Do you have to play an instrument?

[Col.G]

Richard Wagner never bothered to learn how to play an instument. He just sat at a desk and wrote what he heard in his head down on paper. He was most likely insane but he did write some good shit in his day.
"Wagner was born in Leipzig into a theatrical family. His boyhood dream was to be a poet and playwright, but at fifteen he was overwhelmed by Beethoven's music and decided to become a composer. He taught himself by studying scores and had almost three years of formal training in music theory, but he never mastered an instrument. As a student at Leipzig University he dueled, drank, and gambled; and a similar pattern persisted later--he always lived shamelessly off other people and ran up debts he could not repay".
Hey I know people like that! I bet there are people like that right here at KvR. lol

[donkey tugger]

play chords nobody else plays .. why? simply because i tune my guitars for each song the way i like to tune them, matching the songs feel and making it easier for my so-la-la-guitar skills ..

You tune your guitars? I never noticed!


Hehe, you play the same chords as everyone else hun, just different inversions!

[donkey tugger]

As a student at Leipzig University he dueled, drank, and gambled; and a similar pattern persisted later--he always lived shamelessly off other people and ran up debts he could not repay[/i]".
Hey I know people like that! I bet there are people like that right here at KvR. lol

GAMBLES? HE IS A f**k BASTARD!

[Lucky_1]

THIS happened to me EXACTLY the same way countless times in my old band.
Our singer (who was the main songwriter as well) allways came up with something "wrong" - but in the end we allways kept the "wrong" parts because they just sounded great.

A prime example: A lot of you may know a stock open position C major chord on guitars (3rd fret A string, 2nd fret D string, open G string, 1st fret B string, open high E string). When you move the fingered notes up a whole note (two frets that is ;o)) while keeping the open strings, the chord spelling becomes: D-F#-G-D-E, resolving in a D-chord with both the major 3rd and the 4th present.
In all theoretical explanations this is a "you better omit it!" situation - but does that particular chord sound great or what (it even does when you don't arpeggiate it but strum it)?
Same thing about that B major chord (7th position, E-barré-type thingy) with the high B and E strings ringing open...

Well the Godmachine wrote a song with those 2 chords
(cant remember the name but it's on "One Last Laugh In A Place Of Dying ..."

cu[/quote]

[Emerald Tablet]

question :

isn`t being able to controll a daw the same as mastering a regular instrument?

it both takes perseverance and talent

[Klemperer]

question :

isn`t being able to controll a daw the same as mastering a regular instrument?

it both takes perseverance and talent

Thaaaaaat's right (I cite Emily Brontë here but she spoke about another subject 1847 ).
But playing an instrument AND controllin a daw, that's fine too... I say to myself and try to play better
(okay, not the best post possible but today it's just fun living, err)

[wrench45us]

from Eric Tamm's book on Robert Fripp
Chapter Two: The Guitarist and the Practice of Music

Fripp The Guitarist

Robert Fripp said in 1986, "Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice." Fripp was - and is - the opposite of a musician like Mozart, whose seemingly divine, God-given talent enabled him, under his father's tutelage, to be playing the harpsichord with facility by the age of five and composing sonatas and symphonies by the age of eight. Of his own natural aptitude, or rather lack thereof, Fripp has often said, "At fifteen, I was tone deaf with no sense of rhythm, sweating away with a guitar." He contrasts his situation with that of the supreme guitar hero of his generation: "One might have a very direct, very innate and natural sense of what music is, like Hendrix, or be like me, a guitar player who began music tone deaf and with no sense of rhythm, completely out of touch with it. For Hendrix the problem was how to refine his particular capacity for expressing what he knew. For me it's how to get in touch with something that I know is there but also I'm out of touch with."

[Hink]

i play chords nobody else plays .. why? simply because i tune my guitars for each song the way i like to tune them, matching the songs feel and making it easier for my so-la-la-guitar skills ..

putte

that's awesome, I use to do that with my bass. Instead pf your method I have several tunings that I use my main one being ones that I like the scale structure. On my newest song this is the case (conviently the first song you hear when you click my link). In that song there is a theme to solos and verses ending, a riff I like very much because it's smooth, and sounds nice if you got the speed. Also this song started out as a 12 bar blues riff on B4.

On other songs I'll just retune my guitar to a new tuning and a song will be born. Of course open E and open A for any slide work I might do (though I do very little) Quite often though I come up with a song on my keys and then choose the tuning to fit.

Also on my page is a few other songs "Reality" is two tunings standard and Am. "Plight of a Dreamer" was one that uses Am because the open "F" chord is sweet sounding...(I know shameless self promotion)...

[pHz]

question :
isn`t being able to controll a daw the same as mastering a regular instrument?
it both takes perseverance and talent

didnt i say that a few pages ago ???

... interesting little bit about fripp there too - pretty much sums up the way i struggle to find something listenable too

slainte rob

[VicDiesel]

question :

isn`t being able to controll a daw the same as mastering a regular instrument?

it both takes perseverance and talent

So does painting a picture or dancing tango.

Still I'd say there is a difference.

To me, "playing an instrument" means being able to produce a couple of notes in real time, whether that's with a harmonica or a soft synth. The direct real time control is what counts.

Programming music takes talent too, just a different talent. It's not "playing" an instrument, and it's a different skill. Not better or worse, just different.

V.

[tee boy]

question :

isn`t being able to controll a daw the same as mastering a regular instrument?

it both takes perseverance and talent

Not at all, mastering a daw is nothing like mastering a musical instrument. Working on a daw is engineering, just like working with any other form of studio equipment. Playing music live on an instrument is quite different imo. I suppose some might argue this point, cuz both are involved with making musical ideas reality, but i still feel they are in no way the same.

[pHz]

question :
isn`t being able to controll a daw the same as mastering a regular instrument?
it both takes perseverance and talent

Not at all, mastering a daw is nothing like mastering a musical instrument. Working on a daw is engineering, just like working with any other form of studio equipment. Playing music live on an instrument is quite different imo. I suppose some might argue this point, cuz both are involved with making musical ideas reality, but i still feel they are in no way the same.

this was the point of my earlier post ...

... this MAY have been true up to now but i think we are seeing the emergence of new 'DAW' tools that make the PC much more of an instrument than a tool (IF you wish to use it that way) ...

... the obvious candidate is live4 - sure there are still large elements of 'engineering' in its use but it also allows a more fluent and musical approach to a certain extent too (if you see the process of playing an instrument as (1) learning how to get ANY noise out of it (2) learning how to structure that noise (3) working out how these noises fit into a context with other sounds (4) becoming proficient enough at making and matching these sounds so that you concentrate on the music rather than the tool youre using) ...

... ive also been playing with the crusherX demo tonight - and this too feels more like an instrument than an engineering tool to me (albeit a pretty unconventional instrument) - you DEFINITELY have to learn how to get usable sounds out of it in the first instance and its complexity means (for me at least) that thats more about feel and 'playing' with it than learning a piece of software

i STILL think that within 5 years or so live performers playing 'laptop' musically and expressively will become relatively commonplace (look how quickly many bands have incorporated turntablists into their line-ups - even f**king texas have one now !!! )

slainte rob

[Stupid American Pig]

as much as I like having my PC at my disposal and though I would never go without it for making music. Nothing is quite as rewarding to me as playing a real instrument through a tune that I considered impossible for me to play previously.

[liqih]

Squarpusher - messy noise.

never, it's all very rational and thought

I thought that might put the pigeon amongst the cats. I haven't really heard that much Squarepusher, but he is among a very small group of artists who have forced me to take the CD back and get a refund - I really don't do that very often.

maybe it was the cd with "exploding psychology" track ?, <grin>

Maybe it is all thought out and rational, just didn't do it for me, it all sounded way to self indulgent.

I may agree with you here, sometimes he is,
I think he oscillate between funky reggae spirit and scientific research of digital beats

But hey, different strokes for different types of paintbrush I guess. It would be really dull if we all liked the same things...

yes, I just meant that's not messy music IMHO, <grin>

[Sascha Franck]

I think that a lot of DAW work is similar to playing an instrument, at least during the compositional process.

Things such as being quick with navigation, tool handling, shortcut useage and what not require similar technical skills like, say, moving around my fingers on a fretboard properly, the only difference being that it doesn't necessarily have to be done in realtime.

Then, arranging things properly, adjusting sample start points, track delays, note levels (and maybe pitches) require some sort of musical knowledge as well, be it selftaught or learned theoretically.
Again, with a DAW it doesn't have to happen in realtime, but the skills per se are pretty much similar.

And finally, that's why I love Logic so much. While lacking of some features in, say, the audio department, all of the "musical" tasks are just done brilliantly.
To me Logic feels like an instrument rather than a tool (at least the arrange page that is), which is what Cubase still felt like after using it from V1 to V3.6 (and still feels like, now that I have to use SX for quite some things... but that's another story).