It's existentialism time. Imagine if you will a robotic orchestra which can copy every single nuance, inflextion, etc. of a human orchestral performance. In other words, take every action done by a human orchestra and program it into a robotic orchestra so that everything is copied to the letter. What you'd end up with is an exact copy of the human orchestra just as if the human orchestra was recorded.
But wait, we already have something similar in terms of actual recordings! If you go down to a major library you could easily find writings from people 100 years ago who argued that recorded sound would eliminate all live recordings. Yet, today, we still have many live performances and many recordings from live performances. They haven't gone away. You could also make the argument that playing electronic instruments removes the human factor from making sound by that logic. No matter what, you're not going to get around the fact that people made the robots. People programmed them. People are behind their actions. We are telling them exactly what to do. They do not think. They are not self-aware. They are not sentient. Does a story change simply because it is written down and read later? Does a performance change because it was recorded at one time and performed for others later on a digital recording? You're not really removing the act of performance. You're just shifting it to the person who has to control the machinery. You still have to have a human to write the music for it or make the machines or program them. Times change. Technology is exponentially growing. We will have to adapt to it. Even if all orchestras tomorrow were suddenly replaced with machines we would still have some demand for humans to perform music. I say let the technology grow. I'm not burdened by it nor am I frightened. Humans are good at adapting. -William -----Original Message----- From: Hans Pizka <[email protected]> To: The Horn List <[email protected]> Sent: Sun, Jul 11, 2010 12:29 pm Subject: Re: [Hornlist] About those brass playing robots... Have you ever heard about sampled sounds ? Write music with Finale or Sibelius, use Garritan sound bank & listen. It sounds reasonable, even much better than most Sunday-afternoon-orchestras or weekend orchestra, BUT - it is missing the human factor of sound coloring completely. I work with Finale since CODA issued this program. _______________________________________________ post: [email protected] unsubscribe or set options at https://pegasus.memphis.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/options/horn/archive%40jab.org
