Can the melody of my music already exist before i created it?

[Davias]

I think too that he had a good musical background for classical, but to him all synthesized sounds are lifeless, he only accept real instruments. And also he told me that a computer could never emulate perfectly real instruments. As an IT person I totally disagree with him, computers are theoretically able to emulate anything, u just have to make a good emulation, and sooner or later every "old" instruments will be perfectly emulated

The part of computers being "lifeless" is a common prejudice in classically trained instrument players, and I can somehow understand what they say. When you listen to a piano, a violin, a cello, a flute, a clarinet, whatever, played by a well trained musician, is like the instrument has a "soul". The player articulates the phrases very much like a good "speaker" articulates the phrases in a speech, with pauses, emphasis, ups and downs in volume, crescendi and dinuendi, sforzandi, rubati, etc.
We can do that with computers too, of course, but that requires a lot of work and skills, which the vast majority of people using computers for music do not have (and the vast majority of styles, like EDM, even don't care about). To sum it up, yes, computers can sound lifeless, but they can also sound very much alive, if well programmed.
But I totally disagree with you regarding the emulation of "old" instruments (first of all, I don't even understand the word "old" applied to a musical instrument - perhaps you would want to say ancient, but we don't consider ancient any instrument that's commonly used nowadays, like the ones I mentioned above).
The reason I don't agree with you is because the acoustic instruments depend very much on the technique developed by the players. If you listen, for example, piano pieces of Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, Messiaen, Ligeti, it's like you are listening to different instruments. It's the same instrument, but the techniques used are so different, the musical language is so different, that's almost like it's not the same instrument anymore.
My view of music with computers and synthesizers is more towards considering them like musical instruments in their own right. Someone once wrote that the first synthesizer was the pipe organ, and I tend to agree with that.
Synths, like the pipe organ (but much more widely) are able to create different timbres and sonorities. My approach is to use them by what they are - new instruments capable of a wide timbre and sound palette, and painting and sculpting with those sounds, as if they were colours.
Using computers to emulate an acoustic instrument is not only pointless but also an exercize condemned to failure, I'm afraid. My two cents.

Oh I just said that it will be possible technically. My own taste is into lifeless sounds, I don't articulate anything, even put velocities in the piano roll is a pain and i don't play any instruments

[srv-musikmaker]

It just happens to be 'Bag On Tarnce Day' at KvR....

[foosnark]

There is a theory that nobody creates anything, they just conjure it from someplace in an infinite spirit world of possibilities.

But I think somebody just made that theory up.

[jancivil]

intellectually lazy and unimaginative.

feeling like the elite

someone who knows a lot of music, and is able to recognize influences to the point of mimicry in what others find "originality". Of course, the part of "bleeps and blops" sounds like prejudice, and the remaining assessment is somehow a caricature.

not all classical musicians are so elitist that they cannot see the good in modern music.
some are, but theyre usually pricks anyway, not just in regards to music.

Well, we can run with that story and believe it

you can be an elite player without having tendencies to belittle every "other" thing.

you can have a straw man do whatever you want him to.
the one bit I know I like here is 'the remaining... is a caricature'.

[jancivil]

not all classical musicians are so elitist that they cannot see the good in modern music.
some are, but theyre usually pricks anyway, not just in regards to music.

Well, we can run with that story and believe it, the guy didn't get something because it was new. But maybe it was some total shite, like one of these Moby CDs where there is very little content, let alone novelty in tune-making. I don't really trust the whole anecdote frankly.

I don't know what 'electronic music' is in the tale. a lot of people here use that term, which ought to be kind of wide open, to mean something very narrow, in place of EDM styles. We can see all around this pejorative 'elitist' coming from that corner... so my filter is in play. If your band of experience is so very narrow, this sort of notion 'there aren't so many possibilities' follows that.

the thing about training to be one of these kind of musicians is, you expose yourself to the elite and they critique you all the time, 'you aren't measuring up' is a way of life. Miles Davis was one of an elite, really. It always strikes me as defensive to see it as an insult, and it has this political color I kind of find suspect.

you can be an elite player without having tendencies to belittle every "other" thing.

as forwhat i said, i was talking in general rather than for the specific case, i wasnt in that car, for all i know it could have been anything.

as for my band of experience, im sure you already know, its not narrow. ive been involved with music for almost 35 years now.

well that isn't directed at you particularly. but you seem to have adopted teh KVR definition of 'elitist'. There are jazz people that disregard a Justin Bieber tune, even though the thing is founded in dealing with popular song, classical people that don't even listen to anything and there was someone here repping teh EDMs to tell us a story about their straw man's pretentiousness in order to suit their narrow thing. I wouldn't hang out with any of them.

I come more from jazz where a lot of the music is just a bunch of cliches, but the real people embrace the whole of music and incorporate it.

[BMoore]

Is Robin Thicke aware of this thread?

[jancivil]

I think too that he had a good musical background for classical, but to him all synthesized sounds are lifeless, he only accept real instruments. And also he told me that a computer could never emulate perfectly real instruments.

The part of computers being "lifeless" is a common prejudice in classically trained instrument players, and I can somehow understand what they say.
My view of music with computers and synthesizers is more towards considering them like musical instruments in their own right. Someone once wrote that the first synthesizer was the pipe organ, and I tend to agree with that.

Synths, like the pipe organ (but much more widely) are able to create different timbres and sonorities. My approach is to use them by what they are - new instruments capable of a wide timbre and sound palette, and painting and sculpting with those sounds, as if they were colours.
Using computers to emulate an acoustic instrument is not only pointless but also an exercize condemned to failure, I'm afraid. My two cents.

Well, I would tend to agree there is a limit to how much expression is possible, vis a vis a real, live experience especially, but as an overarching statement I don't agree with that at all. A lot of what the people in an orchestra do is not that big a deal to fake in a virtual instruments production and I think you would be surprised at some things in terms of instrumental soloing. Someone likens 'my sax solo' to Ornette, I think what I did isn't as pointless as that. Your mileage and experience must vary. There is an opinion stated as fact, too. So that's you, that's your choice of a limit, it isn't everyone.

I think approaching the computer as its own thing is something good to bring in, and via the analogy of the organ... I think the analogy is good.

[Jedinhopy]

There is a theory that nobody creates anything, they just conjure it from someplace in an infinite spirit world of possibilities.

But I think somebody just made that theory up.

The future exists in my dreams?

[vurt]

feeling like the elite

someone who knows a lot of music, and is able to recognize influences to the point of mimicry in what others find "originality". Of course, the part of "bleeps and blops" sounds like prejudice, and the remaining assessment is somehow a caricature.

not all classical musicians are so elitist that they cannot see the good in modern music.
some are, but theyre usually pricks anyway, not just in regards to music.

Well, we can run with that story and believe it

you can be an elite player without having tendencies to belittle every "other" thing.

you can have a straw man do whatever you want him to.
the one bit I know I like here is 'the remaining... is a caricature'.

juggling fire probably wouldnt be a good idea.


as for the other post, i not sure my definition is strictly a kvr thing. its how a lot of people i know speak, people who arent on kvr.
like me they see being elite, ie pretty darn good at what you do, and being elitist, belittleing things or being snobbish, as being different 9but not mutually exclusive0. as its not my "mother tongue" i guessed theyd know better but have seemingly led me astray!

obviously, neither of us where in the car, so dont know the music in question or the whole conversation. the guy may indeed have been correct and followed the anecdote we heard/read with a full list of all the melodies used and such, we just dont know.

my background is folk/rebel songs then metal(the death kind, not spandex and perms ;hihi: )
although i listened to a lot of other stuff when growing up, i come from a big family, i never got in to playing synths till much later.

if the cd in the car was william orbit "pieces in a modern style"
i may have an explanation for the mystery guys reaction

[jancivil]

not sure my definition is strictly a kvr thing. its how a lot of people i know speak, people who arent on kvr.
like me they see being elite, ie pretty darn good at what you do, and being elitist, belittleing things or being snobbish, as being different 9but not mutually exclusive0. as its not my "mother tongue" i guessed theyd know better but have seemingly led me astray!

oh, I'm sure I could encounter it elsewhere but it's a 'thing' here. it's a political kind of pejorative, really. A musician being an *elitist* doesn't really work for me like it does for someone that tosses it here. I had to struggle to have an instrument at all, before that my mother had to sacrifice but I passed my auditions and woodshedded all day and expected to be at the bottom of the ladder hearing about my deficiencies. Even the really fortunate-by-birth ones had to savage themselves mercilessly to be there. There were singers there groomed for The Met that wouldn't speak to a plebe, sure. And there are whores who won't f**k you for less than ten grand.

By comparison, the EDM children here seem to me as though they feel entitled to a result if you get my drift.

[fmr]

I would tend to agree there is a limit to how much expression is possible, vis a vis a real, live experience especially, but as an overarching statement I don't agree with that at all. A lot of what the people in an orchestra do is not that big a deal to fake in a virtual instruments production and I think you would be surprised at some things in terms of instrumental soloing. Someone likens 'my sax solo' to Ornette, I think what I did isn't as pointless as that. Your mileage and experience must vary. There is an opinion stated as fact, too. So that's you, that's your choice of a limit, it isn't everyone.

I didn't state that as a fact, by all means (I wrote "my two cents", which may be read as IMO). And I also wrote that I like to try orchestrations using the sequencer and an orchestral library.
I already heard really good orchestrations done with libraries (I wish I had the skills to do those). But when we come to a complex orchestral piece, like a Mahler symphony, for example, I never heard nothing in a computer that could be compared, and accomplishing that, if possible, would mean a tremendous amount of work.
Not all orchestral works are that complex though, and there's nothing wrong in using computers for that. Computers are tools, therefore, one should use them for whatever needed, as long as they feel it suits. And I'm glad you are able to mimick a sax up to convince the audience. My compliments to you on that.
I once heard a keyboardist friend of mine mimicking a portuguese guitar on the keyboard, and I was astonished with the realism of the performance. Of course, when the guitar played alongside, I could easily tell what is what, but alone, I could have been trumped...

[jancivil]

william orbit "pieces in a modern style"

never heard of it. track one now playing. it's a literal reading of Barber Adagio for Strings.
It sounds f**king great. I don't know what was done, it may as well be a vinyl disk with some wear, a record of a string orch., but it could be a really nice synths arrangement, I'm only hearing it through the little display speakers but it's very 'analog warmth'.
Then some Cage and Satie I don't know which sounds like electronica.

Elitist:

1.
a person who believes that a system or society should be ruled or dominated by an elite.
synonyms: aristocrat, blue blood

the secondary definitions are basically describing a snob. What if Samuel Barber got to be a snob? Do we think a William Orbit will write a piece as superb as Samuel Barber's piece there? It's going to stand for all time. Why is that? How does that get to be true? Does it 'dominate' through a system that oppresses the poor plebes, or is it just very excellent and so strong in itself that it sticks with you. What made Barber Barber? He wrote his mother at nine, apologetically, he'll never be an athelet/sic, but he sure will be a composer. "I'll ask you one more thing. Don't ask me to try to forget this unpleasant thing and go play football."

So for me, there is this pervasive use of the lingo with that color; out of resentment. It happens here if someone makes the value judgment 'valid' or 'better'. Then, of course there can never be a metric in music because of the majority of people that will never compare. You know? I would want more people to have the chances to become their best self; that's political. Expecting equality of result is bullshit. Some people care deeply and that's who they are, some are tossers.

[vurt]

ooh, i glad ive turned you on to soething
the whole albu is pretty much a copycat excercise, similar to carlos switched on bach.
the idea was to introduce the younger edm fans to some awesome music.
orbit is a big classical fan hiself, you may find his other stuff more to your taste than most of that ilk.
he did also have a symphony performed by the halle, hes a guy who knows his stuff and did the work to get there, not all edm producers are equal

[jancivil]

There is an opinion stated as fact, too. So that's you, that's your choice of a limit, it isn't everyone.

I didn't state that as a fact, by all means (I wrote "my two cents", which may be read as IMO).

well, you said pointless which is like statements I see perhaps too frequently here, but fair enough, I saw the conclusive 'I'm afraid' blotting out 'my two cents'.

I once heard a keyboardist friend of mine mimicking a portuguese guitar on the keyboard, and I was astonished with the realism of the performance. Of course, when the guitar played alongside, I could easily tell what is what, but alone, I could have been trumped...

there are things which I can't do that I want to do. I don't have the wherewithal to get things performed - few do, but it's truly beyond me - so I am really driven to realism. I find that 'pointless', 'it can't be done' discouraging and I'd rather promote the other way. There are certainly things even in film music I think if I had to call it I could tell you 'string section' vs 'VSL', even though Elfman beefs his scores up with the latter. I think in terms of expression as a virtual soloist things have improved lately and will continue to.

[jancivil]

the idea was to introduce the younger edm fans to some awesome music.

that really needs to happen. I only know of 'EDM' via this forum, really. I'm just that much too old to have possibly been part of any scene with it. What I experienced here has typically been just shockingly inept and I see people thinking it's really great, and they can't think that if they were ever exposed to greatness.

not all edm producers are equal

I don't think there's anything in the choice to make danceable, pedestrian music via synthesizer that should guarantee that it's shit per se but an outcome of keeping one's head up one's ass.