Shitting on our inheritance (extended rant)

[RTaylor]

But it is all taking place below the very, very crude 'radar' of the recording industries.

:} They are just looking to make money.

[intel]

you know, hero... you're rather intelligent for a drummer. something's not right here...

[herodotus]

you know, hero... you're rather intelligent for a drummer. something's not right here...

A birth defect.

[intel]

that explains it.

[Hewitt Huntwork]

I agree with your point that this is absolutely the best time, technology-wise, to be a musician. I often tell people that I hope Bach and Mozart are up in heaven using RMX and Atmosphere. I know it sounds like a joke, but they deserve the tools we have today much more than I do.

[BONES]

Surely there are only computers in hell?

[egbert]

I agree with your point that this is absolutely the best time, technology-wise, to be a musician. I often tell people that I hope Bach and Mozart are up in heaven using RMX and Atmosphere. I know it sounds like a joke, but they deserve the tools we have today much more than I do.

Lemme see - Bach would still be trying to write a cantata every week (a Cantata for the Mortification of the Operating System anyone?) but instead he'd end up spending hours online to tech support complaining about the POS Dell his patron bought and the problems getting it to play nice with the printer. Mozart? He wouldn't have time to write music - he'd be fragging away, pulling bongs, ogling pron and staying online all night telling fart jokes.

[intel]

and that's why God blessed Mozart.



Rock me, Amadeus.

[Hewitt Huntwork]

I agree with your point that this is absolutely the best time, technology-wise, to be a musician. I often tell people that I hope Bach and Mozart are up in heaven using RMX and Atmosphere. I know it sounds like a joke, but they deserve the tools we have today much more than I do.

Lemme see - Bach would still be trying to write a cantata every week (a Cantata for the Mortification of the Operating System anyone?) but instead he'd end up spending hours online to tech support complaining about the POS Dell his patron bought and the problems getting it to play nice with the printer. Mozart? He wouldn't have time to write music - he'd be fragging away, pulling bongs, ogling pron and staying online all night telling fart jokes.

While your post made me laugh, I can't help noticing you're perspective supports the OP's point (by example).

[egbert]

While your post made me laugh, I can't help noticing you're perspective supports the OP's point (by example).

I find the whole classical thing pretty bizarre. Look at the great composers - they often used the very latest tools. New works were composed to exploit the new capabilities of the latest music technology - a bigger more powerful piano with more range, a wind instrument that could play chromatic scales etc.

If those guys were brought to the 21st C in a time machine I think it might take them a while to get over the fact that their music had somehow become fossilized. And while the new tech would obviously shock the hell out of them I have no doubt they would try to exploit it.

[opia]

Within all seriousness.

Does everyone really not get how lucky we musicians of today are?

Because it really seems like people don't get this.

I mean, if people around a place like this, a hive of applied audio-technological activity, don't get it, then certainly the less well informed are even less likely to.

And people around here really don't seem to get this.

This is not out of ignorance. The relevant information is all in plain sight. But despite this, one can't help but notice that people complain all of the time.

I mean, its incessant.

It's not just the 'warez kiddies' demanding help with the stolen software they can't figure out in less than an hour (though that is, of course, annoying). It is the constant complaining about everything.

From features that are lacking in a particular host, to prices charged for software that absolutely no one needs to use if they don't want to; from how many freeloaders there are, to how much crappy freeware there is; from p2p networks to the RIAA and its enforcers; from how overlimited every crappy pop song is, to how crappy pop songs have become these days; wherever one looks there is something to bitch about.

It isn't an isolated problem, it is an attitude problem.

It is a tendency to be querulous and whiny instead of curious and respectful. It is a preference for dialogue about what is hated and risible over what inspires awe and humility.

And it is a lack of historical perspective.

We are so wrapped up in our own time, that very few people cultivate a sense of what it was really like to live in other times. This is natural enough, especially among people whose area of expertise is a particular group of technologies. But it can lead to a myopia that can make a very positive reality seem like something worthy of one long bitch fest.

Because, make no mistake about this, this is the best time in history to be a creative musician. If you are a composer looking to hear your every idea, an instrumentalist trying to record your playing for posterity, a band trying to make a name for itself, or any person with music in your head that you want to hear coming out of your speakers, the times in which we live are at least 1000 times better to be born into than any previous era in history.

I mean, is anyone in their right mind a true musical luddite? Is anyone really nostalgic for those wonderful millennia before 1877 when no one could hear any musician unless they actually were in the same room as them?

Think of it. Think of what this means: In 1877, Edison patented the cylinder phonograph. This was the first known method of recording sound events.

Lets say that again:

THE FIRST KNOWN METHOD FOR RECORDING SOUND EVENTS WAS INVENTED IN 1877.

Which means that for most of recorded human history (dating from say, 3000 BC), when a musician died, they took all of their music with them.

Ouch.

Just think: Coleman Hawkins, Count Basie, John Bonham, Jimi Hendrix, all gone without a trace.

OUCH.

Thelonious Monk, Earl Hines, Oscar Pettiford…well, you get the point: EVERYONE. Dead, gone, a fading memory for a few years and then…nothing.

The only way out of this was if you became a composer, because composers could preserve their ideas through notation. This notation stuff was a petty neat invention to be sure. But wow, what a lot of things it didn't capture. All of the things that make the difference between a great performance and a shitty one are completely lost in the abstraction of note heads and ledger lines.

But it was actually even worse than I have let on. Because musicians and people interested in music had to cope not only with limitations of time, but with limitations of location as well. The whole process that created British pop music in the 60's, I.e. people listening to recordings made in America and basing their music on their unique understanding of them, would have been not just impossible, but unthinkable. Jazz itself would be unthinkable, or at least very different, for similar reasons.

OK, so recording technology took about 85-90 years to go from indentations on a wax cylinder to get to the first high fidelity multitrack tape recorders. These 3 or 4 track machines changed the world of music all over again, because they allowed people to create sonic events that never actually occurred in real time. For the first time, people could sing with their selves, could jam with their selves, could create a whole band with one person. Exciting stuff back in 1960.

But most people were never given the opportunity to sing with themselves, because high fidelity recording technology was, from its inception, really, really expensive. The equipment that the Beatles used to make 'Sgt. Peppers' cost a small fortune. Most musicians could only dream of getting to use it.

Today, anyone with a 400$ computer, a 200$ interface, and an internet portal can do things that the Beatles of Sgt. Peppers couldn't have imagined. If you add another 150$ to get a cheap condenser mike, you can sing with yourself as many times as you want. You can, quite literally, be a whole choir section.

You can, in fact, do just about anything.

Even if you can't play an instrument (at one point, an absolutely essential precursor to 'being a musician'), you can still program parts and play samples, or play synths, or any of an infinite number of combinations thereof.

None of this will sound like Beethoven played by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and certainly, the super cheap setup we are talking about will lack some of the subtle beauties of super high end gear. But it is still enough to provide someone who just wants to create great music with all of the tools they really need.

Pretty cool, don't you think?

I mean, when we are bitching about everything; while we are bemoaning the fate of our poor and writhing over the injustices that we see everywhere; while we are tallying up the list of why this modern world sucks in every way, we really should remember that THIS IS THE BEST TIME EVER to be a musician or music enthusiast of any sort. Anyone anywhere can jam with anyone else from anywhere, and listen to music from anywhere, and from any time.

This is a really, really wonderful thing. And failing to appreciate it is an insult to those from our past who created so much with so much less.

Thank you and have a good day.

whats the difference between a puppy and a musician?

eventually the puppy stops whining

remember these wize wordz and try to have a nice day

[respirator]

Mozart? He wouldn't have time to write music - he'd be fragging away, pulling bongs, ogling pron and staying online all night telling fart jokes.

QED. Vurt is the new Mozart AND he manage to make music too.