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 Forum index » Discussion » Composition
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Kassen
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PostPosted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 1:45 pm    Post subject: Getting started. Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I have some ideas that I´d love to "throw in the group" later on once I´ve had some time.

For now I´m realy wondering. Current technology is capable of both generating notes and generating sounds, just like the person behind it is.

This means your synths could play music composed by you or you could play music composed (or generated) by the computer or you could have any number of hybrid forms in between. You might call those jams.

Where are *you* on this scale? Do you find yourself fighting the technology for controll or do you feel more like you are coöperating with it? When playing solo keyboard (or guitar!), do you find yourself following a shuffle patern inspired by a drum machine? Or, conversely, are you frustreted the X0X doesn´t "get" your funk? Do you think programed randomness is adding to music on a sound level? How about on the note level? How does the instrument´s interface influence the way you write for it or play it? Can you only "jam" in realtime or can you jam in your head while writing notes that your computer renders later?

Let´s forget how large and heavy the subject is (or can apear to be) and get down to *your* bedroom studio´s method and madness.

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chuck



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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I think we face this problem every day. Probably in areas beyond music.

I've always had a bit of a problem with computer generated notes.... the random, S+H, algorithmic composers and the like. Somehow I prefer to think that music (for whatever it really is) is controlled by the human.

We have given in so much to mother nature and this earthly existance... we have to eat and sleep, we have only two arms and legs (that is the lucky ones of us) we won't live beyond 100 years... can only hear between 20Hz and 20K Hz (the lucky ones again!) can see less than a octave or so of light vibrations.... the list goes on and on.

It seems like in the case of art that we (humans) have created we ought to impose a certain element of what it is that makes us unique as people.

In other words, surrendering to randomized composition, or allowing computers to make our music (even if we do program the parameters) is some kind of artistic/philosophic justification of avoiding the responsiblity for the direction of the art we are living for.

So as for the organization of the sounds, or the sounds themselves.... go ahead and create what you feel like. Don't apologize. Make something, and make it as good as the moment you are in dictates. If it sucks, so what? Make something else.... make more of that. Try to copy something you love... copy something you hate..... create something that is the oposite of what you love.. or hate. Don't worry, failure is a valid human experience too.

And if technology is a help to this goal... use it anyway you'd like.

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mosc
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:22 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

welcome Chuck, good to have you here.

Quite a good first post. Thanks.

I missed this topic when it first started. It's scope is huge.

I sometimes feel more expressive developing an algorithm than when I'm improvising on the keyboard, which I love to do BTW. Some of us are hackers - we love it and we express ourselves threw it. I get a thrill hearing music that is new and never heard, but being created using processes I created. When the algorithms are musical, then the music will sound fresh and interesting. While the processes can use random sequences, the output is not random - there is form and structure. I enjoy very much listening to such works by other people too.

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Kassen
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PostPosted: Tue Apr 26, 2005 7:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Chuck, I´m delighted you took this topic to jump into the fray. Frankly I´m not surprised you are taking a critical stance; my writeup was meant to provoke in order to get things roling, however it took a while before somebody responded.... No harm done, we have the time. I´d like to take this paragraph which seems to be the core of your post and react to that.


chuck wrote:
In other words, surrendering to randomized composition, or allowing computers to make our music (even if we do program the parameters) is some kind of artistic/philosophic justification of avoiding the responsiblity for the direction of the art we are living for.


Valid. However, wouldn´t the stance that taking a purely deterministic additude towards composition and sound denies the inherent organic, fluent and only partially understandable nature of our world be equally valid? couldn´t that too be seen as hiding from the truth and avoiding responcibility? After all, how can we deal with the world, much less coment on it or "talk" about it if we don´t deal with it´s nature int he process?

Do I understand you see total controll of every element down to the bit (or electron, if you wish) level as desireable and if so attainable?

To me both extremes are undesireable; pure machine controll or randomness leaves no room for myself, pure and total controll of all details takes far too much time and efford, it´s not that I lack the dedication, it´s that i need a certain flow to the creative process that rules out such micro-management.

Can I ask what instruments you prefer and see as reflecting your stance towards music and self-expression?

Welcome on board, by the way, I look forward to discussing these matters and others in more detail.

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chuck



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PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2005 4:21 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Kassen,

We're in agreement. I don't think anyone can really be in control of anything. Anyone who has composed music for live ensembles has had the experience of hearing it performed in ways unexpected. Or if we compose with technology, then we get to discover (after the fact) things that we could/should have done. If we get upset about that, we've lost the thrill of music.

I'm just a bit suspitious about random selection as an artistic expression. Putting bits of recording tape in a box and splicing them together is an interesting idea, it really is... but how many times do you want to listen to "Williams Mix"? Is "getting the idea" the same as "hearing the music"? (However this 'idea' was put to good use by George Martin and the Beatles in "Sgt Peppers...")

So maybe random things are best left as a tool, and not as point of focus for art.

As for instruments, I have the usual Mac dual G5, Digital Performer and Aurturia Moog Modular, Mach 5, Absynth 3. Although I do a good bit of writing for acoustic groups and theater.

If anyone takes a bit of offense at comments against the random thing, I'll confess to having taught Middle school band for 16 years where the sole order of the day is to stamp out randomness in pitch and rhythm selection(a task never completed BTW). For the last 6 years I've taught electronic music composition to 7th graders.... much nicer, quieter, in tune. (ah... sweet control!)

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blue hell
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2005 5:28 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

chuck wrote:
In other words, surrendering to randomized composition, or allowing computers to make our music (even if we do program the parameters) is some kind of artistic/philosophic justification of avoiding the responsiblity for the direction of the art we are living for.


Maybe there is some laziness involved indeed, but randomness can also be a way out of patterns you have grown into. When I play guitar I tend to play the same things over and over again, letting a synth play some random tunes sometimes gives me new ideas. But so does singing along with the car engine, sometimes.

At the same time my Nord Modular noodles seem to have a purpose in itself, but of course things are never truely random, not even are the noodles quickly made. They always have to fit the mood that I'm in while making them - not much differentfrom playing a guitar or a whatever - in that respect.

And to be honest, when I use a note sequencer almost always I'm to lazy to fill out the notes indeed, instead I just hit the ransom button a few times until it sounds ok (but I do usually impose some scale over the output before the wire goes to a frequency control input). But then again I don't use note sequencers that often, there are more (and more interesting) ways to generate pitch patterns.

Now I don't think that I'm avoiding some responsibility working this way, but of course everyone has to find a personal way to make music.

And the quoted remarks above certainly made me think for a while, which is good :-)

Jan.
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egw
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 27, 2005 5:44 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

I think of randomness as a kind of stimulus.
When the human mind is confronted with random information, it attempts to impose a structure on it. The brain is after all a pattern recognition device.
This process of imposing order is the origin of the creative impulse (or vice versa).

It's an interesting exercise to try to play random things (without the aid of a computed process). Of course it is not truly random but it can inspire new ideas. Then you can also play with the grey areas of partially random patterns. I think others here have also expressed a fascination with the boundaries between order and chaos, between human and machine, organic and electronic, etc. To me, that is where the most interesting music lies.
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sloppycoder



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PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2005 5:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Just to bring back this old thread, i dont like randomness at ALL! I dont even like arpegiators for taking precise control out of my hands.

That said the way the technology works provides a series of tricks which we can use. For example fading out a section by closing a lowpass filter with a high Q value, giving a really dark sounding end/transition. To my mind this is similar to a guitarist performing a pinched harmonic or similar, just another way to use an instrument. The physical (and software... hmmm not very eloquent that!) possibilities do control what we do to some extent, but i like to keep a far tighter grip than random score/ timbre generation allows.

I do use a technique i call "Rekeying" sometimes. This means making a cifer style key linking the 12 tones to each other arbitrarily. This can be done in 6 pairs, or each individually to one other or any combination of pairs/ non pairs. Then you run a known lick or riff or whole passage through this system (By hand at the minute, working on it though! hehe) which can yeild some interesting results as all intervals are arbitrarily changed and can be inverted totally but some of the musical meaning gets through anyway in return notes and the overall structure.

Slop

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Kassen
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PostPosted: Wed May 18, 2005 6:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

sloppycoder wrote:

I do use a technique i call "Rekeying" sometimes. This means making a cifer style key linking the 12 tones to each other arbitrarily. This can be done in 6 pairs, or each individually to one other or any combination of pairs/ non pairs. Then you run a known lick or riff or whole passage through this system (By hand at the minute, working on it though! hehe) which can yeild some interesting results as all intervals are arbitrarily changed and can be inverted totally but some of the musical meaning gets through anyway in return notes and the overall structure.

Slop


You could download the demo of Ableton Live4 which has a midi effect that does exactly this. You get a matrix of in and out notes and get to link those. A diagnoal line from the lower left to the upper right means the input equals the output but you can moce all of the blacks around for your own custom remapping. You can also modute the position of the links to change your map in mid-piece if that´s desirered. Works on iether a MIDI file or on live keyboard (or whatever) input. It´s propbably meant ot remap drums or change scales but your method will owrk equally well. I think you could save your maps as presets too if you find a particularly good one for later use but I´m not sure the demo supports saving.

Much faster then doing it by hand!

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sloppycoder



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PostPosted: Thu May 19, 2005 12:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

Ahhhh thanks kassen, ill check it out Smile

Slop

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PostPosted: Sat May 21, 2005 8:00 am    Post subject: Reply with quote  Mark this post and the followings unread

This "rekeying" thing is very cool. I use something similar. I process my MIDI keyboard though KeyKit and remap notes in both time and pitch. I love to make automatic canon generators. One of my favorite effects is real-time time quantization. You can do this on the G2 as well (an many other ways too, no doubt). Another interesting thing to do is just delay the MIDI stream but some significant amount, like several seconds. Then when you play, you are listening to yourself in the past. It really frees up your creative process - highly recommended. You don't even need a MIDI delay tool for this, you can use an audio workstation, although I have never done it this way.
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