experimental composer; more excited by the prospect of outlining a situation in which sounds may occur, a process of generating action, a field delineated by certain compositional rules.

The experimental composer may act the outcome of which are unknown(John Cage).
Process may range from a minimum of organization to a minimum of arbitrariness, proposing different relationships between chance and choice, presenting different kinds of options and obligations.


1.chance determination processes
material at one remove from the composer by allowing it to be determined by a system he determined. And the real innovation liesin the emphasis on the creation of a system(/process).

2.people processes

The experimental composer is not interested in the uniqueness of permanence but in the uniqueness of moment.This is a concept which is clearly expressed in Jung's statement about the I Ching;

The actual moment under actual observation appears to be ancient Chinese view more of a chance hit than a clearly defined result of concurring causal chain process. The matter of interest seems to be the configuration formed by chance events in the moment of observation, and not at all the hypothetical reassons that seemingly account for the coincidence. While the Western mind carefully sifts, weighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture of the moment encompasses everything down to the minutest nonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make up the observed moment.

For experimental musicemphasizes an unprecedented fluidity of composer, performer, listener roles, as it breaks away from the standard sender/reciever/ carrier information structure of other form of western music.
In experimental music the perceiver's role is more and more appropriated by the performer-not only in scores like Toshi Ichiyanagi's Sapporowhich has a sign which tells the player to listen to what other players are doing, or inmusic like Chistian Wolff's which needs a high degree of listening and concentration.
And if the performer's participation is passive, involving observation rather than action, the workis not invalidated or changed.

in reality, compelte silence is impossible.
Cage's 4'33" is a demonstration of the non-existence of silence, of the permanent presence of sounds around us, of the fact that they are worthy of attention, and that for Cage environmental sounds and noises are more useful aesthetically than the sounds produced by the world's musical cultures. This would be simply a way of wakin g up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent onece one gets one's mind and one's desires out of its wat and lets it act of its own accord.