The Revenge of the Intuitive - Article by Brian Eno in Wired

I still don't understand why he's got a reputation as a heavyweight intellectual...

because he is right.

Ever so right.

Wasn't there an article about this in Parade this Sunday?

familiarity breed content. i like that.

breeds

This is a strange article in that the sentiment is more or less retro, and that seems really odd coming from someone like Eno.

It's a generational thing, I think - his points are valid
for his own age set, but are useless for people who cut their
teeth on technology and are comfortable with computers.

I'd imagine Eno's rather more comfortable w/technology than pretty much anyone here

I disagree.

Yr not actually a robot, Ralf. Get over it.

See there you go, Thames, indignantly insisting that Eno is
a wiz - thereby exposing your own generational pro-tech bias.

But if Eno directly correlates "computer-like" and
"computer-driven" with "buearacratic" and "insidious" - I highly
doubt keeps up with technical advances (in fact, the article
seems to have stemmed from his failure to cope).

Not that I'm tsking - whatever floats your boat, I say;
artists should use tools that their comfortable with, or of
course the product will suffer. Eno's attitude is bemusing
but he's so damn good I won't roll my eyes.

Does me being 25 work w/that, Police?

Well, Eno's 55 and you are posting here, so arguably yes

if he thinks 'computer-like' is bad i wonder what he thinks
of making music solely on computers. i've always considered
him a savant anyway, using normal equipment to make weird
noises no one else was smart enough to invent

I think his point about the elimination of the muscles from art, and how artists need a tool that has limitations and familiarity is spot on.

I don't think he's the kind of person who would rail to eliminate these new tools, but would like to see artists better use them.

Yes.

Build better software and build better computers seems like good advice.

Better interfaces. Mouse clicker, go to hell.

i dont think there is anything especially shocking about this. reduce the ideas to their basics, and they fit it a discussion of any art and its creation and perception.

1. You could make a similar argument (and it has been made!) about literature and intellectualism, which is that a conservative education can yield more liberal thoughts. Why? A deep familiarity with tradition draws previous rules and boundaries making them more distinct, and hence easier to break. Hitsch made a great point in his sometimes-good book Cultural Literacy when he quoted a portion of a pamphlet from the Black Panthers, and noted that their allusions to the founding documents of us history added strength to the writing. the counterpart would be a deep familiarity with a more straightforward mixing console (us history in the preceding example), as opposed to a passing familiarity with a much more complex one (a library full of half-read books, some good, some bad).

2. There is something superior to control surfaces. that doesnt mean that computers or software are bullshit, or that hardware is more authentic or musical. craig anderton (home stuido guru) made this point in a talk i saw him give. he said simply that creation is a right-brain process, and that is a control method interferes by bringing the left-brain back into the mix, then creativity will be hampered. i dont think its conservative for technology to be easy for humans to use simply because humans are the ones using the technology. anyone who is following the music technology world knows already that all those fancy software audio reording suites now have marvelous hardware controllers. is it conservative to stick with a good idea if it works? sometimes, not doing so can create crappy results (cf the entire history of city planning vs us suburbs since the 1950s).

3. there is also too much of a myth of the happy accident, or whatever. techno, for instance, is sometimes disccused as being a bunch of kids fucking around with old gear, throwing out the manuals, which is a little condescending. i watched a video of carl craig doing seminar on Logic software, and he talked about, either on the vid, or in the accompnying interview, about how, when he got his first sequencer, alesis mmt8, he got to the point where he could take the whole thing apart and put it back together again. certainly this kind of knowledge is partially the basis on which his excellence is founded upon.

4. i find that the more options are available, the harder it is to create something unique; its easier to rely on presets, especially if you are presented with a language that is not intuitive. if you sit down for the first time at a korg or yamaha workstation, you will end up using presets, making bland tracks, and if you had a studio filled with tritons, motifs, fantoms, etc., your tracks would more like demos than tracks made by someone who only has a few small synths, but knows them all very well. stretching a dinky 1 osc analogue synth to its absolute limits will probably yield stranger results.

yay for craig anderton. & point 4 is particularly dead on.

>I highly doubt keeps up with technical advances

He's writing for a mass audience, so he's not providing details.
He's most likely griping about $100,000+ digitally automated mixing consoles. Which are extremely powerful, they do 'everything'; just not intuitively. Ten times more constricting than using a mouse is using a tiny digital touch screen to page through four pages worth of bizarrely abbreviated menus (MLDY2 or DQX10) just to adjust an EQ setting or change the delay time by 3 milliseconds, instead of reaching over and twisting a fucking knob.

The corporations leading the way are huge and have the reflexes of a four ton slab of concrete, so the changes are slow in coming; in fact every single time one long-requested for, completely boneheadedly obvious feature finally shows up, ten other things seem to become more obscured. It's absolutely maddening.

Eno's points are succinct and I hope this article led to a lot of work as a consultant. Ha ha ha ha ha.

i should say that it is possible to learn those workstations really well and produce something amazing (though its a dirty little secret that most hiphop tracks are korg presets, which doesnt take away from the genius of the songs), but it takes a while (you can go to www.motifator.com and order a series of like 4 or 6 DVDs that explain how to use the motif forinstance).

yes. of course it's possible, you quickly learn how to page through those four submenus in your sleep. I'm just griping.

I'm not really complaining, I grew up with a razor blade and quarter inch tape and I am staggeringly grateful for Pro Tools, mouse and all. I love to complain about the Neves, the Studers, the Pro Controls but as I complain, I use them every chance I get. I also think that companies are well aware that the real frontier for hardware development at this point are control surfaces, and there have been amazing breakthroughs in the four years since grumpypants' Wired article, so hopefully they'll keep coming...

>dirty little secret that most hiphop tracks are korg presets

it's been a good couple of years for korg, that's for sure

A couple of notes:

1. In response to "3. there is also too much of a myth of the happy accident, or whatever. techno, for instance, is sometimes disccused as being a bunch of kids fucking around with old gear, throwing out the manuals, which is a little condescending.

I think that one may have been started by original, and current techno fans themselves. It's not condescending, its more about a sort of rebelious attitude. At least that's my theory, as I've always thought the idea of them throwing out the manuals = genius.

Plus, I saw David Bowie discuss that in an interview once, something about how the scientests who made synths didnt know anything about music so they threw away the manuals. Hmm.

2. I seriously doubt Eno is behind technology-wise. I remember he was actually part of the ad campaign for one of Cubase's products.

3. also think that companies are well aware that the real frontier for hardware development at this point are control surfaces, and there have been amazing breakthroughs in the four years since grumpypants' Wired article, so hopefully they'll keep coming...

What are some of the advances in control surfaces? Not meaning to come off sarcastic or indignent at all, I'm really generally interested if companies have moved interfaces beyond the mouse? I mean beyond the midi keyboard, is there anything?

2. I seriously doubt Eno is behind technology-wise. I remember he was actually part of the ad campaign for one of Cubase's products.

Or rather, not Cubase, the company that makes Cubase. Steinburg or whatever.

Grossman:

1. We're not talking about literature and education, it's
a different subject and the rules are different.

2, 3, and 4 reflect the attitude of not using new tools
because we're already so damn good with the old ones.
You could use the same argument for instruments: I'm already
a damn good ivory-tinkler, why pick up the clarinet when
I'll sound like a squawking disgrace for the first year
or two?

no reason to be afraid of the new stuff. but important to realize there's going to be things the old stuff does that the new stuff will never, ever be able to simulate or even remotely compete with.

by control surfaces, I'm mainly talking about mixing consoles. The mixer is the instrument, as physically playable as a guitar. I don't know what Eno was using, but maybe something like this, but since 1999 there have been neat things happening on the consumer level, like the oxygen8 (and the Edirol surfaces), the digi002, the Logic Control & the Tascam firewire stations.

Brian Eno composed the Window's startup sound wav, didn't he?

it should be pretty clear that i am not against new tools. if not, let me say it: i am not against new tools. your analogy is wrong because you are talking piano vs clarinet when i am talking about different kinds of pianos or clarinets. imagine if someone were to try and make a new type of clarinet, with all sorts of extra options that have been made available by technology. if those options were to make it more difficult to play the clarinet, then they would be at least frustrating if not pointless. the whole idea is to integrate the new ideas and new technologies with the familiar ways of working. its important to remember that i am not railing against any new type of interface, and neither is eno. a $300 console and a $300,000 console still share the same basic ideas of what an interface is. the question is whether all of the complex functions of the latter get in the way of actually making music. its not a deficiency with the technology, but how it is presented to the user.

Speaking of Eno, Control Surfaces, and Korg... Eno loves the KAOSS Pad.

http://www.korg.com/sbytes/article.asp?ArtistID=155

I've had a Roland Phantom workstation keyboard now for better than two years, and am just getting around to messing with the actual timbre of the tones. I have always had a much easier time creating music with simple tools that I am pretty familiar with, and this keyboard is like learning a new language. However, once you know the language, new worlds start to open up and you get to be familiar and amazed all at once. I can't see any greater advantage to technology in music.

Also, in Eno's article I detect a very common aversion among musicians/artists coming to terms with technology, one to control and the sudden responsibility to explore hundreds of avenues that were previously left to some degree of chance. He speaks of a lack of personality in the new system he was working with, that he could not develop any "relationship" with it. Even though I feel I know exactly what he's talking about, I think he writes that because he is expecting the equipment should "interract" with him, in a relatively unpredictable manner - like, say, an analog synthesizer might when you tweaked with wave patterns of a patch or whatever. Eno is probably used to a "painstaking" (though really pretty fun if you're into it) process if tweaking things, of going over things again and again trying to refine the sound you really want. New recording systems do not operate in this fashion exactly; today, one must explicitly "tell" the sound how it should behave. I think most artists want to feel as if they have invested time in every aspect of their composition, but with the number options available, tweaking and exploring every aspect of sound would completely overwhelm the recording/compositional process. It's funny, even though there are lot more sounds at everyone's disposal, you almost have to have an even more single-minded focus than in the past. And that can be pretty frustrating/scary.

>New recording systems do not operate in this fashion exactly; today, one must explicitly "tell" the sound how it should behave.

i.e., these programmable mixing boards can do everything... once you've carefully mapped out a key matrix especially customized for the song you're working on. and once you've mapped out that matrix, you have to learn file management to save and recall those values.

this gives you tremendous power; you can move back and forth between mixes very quickly without physically resetting each EQ, fader value, and redoing that patch bay, it's all digital. But you do need to learn how to use the computer that's built into the mixing board. you end up spending a lot of time doing admin work on that board, your fingers are often having to leave the faders to go back and tweak something that's four menus deep on that touchscreen; and yes, when the engineer's busy reading menu options, he can't listen to the producer's suggestions about how maybe the snare drum needs a little more 'life' in it somehow, could the producer hold that thought for just a second.

the neat thing about vintage audio mixing consoles is; they're huge, multi-person boards; they're built for multiple pairs of hands. Mixdowns would be rehearsed and choreographed by teams of people, there was no other way to print simultaneous EQ sweeps on tracks 9 & 10 while fading out tracks 38-44 while fading up the reverb on the bus.

So engineers have actually been asking for digital consoles that allow you to automate these processes, to record these dial & fader movements piecemeal, to compose with them. The new consoles do these things, but the feature set has been implemented with computers; for the last twenty years, computers have been designed as single-person workstations. As a result, the new digital consoles aren't very collaborative, they come more out of the tradition of a single-user piloting a TV monitor, clicking through options and menus to configure & choose from a universe of options. Getting ready for playback used to require several technicians, now it's one person doing everything, not necessarily faster (although 'cheaper', requiring only one paycheck).

Eno's not being regressive, and I'm sure he can see the upside of these consoles; they're more powerful now that one person can do everything, but the simple, basic tasks (like EQ routing) that used to be simple now take longer to execute. And also, the mixing engineer is forced more and more into the role of an Information Technology Administrator; single pilot boards force him to do a lot of work himself, and so he can't respond as quickly to other people in the room.

One last thing about 'painstaking', Eno certainly is not afraid of new technology, he's one of the only people out there who really learned how to do interesting things with a DX7, one of the most unfriendly programming interfaces in the history of musical technology (a fader for data entry, a few buttons and a 2 x 32 character ASCII display). So if he's calling something 'unintuitive' as a criticism I will believe him.

Nice discussion, folks.

all good points. its prob important to note that Eno doesnt have one of these $million boards at home.