On 8/31/06, kent williams <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Tom, time and again, you make no concessions to anyone else's taste. While I like the stuff you like, and can listen to you DJ all the live long day and enjoy nearly every track, I like a lot of stuff you don't. I think I get what appeals to you about what you like, but there's more than one way to the top of the mountain.
really what it boils down to for me is that i feel like any appreciation for production value and things of that ilk are completely separate from the appreciation of the music. personally, i love Chic's piano sounds. but its not that that makes me go nuts when their tunes are played, its how ridiculously brilliant all their records are.
And I don't totally get your thesis in this discussion. Music technology either matters (which is what you seem to be saying when you complain about computer-produced music) or it doesn't (which is what you seem to be saying when you talk about people making great music, simply).
ill try to be specific here. it SHOUDLN'T matter, if people have the right goal in mind. the reason it does matter is because using a computer opens you up to over production and all the other follies that afflict software prodction. for those things to happen in a hardware studio, youd pretty much have to be a millionaire and not care about how much you spend. it seems to be a temptation that way too few people are able to overcome. why that is, im not entirely sure.
I think the truth of the matter is more complicated than that. People evaluate Electronic Music in terms of sound design, in addition to the more traditional attributes of rhythm, melody, harmony, and structure. If you want to advance the state of the art, you try and build something, either in the world or in your computer, that makes a new sound. To do this new technology is important. Where artistry and talent come into play is in finding, manipulating, and arranging new sounds in a way that's pleasing to listeners. Believe me, I've spent hours and hours making 'sounds never heard before' in my studio, and most of them are awful.
exactly. and what happens when every timbre ever has been explored and beaten into the ground? will that fascination finally end? there's alot of sound possibilities, but compared to the range of human emotions it is very limited. exploring those emotions is what is interesting to me, and for me that rarely if ever happens through a sound alone. usually it has to do with a specific sound in its proper place, and i can think of maybe 20 instances of that in all music ive ever listened to. and it definitely had more to do with everything else going on in the song at the time than just the sound design.
But the sounds you use isn't the only factor in producing music -- you need to consider things like rhythm, structure, and harmony, the balance between repetition and novelty, and production technique. More important than any one of those properties is whether the artist has anything to say through the music. An artist's music, to be truly worth listening to, needs to be something more than beats, notes, and noises. You can call it 'soul' but it's not a narrow, Ray Charles definition of Soul.
i agree with all of this exactly.
It's more a sense that the music is inhabited by something, something that speaks to _your_ soul. Something that can't be reduced to formula and reproduced at will. And even if that spark is there, there's no guarantee that you'll respond to it. Everybody needs to find what speaks to their condition. Aesthetics can never be absolute.
i dont think i agree with this part though. i feel like truly great music speaks to all people, reguardless of what their "taste" might be. for example, as a favor at our wedding, my wife and i made mix CDs. the number of people whom have commented to us about them since then is insane. they really LOVE them. and the first track is carl craig's "a wonderful life"! theres tracks from 50s r+b to disco to techno to rock on there. and the songs are such that they speak to the peoples' souls directly. and we got comments from people from age 11 to age 70. music is probably the most universal language there is for the human species. the best music does the same thing, reguardless of who made it or where it comes from.
On the subject of production values . Guys like Larry Heard may have not obsessed over the latest gear, and made music very simply, but it's a mistake to say that they didn't spend considerable time and energy on getting the production right. Larry is a perfect example of this. He may just have a drum machine and a couple of synths going into a track, but they sound really, really, good. I know the machines Larry Heard used on his early tracks, and believe me, you can't just plug them into a Mackie 1202 and have something that sounds that good come out. There are plenty of closely guarded production tricks in dance music. You find that out if you get serious about producing tracks.
exactly! and if its not easy to do right with a synth and a drum machine, it must be even crazier to do with the complex stuff on a computer! which is why keeping it simple is good, you can get right to the point with the least amount of mucking about in things that arent as important. which gives you time to spend on the things that ARE important.
What it comes down to is this: It's the person, not the tools, that makes any art special. The fact that a bunch of clueless raver kids can string a few loops in Acid or Live has absolutely nothing to do with what real artists are doing. Most of the music that gets isn't any good, and a lot of it that is good isn't to your particular taste, or mine.
the kids doing crap in acid or live arent even what really irritates me. making nonsense halfassedly is only annoying. its the people who spend HOURS on their bass sound, or the EQ ing of their drums (drum and bass anyone?) and spend maybe 5 seconds on what actually might make their track interesting (the structure, the melody, just doing something different in general). and that kind of thing is rampant in NYC house, prog house, dnb, "minimal" techno, and many other dance genres. ill take the random 303 patterns from taking the batteries out any day. tom
