From thatcat Sent Thu, Mar 26th 1998, 00:42
From thatcat Sent Thu, Mar 26th 1998, 00:42
On 03/25/98 20:04:53 you wrote: >>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.. recent albums by aphex twin, autechre, coil, etc. all rely on expensive computer software/hardware and (at least) moderately expensive samplers. all of these bands have sonically progressed from their earlier works, partially through buying more powerful (hence expensive) equipment. these artists all succeeded in writing good music with little gear, but personally i doubt rdj or autechre could create five lp's each of totally brilliant music which sounded completely different from album to album using only a juno and a 606. it would get old after a while. i find their recent works more sonically challenging than their older stuff, some of which is due to the fact that they can create more original sounds due to more expensive gear. >:-) ...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. right, but again i enjoy tom's recent music (hard normal daddy, big loada) more than his older stuff. > 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. right, but a creative musician can get more out of a computer loaded with powerful software than he could out of a simple cheap synthesizer. (of course, he may be able to get more out of a simple cheap synth than an uncreative person could get out of an expensive computer...) >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. it is made to be heard and enjoyed, but generally it is made for the artist writing, or perhaps their direct friends. neither i nor anyone i know who writes music, idm or otherwise, gives a shit about making things commercial so that people will listen to it. if a label happens to like something i've written, then so be it, i'll release something on that label. when the owner of astralwerks said to me "we now only release dance music", i didn't go and write some dance music. >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 doesn't mean that musicians are sitting around trying to write music that other people like. generally they write music that they like themselves, and either other people like it and they sell records, or no one likes it and they don't. it's not a matter of every idm musician sitting around going "i need to write something more popular so that warp will pick me up", although i suppose some people are like that... np: black dog "bytes" "a dream is worth a thousand pictures, the mouths of lampreys a thousand more..."