(idm) Sampling/How The Music Was Created

From Chris Fahey
Sent Thu, Jul 9th 1998, 14:45

In response to the various responses to my post:

> Mother of God! What is this rubbish? When a musician is considering doing
anything
> he needs to think carefully about only one question. "Does it sound good?"
> Noone needs a load of rules for correct/incorrect music creation. If we
judge music
> not by how it sounds, but by how it was created - then we've lost the plot
completely.
> Take this "Keep Music Live" crap and return it to the fifty year old
rockers where it
> belongs.

    NO! NO! Just because I say you should *think before you sample*,
everyone accuses me of being some kind of "Keep Music Live!" hippie or
something. All I ask is that we, fans and artists, think about the music a
bit! That's what the "I" stands for in IDM.

    I totally disagree that the sole question when judging music should be
"Does it sound good?" I could release a record which is nothing but a giant
sample of Bitches Brew and satisfy your simple criteria. You have to hold
artists to a certain standard of artistic integrity, and your standard is
simply not high enough for almost anyone (except maybe a person who thinks
postmodernism is a fundamentalist religion). Judging music by How It Was
Created is and always should be one of the criteria.

    If I told you I was an expert cellist, then I stood behind a curtain and
played a Yoyo Ma album, wouldn't that be a bit of an ethical problem? I
think you're lying to yourself if you think that How The Music Was Created
doesn't come into play in your opinions. (For me, part of almost every
musical experience, I think, is a degree of personal identification with the
artist, imagining yourself making the music and what kind of skills it would
take to do it.)

    I find it strange that you and others saw my list of QUESTIONS and saw
them as RULES. What you call rules, I call plain old "thinking". Frankly, I
can't even fathom how anyone could use a sample and not ask themselves these
pretty simple, basic questions.


> > I still think that using the Amen Break in 1998 would be hard to justify
> > artistically.
>
> I disagree with this too. I think you'd be hard pressed to come up with
> unique amen usage these days, but it could be done.

THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I SAID!!! I never said you CAN'T, I just said it would
be HARD. (grrrr)

> It still takes a skilled chef to make delicious soup from store-bought
> ingredients, even with shelves full of cup-o'-soup.

    Ah, yes, wisdom!

    Again, I'm not saying it can't be done, but if I go to your house for
dinner and you give me cup-o'-soup straight out of the box, no matter how
good it may be, I'm not going to be impressed with your cooking skills. I
may *like the soup*, but I will probably think of you as a lazy chef (if I
even think of you as a chef at all).

    But if you make me a stew which happens to have cup-o-soup as an
ingredient (it's possible!), yet you've employed other culinary skills and
ingredients as well, then I will think of you as a chef.

-Cf
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