Is there still such a thing like instrumentalist snobbery around?

[VariKusBrainZ]

poor people

i cannot understand why we are not allowed to hunt them.
it would entertain our children, when they weren't busy beating the staff and taking advantage of their busty barmaid daughters in the tavern.

Youre referring to Paupers, quite different to poor people

we sadly cannot hunt either

Seriously??

I thought Paupers were fare game, especially if theyre immigrants

[Hink]

ok, we need to get back on on topic and not hpc stuffs

[tapper mike]

Well, you make god sense Tapper Mike and none of what you write here would I apply to any snobbery. Though I do not know what you mean by ravers stealing the scene. Are there not dedicated jazz clubs for musicians like you that would never hire ravers? Ravers belong in dance halls, cellars, under bridges and appeal to a rather young public on designerdrugs if you ask me. That can hardly be the same scene, can it?

Not ravers stealing scene's from their own. In fact quite the opposite. I've actually helped financed second wave Detroit Techno artists. Supplying PA as well as key studio equipment from my personal collection including LinnDrum, Akai MPC and Emu XL-7. I didn't join in a live set where they were the artist as it wasn't about my promotion.

On the other hand I have been in round table performances at seminars where by the subject was jazz studies when someone with only experience in edm wanted to garner attention and validation where by they had no knowledge or experience in the medium presented.

[Lotuzia]

ime snubbs you can find ... everywhere : µIn electronice/edm/classical/Jazz/pop-rock, composers/producers/instrumentists etc.

Might be that the elements 'composing' the snubbery can be (more/less) grouped and related to this or that aspect of music, depending on the category of musician one belongs to.

Anyway, music is as big as life, and much bigger that all of this, and I've found I can be a snubb myself from times to times.

[IncarnateX]

On the other hand I have been in round table performances at seminars where by the subject was jazz studies when someone with only experience in edm wanted to garner attention and validation where by they had no knowledge or experience in the medium presented.

Ah, that I can follow. And even though the noise I produce is closer to EDM than Jazz, I think I would annoyed too on the behalf of the Jazzers. In this regard my own story is different. I started out by being fascinated by electronic music but I went to school, learned my basics in both classical music and rhythmical such as Jazz and Fusion and then I took a final choice in favor of my prime interest. I wanted to know what I said “thank you, I’ll pass” to before saying it, so I got little Jazz experience after all and I can still enjoy classics from Real Book.

[IncarnateX]

On another note. "Someone" wrote earlier something about playing an arp instead of using a pianoroll or notation or whatever is musical laziness. Though the statement itself apparently was based on a misinterpretation of what I wrote, I'd like to ask how many of you have tried to play an arp in terms of "playing" it, not just hold a chord, but changing the melody and use if for modulations? They should know that you indeed has to be on par with its mechanical timing because if you are late as much as 1/16 note, the whole rhythm of the arpeggio is going to change and you end up with something entirely different than you began with. In the prime 80s when sequencers still could cost a fortune compared to synths with arps that became cheaper and came into the hands of the public, a good deal of what we today think of as "sequenced" phrased was played by pros on arps. I'd say it is an discipline in itself within electronic music, and it certainly ain't that easy. Step sequencing or notation in piano rolls would be a much safer and "lazy" way than doing it by arp.

[Jace-BeOS]

So now I ask you, do you have any experience in this regard? are there still instrumentalist snobs around or have they become extinct?

So what happens if the power goes down permanently and the only thing left to make music with are old fashioned acoustic instruments ?

No electric power = no music

I made music long before I got into electronic, and if the power goes down I will still make music.

Yeah, I am a snob.

Interesting idea. I'll digress on it:

The loss of electricity as a tool is a serious consideration for me sometimes. I hate computers and software. They're nearly absolutely built without consideration for reliability or humanity. Yet, everything I do requires computers as a tool.

If it weren't for computers and software, I'd likely not be a musician at all today (even if I'm the impostor type of musician, since I'm not an instrumentalist). No musical instructor ever bothered to try to teach me without requiring me to learn notation. Notation is completely outside my neurological capacity.

So, as with pretty much everything in my life, I had to pursue my musical interests without any formal guidance and without any encouragement or other extrinsic motivation. In fact, I was treated to obstruction, which deadened much of my intrinsic motivation.

(All of the above goes for my other artistic interests as well)

So if the power went out permanently, I don't think I would be a musician (a fake one or a real one). I wouldn't be a photographer (I did not enjoy working with film and development processes, though I was formally trained in that media).

I can't afford (and don't have room for) a real piano (my preferred instrument), and I don't have the dexterity (or money) for the stringed instruments I most enjoy listening to. I don't want to damage my fingers the requisite amount to be a proper guitar player.

Worst of all: ultimately, I wouldn't be able to even listen to the music I enjoy. We'd all be back to playing for ourselves, hiring musicians to play for us, and going to auditoriums to hear any music at all. Without electricity, for recordings and playback, and for amplification, music as it is today would end. We'd be back to reliance on the music of the era we call "classical". We could make purely acoustic recordings, and play them back on hand cranked players, but... Really, what we think of as music today, as a global culture, would end.

Luckily, there's nothing that will stop electrons from moving. In an apocalyptic scenario, we might lose the knowledge and have to start over with some technology, but it would be possible to get here again (unless we've already wasted all the precious materials required to build tech again).

[Jace-BeOS]

So now I ask you, do you have any experience in this regard? are there still instrumentalist snobs around or have they become extinct?

So what happens if the power goes down permanently and the only thing left to make music with are old fashioned acoustic instruments ?

No electric power = no music

I made music long before I got into electronic, and if the power goes down I will still make music.

Yeah, I am a snob.

You could still play the metel, but it would sound something like this;

http://www.bennyleeds7.myfreeola.uk/tehmetel.mp3

Which would be unfortunate.

Unfortunate? I totally found that recording to be quite interesting!!

[Jace-BeOS]

On another note. "Someone" wrote earlier something about playing an arp instead of using a pianoroll or notation or whatever is musical laziness. Though the statement itself apparently was based on a misinterpretation of what I wrote, I'd like to ask how many of you have tried to play an arp in terms of "playing" it, not just hold a chord, but changing the melody and use if for modulations? They should know that you indeed has to be on par with its mechanical timing because if you are late as much as 1/16 note, the whole rhythm of the arpeggio is going to change and you end up with something entirely different than you began with. In the prime 80s when sequencers still could cost a fortune compared to synths with arps that became cheaper and came into the hands of the public, a good deal of what we today think of as "sequenced" phrased was played by pros on arps. I'd say it is an discipline in itself within electronic music, and it certainly ain't that easy. Step sequencing or notation in piano rolls would be a much safer and "lazy" way than doing it by arp.

I find performing synths with an arpeggio tool to be quite frustrating. Depending on the exact programming (if it's designed to quantize user input), if your timing isn't perfect, you end up with the wrong rhythm/pattern. It's work. I've had to manually edit trigger notes as a solution on many occasions.

It's not the same kind of work as playing (or writing) every note manually. The point of a tool is to reduce the effort required to accomplish a task. In music that demands many sections of minutes-long quick successions of short repeated notes, I'm not sure what the point would be in forcing any musician to manually play the notes.

Some arp tools allow MIDI clips to be used to derive the arp pattern. These are probably the best tools for people who want to meticulously craft their lines of repeated notes. Check out KARMA, found on numerous Korg synths, but also available as software. I actually bought a Korg M3m specifically to drive synths with KARMA as inspiration and decorations (I generally create music better when something triggers my brain to "modify" existing content). EDIT: not that I've actually used it for this more than a few times (MIDI routing has been a PITA because I didn't buy the keyboard version of the M3).

I'm not against using arps. I think they're a very useful tool for the specific purpose of playing rapid short notes in a repeating pattern. When a song is built up from almost all arpeggiation, though, I am apt to lose interest. I'm not a dancer.

To get an idea of where you're coming from. I took a listen to some of your music on SoundCloud. Would it be fair to call your stuff as being in the dance genres?

Is it also fair to say that dance music (and I am using the term very generally) tends to be more about serving an audience of dancers, not about serving an audience of people sitting there focusing on the music itself?

Do you dance and intend your music for dancing?

[IncarnateX]

Do you dance and intend your music for dancing?

Not really, that it is danceable is a welcome side effect. It is really a fusion of elements from popular or underground electronic music that I have endorsed during the decades: some melodies in synthpop style, lots of bass figures inspired by early industrial (EBM), some mid octaves elements from the Berlin School, lead themes from psy-trance and a few things more. I kind of take what I best like from a period and fuse it together. Then I add a little theoretically inspired complexity now and then, e.g. my extensive use of counterpoint on some tunes where I mix different melodic themes together. But when I perform in my studio I am moving to it, of course.

Thanks for listening, mate. You certainly didn't have to

[Jace-BeOS]

Do you dance and intend your music for dancing?

Not really, that it is danceable is a welcome side effect. It is really a fusion of elements from popular or underground electronic music that I have endorsed during the decades: some melodies in synthpop style, lots of bass figures inspired by early industrial (EBM), some mid octaves elements from the Berlin School, lead themes from psy-trance and a few things more. I kind of take what I best like from a period and fuse it together. Then I add a little theoretically inspired complexity now and then, e.g. my extensive use of counterpoint on some tunes where I mix different melodic themes together. But when I perform in my studio I am moving to it, of course.

Thanks for listening, mate. You certainly didn't have to

Happy to I was trying to get a sense for where you're coming from. In another thread you mentioned that you pretty much make music just for yourself. That's a good way to go. Aiming for any popularity is a path of inevitable defeat. If it turns out to be something others enjoy, that's a plus. If composition earns money, that's usually more about supremely good luck (though there's certainly better business in writing music for picture, if you can handle the pace, and get a foot through the door of the business).

I wish I could say that I only make music for myself, but if I'm intellectually honest with myself, that's not entirely why I do it. I feel like it's worthless to me, and I need validation from others. I want an audience of some kind. This is entirely my family's doing, with how I was raised to value work vs "otherwise unproductive activities".

However, I have zero interest in fighting to make a living out of it. I'm just not built that way. It was hard enough for me to work for others in the first place. The business of music is a horrible one that demands constant self-promotion and mercenary thinking (or dealing with largely untrustworthy or overtly scummy corporations), as well as great tolerance for miserable scheduling, elitism, various forms of snobbery, and monumental heapings of extremely good luck while being in the right place at the right time, around the right people. I'm not a remotely competitive human being.

Supply and demand... there's more music than we could ever consume in a single lifetime (though maybe not if we have very narrow preferences, but trying to find a niche paying audience to sell to... eh). There are far more people who want to make a living out of making music than there are jobs to be employed in doing so.

But back to the main topic: I'm wondering if your experiences with the snobbery at the music school you attended had to do with the population, in a self-selection kind of way.

Are there multiple dedicated music schools in the country? If there are few, it might be a case of "this is where everyone goes for that". When there's only one "authority" to go to for music schooling, that's where everyone will go, regardless of their motives and attitudes. As a result, it might be hard to get into the school due to competition (more prospective students than seats). That might increase the likelihood of aggressive or competitive personalities getting more representation in the school (like how sociopaths are so common in politics and corporate America: aggression and arrogance are rewarded).

It could be upbringing. I don't know how the system works there in Germany, but in the USA, elite schools tend to have many students who's parents could easily afford the school. Having a population of privileged people tends to shape the social environment of a place.

Or it might just be that the school sucks at instilling any sense of diversity in its students.

I'm pulling this all out of my ass. I've not gone to music school and I know few instrumentalists. I do know human behavior a bit. In general, anyone who's struggled to accomplish something will have a tendency to have part of their personality be shaped by that struggle. They also have a tendency to overvalue the thing they struggled to attain and may look at others through a colored lens.

Academia appears rife with this behavior, but it's also probably overpresented because jerks are louder than nice people. When I worked in university, I had a small minority of people treat me poorly because I didn't have an associates degree, let alone a masters (or a frigging doctorate). More people acted with admiration at my self-accomplished knowledge/skills. It was a small minority who acted like I was an impostor (but it was notable to see how their behavior toward me changed after they discovered I wasn't what they presumed).

In general, I think humans need to be taught how to exercise both empathy and modesty. Struggle tends to make the average person demand that everyone else struggles the same way/amount they did. When most people see someone else having some kind of success (or sharing an opinion) without clear indication of having earned it through hard work, well, there's often attitude.

I'm not immune to this. I am bitter about the companies who ruined the IT support job market by selling "tech certifications". Certifications aren't proof of practical knowledge (and the stuff in the test i saw was useless nonsense), yet people would get the jobs I applied for (once even in the same damn place, doing my work). I'd be turned down for the job and then also have to clean up after the certified employee's foolish mistakes. I worked hard, for years, to learn what I knew about computers and support, and they just crammed for an A+ Certification test. Certified Impostors.

Where music is concerned, I feel like an impostor around people who are instrumentalists (I'm a bit more cozy with fellow photographers because I finished an actual two year program in it). I feel self-conscious about my failures at learning notation, and consequently instruments. I'm bitter that no music instructor tried to teach me without demanding I learn notation. I've been told this is perfectly possible, but it wasn't presented as an option to me and I had no advocate.

It wasn't until I was in my early 30s that it was validated that I have neurological issues / learning disabilities. Hypothetically, I've done quite well for someone failed by the system, forced to acquire skills mostly through his own efforts. Too bad my life isn't hypothetical.

[IncarnateX]

But back to the main topic: I'm wondering if your experiences with the snobbery at the music school you attended had to do with the population, in a self-selection kind of way.

Are there multiple dedicated music schools in the country? If there are few, it might be a case of "this is where everyone goes for that". When there's only one "authority" to go to for music schooling, that's where everyone will go, regardless of their motives and attitudes. As a result, it might be hard to get into the school due to competition (more prospective students than seats).

Well, it was a one of the very few pre-conservatory schools that aims to help students make it to our rhytmical music conservatory or the university. But here is my real take on the competetion. The students attending this schools were in many (but not all) cases unemployed, had mental problems, came from miserable homes, were alchoholics, former drug addicts or actually addicted like myself (THC - Cannabis), had no education, and we even had a student doing jail time while studying. And I think we all somehow knew that we belonged to the lower end of the societal hierarchy; that we all were a bunch of losers by default. Music was the only thing that kept our hopes up, gave us a sense of identity and some skills. Thus, if you are going to raise yourself above the swamp, you have to be better than anyone else living in it and here we go....

BTW: I am in Denmark not Germany, though it is right below us.

[funky lime]

I can't afford (and don't have room for) a real piano (my preferred instrument), and I don't have the dexterity (or money) for the stringed instruments I most enjoy listening to. I don't want to damage my fingers the requisite amount to be a proper guitar player.

So you would rather make excuses than make music?

Space can be made, if you prioritize it. And people give pianos away for free all the time on Craigslist. And spinet pianos are quite small. In our apocalyptic scenario, it's not like you would need a computer desk anymore. Hell, these guys live in a bus and still found room for a piano. This person lives in a van and has a piano in it (that he supposedly picked up for free).
Dexterity can be trained, and money can be earned. It's not like you have to learn on a Stradivarius. The ~$60 violin on Amazon is actually quite good for what it is: a ridiculously inexpensive piece of kit made specifically for learning. There are YouTube reviews comparing it to violins a hundred times the price, and it is still rated pretty favorably. And you gotta start somewhere; if you had started yesterday, you'd already be more dexterous and skilled than you are right now. This guy has cerebral palsy, and didn't let his lack of dexterity stop him from pursuing his passion for music. Nor did this guy with Parkinson's.

And they're just callouses. I'd hardly call that lasting damage.

Sometimes we have to make sacrifices and compromises to make space in our lives for the things we really want to pursue.

But whatever, I know nothing about you beyond what you've posted, so I shouldn't make assumptions.

[jancivil]

On another note. "Someone" wrote earlier something about playing an arp instead of using a pianoroll or notation or whatever is musical laziness. Though the statement itself apparently was based on a misinterpretation of what I wrote, I'd like to ask how many of you have tried to play an arp in terms of "playing" it, not just hold a chord, but changing the melody and use if for modulations?

I said it. The difference between what an arpeggiator does and what a human on any instrument does should be quite clear. I doubt I'm putting any words in your mouth at_all. I know what you said and I know what I thought, and what I said and meant.

It's a machine doing something that is generally pretty robot-like (there are exceptions I have used in a Kontakt instrument) vs what a person does; and merely telling a machine some chord notes and 16th notes is... well there are stylistic reasons to do it, such as techno type of music and all this, which I would never object to per itself; but as a replacement for an arpeggio on an instrument, really? Why do people ever use a humanizing routine, that quantize and then have to humanize? (It doesn't work, really, but hey.)

I used to be a performer, so yeah, I've played serious arpeggi in my life, fast as fvck and accurate.
I do not however have a lot of skill on a keyboard so, guess what? I write them in, as "tiresome" as that is. OR, I do what I can and edit. I can get away with murder with my thwarted technique and my ad hoc compensation for normal keyboard technique.


I like doing it. All of it. I LIKE WORKING ON MUSIC. I'm lazy in so many ways and I will see if there's a labor-saving device for what are actually mechanical tasks. But this is making music, so I do not cut corners.

Getting them up to speed on the guitar was not the most party-time sort of a thing I've ever done in my life either.
Getting my rolls and rudiments together as a drummer was pretty boring in general.

[experimental.crow]

So now I ask you, do you have any experience in this regard? are there still instrumentalist snobs around or have they become extinct?

So what happens if the power goes down permanently and the only thing left to make music with are old fashioned acoustic instruments ?

No electric power = no music

I made music long before I got into electronic, and if the power goes down I will still make music.

Yeah, I am a snob.

if the power goes down permanently , you'll have a few more urgent issues
to deal with than how you'll make music ...