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From:
Mark Kolmar
To:
Anthony Ewers
Cc:
Date:
Wed, 1 Oct 1997 19:24:21 -0500 (CDT)
Subject:
Re: (idm) Playing Vs. Programming? & 'new'? frontiers in music...
Msg-Id:
<Pine.SOL.3.95.971001144935.29438B-100000@typhoon>
In-Reply-To:
<v03007801b057c23c7939@[158.152.239.189]>
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idm.9710.gz
On Wed, 1 Oct 1997, Anthony Ewers wrote:
quoted 2 lines Do you sit manipulating numbers all day without playing keys or other> Do you sit manipulating numbers all day without playing keys or other > instruments
Much of the night, yes.
quoted 1 line have you ever *played* live?> have you ever *played* live?
I'm inherently musical enough to play various instruments, to a point, esp. drums and bass guitar. I can play clarinet pretty well, and have a strong voice.
quoted 2 lines Please don't tell me you sit in front of Cubase's Grid/Key> Please don't tell me you sit in front of Cubase's Grid/Key > Edit all day!
Actually, Logic Audio, matrix and list editors. If I already know a certain sound should play at 0.2.0.9. +/- a couple ticks, I just put it there.
quoted 4 lines To come up with a new musical scale and thus possible harmonies you would> To come up with a new musical scale and thus possible harmonies you would > need to create notes not already present in other musical scales, like an > H or an I for example. Put quite simply, the amount of maths that surrounds > the acoustics of sounds & musical scale, points to this being impossible.
Harmony is a subset of timbre. There is no need to restrict one's musical thinking to the grid of the chromatic scale. I'm not even stuck with a 12-tone grid on clarinet! (It ain't a trombone, but you can do some pitch bends, quarter-tones, etc.) Much less with hardware/software which can create and reproduce sounds of arbitrary complexity. Traditional notions of melody and harmony sometimes don't apply.
quoted 4 lines The reasons you have to program> The reasons you have to program > or take multiple passes to record a simple acid bass line, is beacuase > elctronic gear encourages people to record things thay can't physically > play in one take
Good! In other words, electronics encourage a composer to dismiss the notion that music should hobble through ten, clumsy fingers on its way from the mind or soul.
quoted 2 lines people who barely play instruments using synths and sequencers and being> people who barely play instruments using synths and sequencers and being > heralded as bastians of music of the future!
On the upside, their thinking may not be bogged down so much by tradition. Although I still believe a thorough understanding of the history of music, as seen through a jaundiced eye, is an asset. (So do you still want the demo cassette you asked for? ;-) --Mark __ <http://www.xnet.com/~mkolmar/BurningRome> < MPEG & RA audio clips > m u s i c : w e b : s o u n d d e s i g n : h t m l : c g i : e t c