will notation programs be phased out?

[vurt]

frank

[Nanakai]

Chut up!

[woggle]

The interesting thing for me about piano roll representations is how musically restrictive they are in their (typical) interaction. Last time I looked it was not possible to use a simple gesture to select a musical phrase from amongst other notes. FL allows it but I don't think anyone else does - you have to select notes using various rectangular shapes. It's a bit of a giveaway as to who is driving DAW development - not musicians, but programmers, and programmers responding to a very narrow conceptualisation of musical form.
re notation - for all history far and away most musicians have not read music. However, reading/writing music is incredibly useful - thinking that notation has no place in musical software really does reveal a very narrow understanding of the possiblities of music and musicians. ANd again, the sorts of notations that DAWs allow are incredibly restricted compared to the sorts of notations that musicians trained in the western classical traditions employ. For example consider any of the scores by someone like Liza Lim or Richard Barrett or Aaron Cassidy.
None of which is to say that DAWS aren't useful or do not encourage their own forms of practice - but I can't see any value in thinking the vast range of musical practices are engaged in some sort of artistic conflict or struggle for hegemony over and above the simple statistics of their relative popularity

[DevonB]

I honestly don't get the arguement here. There has always been "only a small handful of notation software programs." But to the point, notation is about being able to communicate your music composition in a standard, acceptable format that is understood by a large audience of musicians to allow them to easily be able to re-play your composition more or less as you intended. Up until more recently, it's been the accepted and best way, and more or less the ONLY way to do so for centuries.

There are far easier ways to program music into a computer or write music than to enter it in a notation format (ie. play it directly on an instrument or the many ways to program music into a computer like step seqeuncers, etc.) Considering Cubase has invested time and money into improving its notiation aspect not that long ago, there obviously must be enough of user demand to make those changes, and help it stand out among the other high-end DAW products. <shrug>

If you program your music into a DAW with standard notation, I think you're crazy patient with this music composition method. Nothing wrong with it; I prefer playing in real time and record as I go. That's my method. Why does this matter anyway?

Devon

[whyterabbyt]

Why does this matter anyway?

OP likes to start about ten pointless threads a week?

[trimph1]

Why does this matter anyway?

OP likes to start about ten pointless threads a week?

Wait until he discovers minimalism...

[vurt]

i prefer a more colourful approach.
we are painting with sound afterall

[vurt]

Why does this matter anyway?

OP likes to start about ten pointless threads a week?

memyselfandus: "which daw was beta tested by the most people called peter, who also own a shitzu and an iguana, who is married with 2 daughters called wendy and christine?"

[jancivil]

you don't get it. you have chosen to narrow things down rather severely according to your word 'relevant' which pretty much stands in for 'new'.

Yeah... Because being formulaic with a formula that was already done to death 10 or more years prior is just pointless... Unless.... You have something **new** to add to it...

This is an horrific attempt at forming a meaningful sentence, highlighting the fact that you're wholly unresponsive to the point.

You're insulating yourself against wider knowledge out of a typical adolescent arrogance. It strikes me your comment, you're able to get down with the kids. You're thirty and this is your discourse. Whew.

MY defensiveness? I haven't the tiniest iota of care about what you think. You haven't the least inkling what I think or do outside of my specific remarks. You're having at your parents with that, via me as straw man.

and you're response: "OMG, he needs to shut up about this stuff being obsolete before people start believing it and it becomes even more obsolete that it already was!!!"

'you're' represents by contraction 'you are'. you want 'your response', 'your' denoting ownership.
That was not my response. That is your invention out of desperation, unable to say anything more intelligent. I don't think people will be unduly influenced by what you say. I don't think silly people making idiotic comments online will make everything in music that isn't new (but as you say, it isn't new; an impossible contradiction in your hopeless attempt to express, who knows what actual point) 'obsolete'. There is music that you don't appreciate, lacking the tools to, that is going to be around indefinitely. Deal with it.

"doing something exactly the same way it's already been done 10/20 years ago" - but wait! it's been 'reinvented' every decade hasn't it? It's complete nonsense, what you type here. It's impossible to read this blather. One thing comes across, you think newer means more relevant. Yet implicit here is that nothing is new. I know what you say is true? You aren't making any sense, your very premise is half-baked at best.

Well, let's hear how old you are and what music you're into... I won't comment one way or another, we'll just let the facts stand and people to come to their own conclusion. Fair enough?

- a conclusion about me? have I been less than clear? your opinion of me is of absolutely no moment, particularly as it will be based on this thread and that you can't hold your own in the conversation. Go yell at your parents.

[Tony Ostinato]

again, if you work alone you can use anything.

heck we have decades of rock bands with guitarists who don't read, they just know enough to tell the bassist what chord theyre playing.

and thats enough.

but as you work with more and more people and rise higher and higher in the industry youll encounter more and more need for notation.

working with orchestras or horn sections etc. notice that all these guys in bands on late night tv talk shows all read.

as far as notation programs theres not the need for constant upgrading and a million different approaches like daws. most people either use finale or sibelius and thats it. i use finale and havent upgraded it in years because it does all i want.

i once had a guitarist tell me that its a fact that its impossible to transcribe any rolling stones songs because the drummer changes up the beat too often. its amazing the amount of disconnect between people who dont read and the reality of notation.

the worst thing learning to read/write will do to you is point out how much youve been ripping off cliche chord progressions that lots of others have used. that was true before you learned to read its just now you can see it.

the best thing itll do is get you lots of gigs.

[jancivil]

when I started out over 10 years ago, the first thing I did was purchase a music theory book because it seemed like the thing to do. Of course, no matter how hard I tried, those classical chord progressions just sounded awful and boring in my DnB (because Dubstep didn't exist yet) and Trance productions, I eventually figured out that I actually needed those dissonant Jazz and Funk chords, but only that which was totally void of any classical influence...

you have a fuzzy, uninformed idea of what music theory is. there is no recipe book coming out of music theory texts. there are principles in the study of, eg., 'classical chord progressions' - their handling, principles of part-writing, coherence - that don't amount to forcing them into another style of music. "dissonant jazz chords totally void of any classical influence" is clueless. Most if not all of these practices are stolen from practice in concert music, 'classical music' in a broad usage. an intelligent understanding of the whys, the reasoning for the choices is actually quite useful. you could find out some things if you were more patient, more thoughtful and more curious.

you seem to want to function as if some kind of erasure of the past follows novelty. you're going to be less of a musician the more you choose to erase in this way. you're forming a wild overconfidence, that things in music are new - as I indicated to you, you said so yourself, they are reinventions of what exists, certainly what you have been exposed to which seems to be pretty restricted - and your basis is not sound, you're proceeding out of a willful ignorance.

You could be excused for this terribly immature attitude at half your age (since you want to bring age into it), but 'in your thirties', good lord, man. You would be well advised to stop talking and start listening, pull your head out of your asshole.

[trimph1]

@jan...

I think he is not worthy of your skills here...he is doing it to himself...

[jancivil]

you may be right, but that's me, if I become cynical to where I must become hopeless, I'm doomed. I think there is a point where a person is so arrogant and so fixated they aren't reachable. in his thirties and he's just this wildly reactive/can't address a single point, I don't know.

[SJ_Digriz]

I just find the entire idea that the acquisition of knowledge is somehow restrictive to creativity to beyond ridiculous. Maybe it's just the information age that allows these myopic and decadent views of education to seem to be proliferating. But, damn it seems actual knowledge and the pursuit of it is under attack everywhere.

So, why don't we quit using written language as a means of communication? It's clearly old school. And, just like musical notation, it is both effective in some scenarios and lacking in others.

[datroof]

I had a conversation a couple years ago with a friend who's a top-notch arranger - sickeningly good. He told me that he had done composing/arranging in a DAW for a while, but went back to scoring on paper because he found it to be much quicker. At first I was a little skeptical about his claim, but he explained that the ability to hit the play button to instantly hear what you've just written is a huge distraction and time-waster, and over time I've come to totally agree with him. I still do some composing/arranging in the DAW, but I've been doing a lot more scoring on paper lately, and it's a nice way to work - a very different paradigm. For one thing, it exercises the DAW in your head, which might be gathering dust because you forgot it's there. The ability to "hear" (in your head) what's written on your score, is a very valuable skill. It goes hand-in-hand with your transcription muscles - your ability to write down what you hear. Neglecting these skills doesn't make you more modern or relevant, it makes you deficient. IMO, it's like deciding you don't need your legs anymore, because you can buy a wheelchair instead (wheelchairs are much more modern, don't you know).