Murphy
cat malogen
you diy and learn to play bass!
The Mimic Machine
you diy and learn to play bass!
Murphy
cat malogen
genre has been surpassed by vibe, try and get out more munchkins
mixed_biscuits
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Is Beatport organised by vibe now?
mixed_biscuits
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version
Well-known member
We're not talking exact copies in terms of individual tunes, no, but the idea behind the thread's broader than that. It's about the impulse to produce copies and whether our ability to produce those copies is improving to the detriment of fruitful failures.
version
Well-known member
You seen the Tony Scott film, Déjà Vu? There's a similar device in that that allows them to playback anything that's happened in the last four days.
I like the idea of things laying dormant, just waiting for the right person or sequence of moves to activate them. There are potentially individual tunes out there containing the seeds of trajectories not yet taken, lost novels charting alternate courses, cultural viruses to be thawed from the permafrost.
You really need the step back and sense of distance this sort of discussion affords to appreciate that bigger picture as these things become mundane when interacted with from day to day as discrete phenomena. In fact, you're doing with the present and recent past something like I'm describing above: mapping a constellation, connecting dots until the whole thing lights up. Much more exciting to think about those things when you present them like that than actually watching a YouTube vid of Biden rapping or an old ad.
version
Well-known member
Wonder whether anyone's attempted to sketch out a fake economy, i.e. an economy consisting of only the replicas, bootlegs, etc. The Chinese knockoffs on Amazon, the fake Levis, the forged artworks. I don't know that it's even possible at this point. The fakes and copies are an integral part of the actual economy.
"The Industrial Revolution is primarily a virus revolution, dedicated to controlled proliferation of identical objects and persons."
BURROUGHS, THE PLACE OF DEAD ROADS
Art forgery in particular's an interesting one as it calls into question why and how we value certain things. A forgery of a famous painting could be worthless in terms of not being the original, but we place some value on the skill it takes to pull off such a forgery. Counterfeit money's another intriguing one as you're attempting to both forge the object and its monetary value in the same item.
There's a difference in how copies and originals are handled across various media too. With painting, the object itself is the original and a copy's somewhat diminished by being a copy. With a novel, it's more difficult to pin down as reproduction doesn't diminish the text in the same way. There isn't the emphasis on having to read the original Ulysses manuscript that there is on viewing the actual Mona Lisa.
version
Well-known member
Some interesting stuff in that New Yorker article mentioned on the first page:
I guess the equivalent of this in the jungle discussion would be the use and subsequent overuse of a particular sound or sample, something which sticks out enough that it becomes conspicuous when copied, e.g. the Amen.
You're presented with at least two options in that situation: 1) purge the distinct or 2) further the distinction. The former seems to have been the route for a lot of drum 'n' bass as there's so much where the drums are barely noticeable due to the uniformity; the latter's the route of the auteur Biscuits invoked who will chop and edit a break further, tune individual hits, keep pulling it apart, keep exploring it.
That being said, there are different considerations when creating digital backgrounds to building tunes. It's not really viable to crank up the distinction if your business is providing building blocks to a broad range of clients. The onus is on the people purchasing the backgrounds to do something distinctive in the foreground. In this analogy, I suppose the companies scanning the rocks and trees are the equivalent of those creating the synths and sample packs.
That necessity for the unique and distinct to be removed is exactly what I was talking about when I started the thread though. For the simulation to succeed, those elements must be suppressed. You don't want some quirk of the equipment stopping your hoover from sounding like a classic hoover, so the quirk must be ironed out.
This suggestion of realism requiring the unreal - much like its pursuit via an engine dubbed 'Unreal' - is fascinating. Reminds me of DeLillo claiming he paid close to attention to conversations he overheard in public whilst writing his novel, Players, trying to get as close he could to the way people were actually speaking, sometimes even transcribing their conversations word for word, but the end result sometimes seeming more artificial than if he'd written it himself.
I guess the equivalent of this in the jungle discussion would be the use and subsequent overuse of a particular sound or sample, something which sticks out enough that it becomes conspicuous when copied, e.g. the Amen.
You're presented with at least two options in that situation: 1) purge the distinct or 2) further the distinction. The former seems to have been the route for a lot of drum 'n' bass as there's so much where the drums are barely noticeable due to the uniformity; the latter's the route of the auteur Biscuits invoked who will chop and edit a break further, tune individual hits, keep pulling it apart, keep exploring it.
That being said, there are different considerations when creating digital backgrounds to building tunes. It's not really viable to crank up the distinction if your business is providing building blocks to a broad range of clients. The onus is on the people purchasing the backgrounds to do something distinctive in the foreground. In this analogy, I suppose the companies scanning the rocks and trees are the equivalent of those creating the synths and sample packs.
That necessity for the unique and distinct to be removed is exactly what I was talking about when I started the thread though. For the simulation to succeed, those elements must be suppressed. You don't want some quirk of the equipment stopping your hoover from sounding like a classic hoover, so the quirk must be ironed out.
This suggestion of realism requiring the unreal - much like its pursuit via an engine dubbed 'Unreal' - is fascinating. Reminds me of DeLillo claiming he paid close to attention to conversations he overheard in public whilst writing his novel, Players, trying to get as close he could to the way people were actually speaking, sometimes even transcribing their conversations word for word, but the end result sometimes seeming more artificial than if he'd written it himself.
version
Well-known member
Something which struck me reading that article was that it isn't that there aren't mistakes being made within the various simulations, it's that the people building them have seemingly no interest in whether those mistakes might also lead somewhere interesting. Anything which doesn't contribute to the perfect simulation is simply viewed as an obstacle on the road to it.
Murphy
cat malogen
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Unterhimmel 6 Feb 2016
Edited 8 years ago
The blueprint for what I call "Hipster House", followed up by Klangkarussell's "Sonnentanz", Robin Schulz' remix of Mr. Probz' "Waves", the "About Berlin" compilation series, added radiofriendly "girly" female vocals and saxophone samples and finally a myriad of copycats of all of this. At least over here in Germany you can't escape it as it is the next "big" thing after the Minimal movement. Latest effort in this case would be the ridiculous cover of Rufus & Chaka Khan's "Ain't Nobody" by Felix Jaehn.
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spaceisnoise 1 Oct 2016
Why does all this labelling of people and genres matter so much to you? Music is personal. At least this music doesn't promote a behaviour that encourages abuses, sex and materialistic values. We should be happy that these songs exist and people choose to listen to these and promote this industry. Enjoy it.
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Quintdresden 14 Nov 2016
I kind of agree with you...but all the songs he mentioned are really really bad, blueprints of light House Music with the most obvious vocal samples you can think of. I AM actually getting agressive listening to them haha
music is art.. but these cheap, half-assed versions of classic songs made for people who dont care...its just the least artistic thing I can think of.
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Unterhimmel 26 Apr 2017
Yes, music is personal but this has nothing to do with the musical and compositional effort someone puts into a track. With most of these kind of tracks I mentioned (now known as "Tropical House") the effort is less than nothing. Also, I don't criticize someone's taste but if someone is open-minded or not. Also, this stuff gets a lot of promotion (radio, clubs etc.), so most people don't really choose it themselves.
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mixed_biscuits
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Do you have any examples of these fruitful failures? I don't think successful novelty tends to come from 'failures', as per my long post.
mixed_biscuits
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The value of Ulysses is in its semantic content, which is wholly conveyed by the string of characters, whereas copies of the Mona Lisa are not the same configuration of painted material so do not convey the same thing as the original and the effect of the original is ultimately not fully comprehensible as there is no complete theory linking artistic input with viewer output.
version
Well-known member
The 303 example in my original post: Roland attempt to simulate a bass guitar, fail miserably and inadvertently lay the foundations for something much more interesting.
There are stories throughout musical history of people coming up with something new by misusing the equipment, 'joyriding technology' as Goldie once put it. One of the things I'm asking is whether the potential for that declines as technology improves, whether it getting better and better at doing its intended job leaves less and less room for deviation, or whether new deviations will always arise.
version
Well-known member
He's in a disruptive mood. He wants to bring down my thread. He's turned reptile.