You guys are FAR too concerned about technical excellence!!!

[Markleford]

If you believe that this "technical excellence", this attention to sonic ephemera, this pursuit of numerical purity is indeed the holy grail of what music is all about...

Then try taking your act live on the road.

Will the venue's sound projection be up to your standards? Will the acoustics of the room wreak havoc with your pristine reverbs and effects? Will you be able to handle the blasphemy of the house soundman mucking with your mix? What if your rig picks up buzzing interference from the lighting, or you get line noise from dodgy power wiring? And what happens when your equipment inevitably breaks?

Real music will overcome all of these problems. You can have an absolutely shit gig, logistically, that can still connect with your audience. When they're going home from the show, they'll still have your rhythms and melodies in their head.

And if you think that they'll ever know if your synths have frequency aliasing issues, then you're definitely a technician and *not* a musician.

Please don't misunderstand: by all means strive to achieve the sound that's in your head...

...but also consider that music is more than sound.

- m

[munchkin]

I never thought about it that way Markleford but you're right, a live gig is about the music and how it connects with an audience. There is technology involved but again, it's not what people are there for.

It seems as if the focus for some people has become the purity of sound rather than the feeling of the music. Maybe that's a by product of technological development but it doesn't necessarily contribute to better music.

[allofdrab]

Well put Markelford.

But,... my Oxford Dic. says: "music - arrangement of sounds of one or more voices or instruments; written form of this."

So, I suspect you may be promoting an idea of something that isn't necessarily the music.

Perhaps it is some sort of plugin.

[Amberience]

Whoa.... I was simply suggesting that maybe PDC and convolution aren't the most important thing!?!

Read between the lines!!

[Markleford]

I never thought about it that way Markleford but you're right, a live gig is about the music and how it connects with an audience.

Though one must also admit that sometimes, on another extreme, a live gig isn't about music or sound, but rather the *spectacle* of it.

Which is also "okay", but hopefully not to be confused with actual *music*.

music - arrangement of sounds of one or more voices or instruments; written form of this

Well, there's an interesting concept to be taken from that last bit: a "written form". One would hope that any piece of music could be described on paper, handed to another musician, and interpreted by another musician.

In such a process, the "technical excellence" hammered out by the original composer would be lost. So what would remain in this new interpretation? Would it be substantial? Or was the original composition all about the "sound"?

I suppose as a data point, we could examine the KvR Covers Competition this month. The sound is different, arrangements, even notes and chords... but what is left of the "spirit" of the tune? Does it survive its transmutation from one complex changing frequency spectra to another?

I imagine you'll get many different answers from different people, but it's important to at least *ask* ourselves these questions.

As for myself, I'd *like* my music to be able to be written down in staff notation or a progression of chord symbols, to be handed over to another musician who could interpret the piece to the joy of others. I'd like my music to be captured on a page for all posterity, immortalized in something like the jazz standards "fake books".

(But I must admit that I fall very short of this often. I get caught up in avant-garde experimentation when I should be crafting melodies like I did in the old days.)

In the end I'd like to be remembered as a musician, not as a technician.

However, the world needs technicians: they're an important part of the team. But call a spade a spade, if you will...

- m

[Amberience]

One would hope that any piece of music could be described on paper, handed to another musician, and interpreted by another musician.

Sorry but I completely disagree.

[Glassback]

One would hope that any piece of music could be described on paper, handed to another musician, and interpreted by another musician.

Sorry but I completely disagree.

I don't.

See, he used the word interpreted - not copied.
Most, or even any, competant musician will be able to read the notes, but the interpretation will be thier own.

[ouroboros]

munchkin, no worries! Glad were in the clear

markleford: your comments ring true to me. Interestingly, since I've hung around KVR and entered (too deeply) into the vsti world, I think my production of things I liked slowed down for a while, but the technical sound improved greatly. I was banging out a number of .xm tunes previously, and though they sounded pretty rough, I still enjoyed them.

hmmm.

I think that's one of the things I appreciate about some 'round here such as vurt: not afraid to experiment and then get feedback on it. I am more of a technician than an artist, unfortunately. Not totally sure how to change.

[allofdrab]

Whoa.... I was simply suggesting that maybe PDC and convolution aren't the most important thing!?!

Read between the lines!!

If you were responding to my deduction or my misnomer...
both were intentional.

[Markleford]

Interestingly, since I've hung around KVR and entered (too deeply) into the vsti world, I think my production of things I liked slowed down for a while, but the technical sound improved greatly. I was banging out a number of .xm tunes previously, and though they sounded pretty rough, I still enjoyed them.

Very much the same way that I feel about the mass of old tunes I did on 4-track cassette portastudio. My PC virtual studio sounds worlds better, and my engineering skills have grown by leaps and bounds, but there's still a *something* about the old rough-sounding tunes that's missing...

Yes, part of it's nostalgia, I'll admit. But I think I used to concentrate more on *which* notes I was playing than how they *sounded*. Then I had a cheap guitar, two FX pedals, a Kawai K1 synth, and a drum machine. Somehow the limited options kept me more creative. Or perhaps the fact that I had no hopes of creating an LP/CD-quality sound that the burden of tweaking sonic ephemera was lifted from my mind such that it was free to concern itself solely with composition.

- m

[Markleford]

One would hope that any piece of music could be described on paper, handed to another musician, and interpreted by another musician.

Sorry but I completely disagree.

And I'll back your right to have that opinion: I recognize that beliefs about both God and Music are personal dogma, and thus no amount of argument can possibly hold sway.

However, if I'm unable to convince someone to change their mind over the nature of music, I can at least introduce something to mull over in terms of the longevity or permanence of music itself.

Namely, would your music survive if electricity disappeared?

Not that such a thing is likely to happen, but I have a romantic notion that my music, when written on staff paper or described in other notation and placed in a time capsule, could weather the end of the world. I'd like to think that it could be recreated long after my death, not through playback by some automated recording medium, but by the human beings who live after me.

I think music should remain immortal and absorbed into the legacy of creative humanity. I believe that the music itself should have a life of its own outside of a single person's interpretation.

But we each have our own goals.

- m

[vtx]

Somehow the limited options kept me more creative.

Couldn't have put it any better..For me anyway,,I was always starting from basically a clean slate.there was very few toys..
So the idea was first,,the music came later.
Nowadays I have a bad habit of sitting down and startin the drum machines,flickin on a sterile bass loop,maybe a keyboard pad and pickin up the guitar and see what happens,,,,well nothing happens,,,I'm jammin with the machines yet again..
I think maybe unplugging some stuff and putting it off to the side,,and dare I say,,do a little uninstalling..
I'm desperate to get that old juice back,,

[pHz]

wonders will never cease ...

... a thread with both jonas and xg2 and we still made it to page 5 !!!

seriously ... at a site like K-v-R youre always going to see a skewed response to this issue - by nature many (most ??? ) of us here a a LITTLE geeky ... it IS a music TECHNOLOGY site after all ... so a more technical perspective is bound to surface from time to time due to the proportion of producers and engineers (as well as those of us who assume a jack-of-all-trades role) ...

... from a personal point of view i couldnt care less about pristine audio quality but i DO want my stuff to sound APPROPRIATE in terms of the effect i am trying to achieve - so i do care about sound quality but that neednt always be in the context of hifi reproduction ...

... hell - when it comes down to it how many of us take our stuff regularly beyond low quality .mp3 stuff posted on the net - WHO CARES how sharp your high end is ???

slainte rob

[Kriminal]

no, i didn't misunderstand - i agree with you. that's why i said yes, not no.
(the rest of my post was about the 'too technical' thing, not a ref to your comment )

I knew that

[HanafiH]

The problem with elitism these days is everybody's doing it.