Michael, when small bass/drums/guitar combos came out, people said
the same thing: "now anyone can do music and it's gonna be crappy".
When producers didn't have to learn musical theory or music notation
to make music, people said the same thing. Probably, people said the
same thing when Guttenberg came out with mobile typography in the XV
century: "now everyone will be able to read and write and print any
crap they like".
Can't you see that the "loop" is the fact that people tend to be
conservative when facing changes? Changes for me are exciting. And
we're privileged to live years of such revolutionary changes. Y'all
know what i mean.
The formulaic thing... We work in two ways here. In one way, formulas
built the styles, the genres. It comes the expression of many, of a
society or a community. It's important. Like american soul music and
the fight for the civil rights. It has its beauty integrated to a
social factor - its indivisible.
In other way, a composer will turn out to be crappy when you can see
no punch in what he does, and the only thing that remains is an
ordinary formula reaching nowhere. We can hear unexpected wonderful
tunes made upon very simple and ordinary, formulaic structures, like
the 12 bar blues or whatever. After all, what will count has no name.
Gear doesn't matter, styles doesn't matter. It lies only in the
artist himself.
On 07/04/2008, at 15:57, Michael Pujos wrote:
kent williams a écrit :
This seems to come up a lot -- people complaining about laptop
performers, software-based production, etc. This is where the dub vs
mnml thread seemed to be going.
I don't want to start another debate, or another repetition of the
same people launching the same mortars over the wall at each other,
but I want to say this (perhaps again): 1. Judge the results, not the
technique. 2. The theoretical 'futurism' of techno would almost
demand
embracing of new technology. 3. You can make crappy dance music
with a
909, 808, 303, SH101 and a MPC60 too. You're just out $10k more on
hardware than you would be with your laptop and cracked copy of
fruity
loops. 4. Why give people points for making virtue of a necessity, if
the results don't measure up?
The so called "futurism" of techno is debatable. I just wish for
good and ambitious music whether it is futuristic or not.
My main problem right now is the flood of crappy music generated by
the fact the barrier of entry to make music is lower
than in the hardware era. Random Joe makes a loop, add random
sounds, and voila: instant track that goes knowhere that might find
a label since
it's so easy to release digitally. Listening sequentially to
listings of beatport or juno is a painful experience
My other concern is that a lot of those new producers follow a
formula, wheter it's mnml, house, etc where the composition
of their track is soooo predictable. It's boring too tears. Even
some tracks considered super good by most of the people of this
list can enter the "predictable", and "does not bring anything new
to the table even if a little" category.
These days I prefer music that push things forward a bit, whether
it's from Digitonal, Jacen Solo or Matt Chester (hi Matt!) for
example.
After all those years, I have less and less patience for music that
just replicates a formula, as well produced as it is.
