Obsessed!

Matthew Shephard (a differen't non-dead and very less famous one) made me incredibly curious about Raymond Scott, a brilliant, and somewhat bizzaare jazz (or maybe pseudo-jazz, there seems to be some debate) composer. Most people who have watched classic Bugs Bunny episodes will recognize pieces from his song "Powerhouse." Apperantly his music has been used in Animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy, and other animated cartoons. What I found really cool though was when I began reading about his invention, the electronium. It's a music generator of sorts. The way I understand it, it generates random sounds in different "instrument" categories and a composer listens to the sounds and decides whether they are appropriate for the current song he is creating. The noises are all electronically generated, it is essentially a primitive midi machine. But the sound clips I have heard of it are awesome. Apperantly this creation got him a job with MoTown as head of music research and development. This guy is incredibly awesome.

I disagree with his theory that musical art should be incredibly structured and that improvization is not a good thing. This is why people argue that he is in fact anti-jazz despite his jazzy sound. And I would tend to agree that it defies general jazz theory, but his music is wonderful none the less, and obviously follows jazz structures, so I would venture to say he is a jazz composer with his own unique musical theory.

What I think is so cool is how this guy saw that music would come to embrace technology in ways that many now still reject and despise. I want to know how much this guy has influenced modern jazz, hip-hop, electronica, and mixtures of the above, with his innovation. Or did he merely predict the future and not necessarily shape it.

EDIT in addition, if you want to see something interesting take a look at who is on the Raymond Scott preservation board. These are some pretty big names.

Another EDIT I would also just like to add that Raymond Scott has the coolest titles to his songs: "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals," "Square Dance for Eight Egyptian Mummies," and "Dedicatory Piece to the Crew and Passengers of the First Experimental Rocket to the Moon" are some of my favorites.

-Brandon