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Unrefined "Musician" Gains a Global Audience
Carl Bialik from WSJ writes "An unskilled musician performed a catchy pop instrumental for more than one million YouTube users even though he can't play a lick of drums or piano. The 22-year-old Norwegian's tool was stop-motion video, WSJ.com reports. From the article: 'To make "Amateur," Mr. Gjertsen recorded each analog beat and note one by one on video. He transferred the sounds from each video clip into audio files, which he could rearrange with the Fruity Loops sound-editing program — the same software he's used to create his all-digital music in the past. After organizing the sound files into the right order, Mr. Gjertsen reconstructed the pattern with the original video files. In the final product, he insists, nothing about his performance was digitally enhanced. "You have the original sounds from the video," he says.'"
Just because he can't play piano or drums, he clearly still knows what sounds good, has a sense of beat, tempo, and melody, and knows how to use editing software.
I'd wager most modern music is made just like that, and involves a lot of people who would meet this definition of "unskilled" musician.
Its the hair, man.
He should take it on the road!
So basically he made a MIDI track using live instrument samples?
Now this is cutting edge stuff here - simply by dictating what pitch, how long, and when notes should be played, he was able to "perform" an entire song!!
Can you imagine the potential of this? Why, you could be an entire orchestra by yourself! In fact, you could even perform this kind of trick LIVE - simply substitute musicians skilled in their instruments for the samples, and in order to "control" them, you could provide them with the musical instructions somehow on paper. Of course you'd have to implement some kind of global timer to keep them all together, but it seems very doable!
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
Yeah, thanks, I saw that same link in the summary.
A few months and who knows?
The man is skilled. Skilled at sampling and editing. He's not, however, a skilled musician.
I'm sorry, you're mistaken.
The only things your argument establishes is that he is not a talented drummer or pianist. A musician is someone who makes music, and for the purposes of defining the term, I couldn't give a shit how it's made.
The Richard D. James Album by Aphex Twin contains, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful "music" made in the last decade using techniques very similar, in principle, to the ones this guy is using. I'm thrilled to see that new tools are allowing different people to become musicians in brand new ways.
He is unskilled musician.
I have always relied on the definition of music as it was taught to me by my first college music professor: "Music is sounds and silence organised in time".
As far as I'm concerned this guy is very skilled at organising sounds and silence in time. Ergo, he's a skilled musician. He's just not a skilled instrumentalist.
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In case you haven't realized it yet, not everything posted on /. is earth-shattering news. This video was neat. I enjoyed watching it. I bet he enjoyed making it. All is well with the world. Relax.
I disagree with just about everyone in this thread re: definition of musician vs. composer vs. editor etc., but I'm replying to you because I feel that this point of view is particularly damaging to good, original, modern music, and it's acceptance by a wider audience.
No one, other than academics who over intellectualize most music, really cares whether there is a 12-tone row in a piece of music. Why would you expect one to show up in a song by Aphex Twin? Would it make it a better piece of music? Aperiodic rhythms? Who cares?
Music is judged by the vast majority of people in subjective, opinionated terms. Arguing that someone should justify the use of sampling in music by citing an unknown, and in most people's opinion unlistenable (though innovative), composer is ridiculous. I appreciate those on the vanguard like Stockhausen for pushing boundaries and bringing new ideas to the table, but that doesn't necessarily make what they do 'good' music in a conventional (i.e. layman's) sense.
You sound like a pompous asshole. I guess what bothers me most is the tone of superiority that is expressed through statements like yours and by most people who hold similar opinions, and the insinuation that if someone disagrees they are stupid and wrong. It does nothing to encourage communication and exchange of ideas, and everything to turn people off of the fringe completely.