How Long Does Other DAWs Take To Save 20,000 Midi Items?

[harryupbabble]

I don't see my method being that different from the method of noodling on the piano to find melodies. It's the same type of work but mine just uses technology to automate everything.

On the piano, one could use an octave of notes to create their melody. They could use the entire keyboard if they want. But let's stick to one octave for now. So you have 12 notes to combine in any sequence you want. You still have to use your ears to hunt for melodies that is pleasing to you. But you are boxed in by muscle memory.

Sure, instead of 12 notes I am working with 20,000 midi drum patterns. But I can automate everything. How many combinations could you make with 12 notes? Maybe it's more than 20,000? Maybe it's in the millions? Let me Google that.
https://plus.maths.org/content/how-many ... -are-there
It's in the BILLIONS.

So, if you don't want to be limited when you use 12 notes to make your melody, why is it all of sudden illogical and inefficient when I don't want to be limited when it comes to the drums? Or the bass? Or the guitar? Or the etcetera? And ultimately, the melody?

On topic: if you do the DAW file saving speed test, you may find out lots of things that your DAW could or couldn't do. For one, of possibly many previously unknown to you DAW capability, you can find out if it has this function: Copy First Midi Item And Paste 19,999 Instances Of that Item Starting At Bar 2. You may find out if your DAW is capable of batch file midi import AND export.

[JoseC.]

But you are boxed in by muscle memory.

.

No, you are not. You have a set of tools and techniques at your disposal. You can know what a scale is, how its degrees interact, what a motif is, what kind of emotions you want to convey, what kind of rhythm is more likely to interlock with the rest of your piece...to name just a few. As a matter of fact, if you have some kind of "muscle memory" with an instrument, you already are familiar with some of these things, and you also know that "muscle memory" is not your friend while composing.

So, even when you are noodling, you can do it with some sense of purpose and direction.

A question: what kind of music are you trying to compose? Any particular style or genre?

[woggle]

You still have to use your ears to hunt for melodies that is pleasing to you. But you are boxed in by muscle memory.

This makes little sense - most musicians (and most people) can think of a melody or rhythm without playing it. If you then need to play that you just figure out the fingering - muscle memory does not come in to it.

[harryupbabble]

But you are using a randomizer, like I am? And piano noodlers do exist. I was talking about them.

[harryupbabble]

As a matter of fact, if you have some kind of "muscle memory" with an instrument, you already are familiar with some of these things, and you also know that "muscle memory" is not your friend while composing.

So, even when you are noodling, you can do it with some sense of purpose and direction.

A question: what kind of music are you trying to compose? Any particular style or genre?

If your composing method is "noodle at the piano" then what you compose will be limited by where your fingers were conditioned to go?
You said it and I quote: "know that "muscle memory" is not your friend while composing."

According to this article:
https://plus.maths.org/content/how-many ... -are-there
"There are around 82,500,000,000,000,000,000 melodies that are 10 notes long." What's the name for that number? Gadzillion?

Using a "true" randomizer, you might stumble on one or more of those gadzillion melodies that you might not have ever found if you were just noodling around on the piano.
For all you know, bands like Depeche Mode might have used randomizers. You wouldn't know who are using randomizers unless they tell you?
Yup, I think "true" randomizers doesn't limit composers like muscle memory does.


You asked "A question: what kind of music are you trying to compose? Any particular style or genre?"

No particular syle or genre. I really just want to write "something" like Greensleeves. Simple lyrics to fit simple melodies. That description fits a lot of pop music, right? But it seems there are different kinds of pop music. The "Dark Side Of The Moon" album is very popular but its music is not simple nor its lyrics:

"Listed in Guinness Book of World Records For spending 741 consecutive weeks in Billboard Top 200 and 26 years staggering in and out of the charts. According to the December 1, 2001 issue of Billboard, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon has been on the charts for an astounding 1,285 weeks."

But Greensleeves has been popular for over 400 years. There's tons of people at YouTube doing covers of Greensleeves. Rock, punk, metal, etc. Jeff Beck even have a cover of it in one of his albums.

The "simple lyrics to fit simple melodies" description also fits some songs by bands like the Ramones and songs like Yellow Submarine. And some Christmas carols. And some nursery rhymes and lullabies. Yes, I want to make songs like those. Lyrics that stick, melodies that are whistleable and hummable. It's not easy to do, to me at least. It's a Mount Everest.

I'm off to do dog knows what. Randomize stuff, most likely. Okay bye, for now. G'night.

[woggle]

But you are using a randomizer, like I am? And piano noodlers do exist. I was talking about them.

Oh, okay. I do use software to generate variations - but the process is not blindly random, and I write the software myself according to the sorts of output I want. eg I might permute the notes of a piece by Bach and then place those notes into the rhythmic structure and harmonic density of a piece by Bartok (or vice versa)
Sometimes I do this as a joke eg putting Enter Sandman notes into Four Season's structure

And then I edit

[JoseC.]

If your composing method is "noodle at the piano" then what you compose will be limited by where your fingers were conditioned to go?
You said it and I quote: "know that "muscle memory" is not your friend while composing."

According to this article:
https://plus.maths.org/content/how-many ... -are-there
"There are around 82,500,000,000,000,000,000 melodies that are 10 notes long." What's the name for that number? Gadzillion?

Using a "true" randomizer, you might stumble on one or more of those gadzillion melodies that you might not have ever found if you were just noodling around on the piano.
For all you know, bands like Depeche Mode might have used randomizers. You wouldn't know who are using randomizers unless they tell you?
Yup, I think "true" randomizers doesn't limit composers like muscle memory does.


You asked "A question: what kind of music are you trying to compose? Any particular style or genre?"

No particular syle or genre. I really just want to write "something" like Greensleeves. Simple lyrics to fit simple melodies. That description fits a lot of pop music, right? But it seems there are different kinds of pop music. The "Dark Side Of The Moon" album is very popular but its music is not simple nor its lyrics:

"Listed in Guinness Book of World Records For spending 741 consecutive weeks in Billboard Top 200 and 26 years staggering in and out of the charts. According to the December 1, 2001 issue of Billboard, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon has been on the charts for an astounding 1,285 weeks."

But Greensleeves has been popular for over 400 years. There's tons of people at YouTube doing covers of Greensleeves. Rock, punk, metal, etc. Jeff Beck even have a cover of it in one of his albums.

The "simple lyrics to fit simple melodies" description also fits some songs by bands like the Ramones and songs like Yellow Submarine. And some Christmas carols. And some nursery rhymes and lullabies. Yes, I want to make songs like those. Lyrics that stick, melodies that are whistleable and hummable. It's not easy to do, to me at least. It's a Mount Everest.

I'm off to do dog knows what. Randomize stuff, most likely. Okay bye, for now. G'night.

What I meant was that muscle memory is not your friend while composing because one should be aware of what is being played.

Anyway, I asked about genre or style because form is important in music. Greenleeves was not composed in a vacuum, or randomly, but rather following the fashion of its time. It is written in a pretty usual time signature, 6/8, and in A dorian, using four bar phrases. Nothing too fancy, actually.

And your Mount Everest is the same for every art form. "Simple" is the true mark of the genius. The first four notes motif of Beethoven's 5th symphony could not be simpler. You could probably generate it automatically, but no random procedure will make a symphony out of it. Much of the great music out there is much simpler that it seems once you analyze it a bit. I am a big fan of Pink Floyd exactly for that reason.

Composing, no matter what kind of music, is a craft before it becomes art. You are badly mistaken if you think that you will find any shortcuts. A few people are born artists who seem do things effortlessly while the rest must struggle learning the basics.

And lastly, much of the great pop music that has been done came out of people working with others. Pink Floyd was the sum of four different people making music together. Consider that.

[harryupbabble]

@JoseC,

You stated "What I meant was that muscle memory is not your friend while composing because one should be aware of what is being played."

This implies that piano noodlers are not aware of what is being played and therefore it's bad to compose that way? If so, I agree then.



You stated "You could probably generate it automatically, but no random procedure will make a symphony out of it."

At the moment I agree with that because I haven't yet came across of such a randomizer but it seems people like woggle may have created something more complicated than the randomizers that I use.
Also, I am not trying to create a symphony.



You stated: "You are badly mistaken if you think that you will find any shortcuts."

You are basically saying "it can't be done". Einstein was into shortcuts, he was into wormholes. Lately I've been seeing this phrase in Google News "It turns out Einstein was right after all". Or something like that.

Sure randomizers may have been around for a long time. I saw articles on Google stating that Mozart created a randomizer. I even downloaded that software a while back.
But the randomizers of today are super-fast compared to Mozart's randomizer.
And using computerized randomizers is a new "art". Newer than the invention of desktop computers. So you have to give people time to master the use of modern randomizers in terms of composing. Maybe a hundred more years? But maybe urgency compresses time limits.



You stated: "And lastly, much of the great pop music that has been done came out of people working with others. Pink Floyd was the sum of four different people making music together. Consider that."

I sort of agree with that. But what is the math? In the case of Dark Side Of The Moon, in terms of composing, is the addition something like this:
60 percent Roger Waters + 30 percent David Gilmour + 10 percent Rick Wright?
I have to Google later to see if Nick Mason contributed at all, in terms of composition.

I know that there are a lot of composers who seemed to have worked alone in terms of the composition part. Prince, Paul Simon, Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, etc.. Also, there seems to be two phases of the Beatles. With the early Beatles, John and Paul did seem to collaborate writing songs together. But with the last phase of the Beatles, the one when they stopped touring and spent time in the studio... well that's the Beatles that wrote the best stuff, to me at least.

During that second phase of the Beatles, it seems John and Paul were not really collaborators. Paul would go away for weeks and come back with complete songs. Same thing with John and George. So in terms of composing, the Beatles did not need each other by the time the second phase of the Beatles happened.

Playing the songs live, is another matter. It's better to have live musicians play your compositions compared to just having REAPER or whatever DAW you used to execute or play the songs. But everything I've stated is just my opinions, of course.

Although writing wall of texts might be good for speed scrabble, I actually have to play speed scrabble now. So, okay bye, for now.

[JoseC.]

@Harry,

Nope. Mozart did not create a "randomizer". There was nothing random in Mozart's music, quite the opposite, to the extent that the set of rules that he used could be translated to an algorythm and used to create a software program that would output "Mozartish" music. Most music, especially all the music that you have mentioned in this thread, is created using a set of rules. The blues form, for example, is nothing but a set of rules. You create your music within that set of rules, and while it is up to you how much you stretch them, if you stray too much the result is not a blues anymore, which could be good, or not. There are plenty of tools, arranger software and keyboards, for example, that will generate backing tracks for most popular styles. You define a style (a set of rules), and they will help you to compose your song within that style, drum parts and all. But this is not random at all.

None of the music that you have mentioned so far was composed at random. Actually, and leaving aside classical composers who wrote music on paper for others to play, not even most of the "solo" composers that you mention did in fact write all the music that is in their records, there were arrangers, session musicians and producers that contributed to the end result. If told me that you wanted to make experimental, generative music, it would be fine, but we are not talking about Brian Eno here, you keep on bringing up The Beatles, and there was nothing random about their music.

Another question: what do you actually compose in your music?

[harryupbabble]

@JoseC

How can you tell if Mozart did not use a randomizer? If woggle didn't tell you that he is using randomizers, would you know he was using randomizers just by listening to his music? People suspect that the Aphex Twins guy used randomizers but unless he admits to using randomizers, people can't be sure.

You mentioned Brian Eno. Same thing there. It's only because Brian Eno admitted to using randomizers. For all anyone know, he may have been using randomizers all the way back to his Roxy Music days. Yeah, I know I'm just guessing but is the guess a bad guess?

And also, you asked for examples of people using randomizers. Oh wait you didn't. You stated that none of the people I mentioned used randomizers, implying that Pink Floyd and the Beatles did not use randomizers. Pretend you asked "who uses randomizers?" Well Brian Eno is one, David Bowie is another. And maybe Mozart was another.
The Aphex Twins guy may be another. And woggle is another. Maybe Gradywerks also used/uses randomizers because he made randomizers. I'm not sure if the Beatles used randomizers. But the Sgt Pepper album might be suspect? They probably didn't. But Pink Floyd? I'm not sure they didn't use randomizers. They used synths so anything is possible, meaning they were open to newer methods?

Randomizers are everywhere. I guess if no one is using them, devs won't keep making them. And yet most DAWs has "humanizers" which is a type of randomizer to me. And there are tons of VST synths with randomizer functions. Native Instruments has randomizers in most of their products?

Sure maybe Mozart didn't outright say "I used randomizers" because admitting to that may have wrecked his reputation? Who knows? But Google it, Mozart did make a sort of randomizer. And if he made randomizers, why wouldn't he use it? That's like making a hammer and just using it to keep papers from flying away in a drafty office?

What do I compose in my music, you asked? Crap, at the moment. Hahaha. If I am not making crap, it means I have found a method that I settled on. Everything I have ever made is the result of failed methods. But I don't keep making music with a failed method. Once is enough. But the thing is, it depends on the day. I sometimes listen to those music I made with failed methods and I think "Hey that one is not totally crap, how did I make that, I forgot the method, why did I declare that one "crap" at the time?"

So yeah, I spend most of my music-making time slot finding methods and testing them. If the method doesn't work, I abandon it. But not completely. Sometimes, I keep a part of a failed method and add that to the next method. My current method might last me for a while. Of all the methods I've tried, I am liking it the best.

But no, just because people use randomizers it doesn't mean everything is random. It's not all random in my case. The randomizer provides me with choices. I use my ears to reject most of what the randomizer offers. That process is not random to me. Like I stated before, that process is no different than "noodling at the piano". The main difference is that I've bypassed muscle memory and I use automation to speed up the process. Noodling at the piano is a slow process, and the results start to sound the same because of muscle memory, to me at least. But yeah I admit, some people have made wonderful stuff noodling at the piano. Elton John, maybe? But maybe at some point Elton's music started sounding the same because of muscle memory and his well dried up?

Oooo, what do I know. I haven't made a single hit. So until I make some hits, I'm afraid I'm just babbling. My babbling time slot is done. Now my "test method" time slot is next. Okey dokey, adios senhor. By the way, do you work for The Spanish Inquisition? I'm kidding. G'night.

[IncarnateX]

Hi Harry
Don't go. I come with peace and some thoughts to consider. You know the infinite monkey theorem?

"The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a given text, such as the complete works of William Shakespeare."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Problem is not whether it is possible to hit a classic like Greensleeves by randomization alone, there is proof of this possibility say the wise mathematicians, however it is more the notion of "infinite", which is rather abstract within a human's lifetime and thus whether there would be an algorithm to speed up the proces. Thus, in the proof the monkey has to be immortal.

Also, take a look at these attempts:

https://qz.com/812231/sony-is-making-an ... ing-songs/

https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intel ... g-predict/

https://towardsdatascience.com/the-scie ... 42a522d652

https://www.wired.com/2011/12/hit-potential-equation/

And this is only a few hits appearing on the subject. I am not here to make any conclusions for or against, just to give you some hints and material to take into consideration. Though maybe you are already aware of these?

Personally I am the least to care whether a good tune is written by man or machine, for all I know, my brain would in more than just a couple of cases of popular music have preferred music written by machines at random.

Cheers, mate

[JoseC.]

@Harry,

First of all, "randomizer" is not a thing, so you cannot use that word generically like it was a tool. Please explain what you mean with that, and how you believe that this has been used through the centuries.

Speaking of which, again, Mozart did not create a "randomizer". In the XVIII century existed musical dice games, and he composed one. I repeat, he composed, nothing random there. It was 272 (not 20,000) bars that could be assembled together according to certain rules throwing dice, to make up a waltz. It was a salon game, they were popular for party fun when there were no DJ's. It was not a "randomizer", but rather a loop library. Think "Vengeance Smoking XVIII Century Waltzes Construction Set".

Anyway, I was trying to understand what part of your music you actually write. Or you just write lyrics and are trying to randomly find music that fits?

[dellboy]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Problem is not whether it is possible to hit a classic like Greensleeves by randomization alone, there is proof of this possibility say the wise mathematicians, however it is more the notion of "infinite", which is rather abstract within a human's lifetime and thus whether there would be an algorithm to speed up the proces. Thus, in the proof the monkey has to be immortal.

I have not read the whole article,but what you have said does not remotely resemble the actual conclusion which is further down the page........

"If there were as many monkeys as there are atoms in the observable universe typing extremely fast for trillions of times the life of the universe, the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably small."

Or to put it in plain simple English, it is impossible.

Whereas,the chance of William Shakespeare (if he were alive and so desired) writing a new play within a time span of a few months is probably close to 100%.

[woggle]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem

Problem is not whether it is possible to hit a classic like Greensleeves by randomization alone, there is proof of this possibility say the wise mathematicians, however it is more the notion of "infinite", which is rather abstract within a human's lifetime and thus whether there would be an algorithm to speed up the proces. Thus, in the proof the monkey has to be immortal.

I have not read the whole article,but what you have said does not remotely resemble the actual conclusion which is further down the page........

"If there were as many monkeys as there are atoms in the observable universe typing extremely fast for trillions of times the life of the universe, the probability of the monkeys replicating even a single page of Shakespeare is unfathomably small."

Or to put it in plain simple English, it is impossible.

Whereas,the chance of William Shakespeare (if he were alive and so desired) writing a new play within a time span of a few months is probably close to 100%.

nah - hinges on the idea of infinite - which does indeed get pretty strange eg some infiinite series are bigger than others (for some versions of bigger)

[VariKusBrainZ]

Award for most inneficient, uncreative and illogical method of creating music.

Id love to see this guy in the kitchen with his random recipe generator.