You can barely call a lot of what's out there music anymore. It's hard to turn on the radio and find a song that doesn't have a synthesizer or isn't being auto tuned. Drums are being replaced by samples. Instead of finding the perfect guitar sound, you just choose a preset on a program. And do to auto tune a lot of people who should be singing are selling out concerts and wasting everyone's money. I've tried making songs with programs and I have to say, it is no fun. In my opinion the best bands use there own talent, not other people's. What do you all think??
p.s. i am gay
At 8/3/15 07:47 PM, midimachine wrote: i think you're a fucking idiot
judging by your name your a fan of the whole electronic thing?
I don't think it's the computer/technology to blame. The computer's just become another instrument/sound. Creating computer music does take some skill (compositional, technical). If anyone's to blame, I think it's people. Record companies are worried about making money. Giving the audience what they want....whether it's good or bad. In the end, it's the audience that's deciding what they want to listen to. I don't see how people are wasting their money going to see artists they actual want to see.
Music is in the eye/ear of the beholder. I could sit outside and listen to the birds, trees, cars, people, etc and call that music. It's all sound at the end of the day. Even music.
At 8/3/15 07:50 PM, girafficus wrote:At 8/3/15 07:47 PM, midimachine wrote: i think you're a fucking idiotjudging by your name your a fan of the whole electronic thing?
i'm a fan of a lot of things, but poorly reasoned, troll bait arguments against music technology are not among them.
p.s. i am gay
At 8/3/15 07:56 PM, DSykMusic wrote: I don't think it's the computer/technology to blame. The computer's just become another instrument/sound. Creating computer music does take some skill (compositional, technical). If anyone's to blame, I think it's people. Record companies are worried about making money. Giving the audience what they want....whether it's good or bad. In the end, it's the audience that's deciding what they want to listen to. I don't see how people are wasting their money going to see artists they actual want to see.
Music is in the eye/ear of the beholder. I could sit outside and listen to the birds, trees, cars, people, etc and call that music. It's all sound at the end of the day. Even music.
Yeah I Can understand that. And by a waste i was referring to the whole auto-tune thing. they sing well on an album but bad live, Doesn't happen in all cases but It does happen
At 8/3/15 08:00 PM, midimachine wrote:At 8/3/15 07:50 PM, girafficus wrote:i'm a fan of a lot of things, but poorly reasoned, troll bait arguments against music technology are not among them.At 8/3/15 07:47 PM, midimachine wrote: i think you're a fucking idiotjudging by your name your a fan of the whole electronic thing?
I'm not necessarily against the whole thing I just thing it takes away the authenticity. and yeah the way i phrased it was kinda eh ill give you that.
Yeah I Can understand that. And by a waste i was referring to the whole auto-tune thing. they sing well on an album but bad live, Doesn't happen in all cases but It does happen
I think in that case, technology has influenced our expectations of this 'perfect performance'. You could do an unlimited number of takes of a track in your DAW and edit until it's perfect. Then people hear this perfect result and expect artists to sound like that. I think it's a false sense of reality.
I think in that case, technology has influenced our expectations of this 'perfect performance'. You could do an unlimited number of takes of a track in your DAW and edit until it's perfect. Then people hear this perfect result and expect artists to sound like that. I think it's a false sense of reality.
I agree
At 8/3/15 07:35 PM, girafficus wrote: You can barely call a lot of what's out there music anymore. It's hard to turn on the radio and find a song that doesn't have a synthesizer or isn't being auto tuned. Drums are being replaced by samples. Instead of finding the perfect guitar sound, you just choose a preset on a program. And do to auto tune a lot of people who should be singing are selling out concerts and wasting everyone's money. I've tried making songs with programs and I have to say, it is no fun. In my opinion the best bands use there own talent, not other people's. What do you all think??
I see it differently. For me, computer assisted music is a real chance. Because I would have never been able to begin my musical journey without it. I'm writing mainly orchestral tracks, and I guess you can imagine it's not easy, for a teenager or for a student, to hire an orchestra to play your music, for example. And in that case, instead of "killing" music, the computer is democratizing it.
Even in the professional world, orchestral/acoustic sound libraries are widely used, because of ultra-tight deadlines (trailer music commissioned two days before the deadline), or because the project doesn't have the budget to hire an orchestra (indie games, or school projects), or sometimes just to give a bigger sound to a recording (If I recall correctly, even Hans Zimmer does that).
Also, you have much more freedom if you know how to use your tools. Presets are available to everyone, but you are free not to use them - and I think it is the wisest choice, because you then have to learn how to create your own sound. And, this way, you can get exactly what you want, instead of being limited by the presets available with your software. Is it really useful to have great sounds if you don't know how to use them, how to mix it with the rest of your track so it doesn't sound muddy/too bright ?
To sum it up, computer-assisted music offers opportunities if you do not have the skills, instruments and hardware equipment to record and produce all your music alone from A to Z. I'm not defending it against everything, yet I'm sure there are plenty of other examples where the use of a computer to make music is not only justified, but even sometimes necessary.
I respect you when you say that like when money is an issue. you gotta make the best of what you have. I think that it's a good tool for that purpose, But i find it to be an issue if you wanna sell your work. Because i mean, that's someone else s recorded playing. You get what I'm saying?
At 8/3/15 08:23 PM, girafficus wrote: I respect you when you say that like when money is an issue. you gotta make the best of what you have. I think that it's a good tool for that purpose, But i find it to be an issue if you wanna sell your work. Because i mean, that's someone else s recorded playing. You get what I'm saying?
I completely get it. But actually, sound libraries aren't free most of the time - and the musicians who helped to create these libraries have been paid to do that, and you paid for the right to use the sounds included in this sound library - so, indirectly, you paid the musician who played these samples. Basically, you pay the rights to use the recording of this musician for a lifetime - while you can't hire an orchestra for a lifetime, for example.
Oh, and by the way, just to be sure we're talking about the same thing, I'm mainly talking about the kind of sample libraries where you can "play" each note separately, I'm not talking about loops and phrases (although what I said apply to this kind of sound library as well, it's not something I use personally, most of the time, because I feel I don't have this freedom I was talking about).
Holy damn.
Anything electronic is part of music. Why do I say that? It's most definitely because a musical instrument is a tool to produce sound, and if choosing what note is played on it is cheating, then you sir, have no thinking process going up in your brain. I'll explain more -
You see, not everyone here is a composer so they practice doing remixes, etc. IS that cheating? If they've said they were a composer, of course it would be. But, if they are here to make their own version of songs then they're literally here to produce music. You can't simply digitally record a song HQ expecting it to sell out in the music industry. It needs a lot of EQing, compressing, and then mastering to make it sound like LIVE. Without all that, then you'll get a cheesy home made recording that no one will warm up to as much because the quality is god awful. So - using tools that improves quality isn't cheating? Let's move on.
Secondly, you have said synthesizers is cheating. Well, I'll be damned. Synthesizers need a knowledgeable person to use to produce music. So, it's not like it automatically plays a well written song. It needs someone to choose what it plays like a REAL instrument. Is that cheating, NO!
Lastly, you're just an idiot overall for assuming everyone you hear on the radio is auto-tuned. Auto-tune would be called out quick and slick because there's no way for someone not to sound robotic. They don't call in people and be like "Hey, you suck at singing, let's give you a record deal!" -- Believe it or not, people have fucking talent. The fact that you sit there and call them out without talent irks my nerve. Just because it's not music you like doesn't mean people are talentless.
Edit: I have heard some of your tunes, and I don't think you are knowledgeable enough to suggest what is cheating and what isn't.
http://yukkihonoka.newgrounds.com/follow
Like what I do? Then, it'd be really nice to have followers!
At 8/3/15 08:53 PM, dem0lecule wrote: You ran out of topic to troll, mate?
LMAO for someone who's using LMMS or a DAW to make music, I think you're a fucking hypocrite. Ofc, we can't rule out the fact that you just want a clickbait topic.
i used lmms and i didn't enjoy it i said in the post i've made stuff with synths. I posted this to see honest opinions. now i know this sint the stuff to post about
Sadly, I don't think it's the computers that are killing music. In fact, I think it managed to save some really old music as well that many of us still enjoy to this day, such as Tomas Luis de Victoria's 1572 major works of "O Vos Omnes" and "O Magnum Mysterium."
I think the computer is giving a false sense of what is expected vs. live - more bands have worse lives now than before, though some bands or musicians still produce top-notch lives.
However, since counterculture, which is where I honestly believe when the entire media industry in general (some not under that type of control have shown up since), things have gone downhill.
I hate to say this and bring in a political portion into this discussion, but recent events and interviews make need for this point to come up - Democrats were the ones that managed to get control of the media industries, and sadly, have promoted things as "R" when they should be more like "X" or above (and many should be "NC-17"). So how does this factor in necessarily you ask? - well, something unrelated is the other side of this issue, and the question that the Democratic Party chairperson was asked was "What is the difference between a Democrat and a Socailist?" The chairwoman could NOT answer that question.
With that said, I don't believe computers are actually the cause of the demise, in fact, they may have slowed it down a bit. However, if it was not computers that diminished the sentimental value of modern music on the radio, then it must be the promotion of socialism that did, because music was much better until about 50 years ago
I find myself listening to music made on gameboys more than I do music made with real instruments.
p.s. ur gay
At 8/3/15 10:26 PM, TheBetterAudioPortal wrote: I find myself listening to music made on gameboys more than I do music made with real instruments.
Gotta love the gameboy
At 8/3/15 09:51 PM, Chris354 wrote: Democrats were the ones that managed to get control of the media industries, and sadly, have promoted things as "R" when they should be more like "X" or above (and many should be "NC-17"). So how does this factor in necessarily you ask? - well, something unrelated is the other side of this issue, and the question that the Democratic Party chairperson was asked was "What is the difference between a Democrat and a Socailist?" The chairwoman could NOT answer that question.
I cannot for the life of me figure out how this is supposed to relate to the thread topic...
Aaaanyway, this is a pretty standard idea that you hear across almost all fields of media. The computer simply has become a tool of incredibly efficient manipulation.
What the introduction of all the computer-based production techniques mentioned (non-linear editing, MIDI, sample replacement, autotune, etc.) has basically done is given an incredibly strong boost to the industry element of the music industry. As anything industrious is concerned, it generally has to do with speeding up production while normalizing quality. There were just as many people who thought MIDI would ruin music following it's deveopment in '83. "Drum machines will replace drummers," and "no one will have to actually play an instrument any more" were some things fervently voiced by the AFM at the time. Little did they know what was to come, but luckily those sounds/approaches don't jive with everyone, and so there remains a market for tape, live music, and so on.
Photographers have said the same about Photoshop and digital cameras.
Film editors said the same thing about digital film formats and editing software.
Journalists have said the same thing about the internet, and now about automated article-writing bots.
None of these technologies will ever "kill" their respective forms of media, they will just give their industries a way to be more and more industrious. This does tend to mean that the media produced by these folks will become more formulaic, which is where the argument/complaint stems.
Derp.
At 8/3/15 07:35 PM, girafficus wrote: You can barely call a lot of what's out there music anymore. It's hard to turn on the radio and find a song that doesn't have a synthesizer or isn't being auto tuned. Drums are being replaced by samples. Instead of finding the perfect guitar sound, you just choose a preset on a program. And do to auto tune a lot of people who should be singing are selling out concerts and wasting everyone's money. I've tried making songs with programs and I have to say, it is no fun. In my opinion the best bands use there own talent, not other people's. What do you all think??
Yes, midi-programmed music or music made with loops have a lot less "feeling" and there's a lot of over-produced stuff on the top 40. However, you can add a lot of feeling if you play live the synth lines or you program your song with human "errors".
Try out some Daft Punk or for instance Hide and Seek from Imogen Heap and you'll see some electro stuff with A LOT of soul in it ;)
Yes, midi-programmed music or music made with loops have a lot less "feeling" and there's a lot of over-produced stuff on the top 40. However, you can add a lot of feeling if you play live the synth lines or you program your song with human "errors".
Try out some Daft Punk or for instance Hide and Seek from Imogen Heap and you'll see some electro stuff with A LOT of soul in it ;)
Ive listened to daftpunk, And I do enjoy them. there are bands who use these tools that sound good for instance radiohead. I just think its so much better when its not messed with
Though I as a dedicated electronic music producers feel inclined to say F*** u to ur opinions, I should probably explain y I think you are completely wrong. A synth is as much a instrument as a guitar, now isn't it? Just because you can't comprehend the beauty of.it doesn't mean that it isn't music. You don't really have the right to define what's music and what's not. I understand that you might not enjoy it, but please word urself differently and understand that your definition of "real" music isn't necessarily the rigt one.
-Ectisity
Just a random idiot
At 8/3/15 11:46 PM, Ectisity wrote: Though I as a dedicated electronic music producers feel inclined to say F*** u to ur opinions, I should probably explain y I think you are completely wrong. A synth is as much a instrument as a guitar, now isn't it? Just because you can't comprehend the beauty of.it doesn't mean that it isn't music. You don't really have the right to define what's music and what's not. I understand that you might not enjoy it, but please word urself differently and understand that your definition of "real" music isn't necessarily the rigt one.
-Ectisity
I should have phrased it differently. the electronic genre, I have nothing wrong with. Its things like rock music i draw the line. I dont want the synth to replace the electric guitar or a drum machine to replace a drum set. And if you listen to rock its starting to go that way
At 8/4/15 12:09 AM, girafficus wrote: I should have phrased it differently. the electronic genre, I have nothing wrong with. Its things like rock music i draw the line. I dont want the synth to replace the electric guitar or a drum machine to replace a drum set. And if you listen to rock its starting to go that way
It's simply the post-modern mentality in action: take what you please from the buffet of ideas and toss the manual out the window. Fusion, and the freedom of genre movement that comes with it, is the dominant "genre" of music of the 21st century. I often feel the same bitter remorse as you when I listen to a new hollywood film score that blends some sort of pointless electronic beat with an orchestra when it was not necessary in the first place; in many ways, I'm a purist. However, it doesn't take much to realize that 1. music is a grand tapestry of fads and fashions that come and go, and 2. even as times change, no genre or style is truly obsolete, or truly dominant.
What we are seeing in this thread is the same grinding of tectonic plates that composers like Beethoven or Haydn witnessed as styles, tastes, and interests changed: one group presents a new blend of ideas, it either gains popularity or dies out, and if it gains enough popularity, becomes the new dominant art form. We've seen this happen numerous times in music history: Baroque giving way to Classical, Classical giving way to Romantic... Ragtime giving way to Swing, Swing giving way to Beebop, Beebop giving way to Latin, etc.
Yet, even during the height of the 60's and 70's, with the rise of rock, contemporary jazz, and increasing complexity, a different resurgence of an entirely different type took place- the music of the 12th through 17th centuries- Early Music. Melodies and harmonies written over five centuries ago rang through the halls of churches and schools. One of the most famous events in this movement was the recording of a number of J.S. Bach's works on an early Moog synthesizer- a surprisingly tasteful (according to the reportedly immense record sales) combination the Baroque master would have never predicted.
For the five centuries between, it's easy to think this music was dormant, but it was not! A small group kept alive the embers of the Renaissance for modern man to revive and kindle into a movement to examine our past under a new lens.
Keep in mind that even in the 1900s, there were a handful of composers writing music in the style of Haydn, who lived 200 years prior, at the same time Joplin wrote his toe-tapping rags and Stravinsky drove the word mad with his bizarre music, despite the fact that the mediums, instruments, and performance venues had changed immensely over those 200 years.
Purists may seek a route of un-corruption, seeking authentic performances, period instruments and equipment, and traditional performance venues, but the potential for blending and cross-germination is not something to be lightly ignored. Without recombination/fusion, the very genres purists often seek to keep "clean' would never have existed in the first place. Any band, composer, songwriter, or producer who anyone can say has even just slightly "brought something new to the table" wouldn't be there without fusion.
The computer, and its potential, is no different. Computers and the digital world permit us to emulate, replicate, and manipulate the sounds of the acoustical and analog worlds. A splice that would have taken painstaking minutes, a careful hand, and masterful expertise, now takes mere seconds. A low-budget studio can track upwards of 12 channels of simultaneous multi-track audio at a time with under $1,000 in hardware, including the computer. Something like noise reduction or click removal, which would have been all but impossible albeit with the most advanced analog technology, is at the click of a mouse. An entire studio can consist of a $100 microphone and a piece of $200-400 software and a computer. Innumerable effects aim to put expensive, rare consoles, preamplifiers, effects, and more in the hands of computer users for affordable prices.
To say that those people who rely on these affordable solutions are less musician than those who spend $1,000+ on a solid drumset or guitar is a rather blind view, not to say that I think you have it. If anything, like the stunningly creative game composers of the 70's, 80's, and 90's, who, against incredible limits and constraints, created works of truly impressive complexity, the people who struggle to make it with that drum machine and those cheesy guitar samples are being driven to a creative realm no perfectly-equipped musician can even dream of going. Not to mention, their struggle is no different than the struggle every musician faces when he or she first starts out... perhaps in the 70's or 80's that meant with a cheap guitar or a home-made rig or some cheap keys, but today, that means some samples and some synths and a whole lot of experimentation.
Additionally, I do not think it is just to view computers and digital processing techniques simply for their usage in popular music. Its incredible democratizing of the music industry has taken the life-long commitment of "musician" or "composer" and turned it into a hobby that potentially costs even less than golf. It has put orchestras in the hands of students and hobbyists, amp cabinets in the hands of beginners and amateur guitarists and bassists, and drumsets and backing bands behind every singer-songwriter who needs a nice polished track and lacks the funds to take out a studio full of living musicians.
While the mark of perfection that has been left on music due to the wonders of technology in the digital age is perhaps something to be bummed out about, samplers and synthesizers will never truly be able to replace true beauty of the imperfection, much less the exhilarating joy of live performance. Sitting before (or among) a performance, be it the Boston Pops or your favorite rock band, is something that transcends the digital domain and no matter what those wonder-scientists of the 80's told us when they marketed their synthesizers to us and a fair bit of the sample library moguls continue to tell us today, performance, and the human element of music, will never disappear. Humans desire to express themselves, and just as we still rub pigments on surfaces and blow down bone flutes as we did 15,000 years ago, I don't think we'll stop finding ways to do that using sound, light, or motion, for a looong time to come. :)
What he said, but also remember that there's now an entire class of musicians that will never see a stage or venue and perhaps will never want to. I'm a recording artist. I want my music to travel with you and find you in odd places and poke you in the face with their sausagey rounded square-waves and stuff. There's no visual gimmick involved, and no performance. If I invented one, I wouldn't be making the same stuff anymore.
Also, rock music has had synths since the 60s =P
I never thought I'd say this but I agree with midimachine.
You've come upon this idea from only one angle and decided that is everything there is to it. I don't need some bullshit excuse for example that it's cheaper or whatever. If I use a virtual instrument to create a song it is entirely my own work, the same as if I had hired those musicians who helped create the virtual orchestra or whatever, to play the song for me. If I work hard enough then you will feel the emotion I want to get across. Pop music is representative of what the masses like but it is by no means what music really is right now. We all know the sheep are fools.
I am a guitarist, singer, a composer and an audio engineer, I write hard rock/metal, symphonic tracks and from time to time, electronic music. I use a computer to do it. Don't attack my form of expression with blanket, inflammatory statements or you will have a fight on your hands, and I'm a calm person. My work is every bit as valid as anything made in the past thousand years.
Rocker, Composer and World Ambassador for Foxes! Veteran REAPER user. Ready to rock! :)
At 8/3/15 09:51 PM, Chris354 wrote:
Democrats were the ones that managed to get control of the media industries, and sadly, have promoted things as "R" when they should be more like "X" or above (and many should be "NC-17"). So how does this factor in necessarily you ask? - well, something unrelated is the other side of this issue, and the question that the Democratic Party chairperson was asked was "What is the difference between a Democrat and a Socailist?" The chairwoman could NOT answer that question.
omfg lmao
get this tea party shit out of my audio forum haha
btw true democratic socialism is the way of the future js!
p.s. i am gay
Kenny G has been trying to kill music for years. It's time to give the computer a chance.
At 8/3/15 07:35 PM, girafficus wrote: It's hard to turn on the radio and find a song that doesn't have a synthesizer or isn't being auto tuned. . .
Still not sure if bait.
But in the "benefit of doubt spirit" . . .
"Radio" is the key word here, most radio music is commercial music, it is a business, and things as auto-tune, drum samples and synth presets make it more profitable. Computers are useful tools in the hands of "artists who make music", in the hands of business men, are just money savers. Computers are not by any mean killing music, music industry is replacing artist with computers.
Musicians make music , producers make products. * drops mic :D
