If more and more kids want to learn to make electronic music, does that mean fewer and fewer kids want to learn instruments?

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Really??!? So do I, kinda.

I left the guitar in Australia, though am thinking of picking up another one. None of the Virtual Guitarist or Apple Jam Pack 3 samples have the right kind of lo-fi skronk.

was this the question?

FREE YOUR MIND.

Seriously, this shit is part of why 99% of all music-making-related bulletin boards are so terrible.

instrument: 5. A device for producing music.

But perhaps that's because the keyboard is more similar to girls' masturbation mechanics... (sorry, I still have not got over giggling about that comment on the Girls What Play Bass thread)

!!!

i've been doing it all wrong

I pretty much gave up on playing in a rock band in Feb 99 and all I did for the next four years was work on electronic music. In the end, I found the whole process really tiring and not much fun. There is much, much more work that goes into designing the sound than actually playing. It is just not for me. I'd work for a week on some sounds and end up writing myself into a corner with about 90 seconds of music and not being able to figure out how to get to the next part. My hat goes off to people that can make the machines sing. I can't start with making music with MIDI or just samples, I think they are fine tools, but my brain is hardwired to the bass/guitar neck to build up music structure.

From messing around with breaks, I have no clue how people could have the patience to make drum and bass or those kind of breakbeat sounds. To really make it work and sound right and not some BS with one loop on repeat, it takes HOURS and really knowing how to use your setup.

the way i figure it you've got a great loop/riff/idea, maybe it's on sequencer, maybe it's a guitar jam - ok it needs a change - how are you going to get that change? - on my old setup it used to take me a good 90 mins to piss about, take a shot at the (one)chord change with stretching/pitching whatever, then decide that it sucked and didn't work. on a guitar you can jam around 50 or 60 possible changes in the same amount of time. by my way of working, that makes a live instrument 50 or 60 times more fluid than a sequencer based setup for writing, even if you end up sampling off your changes and mashing the fuck out of them. the time spent on tracks is critical - from the minute you start an idea on a computer the race is on to get somewhere with it before you get so fucking bored with hearing the same thing going ROUND AND ROUND AND ROUND. sometimes you get led up an alley that still ends up in nothing. as a guideline, if you've spent 3 weeks on a track before it collapses through your fingers one morning and leaves you with a boring stupid jumble of loops that you never ever want to hear again then you've lost it you fucking numpty - welcome to the inside of your lower intestine. rant rant rant grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

mad at myself? me?? maybe, but i get more and better results working on a guitar.

-- n/a (nu...)

OTM and I can't believe no one said it sooner.

Nick and Roxy are totally OTM when it comes to recording, but for live playing, computer-based stuff just don't have the same flexibility and power in most cases (yet).

Really??!? So do I, kinda.

Yeah, we're one of the only shops of our kind in Canada, in that we just sell synths, computers, and DAW hardware/software. I've been there for six years.

Of course (as others more or less pointed out later on) it takes a lot of practicing with the computer to "play non-trivial things" as well.

Seriously, this shit is part of why 99% of all music-making-related bulletin boards are so terrible.

I belive Lynskey has been saying it on ILM for about 3 years now.

i'm with Earl... i'm in awe of some of the incredible artistry that gets plucked out of the ether by people who start with nothing but a blank sequencer screen in front of them - in fact it was those people who inspired me to throw myself onto the vertical learning curve in the first place. it just took me years to realise that this way of working didn't suit me. take it from a jaded old fuck - don't squander your life kids! choose the path of least resistance ie. whatever suits you best, electronic or trad instruments and just Make The Music. the machines and toys and guitars don't create great things, the people in front of them do.

now i should stop posting on this board and go and Do. It. :)

Now, I don't feel much of anything because I don't have access to a home studio anymore.

I'm fond of saying that all recorded sound is inherently "artificial", so what does it matter how that sound is created? I like "live"-sounding music, I like completely programmed music, and I like music that sits somewhere in the middle. All three approaches are perfectly valid to me, so long as the end result is a good song.

I've always wondered why the "electric" guitar is seen as "real" but a synth is not.

Anyway, believe me, I DO NOT see one group as "real" and the other group as "not real".

The important thing is being able to asy the kids aer still making interesting and good music.

I also like hot beats and crazy sounds, so I would be sad if teh kidz stopped learning how to use computers, samplers, and sequencers too.

you see, in the '90's we used to get screamed at from magazine covers everywhere by *insert name of techno act* browbeating us into their opinion that Rock Is Dead and somehow an inferior form of artistry practised by dull-witted luddites. this is as facile as claiming now that Dance Music Is Dead - it's not, it's merely in a temporary coma. question is, does any of this shit have to be so partisan?

1. it's all valid

2. do whatever suits you best

walter, i get your point and every generation becomes better and better at crossing the interface between man and machine into the realm of genuine creativity - but be sure to let your offspring find their most genuine method of expression - don't push them to suit your agenda! great music is great music period.

right i'm officially drunk now. sparring partners of old know never to take me seriously at this time of night - adios!

Well, it's about whether it's real time or not, but it's also about whether it involves any sort of mechanics or not, whether it involves physical/muscular control or not. Again, not trying to debate the merits of one versus the other, just suggesting a distinction.

And at a certain point you have to say oh well, kids aren't learning to play the accordion anymore. So what?

Well, I think I'd make a stronger analogy than that - it'd probably be more like if everyone stopped reading purely text novels and only read graphic novels.

But anyway, I started this thread half-jokingly, and I'm not really too worried about guitar and drums dying out.

Why, what's the difference? Electronic music doesn't preclude the possibility of physical controllers. A MIDI keyboard or electronic drum set is not so terribly different from the acoustic counterpart. And as it's been pointed out already, programming exclusively on the computer screen is in many ways similar to composing on paper.

Well, I think I'd make a stronger analogy than that - it'd probably be more like if everyone stopped reading purely text novels and only read graphic novels.

I don't think that analogy holds up. To me it's more like writing a novel with paper and pen vs. using a word processor. The end results are essentially the same even if the process uses the muscles and brain in a different way.

One would probably have to take enormous, enormous pains on very advanced equipment (which may not even exist yet) to get certain subtle dynamic or phrasing effects that occur almost naturally on a guitar, violin, or whatever.

I disagree completely. First of all, the expressive possibilities of acoustic instruments are definitely not naturally ocurring. You still must learn to bend strings or create vibrato, and more importantly learn how and when to use those techniques effectively. Expressive electronic instruments are not that much of a novelty with all of the velocity sensitivity, pitch and modulation wheels, knob turning, theremin devices, ribbon controllers, foot pedals, etc. As always it's a question of how to use the possibilities in an expressive way. If anything I think kids who become completely immersed electronic music at a young age will create new types of music that explore these expressive possibilities in ways we can't imagine yet.

I came to electronic music quite late - after 15 years of being in guitar bands. However, before the guitar bands, I had 10 years experience of "classical training" so I wasn't particularly attached to the twangling metal strings thing. My formal musical training was in composition and sight reading first, then applying that to violin or piano or voice or any of the other things I studied. Which, even though it's seen as an outdated teaching method in the "rock age" of people getting together in bands and jamming, was a much better training for electronic music, funnily enough.

Because even as I was playing in guitar bands, my favourite medium was actually 4-tracking. In which case, the tape recorder becomes the "instrument" - multilayering, multitracking, recording found sounds and mixing them with vocals, guitars, drum machines etc. To me, that was the perfect form of music making.

So, to me, using a laptop and Reason or Cubase or something is an extension of 4-tracking - a 4-track that never runs out of tracks, where the sounds are limited by your imagination, rather than what stuff you can find lying around the house.

Teach kids composition and music theory - those are the important bits. How music works, how it's made. And then let them choose what instrument they want to use to play it - be that a violin, guitar or a laptop.

I guess it does; I've been tinkering with sequencers of one sort or another, on and off, since the early 1990s. (I started with module trackers, unless one counts juvenile experiments with a Commodore 64.)That experience has undoubtedly helped.

These days, even if one doesn't get into computer music via being a big geek, one can start off and achieve things from the start. Launch GarageBand/Cubase/whatever, plug in a MIDI keyboard, and noodle as if it were a piano. When you come up with an idea, record it on a track. Repeat for more tracks. The rest of it (effects, EQ, and so on) is studio technique, and one can pick that up as one goes along. One can start with dry piano (or string, or softsynth preset, or whatever) tracks, using the computer as a glorified 4-track, and then gradually tweak the presets, layer plug-ins, and get into the whole studio-as-an-instrument paradigm in one's own time.

Amen.

I kid...

Man, did that ever get old fast. And the sad part is, I know a lot of people who bought into the mythology at the time.

This has to do with the key difference between live music and sequenced electronic music being that creating the latter isn't so much an act of performance as of authorship, of constructing an artefact rather than performing an act. A maker of electronic music working on an opus has more in common with a writer or sculptor, in the way s/he works, than with a rock/folk/jazz/&c. musician playing in real time.

Hmm... has anyone tried playing overwrought air-guitar (or air-keyboard or air-violin or whatever), perhaps on a toy plastic guitar or something ridiculous, over a sequencer/sampler set?

The guitar has long been a symbol of cool and has sexual overtones. The laptop less so.

Somehow Hip Hop artists get away with it.

-- acb (il...), October 14th, 2005.

OTFM

i actually thought about what i'd do if i were doing like electronic stuff on stage. and decided i'd project my laptop screen onto a huge screen. and they'd see my sequencer thing working on half a screen, and my game of solitaire on the other half.

occasionally they'd see me logging on to gmail/AIM to write to my mate to tell them about all the suckers who paid £25 to see me do this.

I've never understood how strumming a power chord on a guitar is supposed to constitute more of a "performance" than someone twiddling knobs on a f/x box. Why is one minor physical act a "performance", and the other isn't?

http://www.well.com/user/wellvis/Myrtle.JPG

Fake:

http://www.carnaticcorner.com/pictures/mohan-synth.jpg

Get it??

Just noticed that.

face it, getting all cerebral with our software ain't gonna pull the ladies. it just isn't as 'exciting' to watch - we can gripe and bitch and moan about it all we want but we can't change the core truth - until you can sling your laptop like a gun, play it like a phallus and/ put your foot on the monitor at the same time then you're just not in the running. ever seen a sonic sculptor break a sweat? hang a cigarette off their cd drive? simulate sex with their firewire port? nah, me neither.

what walter purposefully fails to grasp here is that you have to be able to play the music and pull the gurning face at the same time to really be able to lay any claim to authenticity as an artiste.

now i'm off to 'drop' a 'phat' 'break' and work up a 'nasty' 'b-line' so i can be down with 'the kids' - oh yeah gramps!

Umm but so question-wise here's the thing: apart from certain fields of really sample-mashing breakcore stuff, I feel like most electronic music right now is stemming from some kind of real-instrument background; plenty of (or even most?) electronic artists started on something more physical and immediate, and presumably draw on that in everything they do. (At the very least there's some childhood instrument-lesson or middle-school band to introduce you into the basics.) So while electronic music certainly keeps people from really mastering their instrument of choice, or developing "chops" or performance skills, I always assume that people are working from some kind of background instrumental framework when they make the stuff. (Personally I have no history with the keyboard and wind up programming most of the parts anyway, so I'm constantly going back and forth between guitar and mouse in order to make stuff -- half of the lines I write come from actually playing guitar along with loops and songs, and coming up with new parts that way.)

It's a fair point, but one totally irrelevant to what you were quoting.

Even though I don't make what could be called "prerecorded" music, I am interested in how the "performance" of such a thing could be made interesting to an audience. I mean, it seems like some musicians are forced to pointless fiddling of knobs when they really would rather be showing off the piece that they have slaved over with great exactitude, but "just clicking and leaning back" is so notoriously lame, and adding elements to making the performance more exciting also cuts away from the focus on the music itself, that it is just frustrating, and they come up with "things to do", knobs that they have to twiddle even though they could have been pre-twiddled, introducing an element of "liveness" that probably is only there to justify the expectations of the audience and basically amounts to busywork.

So, how can "prerecorded" music be "performed" successfully?

I've been off live shows in general for a couple years now. 90% bore the crap out of me.

I could go on, but I kinda think I don't need to.

On the other hand, live shows are generally terrible, but it often has more to do with how terrible and unpleasant venues (and perhaps also other concert-goers) are, although the fact that bands often obscure the interesting balance they have going on in their records to hit you with PURE RAW LOUDTH is annoying.

But, like, certainly with, say, classical music, I prefer to go to a concert and see it performed live, since it's much easier to make out the, uh, interactions in a piece when it is performed live (I tend towards chamber music rather than symphonies), and much easier to maintain focus in that classic "darkened room with campfire-like spotlight on performer" environment.

But you probably should ... you said you're interested in how the performance can vary from one gig to the next ... but you also labelled knob-twiddling as "pointless". So you're saying that an electronic piece represents "exactitude" and needn't be reshaped in real time during a gig, whereas with a rock song it's the opposite?