Just a simple question. With all of the software capabilities, music has evolved to a precision that, in my opinion, could go to far. What are your thoughts on this?
Views: 10
You need to be a member of Composers' Forum to add comments!
A melody is a melody, but the performance of it can make a huge difference. It's all those small nuances and shiftings in timing that makes a melody come alive. If you record it in a sequencer and quantize it, you will flatten it to various degrees. By forcing the notes into the technically right position you loose all the rhythmic deviations that lets the music breath. But that effect will be more or less noticeable depending on where the melody belong in the arrangement. It will be less obvious in the bass than in the lead.
A sequencer is a nothing more than a glorified tape recorder. You can record a melody and it can be just as alive as when you played it - just don't quantize it! If you make mistakes record it again until it sits. If you have to quantize it, just quantize the notes that are actually too much off beat and leave the rest. If a piece of sequenced music sounds too stiff, it's my fault - not the computers!
True! A lot of the problematic stiffness in a sequencer recording comes from the tone itself having a very limited variation. If one could build an electronic instrument that had the same ability to vary the tone as a acoustic instrument have, it would be equally hard to master. I'm not aware of any such instrument though. I think that the Haken Continuum Fingerboard might come closest.
Jerry Gerber said:
Some of what you say is true, but not entirely, because style has to be taken into account. In some music, particularly Baroque music, many notes can be right on the beat. Deviation, syncopation, and variation can occur on other levels as well as whether a note is exactly on the beat or not: note length, note amplitude, attack and release, cross accents, tied and dotted notes, polyrhythm, complex counterpoint--all these things can also create a sense of humanness and naturalness of expression and a sense of intention.
"Can a being be omniscient? A hypothetically omniscient consciousness would, by definition, never know the experience of not knowing. Similarly, one can only arrive at the conclusion that "not knowing" is not a part of knowledge, but rather of "not-knowledge", or that omniscience is a logically invalid concept."
That's a very clever analogy:
But I would like to go back to Doug's point, in that perfection is measured in the correctness of timing (and tuning of course). Whilst the real life conductor will strive to make all instruments correspond to near perfect precision, a midi artist will look for ways to humanise the performance of his mock-up by introducing very slightly mis-timed entries and some instruments very slightly de-tuned.
As far as perfectly composed music is concerned, one only needs to listen to the first movement of Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto. Every single note is perfect.
Kristofer Emerig said:
Jeff, sometimes you view everything so mathematically...
Let me help unclarify; Let's assume for the sake of discussion that "perfect" is definable and quantifiable, therefor "imperfect" is as well.
Now, according to our assumption, we can hypothetically measure a work in terms of those scalar values, for instance, one which is 90% perfect and 10% imperfect.
So let's assume we agree that 10% imperfection is the ideal amount to make a work 100% perfect. Yet, if the work is 100% perfect, how can the 10% imperfection be regarded as imperfect? One can only conclude that no amount of imperfection can be a part of perfection, or that perfection is an invalid concept.
Can a being be omniscient? A hypothetically omniscient consciousness would, by definition, never know the experience of not knowing. Similarly, one can only arrive at the conclusion that "not knowing" is not a part of knowledge, but rather of "not-knowledge", or that omniscience is a logically invalid concept.
I also like contemplating the sound of one hand clapping.
Jeff Cattie said:
Well, everybody seems to be avoiding the very obvious answer to this question, for excuses of subjectivity and all sorts of nonsense.
Simple. How much imperfection should we allow in "perfect" music? None. It's deemed "perfect" (in quotes, as you've presented it), therefore it can't have imperfection. It's not like asking about traffic accidents at all... it's more like asking how much dust you should 'allow' in a clean room. The answer is none.
We don't need to get existential about this - there's no need to define perfect, because defining something MAKES it imperfect by implication.
How much imperfection should we allow in "perfect" music?
Just a simple question. With all of the software capabilities, music has evolved to a precision that, in my opinion, could go to far. What are your t…
Another important question is what kind of music are we talking about? I know that a lot, if not most people in here are into orchestral music and spotless digital mockups, but the idea of a "perfect" Bruce Springsteen recording is somewhat terrifying, wouldn't you say?
What is perfect in one case might not be perfect in another.
I dislike the term "mockup". The term "MIDI Mockup" came into being in the 90s, when film directors couldn't imagine what an orchestral score would sound like when a composer would play it on the piano. The problem with the term is that it sounds derogatory. It is like saying a photograph, no matter how much skill went into it, is a mockup for a painting, or a film is a mockup for a play. The truth is, that there are digital performance standards now evolving. If one cannot get a highly expressive, musically satisfying sound out of current levels of computer technology, sample libraries, DAWs, etc., the fault is not with the technology with the musician using it. The other problem with the term "mockup" is that in the minds of the uninformed, it means MIDI will not be explored for its full artistic potential. Again, its all in the details.
I struggle with my music sounding 'rigid'. It happens all the time - very frustrating. On the other hand, if it wasn't for the mass of music software available, those of us who will never have a career in music, doing what we love doing would never have the opportunity to see 'what it would be like'. 'Could I have arranged something beautiful?' would have been an unanswered question for those of us without the capacity to have something performed for real (ooh the dream!). In that respect, I'm grateful but totally understand the frustration - especially for all you professionals! Having said all that, my very budget programme frequently plays imperfectly (perfecly??!) - but not in an artistic way I assure you! Where that fits into this discussion, I have NO idea! :)
I've struggled with this in my electronic compositions. I find that perfectly quantized music is easy to edit and work with in general, i.e. you can copy it around to various tracks, stretch it, shrink it, etc.. (I'm talking about MIDI here). I've recently started incorporating non-quantized MIDI captured from my noodlings on the keyboard (still after some tweaking -- but not quantizing), and find that make for more interesting music when it's mixed in with quantized MIDI.
I sometimes quantize everything when composing , and then replace the quantized music with unquantized when the composition is finished. it's sometimes very good to separate the composition, the recording and the mixing phases, even if you use your DAW for all those parts.
That's excellent advice Lennart. I think I'm going to try that in the near future.
Mike
Lennart Östman said:
I sometimes quantize everything when composing , and then replace the quantized music with unquantized when the composition is finished. it's sometimes very good to separate the composition, the recording and the mixing phases, even if you use your DAW for all those parts.
Replies
A melody is a melody, but the performance of it can make a huge difference. It's all those small nuances and shiftings in timing that makes a melody come alive. If you record it in a sequencer and quantize it, you will flatten it to various degrees. By forcing the notes into the technically right position you loose all the rhythmic deviations that lets the music breath. But that effect will be more or less noticeable depending on where the melody belong in the arrangement. It will be less obvious in the bass than in the lead.
A sequencer is a nothing more than a glorified tape recorder. You can record a melody and it can be just as alive as when you played it - just don't quantize it! If you make mistakes record it again until it sits. If you have to quantize it, just quantize the notes that are actually too much off beat and leave the rest. If a piece of sequenced music sounds too stiff, it's my fault - not the computers!
Jerry Gerber said:
"Can a being be omniscient? A hypothetically omniscient consciousness would, by definition, never know the experience of not knowing. Similarly, one can only arrive at the conclusion that "not knowing" is not a part of knowledge, but rather of "not-knowledge", or that omniscience is a logically invalid concept."
That's a very clever analogy:
But I would like to go back to Doug's point, in that perfection is measured in the correctness of timing (and tuning of course). Whilst the real life conductor will strive to make all instruments correspond to near perfect precision, a midi artist will look for ways to humanise the performance of his mock-up by introducing very slightly mis-timed entries and some instruments very slightly de-tuned.
As far as perfectly composed music is concerned, one only needs to listen to the first movement of Shostakovich's 2nd Piano Concerto. Every single note is perfect.
Kristofer Emerig said:
What is perfect in one case might not be perfect in another.
Jerry Gerber said:
I've struggled with this in my electronic compositions. I find that perfectly quantized music is easy to edit and work with in general, i.e. you can copy it around to various tracks, stretch it, shrink it, etc.. (I'm talking about MIDI here). I've recently started incorporating non-quantized MIDI captured from my noodlings on the keyboard (still after some tweaking -- but not quantizing), and find that make for more interesting music when it's mixed in with quantized MIDI.
Mike
That's excellent advice Lennart. I think I'm going to try that in the near future.
Mike
Lennart Östman said:
-
1
-
2
-
3
-
4
-
5
of 5 Next