On 8/31/06, Stoddard, Kamal <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Of course computers are used for lots of stuff. Guitars have one purpose. No-brainer.
but it does help create the problem!
Hey! you ever see this band called peelander-z? I have. One of the things they do in their act is at a certain point they recruit audience members to come up onstage and play their instruments for them while they do other things with bowling pins and such. Before this though, they get the music to such a fever pitch of screaming guitar-feedback madness that, unless the dude who got picked for drums sucks bad you can barely tell it's not them. Ever hear of the noise core rock stuff. A lot of that is just guys that can't play guitar a lick hitting the strings as hard as they can and screaming. As long as you market it right you can sell anything. Music is no exception and knowing this, I can't believe you still see this as an issue with the artists/tools instead of with the idiots that buy it.
yeah, it might be marketed and sold, but its not going to be really hitting people musically. things like that are fun to see live, more like performance art. we used to book local cats like the joysticks (who went on to produce that girltalk guy iirc! Ewwww) and big daddy bullseal to do goofy things while bands and deejays played. and i can appreciate that kind of thing for sure. but it still doesnt make the music good!
Any new convenience will make people do less to achieve more by definition. If it didn't make things easier, it wouldn't be convenient would it? It would be making things more complicated (which we both abhor). I personally stick with gear when I can, but I wouldn't let these cats off the hook as easily as you Tom. I'd never let a punk fakin' uncreative hack blame his wackness on the availability of the arpeggiator (which, when introduced to the "all gear" studio world, heard the same cries of "but they just hit that random button") or some preset.
im not sure any of them are blaming the gear! i think theyll support it because it helps them camoflauge their lack of good ideas.
I've heard cats work them fxcking presets to the bone. And in my experience in big studios, that cost model has proven to weed out more of the creatives and put the control factor solely in the hands of those with the cash to pay. Usually that's not the guy who's tormented by his creative genius. I've had to watch more than a few real live geniuses get raped for their ideas and soul because they either needed the money to get a studio, or were under the thumb of the guy that paid for the time (A&R). so it's a good theory, but it actually works the other way around in real life (according to my experience).
this is true, which is why i said i support the idea of music making being easy to obtain in theory. of course, you could just rock old thrift store kinds of gear, and really wack hardware. i use the hr-16 which can be had for like $75 or less even! dr rhythms are another source of good variety of sounds and programmability at a really cheap price. you could save your lunch money in high school for a couple weeks and afford a used one.
You been buying some of it, some gets obscured by the shxtpile of weak shxt, and the rest is on the way. If you haven't found it and we tell you it's there, maybe you just gotta dig deeper...or in another hole/shop. :)I run with a crew of real sampleheads and the crate diggers credo has always been, "it's out there...I just gotta cop it before you." So go get it man.
that is who i run with! but the problem with that is that we're buying all old records. we dont want to be buying only old records, we want new stuff. we did an order from hardwax a couple weeks ago to pick up some of the new stuff we needed that wasnt around here. we still ended up ordering mostly older records. i go wherever the music is, i check sites like juno, hardwax, emporium50, submerge, picadilly, etc. im a fiend baby, if its out there and its good, ill find it somehow. i check peoples reccomendations on various lists and message boards in many many genres. i might miss some things here and there, but as soon as i find out about them, i hunt them down.
I think this is where the crux of the matter lies. No tool will make up for artistic integrity and creativity. What it can do is allow you to approximate these with less effort. If you choose to be happy with that, okay then. Plenty of guys I know are happy just to go outside, play some football, get hurt again and call it a day. They're not shooting for the premier league or anything and that's fine.
but if youre just making music for yourself to listen to or whatever, thats one thing. but putting it out in wide distribution on vinyl is as much responsible for why people dont wanna buy records anymore as anything else. if the music was better, people wouldnt mind paying!
For me it's a no- lose situation. See, for every crap record out by "dj slackfingers", there's someone with crap taste that's ready to buy it. YAY! They win. For me, I have a zero tolerance policy for that kind of music, so not only do I not listen to it. It's like the fxcking easter bunny to me...not even real. So it doesn't bother me. It's only as annoying as a fly in traffic. Not very when it comes to the day to day.
it wouldnt bother me at all if it wasnt all everyone talked about anymore. if it wasnt what paxahau was booking at the fesitval. if it wasnt in all the magazines. if it basically wasnt pushing what little good stuff there is out of the spotlight.
Bottom line: hold artists responsible for their failures. Hold yourself responsible for the effects of your taste on your psyche. And above all, hold the system responsible for it's oppressive nature that allows these a$$hole to thrive and gives us a reason to hate..
i hold everybody responsible even if they support that nonsense. tom
