Liquid Notes

[Fox Crazy]

Here's a healthy attitude for those complaining in here:

If it helps you make better music, use it. If it gets in your way, don't use it, and by extension don't complain when other people use it, because you had the option to and didn't. Because music consumers will decide whether they like a song or not, and we have no right to say whether or not a certain tool should exist. That's how art has always been, and always will be.

Everyone complaining in here is probably using a computer to produce, when back in the day there were people just like you complaining "oh great, now any idiot can make a recording and give it away, music is dead." Yet you're making music today. So just don't worry about it, and make your music the way you want it to be. If people choose to listen to music with "stupid, seemingly artless chord progressions", then maybe you have the wrong perception of what an "artful" chord progression actually is, or you're making music people just don't care about. Which is, of course, perfectly okay

You're quite right, but unfortunately you're in the wrong place, because "live and let live" doesn't compute in this sub-forum. Same endless loop of vitriol from the same fossilized reactionaries.

It's a freaking tool. Like any tool its uses are defined by how people choose to use it. If you don't like it, don't use it. And while you're not using it, stop making presumptions about it.

[lingyai]

I say that if you have to use frets you're just clinging to a crutch and actually have no business making music, because you should know by ear where to put your fingers.

[jancivil]

What a bogus analogy and how desperately defensive. Guess what? I actually know my way around harmonies, having learned something about it. I actually prefer to make my own decisions for my reasons. It's fun, it's a richer experience than relying on a 'tool'.

I heard your guitar piece, dude. There were all of these cute substitutions that stood out like a sore thumb; as something other than musical thought, really. Completely not organic. So this is why. Not long after that I see you arguing for this thing. It's so obvious. Your result is definitely a result of not knowing. This is a shortcut to musical thought. Who are you really fooling at the end of the day, though? Is getting strokes at KVR really preferable to the experience of coming up with good, well-thought-through substitutions, and the rich experience of learning? If it is, it's just sad.

Live and let live? Sure, remain in the dark. Keep telling yourself 'you don't need this if you know your shit' is not a true statement. Whatever, it's on you. But this 'tool' is a crutch. You are relying on a crutch before you can walk; the people that learned to walk don't rely on the crutch.

You can react in this way, but I'm telling you something that were you honest, you could heed this and it's going to help you grow. But it occurs to me that isn't what interests you. Looks like you, @lingyai, feel entitled through your talent and your ego to a result before you've earned it.

[lingyai]

You are so predictably you, Jancivil.

Don't be so polite and shy, dude. Speak your mind!

[Fox Crazy]

You are so predictably you, Jancivil.

It's actually funny, people are so predictably that way around here, that when I first read your frets post I had to do a double take as the sarcasm went right over my head and I almost took it word for word. Thankfully I realized you were the same person I was agreeing with, but it's really kinda sad when things are so bad you expect the worst from every post.

[HanafiH]

Do you know ANY musical theory, Paul?

You hum it and I'll play it, lar.

[lingyai]

Hendrix couldn't read or write music

http://classicrock.about.com/od/bandsan ... endrix.htm

Note to self: Stop liking Hendrix.

[aaastronomer]

I hope all of you complaining about Liquid Notes don't read the Computer Music Journal (http://mitpress.mit.edu/content/computer-music-journal). The tools described in the last two years of issues (which i unfortunately don't have before me) seem to spell the end of quill and parchment composing. (Liquid Notes is just a warm-up.) Basically, what's coming...are large style and sound databases with the capability of being queried without sql (or any other formal language). Query by "singing" (if you call that 'singing') or whistling or whatever. Then you get some audio and metadata and agents which 'know' the history of musical style+theory and can guess the style of the audio queried and can suggest uses in various sorts of compositions or even construct whole compositions based on a fragment. Any key or cadence or row will be there for the asking. These will, naturally, be completely (or nearly) elastic and morphable into all sorts of 'stuff'. Not to mention score generation or generation of individual parts for players using tablets on stage so the composition can be manipulated by the composer as it's being performed. (For those of you who read the journal, religiously, you may notice i'm a little behind.)

Of course, all of this is just: 'academic'. (who knows what the krapitalists will do with all this grad lab? well...beside turning it into KRAP! but, that's another story...and not fair to a lot of great developers seen from this site. so, maybe, just ignore that part...)

the moral of my little diatribe is: you can whine all you want about the 'dumbing down' that tech implies, but it won't even be noticed by the army coders out there needing to earn a PhD! it's coming...and it's com'in fast. (and I, for one: LOVE IT!)

[Nanakai]

Just what is so wrong with playing music yourself? What do you gain by using these computer tools to graph out abstract musical relationships? Do you really not trust yourself enough to just enjoy playing music that you have to have this "safety net" to keep you from making "mistakes"?

Really, honestly... what do you gain? How does this make your music better?

[aaastronomer]

Just what is so wrong with playing music yourself? What do you gain by using these computer tools to graph out abstract musical relationships? Do you really not trust yourself enough to just enjoy playing music that you have to have this "safety net" to keep you from making "mistakes"?

Really, honestly... what do you gain? How does this make your music better?

ultimately, you are 'playing music yourself', as long as the ai isn't fully conscious and 'calling the shots'. you will sit at the apex of a ziggurat of agents, optimization algorithms, musical style ontologies, active databases, and the world-wide-web. any style that ever existed will be at your beck and call. as long as you have a sense of compositional integrity you can pull parts together graphically with a harmony agent as silent mentor.

in short: just as i didn't have to become a EE in the 1960s to watch TV, i won't have to have MFA to be a 'composer' in the late 2010s. this is the difference between the 20th and 21st centuries. in the 20th, tech brought you all sorts of passive entertainments (music being one). in the 21st, tech will ENABLE you to DO things that you can't. (performance enhancement drugs were a 20th century warm-up.)

tech becomes active!

that's essentially what synfire and liquid notes are: almost active ENABLERS.

if all this works as i imagine it, then my music (really, anybody's) will clearly be 'better' than anything i could write unaided and possibly better than anything written in the centuries before the 21st when aided (as i can easily draw upon the styles developed in those centuries).

'mistakes'? what mistakes? if, you can hear one, so can (metaphorically) the software. they're quickly 'ironed out' if you want them to be.

as for 'trusting yourself', the 'self' (whatever that is) is always subsumed in the act of composing...just as i find myself when i write notes on paper.

yes, i have had many years of musical training--now fading (like my chinese)--and could play the trumpet well enough to win competitions on a regular basis (get paid), and pass a 6 credit music course in college in one class: five instrumental performances on five different instruments + mid-term...prof made me wait to do the final, but the Ace was in. no classes required. also, i was a rhythm guitarist in a 'local band'.

as for composing, i have basic theory (intervals, scales, chords, melody, some counterpoint) and lots of scores to copy from...and i know what the passages in the scores sound like, having seen them performed and having numerous recorded examples, thereof...

unfortunately, i was not so well endowed as to be able to pursue the arts. so, i took the physics-math-comp sci route to artificial intelligence which has, for many years, generated a handsome income (without having to work 'all that hard'!).

so, in the end, what do i gain? i/we gain independence from the limitations of (A) time and (B) raw talent (to a certain extent)! you may say it's just imitation, but what in the arts isn't (to some extent...if you know the art well enough...and look hard and long enough...).