect for John Cage. He has done so much for experimental music, especially for his time he was completely pushing the boundaries of what music can be. He wanted to create something that hasn’t been created before, so he threw all the rules out and started over. He was a creative genius, and everyone hated him for it. My favorite thing he did was Sonata V. It sounds like some of the work Aphex Twin has done (Avril 14th, Piano Un1 Arpej), where I believe he hooked his computer up to a device that reads midi and plays it on the piano. I also really liked his Water Walk performance. I consider those all to be music. 4:33, however, I don’t know… I’ve been debating it in my head for quite some time now, and I think doing nothing but considering the ambient noise around you to be your song is maybe where I draw the line. I consider noises to be music, but I feel like they have to be purposeful. Maybe they are in 4:33 but in my opinion, you need to at least have a microphone that’s picking up the background noise. I don’t know, I certainly wouldn’t call it a composition. Be silent for a minute, be silent for a couple of minutes, then be silent for a little bit more. Let the audience or the sounds of the room be the song. I think it’s art, definitely performance art, but I wouldn’t call it a song. I have a pretty loose definition of music too. I think music can just be crazy sounds with little to no structure (Kill Robok), which I actually listen to a lot and is some of my favorite music. That probably makes me an insane person. I just think 4:33 is more performance art than it is a composition of music. However, 4:33 and John Cage, in general, have been very important in questioning what is music.
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