Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
It wasn't the whole reason and my point is that you can now get access not that you should have a million of them, so I don't really see your point.
Music software = bad
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It wasn't the whole reason and my point is that you can now get access not that you should have a million of them, so I don't really see your point.
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
True, but at least it's now out of the hands of the elite and rich, so the downside is worth putting up with but seeing as I don't buy or listen to rubbish I don't really have a problem with it
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
True, but at least it's now out of the hands of the elite and rich, so the downside is worth putting up with but seeing as I don't buy or listen to rubbish I don't really have a problem with it
Yes completely out of the hands of the elite and rich. The music business is a completely level playing field. :slanted:
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
That's not what we are taking about tho is it?
Why do you want a level playing field?
Do you really care about EMI?
No business is a level playing field is it?
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Anyone who wants to has always been able to play music - bang some stones together, fashion a flute from a twig, whatever.
I just don't think much has changed since punk and the availability of low cost music making equipment. The big marketing companies are still hugely powerful in terms of what music gets exposure, wide distribution, mass media approval, high profile DJ play and so on.
I didn't say I wanted a level playing field, and I'm not personally bothered about EMI, but organisations like that are not about music or progressive ideas anymore - they are about acquiring money (or worse the political inclinations of their friends) and they will do their best to skew things in that direction.
But no, it does not bother me. Music goes on regardless.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Perhaps the glut of casual music making actually assists big business by making it harder for the gems in the underground to shine?
Martin Dust
Techno Zen Master
Sometimes and you are right, the main problem for small labels is distribution and finding one that doesn't treat your music as "fruit and veg" is very difficult but it's now easier with the internet and cdr's but there's no real need to compete on the same level as them.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
So anyway, re: software, what about this:
http://www.stratfordisland.com/whistler/
Interface wise I'm quite sure it's just the kind of thing Eno would approve of, but again it's just a tool and only as banal or interesting as the user can make it. Of course it would be much better to call up Robert, Phil, Bono and Dave for a jam based around chords derived from the indentations made by large ladies' bottoms on enormous polystyrene I Ching hexagrams.
I like Remain In Light a lot btw.
http://www.stratfordisland.com/whistler/
Interface wise I'm quite sure it's just the kind of thing Eno would approve of, but again it's just a tool and only as banal or interesting as the user can make it. Of course it would be much better to call up Robert, Phil, Bono and Dave for a jam based around chords derived from the indentations made by large ladies' bottoms on enormous polystyrene I Ching hexagrams.
I like Remain In Light a lot btw.
noel emits
a wonderful wooden reason
Incidentally, while we're at it, and for anyone that hasn't seen this:
http://www.woebot.com/movabletype/archives/000649.html
Nice one.
EDIT: Just read that again, bloody LOL!
http://www.woebot.com/movabletype/archives/000649.html
Nice one.
EDIT: Just read that again, bloody LOL!
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Norma Snockers
Well-known member
It'd be cool if that was made! I've got a few programs that sort of do that but it's hit and miss at best.
http://widi-recognition-system-professional.widisoft.qarchive.org/ etc. but they are patchy.
the undisputed truth
Banned
Experiments in Musical Intelligence = EMI
David Cope wrote the program that should allow for computers to recombine musical genes? into new forms that mimic the composer whose data you input.
http://www.spectrumpress.com/da-silva-david-cope-and-emi.pdf
the next BIG thing !
I find the idea (let alone the artifacts) of using computers to create generative/recombinant art unbearably banal.
Show me your humanity.
the undisputed truth
Banned
you show me yours and I'll show you mine
Just think though it'd be the advertisers and major labels dream. NO copyright to pay or flaky artists to deal with. Spend it all on marketing.
Just think though it'd be the advertisers and major labels dream. NO copyright to pay or flaky artists to deal with. Spend it all on marketing.
Yeah I think this direction has proven pretty much a cul de sac by now. Even the high priests of beeping and chirping autechre backed away from it. I'd much rather hear 16 year old musically-uneducated kids on fruity loops expressing themselves.
I think more music is always better, it allows for more fluidity and new beats to challenge whatevers on top at any given moment. To me all this talk about only so and so should make music is pretty elitist and uptight. If something is bad it's really quite easy to not listen to it.
DigitalDjigit
Honky Tonk Woman
Nah, the uneducated 16 year olds musically expressing themselves on Fruity Loops mostly sounds very samey. The same riffs, beats...they are just rediscovering the things that the 16 year olds before them found. So you have dubstep using the same riffs as rave because that's just what you will naturally gravitate to when you use a tracker-like program.
I think the generative music isn't at all exhausted and that's where the future is for me. Noone says that you have to just set it up and leave it to run it's course. You can parametrise it and hit keys and twist knobs while it is going, jamming with the machine. Software lets you to create totally unique instruments where you are not limited by the interface to change any one given parameter (piano limits you to changing pitch and velocity only...and sustain I guess). There's the potential to get away from the grid and the program/listen/program cycle and into a more free-flowing improvisational style.
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Software is just another tool. You still have to learn the basics of how sound works and why people get a kick out of listening to music etc etc. No instrument or computer or whatever will do that for you.
Brian Eno has done some great stuff and has probably earned the right to pontificate. We've probably mangled his point for the sake of argument... But that's dissensus, right?
Anyway there must be heaps of great artists who just use software to make music. Didn't Autechre go all software? Aphex Twin? Someone mentioned Luomo - that sounds software based: ditto Isolée, Jega, Richard Devine... And on the new Booka Shade album they give a credit to Native Instruments.
Brian Eno has done some great stuff and has probably earned the right to pontificate. We've probably mangled his point for the sake of argument... But that's dissensus, right?
Anyway there must be heaps of great artists who just use software to make music. Didn't Autechre go all software? Aphex Twin? Someone mentioned Luomo - that sounds software based: ditto Isolée, Jega, Richard Devine... And on the new Booka Shade album they give a credit to Native Instruments.
Slothrop
Tight but Polite
Bearing in mind that pretty much any computer music was hardcore geekery thirty years ago but these days anyone with a PC can pick up something like Fruity or Tracktion or Reason and get some tunes out of it, it'll be interesting to see if (partially)[1] algorithmic / generative music can turn into something that approachable. We've already had something like that with the whole live laptop thing turning from something only serious MAX/MSP geeks could do into a fairly routine idea via Ableton Live...
As to the 16 year olds with Fruityloops making beats - yeah, the pattern sequencing paradigm encourages them to sound similar in some ways (although one thing that always annoyed me about IDM / glitch, much as I like some of it, was the way that despite all the talk about 'infinite sonic possibilities' the actual sound-palette was normally pretty samey), but a lot of great music has always been about being innovative in some ways while sticking within certain parameters in others eg trying to be mental but mixable, trying to do something new on limited equipment etc
[1] afaict, not much of the Autechre / glitch / whatever stuff is /really/ generative - I'm guessing that a lot of people are using programmes like MAX to set up things that are somewhere between true generative music and advanced macros so they're triggering a load of complex stuff in a controlled way rather than just leaving the computer to get on with it...
swears
preppy-kei
I'm always generating little random 16 or 32 note sequences. 99% of them are shit, but a minority are really good, stuff you would never think of writing yourself. Even in something basic like Fruity Loops: the arpeggiator in that has a random setting, so you can let that run in a certain key for ages, and then pick out the bits you like. The creative parts are setting the boundaries, and editing the results into something viable.
Most VST synths/instruments have randomize settings as well.
But at the end of the day, it's about taste. You can knock out any old noodly wank, or you can sit and take your time making all these generated parts into a cohesive whole.
BTW: I think the point I was trying to make by starting this thread was that ideas are still more important than gear and..um...a bad workman always blames his tools...or something along those lines.
Most VST synths/instruments have randomize settings as well.
But at the end of the day, it's about taste. You can knock out any old noodly wank, or you can sit and take your time making all these generated parts into a cohesive whole.
BTW: I think the point I was trying to make by starting this thread was that ideas are still more important than gear and..um...a bad workman always blames his tools...or something along those lines.
DigitalDjigit
Honky Tonk Woman
Yeah, and on the other hand you can't build the Notre Dame with an axe.