Eno Quote

mikemc · Post by **mikemc** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:13 pm

The eno prophecy was correct in that "more of the things" were being sold. But he was wrong to think that it would be widely adopted by the mass consuming audience, more to a larger spectrum of musical creators. Also, 1995: internet in full bloom, not really all that much forward thinking there.

About innovation, what always happens, from earliest blues guitar to latest electronic experimentation: it gets siphoned off into the mainstream as the mainstream would have it to spruce up the pop, and-- yes-- eventually ends up buried in something like someone's iPod shuffle while the innovator toils in obscurity.

chrysalis33rpm · Post by **chrysalis33rpm** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:36 pm

But if you look at DJs as the intended audience for these kind of tools, you will indeed see an explosion of the demographic in the last 20 years, right?

Of course its not mass market, but its not all insanely dedicated professionals who are turning out decent mixtapes and remixes today. The technology has progressed to a point where both quality and technique are much more widely available. As I commented in another thread, today I can use Live to create a musical assemblage which is basically the same idea that I would have tried to create with 4 turntables 5 years ago. But the mechanics of learning to beatmix 4 platters simultaneously meant that I could only try out a fairly limited number of combinations of sounds, and had to constantly stay in practice. Live lowers the bar of technique (at least in realtime) but allow one to concetrate on the result rather than the mechanics.

I don't think personally that a CD of sampled breaks available commercially today is really all that far from Eno's idea. As for music as a game, or a game as music, its semantics, its a matter of definition. Sure its a game, if you see it that way.

rozling · Post by **rozling** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 2:47 pm

dammit chrysalis you beat me to it!

If I understand from what Pete is saying we can now build these type of tools and apply them to other musical concepts more closely aligned to traditional type sequencing/arranging.

[Ok we're probably already able to do this with MAX/Plogue/etc before but I haven't personally seen anything like his scripting info page describes.]

It's an interesting thing, because at the same time a voice in my head, which sounds like the voices of all my past music teachers combined, is going 'warning! you haven't learned the basics of songwriting properly yet'. It's a funny line we walk...

forge · Post by **forge** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 3:22 pm

rozling wrote: It's an interesting thing, because at the same time a voice in my head, which sounds like the voices of all my past music teachers combined, is going 'warning! you haven't learned the basics of songwriting properly yet'. It's a funny line we walk...

yeah but that is a misguided perspective probably created by someone who has had to define 'the art of songwriting' so they could write the sylabus for a music unit at school. Any musical person has been learning the basics of songwriting since the second they started listening to music.

all you need to know are the basics of music theory - like chords, rhythm, melody etc so you can translate your thoughts into musical actuality and the 'art of songwriting' can be just absorbed and regurgitated

why do you think so many rock stars are thick as shit?

[sorry dont know where that bizarre rant came from, probably from mary jane]

rozling · Post by **rozling** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 4:15 pm

<composes self-serving rant, realises it's of no use to conversation>

re knowing the basics of music theory, I hear what you're saying and do agree, but there's also an element of process. When you have strong preconceptions about how songs should be written it's very difficult to shake them...

This mary jane you speak of, I feel I might need to spend some time with her

impete · Post by **impete** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 4:20 pm

Aha - very intersting, many thanks for pointing me to that sub-topic.

Yes, I picked on Lua for many reasons including speed, small footprint, and easy of use in multithread system.

Needless to say, I find this whole area fascinating (my life's work, I guess) and could bore you all for ages rambiling on about it.

Thought I'd note the miniMIXA product I did with Tim Cole (my bro, co-founder of intermorphic). It was a real-time mixer for mobile phones. Looking back at it, I sort of realise it was a "Live" for mobile, though I honestly wasn't very aware of Live when I wrote it! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxtREMURO8U I hope you enjoy it!

It was a mix of live modular synthesis, Koan generative music engine, audio samples, pitch and time shifting. Oh, and a wavetable synth too. Very proud of this, we won a BAFTA for it miniMIXA.

No longer available though, sadly, the company we woorked for at the time went bust.

Anybody think it'd be worthwhile me doing a "reprise"?

Pete

rozling · Post by **rozling** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 10:31 pm

Woh, I know it's a complete thread derailment but I would've thought you'd at least get an answer! Go for it! Do it! I presume it'd be java, since it's in our toasters by this stage?

Sadly enough I used to really enjoy making ringtones with the 'e1 g2.' style notation - it'd be great to get some kind of dedicated app on phones now that everything's going card-storage. Would Lua be that portable?

Coincidentally I just picked up a Sony K800i today (gratis

) which I just realised would make a perfect candidate for Mobile Processing... not that I'll be coding sequencers any time soon, but it's my next 'project' to get some basic literacy in the language and I'm really looking forward to it.

Angstrom · Post by **Angstrom** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:01 pm

I'm sorry to say that I found noatikl a little impenetrable after an hour of playing around. Easy enough to get a seeming non-musical phrase which is in key, but I couldn't for the life of me get a usable phrase out of it. I appreciate that 'ambient' is considered the forte of generative - but I expected it to be a bit easier to coax a self replicating tune out of the thing.

Perhaps you should ship it with a few example files which show it off - even if that is just using the MS wavesynth thing. Personally I would like to hear something which is noticeably 'a theme' or 'a riff' which mutates and generates related sub themes, then has a reprise which harks back to the first theme. I'm not expecting a symphony - but something more than vaguely rhythmic (in the loosest sense, as in 'on time') random stabby notes, which was all I got. And I watched all your videos too!

I hope that noatikl gets some success, but as a technical type myself I think it needs a more direct signpost toward the results possible which would coax me toward persevering past the hour mark.

nuperspective · Post by **nuperspective** » Thu Jan 31, 2008 11:04 pm

on reading the quote and then the thread i did intially assume [based on the date] he wasnt talking generative music. i assumed he was talking more "open source" music. in reality how is that any different than what trent reznor has been doing - releasing the parts of tracks to a mass audience through the web and letting them evolve though his fans.

impete · Post by **impete** » Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:31 pm

rozling wrote:Woh, I know it's a complete thread derailment but I would've thought you'd at least get an answer! Go for it! Do it! I presume it'd be java, since it's in our toasters by this stage?

No, actually miniMIXA was written in C++ - Java is completely useless for mobile media applications, let alone real-time audio software.

it'd be great to get some kind of dedicated app on phones now that everything's going card-storage. Would Lua be that portable?

Yes, it is incredibly portable! Lua is already used for quite a few games for the DS (or so I've been told!).

If/as/when I ever create some sort of spiritual successor to miniMIXA, it'd mainly be in C++ (for performance and multi-threading) with some bits in Lua (such as pop-up audio plug-in editor widgets). And it would have to be cross-platform. We'll be sure to check-out the iPod touch SDK when it comes out in a few weeks!

Thanks for your interest!

Pete

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:11 am

for a moment it looked to me like the thread had gotten derailed and turned into an advertisement but in further reading it's actualy even more on point to what we've been discussing.
how much to *you* want your music to be generic-tive, I mean how often have you watched/heard someone or even you yourself on this very forum talk about someone not making their own music, from crucifying timbaland to countless others. so what is so different about the ideals that the current form of this discussion aspire to compared with somebody else writing your music, i'd really like to know your thoughts. happy accidents have always been inspirational and wonderful in music, but deliberately handing over the reigns to another conciousness to write your music makes us different from all the people that we make fun of for doing that in what way?

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:12 am

sometimes I wonder if the future that man seems to want so bad is nothing more than just to have tubes running in and out of our bodies supplying nutrients and morphine, and not having to do anything else.

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:15 am

chrysalis33rpm wrote:
today I can use Live to create a musical assemblage which is basically the same idea that I would have tried to create with 4 turntables 5 years ago. But the mechanics of learning to beatmix 4 platters simultaneously meant that I could only try out a fairly limited number of combinations of sounds, and had to constantly stay in practice. Live lowers the bar of technique (at least in realtime) but allow one to concetrate on the result rather than the mechanics.

and I bet you sounded better, and had a better connection with the audience, and the audience had a better connection to your music. and you were more skilled at what you did and stayed on top of those skills.

dj superflat · Post by **dj superflat** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 6:39 am

people have always fought technology advances in music, claiming it lacked/reduced soul. and they're pretty much always been wrong, the true innovators finding the soul in just about anything they touch. (and, ultimately, those who remain wedded to only older technology start to seem like relics/fetishists, just as bad as those enamoured entirely of the new.)

chrysalis33rpm · Post by **chrysalis33rpm** » Sat Feb 02, 2008 11:41 am

EgAD wrote:
chrysalis33rpm wrote:
today I can use Live to create a musical assemblage which is basically the same idea that I would have tried to create with 4 turntables 5 years ago. But the mechanics of learning to beatmix 4 platters simultaneously meant that I could only try out a fairly limited number of combinations of sounds, and had to constantly stay in practice. Live lowers the bar of technique (at least in realtime) but allow one to concetrate on the result rather than the mechanics.
and I bet you sounded better, and had a better connection with the audience, and the audience had a better connection to your music. and you were more skilled at what you did and stayed on top of those skills.

well, that's quite a supposition on your part since you have no idea what I sound like - I may very well have completely sucked! but for my part I think that I did have a literally physical connection with the music (through touching the records directly) which translated into an excitement and sense of implication which the audience could feel. in many ways all I have been doing with Live in the past few years is attempting to recapture that - and I feel that by investing in quality hardware, as well as Max, I'm not too far from it.

your position is of one who confuses the book with the story. i love books. I love the way they feel, the way they smell, their very physicality, but they are in no way equivalent to the words they contain!

turntables are very limited pieces of equipment- they do two things well. the sounds on the records, of course, are unlimited. thus when I used vinyl the holy grail was to press my own records. Hours and hours of digging in the crates and never finding that perfect break. I want to make the breaks, and freely combine them with found bits. This certainly not my original idea, but Live is the best interface availble for this type of music now. The really fantastic thing is that it doesn't eclipse my technics- they simply become another element in the mix, just like when I used to play with live bands.

the combination of Live and Max almost gives me the ability to build my own "turntable"- how cool is that?!

I think DJ culture became far too obsessed with the technicality of beatmixing- a guy who could competently beatmix saw himself as a good DJ- regardless of the music which actually came out of the speakers. by lowering this technical bar (in realtime), software today allows us to concentrate on the music rather than the technique. A flat DJ will always be a flat DJ, never fear. But those of us who understand the soul of the craft will adapt whatever technology we find to our purposes.

djsuperflat wrote: people have always fought technology advances in music, claiming it lacked/reduced soul. and they're pretty much always been wrong, the true innovators finding the soul in just about anything they touch. (and, ultimately, those who remain wedded to only older technology start to seem like relics/fetishists, just as bad as those enamoured entirely of the new.)

exactly. its not only in music- a very similar debate took place at the end of the 19th century when the photograph began to replace the painting as the primary method of recording reality. Of course, what actually happened is that painting was freed up from the onerous chore of reproducing reality, and became free to concentrate on spatial and visual relationships - this gave us Cezanne, Duchamp, and Picasso, and the resulting trajectory of 20th century visual art. Its also worth noting that photorealistic painting could never have developed without the camera - its a way of perceiving the world which did not exist before.

In the end, I think its about using whatever tool speaks to you at the moment, remaining flexible, and focussing on the end result as much as on the act of creation.