Post #271,981
11/3/06 1:17:45 AM
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For comprehension? *swallows own tongue in disbelief*
Anyway, to business.
Devil's advocate time: what makes a "live orchestra" so much more fantabulous than going down to the local playhouse/pub/working men's club/dubya-tee-eff-evAr and seeing four or half-a-dozen people play their stuff?
What makes a live orchestra, playing someone else's (someone else, incidentally, who's almost certainly dead) stuff, so damn great?
Where's the emotional connection between myself and, say, Tchaikovsky's first? What mental context exists for me to enjoy this music other than to go, "ooh, what a lot of notes, cleverly arranged, and with what exquisite skill they are played"?
Compare and contrast Gershwin's Piano Concerto in F with the song "Every Breath You Take" by The Police. Which of these fine pieces of music involves the listener, takes them on an emotional journey and leaves them with more than they started with, to a degree greater than the other?
Outwith the very small community of musical experts, snobs and aficianados, it's going to be the latter. Yes, Gershwin's got more instruments, more notes, more musical sophistication. Perhaps Gershwin is the blank emotional canvas onto which we can paint our own mental picture - or perhaps, just perhaps, there's such a thing as pop music with substance and merit of a type equivalent to but different from "classical" a.k.a. "proper" music.
Yes, there's a lot of crap out there. There's a lot of crap everywhere.
Sturgeon applies.
Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
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Post #271,988
11/3/06 4:38:31 AM
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No problem with your examples
Just with your simplistic assertion that ~ it's all the same - there's no real difference in knowing about many possible choices and - not.
Still, there are many more instruments to audition, in an orchestra -- whether that orchestra is playing Pops, marches, Gershwin or Grieg. There are reasons why orchestral music has survived for centuries, but there's not an iota of logical proof why this should be.
All I say is -
Lead the little tykes to Hear Those, then
Just maybe.. choose one or a few to try out? while eschewing meddlesome pushiness == You Should ___
(Accept that some just won't find anything there of interest. Oh well.)
That's the hook.
The aim is that the kid will want to learn the basics, learn to read music -
Want! to learn these skills. That s/he will want to make music, not just passively hear. That won't always happen; nobody knows why some have strong attractions to 'making music', innately - while others need some encouragement; why some will never care. (I know someone completely indifferent to 'music' - just the one, mind you.)
But it will happen more often if -
A) The kid sees and hears this great variety of instruments, what each sounds like - and how a lot of them sound "in c o n c e r t" == together. There's a need for some intelligent introduction - even if you don't have \ufffdLenny as the guide.
B) The kid experiences (in any case) more than just the habits of his local tribe - inexperienced peers don't have a lot to teach, especially in the pack-culture now commencing pre-teen. Lots of wasted opportunity when running in a pack.
Logic alone isn't enough in the pseudo-sciences of 'people' but there's ample evidence that music can indeed soothe (or prevent) the savage beast. But I suspect that, just maybe: the soothing-beast effect does not follow from a steady diet with screaming, in repeated sessions lasting many hours.
(OTOH - maybe just-that can be a catharsis from internal demons -?- if the kid was already heading Postal. Nobody knows how to fix that one, either. Did the biology of lots of tykes just suddenly change or, was it something they heard? A lot, in recent years.)
Oh - I expect that those who are experienced quantum- mechanics are called snobs by some auto- mechanics, too. Must be something in the water, when experience and lore is dissed, with such Pridefulness. Hey.. we have that MO in Our politicians: is it over There, too?
\ufffd Lenny Bernstein's childrens concerts were always a sell-out. Nice if you lived in NY. There are flics: kids enthralled - camera can't make that up. (We don't know how often those-who-didn't-go .. were 'enthralled'. In any given month, or year.)
I'll let you know re the Postal stuff, after enough autopsies are done following the next school assassinations: if they connect-up real soon - could the MRI-Mark III actually detect snatches of say, Go kill a bitch!.. Go kill a bitch!.. floating about in the cooling jelloware? That would be kewl data... I'd think.
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Post #272,069
11/3/06 2:00:35 PM
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Make up your mind.
This sub-thread started with you asserting that electronics aren't instruments.
Now you're arguing for the children, which I doubt anyone here is really going to disagree with. But it's not what we started with, and it's not a response to "yes, an electronic instrument is still an instrument, and a versatile one at that".
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #272,111
11/3/06 6:04:13 PM
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It's the same one.
This sub-thread started with you asserting that electronics aren't instruments.
Read it again - I said that you don't Make Your Own Sounds. And because you don't - a lot of effort is 'saved' - to a detriment, described more fully.
Now you're arguing for the children, which I doubt anyone here is really going to disagree with. But it's not what we started with, and it's not a response to "yes, an electronic instrument is still an instrument, and a versatile one at that".
A synthesizer is an 'instrument' a composer can 'use'. Is it a performance by an artist -- when the saved program is later turned on? I amplified on that distinction - was it too many words?
Lastly -
Electronic corporations have marketed millions of, "press this button and the drum-set will produce A B C D ... Z"
"Now the treble: select from menu." Yada yada.
These toys are about neither 'composition' nor performance: they are interesting sound-producing toys. Who can say if their use will encourage a serious investigation of the well-tempered scale -
how to read music;
what is harmony?
why does a minor chord evoke emotions of sadness or seem an unfinished phrase?
- or, will these toys discourage bothering to make that effort.
I said what I think the likely answer is.
I think we've done Music? Love? - what ARE They??
No need to gore oxes or even, Bush Gores Self\ufffd
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Post #272,114
11/3/06 6:23:07 PM
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So, are you *absolutely convinced* that...
...a synth can't be used *without* engaging either the "record to memory" or the "replay from memory" functions?
[link|mailto:MyUserId@MyISP.CountryCode|Christian R. Conrad]
(I live in Finland, and my e-mail in-box is at the Saunalahti company.)
Ah, the Germans: Masters of Convoluted Simplification. — [link|http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/?p=1603|Jehovah]
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Post #272,129
11/3/06 8:18:12 PM
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As Christian pointed out...
You're mistaken in your conception of what an electronic instrument is and how it can be used.
Now, if you want to argue against the exclusive use of them, fine... again, I won't disagree. That's not how we started down this road.
Ashton, you have a habit of getting carried away with your rhetoric and painting an extremely wide swath with your brush of disdain. Don't act surprised when you get called on it.
Regards,
-scott anderson
"Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson..."
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Post #272,146
11/3/06 10:51:45 PM
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Always good advice, that
Noted.
Yes, I'm aware that you can dynamically key synths, though I can only guess at the latest versions and their versatility. I guess that is, 'playing that instrument'; the creativity in presetting, also in altering those programs (during, in real time) kinda rebuts my assertion that this isn't like "playing an instrument".
I'll even have to concede that, just possibly there shall be new ways of performing which are not limited to those presets.. yet.. the utter determinism of any state-driven piece of electronics remains -NOT- equivalent to the kinds, extents of whole-body muscular + brain virtuosity whose drum I have been beating.
That I cannot dissect that whole-performance well enough, doesn't particularly bother me; it's a task not unlike defining (music.)
Simplest I can manage: natural instruments demand much more body-controlled nuance - in the act of performing - than these constructs do. Yes, there are similarities to the piano, of any keyboard; doubtless much has been improved since the Vorsetzer ('Sitter-in-front') piano-roll type robots: which required a human's original input natch, and included even-then some crude aspects of key/pedal pressures and rates.
But the strings, woodwinds, brass cannot be mastered by any amount of electrical assistance (that I can envision, anyway) - and to me it is not particularly relevant that we can today create sounds indistinguishable from a 'piano chord'.
"Creating <the sound itself> from a natural instrument" is simply a much more demanding whole-body experience than any of the above. I see no way around that difference with a real distinction. That is an art we must not jettison - is my POV.
The field you are into is certainly music/sound; I simply cannot 'conflate!' whatever we call, 'performance with the New Instruments?' - with the level of involvement needed to achieve even a perfectly clear chromatic scale.. from a violin (or, oblig. trumpet, clarinet, yada.) These are Different pursuits.
IIRC, late-50s the Japanese had cobbled together a vac-tube synthesizer of then: surprisingly realistic instrument sounds. It was claimed that banks could simulate an orchestral sound. I merely heard about this accomplishment at the lab, where we discussed the feat. (I should try to find out what that was called.) Similar issues arose in our discussion then. They aren't very different now.
If I've missed something that can resolve these differences ...
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Post #271,998
11/3/06 8:46:29 AM
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"Every Breath You Take" is tard crap
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
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Post #271,999
11/3/06 8:49:28 AM
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Just couldn't let that one go, could you?
Its certainly not their best, though.
Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry.Adrian Belew
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Post #272,000
11/3/06 8:49:41 AM
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What's the point of that post?
Apart from the fact that you've flung your verbal faeces at this thread, that is?
Peter
[link|http://www.no2id.net/|Don't Let The Terrorists Win]
[link|http://www.kuro5hin.org|There is no K5 Cabal]
[link|http://guildenstern.dyndns.org|Home]
Use P2P for legitimate purposes!
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Post #272,001
11/3/06 8:52:32 AM
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Spots on the wall
by Hoo Flung Poo
Illustrated by Jon Flushing.
Too much of today's music is fashionable crap dressed as artistry.Adrian Belew
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