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Musical Machines Gain Recognition
vena writes "CNN has an insightful article on the increased role of computers in the production of music. While Musikmesse, the world's largest musical instrument show, rapidly increases their support of the computer as a musical instrument, there are still limitations to the power and ability of software synthesizers. However, the ability of a computer to make the everyman a musician could herald a coming age of increased play and experimentation in music. Software such as Reason by Propellerheads Software brings unprecidented power to the hobby musician, and the presence of laptops as part of a live band's performance is becoming commonplace. The days of playing to your sequences off a DAT tape may be numbered, as musicians gain more control of their digital music in a live setting with the aid of new, powerful software and portable computers."
If you're talking about all in one solutions, I would think that highly-programmable software such as pure data, being free and fairly (?) open would top the list, along with less open, but also powerful, packages like MAX/MSP. And if you're talking about Reason, I would think that all-in-one (cheap) packages such asOrion would deserve a mention.
I don't really use (beyo0nd experimentation) any of that software, though - sticking to my own buggy stuff and my hardware synths - so I'm no expert - but next time I update my own (very limited and crash-prone) software synth, it will certainly be a DirectX instrument and maybe a pure data object.
If you don't have the $10k to set up a Pro Tools studio, check out Buzz at www.buzzmachines.com. You can set up virtual versions of your instruments and run them through effects, etc, then run all those into the master. It's very intuitive, give it a try.
When I was a kid, I used to play around with Concertware a lot - it was (as far as I know) the first software that let someone with only the most minimal knowledge of music write something down and hear what it sounded like. This is really neat, I'll grant, and I happily churned out hours and hours of bad chamber music.
However, after I started really playing with other people (band in school doesn't count) I concluded that computers were not really capable of producing music on their own. The computer plays whatever you type in perfectly, which is not what you want. The other musicians, if they're any good, adapt to what you play (this is particularly true of more improvised sorts of music, of course) which is a very "resource intensive" (in terms of your nervous system) proposition. Even if the players are producing exactly what the composer tells them, they're providing subtle variations in the sound (I don't want to mire myself in music-speak) that Concertware's great-grandchildren still cannot duplicate, at least that I've ever heard (although, to be fair, they can do a lot better than concertware.)
This is one of the reasons I don't like most electronic music - you can take a recording of tuvan chanting and sing/play along with it, remix it, what have you, but the technology does not successfully duplicate what the monks would do if they were in the room playing with you. When and if it can, I'll call whatever device an AI.
I suppose the people who actually operate cameras and draw cartoons have the same reservations about CG. As much as they I may love computer assisted editing (which is what most of the toys in the article are about), truely computer generated music still sounds like the stuff that plonked out of my Mac SE30.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
It's very interesting to see all the mildy different viewpoints on this.
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;) The fact that you can mimic a $100,000+ studio to great effect for the meager price of Reason is just fantastic. What if instead of trading MP3s, we were all trading the file formats that contained all the master tracks and sequence information? You like a song, but think it could use just a little more of something else? Open it up, and remix it! (Of course, this would probably just lead to even -more- crappy club-style remixes)
Yes, computers making music has been around for decades - listen to some of the music on Forbidden Planet. Yes, it's been commonplace on stage for quite some time. re: power - I see a lot of 'my dick is bigger than yours' posts on that: Reason's not a powerhouse, Reaktor is. Here's my $.02 - Reaktor's got nothing on Csound when it comes to synthesis power. However, I think Reason's a hell of a lot easier to use than both of them
I'm currently debating with my roommate over which recording tool we use - he likes Nuendo, I still like Vegas. He argues that he can get so much more done more efficiently with Nuendo. I show him all the songs I've put together in Vegas and ask him to show me one full song he's done in the past six months
Electronic musicians 'performing' on laptops is just plain boring. When I went to see Autechre, I didn't expect much more, I just thought it was cool to see Autechre. They turned out all (most) of the lights, and were just a couple of guys with Laptops and Nord Modulars. A little more interesting, Telefon Tel Aviv had a pair of laptops, but also played along with electric bass and guitar, and at least twiddled knobs. Twine did the laptop thing, but had a fantastic video showing to go along with it, and I think that was the most interesting - It's less of a 'lets go see our favorite musician perform' than it is 'lets go see a light and sound show' - unfortunately most of the kids who make electronic music can't afford a good light show
Getting back to something useful - I think it would be really smart if a program like Reason would be included with computers the way that programs like RealPlayer and MusicMatch are included. I had access to music software in the form of ScreamTracker and ImpulseTracker when I was about 14, and slowly got into making music because of that. What if a kid had access to a program like Reason at age 5? We start them on violins young, why not start them doing full compositions early on
No, computers won't ever replace traditional instruments. But computers are becoming a factory for new, inventive instruments - and not just bleepy-bloopy stuff - and bringing production, mixing, mastering all into that beige box I'm resting my feet on right now.
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I'm surprised this one hasn't been mentioned yet(heck, its worthy of a front page story)...
But what about The Creativity Machine? From the article:
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/