Why is there so much nerd music here?

[Forever Sun]

Agree Torpedo. Playing guitar 24 years has helped me personally in understanding composition and how to approach PC music making in some ways. However, there is still quite a difference in composing a piece with a conventional instrument and composing on a PC. For one thing, you don't have that estetic, hands on advantage of actually playing the instrument, instead you have a mouse. This hasn't been easy for me. I suppose I should take the time and money and get some type of guitar setup for my PC so I can actually play parts rather than rely totally on a VSTi.

What are you saying ?

I, for example, do have the "aestetic, hands on advantage of actually playing an instrument" and compose on my PC as there is a real keyboard plugged to the PC. And no, I don't compose using a mouse.

What was your point again ?

(I'm stalking you taoday , sorry don't mean to )

[dystonia_ek]

At first the art of music sought purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound.

This musical evolution is paralleled by the multipication of machines, which collaborate with man on every front. Not only in the roaring atmosphere of major cities, but in the country too, which until yesterday was totally silent, the machine today has created such a variety and rivalry of noises that pure sound, in its exiguity and monotony, no longer arouses any feeling.

To excite and exalt our sensibilities, music developed towards the most complex polyphony and the maximum variety, seeking the most complicated successions of dissonant chords and vaguely preparing the creation of musical noise. This evolution towards “noise sound” was not possible before now. The ear of an eighteenth-century man could never have endured the discordant intensity of certain chords produced by our orchestras (whose members have trebled in number since then). To our ears, on the other hand, they sound pleasant, since our hearing has already been educated by modern life, so teeming with variegated noises. But our ears are not satisfied merely with this, and demand an abundance of acoustic emotions.

On the other hand, musical sound is too limited in its qualitative variety of tones. The most complex orchestras boil down to four or five types of instrument, varying in timber: instruments played by bow or plucking, by blowing into metal or wood, and by percussion. And so modern music goes round in this small circle, struggling in vain to create new ranges of tones.

This limited circle of pure sounds must be broken, and the infinite variety of “noise-sound” conquered.

Besides, everyone will acknowledge that all musical sound carries with it a development of sensations that are already familiar and exhausted, and which predispose the listener to boredom in spite of the efforts of all the innovatory musicians. We Futurists have deeply loved and enjoyed the harmonies of the great masters. For many years Beethoven and Wagner shook our nerves and hearts. Now we are satiated and we find far more enjoyment in the combination of the noises of trams, backfiring motors, carriages and bawling crowds than in rehearsing, for example, the “Eroica” or the “Pastoral”.

We cannot see that enormous apparatus of force that the modern orchestra represents without feeling the most profound and total disillusion at the paltry acoustic results. Do you know of any sight more ridiculous than that of twenty men furiously bent on the redoubling the mewing of a violin? All this will naturally make the music-lovers scream, and will perhaps enliven the sleepy atmosphere of concert halls. Let us now, as Futurists, enter one of these hospitals for anaemic sounds. There: the first bar brings the boredom of familiarity to your ear and anticipates the boredom of the bar to follow. Let us relish, from bar to bar, two or three varieties of genuine boredom, waiting all the while for the extraordinary sensation that never comes.

Meanwhile a repugnant mixture is concocted from monotonous sensations and the idiotic religious emotion of listeners buddhistically drunk with repeating for the nth time their more or less snobbish or second-hand ecstasy.

Away! Let us break out since we cannot much longer restrain our desire to create finally a new musical reality, with a generous distribution of resonant slaps in the face, discarding violins, pianos, double-basses and plainitive organs. Let us break out!

It’s no good objecting that noises are exclusively loud and disagreeable to the ear.

It seems pointless to enumerate all the graceful and delicate noises that afford pleasant sensations.

To convince ourselves of the amazing variety of noises, it is enough to think of the rumble of thunder, the whistle of the wind, the roar of a waterfall, the gurgling of a brook, the rustling of leaves, the clatter of a trotting horse as it draws into the distance, the lurching jolts of a cart on pavings, and of the generous, solemn, white breathing of a nocturnal city; of all the noises made by wild and domestic animals, and of all those that can be made by the mouth of man without resorting to speaking or singing.

Let us cross a great modern capital with our ears more alert than our eyes, and we will get enjoyment from distinguishing the eddying of water, air and gas in metal pipes, the grumbling of noises that breathe and pulse with indisputable animality, the palpitation of valves, the coming and going of pistons, the howl of mechanical saws, the jolting of a tram on its rails, the cracking of whips, the flapping of curtains and flags. We enjoy creating mental orchestrations of the crashing down of metal shop blinds, slamming doors, the hubbub and shuffling of crowds, the variety of din, from stations, railways, iron foundries, spinning wheels, printing works, electric power stations and underground railways.

That was nearly a century ago. Amazing to see that people are still fighting in vain against this even now.

Avaunt!

[hjack]

yes, this sites for nerds... and but non nerds.
nerds are arse and stupid, nerd is just a gentle way to direct to you.
the non nerds, the non nerds, duh, thones who make fun of nerds and make them feel arse and stupid.

YOU nerd.

let now fellas non nerds, let these nerds get offended.

[Forever Sun]

There's more to music than performance.

Yes. Expression. That's all music is all about.
EXPRESSION.

Express it through a performance using a TRADITIONAL instrument.

Express it through a carefully edited COMPUTER composition.

Express it anywhich way, but sincerely.

The only question is, are we able to express ourselfs through music ? This is where the skill comes, either learned or natural.
Good night.

[herodotus]

Music is evolving faster than our ability to understand it.

Personally I think this is a good thing.

It makes it much more interesting to be a musician, not knowing what is going to happen next.

I still think there is room for craft though. Not "craftism", which is a form of snobbery, but craft as the developement of whatever skills your way of making music requires.

I do think that some people might use the anarchic nature of contemporary musical culture to be a pretentious, lazy slob who is a snob in their own way. And I can see how someone who has put tremendous amounts of time and effort into say, becoming a first rate musician like Chet Atkins, could get annoyed with hearing the praises of some guitarist who has much less advanced skills.

But annoyances like this are a small price to pay for the immense world of resources available to us. This is not a time to complain about if you are a musician.

This is the f**king rennaisance.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

[shamann]

I've stayed out till now, so much ill-informed chestbeating on music in one place tends to hurt my head. But I couldn't let this slip by:

It's been defined as
1 The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
2 Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.

As it happens I was just reading this afternoon (Dude you read? You're like such a nerd) something Varèse wrote that will be useful here. I'll now quote extensively:

• I should like you to consider what I believe is the best definition of music, because it is all-inclusive: "the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound," as proposed by Höene Wronsky. If you think about it you will realize that, unlike most dictionary definitions, which make use of such subjective terms as beauty, feelings, etc., it covers all music, Eastern or Western, past or present, including the music of our new electronic medium....Indeed, to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all, what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an organizer of disparate elements. Subjectively, noise is any sound one doesn't like.

So there you have it. Amazing how you can learn from your elders, isn't it? Makes you wonder how folk who have so clearly limited their understanding of the world to one unified mindset can speak with authority on any given subject. Ah yes, but all that thinking is for nerds you say, and authority is the domain for us dullards.

Well, good luck with that, and watch out for that bomb ten paces behind you.

[herodotus]

I've stayed out till now, so much ill-informed chestbeating on music in one place tends to hurt my head. But I couldn't let this slip by:

It's been defined as
1 The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
2 Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.

As it happens I was just reading this afternoon (Dude you read? You're like such a nerd) something Varèse wrote that will be useful here. I'll now quote extensively:

• I should like you to consider what I believe is the best definition of music, because it is all-inclusive: "the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound," as proposed by Höene Wronsky. If you think about it you will realize that, unlike most dictionary definitions, which make use of such subjective terms as beauty, feelings, etc., it covers all music, Eastern or Western, past or present, including the music of our new electronic medium....Indeed, to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all, what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an organizer of disparate elements. Subjectively, noise is any sound one doesn't like.

So there you have it. Amazing how you can learn from your elders, isn't it? Makes you wonder how folk who have so clearly limited their understanding of the world to one unified mindset can speak with authority on any given subject. Ah yes, but all that thinking is for nerds you say, and authority is the domain for us dullards.

Well, good like with that, and watch out for that bomb ten paces behind you.

See what I mean??

Extensive quotes from EDGARD VARESE on a message board that is maintained by a private company for the purpose of facilitating the best possible communication between musicians and the people who make (often FREE!!!) tools for musicians.

The f**king RENAISSANCE I tell you.

[Sicklecell666]

Music is evolving faster than our ability to understand it.

I find this to be an excellent observation.

[dystonia_ek]

I've stayed out till now, so much ill-informed chestbeating on music in one place tends to hurt my head. But I couldn't let this slip by:

It's been defined as
1 The art of arranging sounds in time so as to produce a continuous, unified, and evocative composition, as through melody, harmony, rhythm, and timbre.
2 Vocal or instrumental sounds possessing a degree of melody, harmony, or rhythm.

As it happens I was just reading this afternoon (Dude you read? You're like such a nerd) something Varèse wrote that will be useful here. I'll now quote extensively:

• I should like you to consider what I believe is the best definition of music, because it is all-inclusive: "the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound," as proposed by Höene Wronsky. If you think about it you will realize that, unlike most dictionary definitions, which make use of such subjective terms as beauty, feelings, etc., it covers all music, Eastern or Western, past or present, including the music of our new electronic medium....Indeed, to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all, what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an organizer of disparate elements. Subjectively, noise is any sound one doesn't like.

So there you have it. Amazing how you can learn from your elders, isn't it? Makes you wonder how folk who have so clearly limited their understanding of the world to one unified mindset can speak with authority on any given subject. Ah yes, but all that thinking is for nerds you say, and authority is the domain for us dullards.

Well, good like with that, and watch out for that bomb ten paces behind you.

This post says it all, really.

[jens]

Music is evolving faster than our ability to understand it.

I find this to be an excellent observation.

I find this to be a contradiction

[hjack]

Music is evolving faster than our ability to understand it.

I find this to be an excellent observation.

I find this to be a contradiction

OH HO

[Sicklecell666]

Music is evolving faster than our ability to understand it.

I find this to be an excellent observation.

I find this to be a contradiction

You really enjoy using that emoticon don't you? I challenge you to go 24 hours without employing it.

[tuz]

[jens]

Music is evolving faster than our ability to understand it.

I find this to be an excellent observation.

I find this to be a contradiction

You really enjoy using that emoticon don't you? I challenge you to go 24 hours without employing it.

impossible!

[Soniccat]

I tend to stay out of threads like this because the originator who poses the question is not usually looking for answers, they are just supplying us with their opinions, so any response will never be accepted by them. That said, my hats off to shaman for the most usefull reply yet

shaman wrote

As it happens I was just reading this afternoon (Dude you read? You're like such a nerd) something Varèse wrote that will be useful here. I'll now quote extensively:

I should like you to consider what I believe is the best definition of music, because it is all-inclusive: "the corporealization of the intelligence that is in sound," as proposed by Höene Wronsky. If you think about it you will realize that, unlike most dictionary definitions, which make use of such subjective terms as beauty, feelings, etc., it covers all music, Eastern or Western, past or present, including the music of our new electronic medium....Indeed, to stubbornly conditioned ears, anything new in music has always been called noise. But after all, what is music but organized noises? And a composer, like all artists, is an organizer of disparate elements. Subjectively, noise is any sound one doesn't like.

So there you have it. Amazing how you can learn from your elders, isn't it? Makes you wonder how folk who have so clearly limited their understanding of the world to one unified mindset can speak with authority on any given subject. Ah yes, but all that thinking is for nerds you say, and authority is the domain for us dullards.

Well, good like with that, and watch out for that bomb ten paces behind you.

Thanks shaman for supplying us with the quote from Varese. It says what I feel.