From thatcat Sent Thu, May 21st 1998, 01:04
From thatcat Sent Thu, May 21st 1998, 01:04
On 05/20/98 17:48:14 you wrote: > >> but it does slightly offend me when people assume that electronic music >>is programmed in the same fashion that someone writes computer code...it's >>not too much different a process than a guitar band going into a modern >>digital studio and recording multiple tracks of everything and then >>editing out all the mistakes... > >I'm sorry, but you are wrong. > >Wwhether it offends you or not, the reality is that most 'idm' type music >is made wholely or partly in ways that bear very little resemblence >indeed to the 'process' you mention. > >Its not just a question of 'live playing' versus step-time, there are a >million ways to make electronic music in which the live playing (at least >in the sense that you are using it) aspect is completely absent, for >example roland drum machine and 303 type programming either on these >machines or on ReBirth type clones, Max, drumgrid editing, Metasynth, >using waveloops inside synthesisers, breaking up and restructuring >breakbeats in samplers or audio sequencers, using intelligent >arpegiators, algorithmic composition techniques etc etc >Some or all of these techniques (and many others) are widely used in >everything from house to techno to drum n'bass to electronica to >experimental whatever ... this is really a broader category of music than the one to which i was referring...i was mainly talking about autechre, and implying that some similar bands (warp and skam and similar artists) did similar things. i didn't mean to imply that *all* electronic music was completely played... >There are also many techniques in which although a few notes might indeed >actually get 'played' at some point, these few notes are then looped, >transposed, time stretched, reversed, layered, mixed and mangled in ways >that would probably make your average 'guitar band in the studio' really >rather nervous ;-) a good bit of major/large label guitar/pop bands (but certainly not all) use a lot of the same computerized technology that idm bands use. the difference is that for pop bands, it is used for fixing mistakes in order to enable a shitty semi-talented band to sound like excellent musicians. in idm music, it's generally used for weirdness. "a dream is worth a thousand pictures, the mouths of lampreys a thousand more..."