From artist Sent Wed, Mar 25th 1998, 20:04
From artist Sent Wed, Mar 25th 1998, 20:04
>Okay, this has been boiling up for a bit. <whistle> let the bubbling bile flow! >how many people out there have genuinely advanced with their music by >buying really expensive gear? >I have, definitely. Getting the MAC with SCSI to transfer the sounds and >program the Akai was the best thing I could have done. this kind of gear wasn't really the focus of what i was saying - i was sort of talking about high-quality gear, as in low noise, high bandwidth blah blah, not so much about new tools, which are a more valid way of spending your cash, but still, not something you HAVE to have.. >Programming the Akai >to do a single track used to take 12 solid hours of button pushing. It's >more like two now. It's all about control. If you want your machines to >write your music for you, than stick with a simple setup with fewer >variables. Some of us seek more complexity... i know what you're saying, but really it's just made your job easier, not improved the potential of your music has it? maybe if you're lazy, yes.. :-) ...if tom jenkinson can do what he has done on a boss drum machine for sequencing and a 12 bit akai sampler, then for anyone who has the drive and determination to really do something, a setup such as yours (not that it's particularly expensive) isn't crucially important. i don't want to get to ground down in this argument (if you can call it that - it's more like two strains of twisted logic occasionally crashing together!) - it's horses for courses. if you have the money, fine, spend it if you want. if you don't (hands up) then it's no big loss. you only get out of your machines what you put into them, and don't be surprised if little johnny and his 4 track take the world by storm. with more expensive, and more complex equipment, you can obviously achieve a wider variety of sonic delights and other such things. but is this all that is important about music? can we not listen to music in a deeper sense? is it a good thing if the whole scene becomes one big technological race? where does it end? there's only so much information a human brain can process before information is lost.. >those who have the talent to make music that people want to hear... >I'm gonna cut you (whoever) off right there. The music that PEOPLE want to >hear. That statement is so incredibly absurd that there is no correct >rebuttal. None of the music you listen to was made with you in mind. If so, >than it's COMPLETELY INVALID by the standard definition. right, everyone stay indoors while we shut down the music industry, in that case. it's quite simple - i hear a record, i like it, THAT IS MUSIC THAT I WANT TO HEAR. >I'm assuming we're all referring to with our beloved "IDM' i'm not prepared to lay down the ground rules as strictly as this. there is no such thing as idm, apart from the rotten core of unoriginal producers with no imagination. it is the outer fringe, those not afraid to use whatever ideas they want, who are willing to work with any kind of influences, who make the interesting music and, in turn, influence others. with those people, we are simply talking about MUSIC and nothing so shallow as a set of stylistic rules. >something post-dancefloor. there are a LOT of dancefloors on this planet, and they are NOT all the same. >Agreed, club tunes have to have a crowd pleasing element the whole world is a club, your living room is a club, the street outside a 'club' is a club in exactly the same way, so there is no such thing as 'club music' in the way you put it. all music that is put on a disc and sold in a shop has to have a crowd pleasing element. it is made to be heard and enjoyed, otherwise it would not be put on fucking discs and sold in shops, and bought by us. no-one buys music that they don't like, therefore music that no-one likes doesn't sell, therefore it may as well not exist, except in the mind of the person who creates it, and maybe not even there if that person doesn't even like it themselves. this 'non-commercial' ethos concerning idm is just the biggest load of hot air - idm music is commercial in exactly the same way as any other section of the music industry is - please stop deluding yourselves cult-freaks and fashion-slaves! people make music, other people like it, and they buy it. it's the same across the board. experimental music is no different - experimental music is a market where the listeners WANT to hear something different - the experiment is a success if people LIKE it - because that is the only reason for the music to be there in the first place. taking your argument to it's conclusion, we could arrive at the classic arsehole's motto - 'if lots of people like it, it must be rubbish'. a lot of the time we may find that to be true for ourselves, but it is no way to live your life. it's destructive, and has nothing to do with music. labels who say "[we] will Never press more than 500 copies of our 12"s, we will also support underground retailers by selling in direct to them and Refusing to let the capitilist Pigs who run chain stores [both independant and mainstream] get their hands on our records" /are/ the biggest capitalists, who know that the way to sell lots of records (after the corporate licensing deal) is to create (and publicise) a limited supply, which has the effect of building up demand for their product amongst the impressionable kids to a level much higher than if they had actually pressed enough of their product to meet the demand in the first place. there have been those who did this and did not sell out, but what could their motive have been except to keep their precious art out of the hands of people who they consider a lower class than themselves (thus destroying their illusion that they are somehow more intelligent than the common scum who don't really understand the music (!!) and forcing them to tunnel deeper into underground-ness), or simply to be a cult icon, a face in a magazine or a t-shirt. in other words, these people are egomaniacs who never progressed socially beyond childhood. >But technology making someone less-dimensional! That also is absurd. no it's not. this is much too expansive a subject to write about off the cuff as i am doing here, but i would say that looking at technology as the way to solve your problems, in this case, musical, is simply side stepping the issue. if you can't 'do it' on a simple setup, what is there to say that by simply piling up the gear, piling up the options, piling up the sounds, is going to make your music worthwhile? nothing! would it make the music worse? i would say that more often than not, it will! you'll just end up with 48 tracks of crap instead of 8! no-one wants to hear a boring bastard hammering away on expensive gear - it's a waste of the musician's money as well as the listener's time! >> but your lexicon costs more than many people's whole setups. >so. if you're not prepared to spend tons of dough you don't belong in >the electronic music biz. :) >True, but not true. You can also tweak thousands (but not millions) of >sound varieties out of a Casiotone with built in sequencer. It would beat >out the records that strain to achieve that level of innocence. is anyone innocent in this day and age? everyone seems to think that they know everything ;-) >Anyways, anyone who had the chance to use the million dollar setup to have >greater control over what distorts and what doesn't, would use it right? well i would. but i don't have a million dollars. and i'm not going to lose a minute of sleep over it. any millionaire musicians who would agree to let me have a go on their equipment should feel free to contact me. >the musicians i respect the most know what to do with a studio full of >expensive gear. i don't respect any musicians. i just love pieces of music and try to forget that mere musicians actually made them. cos musicians are really pathetic people on the whole! <waves> np - behold this version - aggrovators / king tubby