A Computer Now Counts As An Instrument?

[mcmurray]

Well said Notes

[Notes_Norton]

Well said Notes

Thanx

[ChanMan]

Notes is preaux.

[crazyhair]

Which would give you a better feeling inside your musical soul?

 

Somebody asking you what software you used to create something,

 

or somebody asking how did You create that?

[Notes_Norton]

Which would give you a better feeling inside your musical soul?

 

Somebody asking you what software you used to create something,

 

or somebody asking how did You create that?

What's the diff?

 

The software I use is just as important to me as my saxophone, guitar, flute, wind synthesizer, etc.

 

If someone asked me, "Which guitar did you use to create that solo?" or "Which software did you use to create that backing track?" it wouldn't make any difference to my musical soul. Both are expressions of my creativity.

 

BTW, I use Master Tracks Pro, Power Tracks Pro, Encore, Audacity, Band-in-a-Box and a number of other apps - see http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html to read how I do it.

 

The computer can be used as just another musical instrument (I use it this way), it can be used to make aural collages of other people's music (the loop copy and paste people do that), or it can be used to talk about music (we are all doing that here), it can be used as a tool for accountants, etc.

 

Your guitar can be used to make music, as a wall decoration, a collectible for investment, or even turned into a lamp (aaarrrrrggggghhhhhh). Like the computer, the guitar player uses it to make music.

 

If you like my music, it's good for my musical soul, no matter what I used to create it.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[mcmurray]

I'm amazed by the poll responses.

 

45% of you reckon it takes no significant talent/skill to write parts for computer based instruments?

 

Un-freaking-believable.

[ChanMan]

I'm amazed by the poll responses.

 

45% of you reckon it takes no significant talent/skill to write parts for computer based instruments?

 

Un-freaking-believable.

 

 

Me too man. Says a lot, doesn't it?

[ShredAstaire]

Me too man. Says a lot, doesn't it?

 

Yeah! Says these luddites have no idea what they are talking aboot! ;)

[Notes_Norton]

I'm amazed by the poll responses.

 

45% of you reckon it takes no significant talent/skill to write parts for computer based instruments?

 

Un-freaking-believable.

I guess 45% of the people never wrote their own backing tracks and found out how much work it takes to make them sound musical.

 

I guess 45% have never played a synthesizer and must think Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman have no talent, because the synthesizers that they play are simply computers with black and white keys.

 

I even think those slice and dice, cut and paste, musical loop collage artists need a lot of skill and a good deal of musical sensitivity to do it right. I know if someone asked me to create something with a bunch of loops, there would be a big learning curve before I could create something that worked.

 

A lot of things look a lot easier than they really are, and we musicians have a certain pride about the particular skills we acquired and are steeped in the use musical instruments to make music culture. And that might make some of us overlook the skills required to make music with a different set of tools.

 

I don't care if the music was made by playing a computer, guitar, synthesizer (also a computer), saxophone, double-belled euphonium, steel drums (once considered not a valid instrument), or kazoo. I care whether the music speaks to my soul or not.

 

Notes ♫

[milod]

Notes...

 

Absolutely correct as far as I'm concerned.

 

Odd thing I find in me at my age and background is that I've found that when I "play out" on a solo, for all intents and purposes I'm using an electric guitar, a bit of "thickening" for it, and a mike. I concluded that mostly what I do would work best that way. I may be wrong, but for the time being, that's my "way."

 

OTOH, when I'm playing with some others, I'll take that Leslie pedal, or use an A-E or whatever.

 

I think the problem with technology has nothing to do with whether or not it's an excellent tool, and I hope I can figure how to incorporate it as sort of a "stomp box" with a "typewriter" keyboard when I have the time to mess with it. Even if it only has a songlist, lyric pkg, joke list, amp settings key, it's worth it.

 

But it looks to me that if we can have strong arguments here just over three or four similarly-powered tube amps with 1950s technology, it must be that much more difficult for some folks to figure how to appropriately integrate technology into an audience experience.

 

I don't think that'll ever change, either. I remember arguments in '66 over just how lights would be most appropriately used in a rock show - and there wasn't much fancy involved by any stretch of the imagination.

 

m

[Notes_Norton]

Technology improves as time marches on.

 

The only thing constant about the universe is change.

 

Those who adapt to the change become the survivors.

 

If I hadn't gotten involved in computer music in the 1980s, I might be under-employed by now, or perhaps even have been forced to become a wage slave with a day gig. (aaaaarrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh)

 

Before that, when psychedelic music diminished the demand for saxophonists, I learned to play bass.

 

Adaptation is survival, and I want to be a survivor.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[crazyhair]

What's the diff?

 

The software I use is just as important to me as my saxophone, guitar, flute, wind synthesizer, etc.

 

If someone asked me, "Which guitar did you use to create that solo?" or "Which software did you use to create that backing track?" it wouldn't make any difference to my musical soul. Both are expressions of my creativity.

 

BTW, I use Master Tracks Pro, Power Tracks Pro, Encore, Audacity, Band-in-a-Box and a number of other apps - see http://www.nortonmus...ing_tracks.html to read how I do it.

 

The computer can be used as just another musical instrument (I use it this way), it can be used to make aural collages of other people's music (the loop copy and paste people do that), or it can be used to talk about music (we are all doing that here), it can be used as a tool for accountants, etc.

 

Your guitar can be used to make music, as a wall decoration, a collectible for investment, or even turned into a lamp (aaarrrrrggggghhhhhh). Like the computer, the guitar player uses it to make music.

 

If you like my music, it's good for my musical soul, no matter what I used to create it.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

 

 

Obviously your main concern is mass producing your kind of music. Band in a box says it all!

 

 

 

[milod]

Such stuff is a tool, just a tool. I don't care for certain types of guitar and I don't play sax. I don't publish music. Those all also are tools.

 

I just wish Bob well in his small music-oriented business that includes services to musicians as well as performance. Ditto Matt Sear and others who have a small business based on music performance, teaching and whatever it takes to convert musical talent into a living. That itself is a talent.

 

m

[Notes_Norton]

Obviously your main concern is mass producing your kind of music. Band in a box says it all!

 

Curious comment.

 

Every recording artist wants to mass produce his/her music, which is why everyone would like to get a big fat record deal.

 

Also interesting, I not only make aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box, but I also write my own backing tracks for my duo The Sophisticats which are not mass produced at all (unless someone offers us a big fat record deal).

 

But since you stated what you think is my obvious main concern, I'll enlighten you. My main concern is to make a living doing music and nothing but music, and it has been that way since the 1960s.

 

The only way I've been able to make a living that long doing music and nothing but music (with the exception of 2 "day gigs" when I was trying to be a fine, upstanding work-a-day citizen), is to be a survivor.

 

Even though I'm a good sax player (first in the state each year I was in school), if I had chosen to stick with saxophone and nothing but saxophone, I would have had to had day gigs for most of my life. After all, sax goes in and out of demand. But I'm a survivor, so I learned to play these other music instruments:

• Flute
  
• Guitar
  
• Wind Synthesizer
  
• Drums
  
• Keyboard synthesizer
  
• Bass
  
• Computer
  

 

And yes, they are all musical instruments, including the computer.

 

I've also learned musical arranging and music theory (and will probably continue to learn until I go to the great gig in the sky) and that coupled with my early musical computer self-education allowed me to make my own backing tracks and as an offshoot of that skill to create musical products to help other musicians and earn a bit of profit for myself, including; aftermarket styles for Band-in-a-Box, "fake disks" for Band-in-a-Box and aftermarket styles for Microsoft Explorer. I've sold my aftermarket products to musicians in over 100 countries on this planet - see http://www.nortonmusic.com/world.html and have a tutorial to help other musicians make their own backing tracks - see http://www.nortonmusic.com/backing_tracks.html which I provide as a free service to help those who started on this road later than me. And if you want to hear a free mp3 backing track that I made using the tutorial I mentioned: http://www.nortonmusic.com/mp3/Sweet_Home_Chicago_M128.mp3 - download it here http://www.nortonmusic.com/freemp3.html

 

I've also done my share of studio musician work, and have had my sax playing featured on a few commercial releases.

 

Insights and incites by Notes

[milod]

Bob...

 

If you could see me, you'd see I'm tippin' my hat to you.

 

m

[mcmurray]

[mcmurray]

Bob...

 

If you could see me, you'd see I'm tippin' my hat to you.

 

m

 

Me too Milo.

[Notes_Norton]

Thanks!

 

BTW, even though I used my own Band-in-a-Box style to create this backing track, I played all those parts into a sequencer in real time and then imported the snippets into the Band-in-a-Box StyleMaker program and assigned the "masks" so the proper patterns will appear in the proper musical context.

 

It's a lot of fun, it's very time consuming, and some would call it work, but I call it play. After all, they don't call it playing music for nothing! So if you can play music on the computer, it MUST be a musical instrument.

 

I've got over 500 sequences that I made for my own duo, but posting most of them would be a violation of copyright laws. Fortunately the 12 bar blues is in public domain.

 

Notes ♫

[The RandyMan]

Forgive me for dredging up a couple-day old post, but this one warrants my two cents. Is the computer an instrument? Depends on who's playing it, and who's listening to what they're playing. In my opinion, anything can be an instrument. Look at steel drums. They start out as fifty-five gallon industrial containers. But with the right mods and musicians playing them, they come to life as true musical instruments. With the advances of computer technology, we simply have another tool that can be used as a musical instrument. One of the reasons I lean towards this technology is the fact that, as a tool, it allows me to compose stuff that I hear in my head but do not have the physical ability to play myself. For instance, I can compose works for piano that I, myself, cannot physically play. And more importantly, I do not have to rely on anyone else to adapt their interpretation of my work. I can interpret it myself, the way I hear it. In this sense, it is a tool but also (to me, anyway) a musical instrument of sorts. To that end, I believe that it could be considered a musical instrument when in the hands of a musician.

 

I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my mother once when I was explaining the computer gear I had gotten and how I was writing music on it. She (a classically trained pianist and piano teacher) asked if I ever thought that this kind of technology would ever make pianos obsolete. I thought, "What an absurd question." Musical instruments, no matter how old, crude, obscure, or forgotten, will never be replaced. They will only be modified to create new, hybrid instruments, or used in conjunction with newly created instruments, or incorporated into compositions using the best of both the old-world and the new. Technology will never replace any musical instrument, it will only add to the use of it, in some form or another.

 

(apologies if this has already been said in this thread--I did not take the time to scrutinize everything written here.)

 

The RandyMan

[milod]

Randyman...

 

My "baby" brother - who's starting to nudge closer to 40 than he wants - has been a decent rhythm guitar player but his "thing" has been running a keyboard through a computer. Might one suggest, however, he's only doing about the same thing as the best of the theater organists did in the silent film era but with Les Paul's concept of recording to allow sound on sound? Oh, and the pipe organ and the newer "Pianoforte" certainly did not replace each other, did they?

 

My own computers are very involved in what I do on guitar depending on what you think of as "computer involvement." Many multi-effect boxes and apparently many single effect boxes are functionally little computerized thingydoos anyway.

 

For me, the biggest impact the computer had is availablity of Youtube and the ability to easily record practice. I probably could get more out of it, but I'm also sure I could get more out of my multi-effect machine that I for maybe three settings and for the tuner.

 

Every electrical guitar player functionally is using a "computer" if he/she uses even a tube amplifier.

 

The tube amplifier? How about the tube computer. In essence both are questionable technologies. Many guitarists like tubes frankly because they are less stable than solid state; they use the tubes' weakness to warp a relatively "clean" electrical impulses. That was the weakness also of the tube computer, so it was replaced quickly by transistors and the later ICs that are much more stable.

 

m

[Notes_Norton]

<...> With the advances of computer technology, we simply have another tool that can be used as a musical instrument. One of the reasons I lean towards this technology is the fact that, as a tool, it allows me to compose stuff that I hear in my head but do not have the physical ability to play myself.<...>

 

Which is a very old tradition when you think of it. Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Saint Saens, Debussy and countless other old masters who were predominantly pianists composed music for instruments the could not play like Violins, Clarinets, French Horns, and so on.

 

And Bach and the other pipe organ players were doing nothing that a synth player is doing when he/she emulates other instruments on his/her synth. The only difference is the technology.

 

But back to the original topic...

 

Anything you can use to make music becomes a musical instrument.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫

[guitargreg1993]

Musicians play instruments or use their voice to make music. All a computer can do is use a program to simulate. It is not capable of original thought, therefore it cannot make music.

 

+1

[surfpup]

I think album was the first thing I heard that made me

really take notice of computer generated music...

 

[milod]

Suggesting that a computer can't be as much of the creation of music as an "instrument" is like suggesting that an amplifier or a stomp box aren't part of, or entirely an instrument.

 

Even a tube amp functionally is a very simple computer, albeit not digital.

 

SS amps are by their nature, not really different from a computer.

 

Ditto stomp boxes, etc., etc., etc.

 

It may not seem that way to one brought up with amplifiers and stomp boxes and PA systems nowadays, but let's face it, they're all part of a "new" sort of music impossible in 1920. They're part of the "instruments" of making music.

 

A computer is nothing more than a further development of that technology and can be part of the "instrument" even as an LP is pretty much worthless in a performance without amplification. The electric guitar, especially the solidbody, frankly is only a part of an instrument, the amp is another part of the instrument and the amp controls and anything between the guitar and the main amplification section are a third part of the instrument.

 

What the better computer tracks amount to are nothing much more than what Les Paul was doing in the 1950s in terms of double tracking - it's just a bit better technology.

 

In fact, if you want to go back further, even much of the "classical" as well as other sorts of music post 1750 or so wouldn't be possible without changes of technology in making wire. No steel string guitars;

 

m

[Notes_Norton]

I think what happens is that after someone works very hard to acquire a skill, and something new comes along that can potentially reproduce what he/she has learned, some people feel threatened and immediately resist (I'm sure there are plenty of other reasons).

 

At one time Oil Painters thought Acrylics were inferior, when in actuality they are just different.

 

When Windows came out a lot of DOS people resisted the change.

 

The Dvorak keyboard layout has been proven to be much easier than QWERTY and makes your hands less susceptible to carpal tunnel problems. Windows 3.1 came with a click-switch to convert your QUERTY keyboard to Dvorak, but nobody wanted to learn the new skill so to this day we are all stuck with QWERTY.

 

Sometimes the new way of doing it is better, sometimes it is not, often times like the acrylics and computers, they just add something new and complementary, but there will always be those who resist the new, and always be those who embrace the new.

 

When I was on the cruise ships, back in the 1980s, I met a gentleman, Irving Bloom, who played piano in the piano bar. He was 81 years young, had lots of stories to tell, his first gig was playing piano for silent movies, and he was president of the NY local of the AFofM for many years. At that time synthesizers were still fairly new. He used to marvel at them, thought they were wonderful, and remarked that if he was 10 years younger, he would buy one. Definitely not a Luddite.

 

It takes all kinds. I will strive to be the kind of person who keeps an open mind about new things and embraces anything that is worthy. If I slip and start thinking "old", I hope someone will nudge me and wake me up.

 

Insights and incites by Notes ♫