I'm a musician, too. It takes some work to sound good at any instrument. To say that there is no comparison between athletic skill and musical skill isn't entirely true. Why do people practice so much? Even if you're just playing three chords on a guitar, you'll like practice a decent amount before a concert. If you're a concert pianist, you'll likely spend 6-8 hours a day in a room with a piano.
Some instrumentalists can't practice as long due to physical limitations (say, brass and voice) but they still do practice. Composers will spend a couple of days working on a couple of measures. Creativity takes work.
There's nothing wrong with you using Melodyne to touch up your singing. More than likely, you don't sing all that much, and consequently, you're not practicing it enough to sing it in tune effortlessly.
My objection is that the record labels keep on popping out "faces" with little or no musical skill. In this case, the person is supposed to be a singer, but he or she doesn't have the simple skill to approach the correct pitch. Not singing in tune is one thing, but to have the record labels doctor it up and pass it off as someone with great vocal skills is disgusting. They know that most people aren't musically discerning. They know that the singer's looks are way more important than what the singer's voice is like.
People like to say, "he may not sing in tune or in rhythm, but he sings with feeling." You know what, most people who are serious at music sing or play with feeling.
Oh well, the record labels will always win... especially if we constantly embrace mediocrity. If everyone on slashdot's okay with this, why does everyone object to paying the record labels for their records? At any rate, the days of the vocalist are numbered. It will all be done on a keyboard or with MIDI some day.
yeah, but almost all famous writers can speak and write. That was my point... it only would only take most of them a week to reach a minimum reading proficiency. Oh well... quite a few opera singers aren't terribly proficient at reading music, either. It must be a singer thing.
I came from a music background, too... and piano was my main instrument. Keyboard instruments have gone from old organs, to virginals, to harpsichords, to fortepiano, to pianos... all the way to keyboards. With a keyboard, you still do some playing... be it sequenced or not. Comparing that to someone who can't sing even close to the correct pitch and rhythm, but gets made up by a talented recording engineer is not a meaningful comparison. Nor is it useful to say, "you can't criticize pop music."
Would you be willing to spend the big bucks to go to the Olympics if you knew that they grabbed some average joe off the street, put him in front of a machine that fired an arrow dead into the bullseye automatically without any effort from him other than turning it on and pushing the button? Would that be an archery competition worth paying money to see?
Why do we celebrate skilled athletes, but not musicians? What if the Olympics were all about watching rather unskilled athletes use electronics to make them inhumanly good?
I think the problem with the pitch/rhythm correction use in the last couple of decades is that the performers are being presented as something they are not.
If I had some sort of electronic device that could complete automate surgeries by taking control of my hands and arms (and without me having to think,) I think it would be very disingenuous for me to call myself a surgeon.
At any rate, recordings have done a fair amount of damage to music overall... not just pitch correction. Classical music has suffered because young students have been lead to believe that every professional plays perfectly all the time. In reality, the recordings are usually a series of takes. The performer might be able to play the piece perfectly in a given performance, but he or she (or the producer) might not be happy with one note out of 12,000 in a given piece - and will make another take, and/or splice in the given pitch (pitch correction doesn't work very well on multiphonic recordings.) Anyway, the young musician will be discourage because he or she can't play the same piece perfectly in a recital, but so and so played it perfectly on the recording.
You're right: good music does not necessarily have to be in tune... which is pretty funny as we're talking about things like autotune and melodyne which make a person sound like a keyboard.
I remember reading an article in Sound on Sound a while back. They were interviewing some hot shot recording engineer. He started talking about how high the industry's standard for vocal performance was. That's the real kicker: Slashdotters are usually going to argue that it's perfectly fine for a person who can't sing to have a recording engineer tweak his or her voice and produce a vocal track that is inhumanly accurate in both pitch and rhythm. Even more amusing: most of these programs will allow you to insert a little random detuning and/or rhythmic variation to make it sound more natural. Pretty funny - take some to perfection, and then tweak it so it doesn't sound perfect.
So, am I a doctor if I apply a bandage to someone's cut? If it's just a game of semantics, then, yes - applying a bandage is enough to make one a doctor.
Is a person who doesn't have the skill to use a drill or a hammer a carpenter?
Is someone who creates a little javascript using a wizard in an HTML editing program a programmer?
By slashdot's standards on musicians, I'd say yes.
Not exactly an exact comparison... you're talking about using the effect to enhance a work... the use listed in the original post is to cover up complete lack of fundamental skill. The original post didn't mention the fact that these tools can adjust rhythm, too. So, what's left? The person can't sing in tune... and can't sing in rhythm.
There's nothing wrong, per se, in doing that. But, I'm not going to waste my time calling these people "artists." I've used Melodyne (a direct competitor) - you can take pretty much anyone and dress up the output.
How about learning how to sing in tune? People have been doing it for centuries. Is that bar too high? Talking about articulation isn't very useful if you can't perform the most elementary tasks on your instrument.
Is someone who uses gimp or photoshop to run some filters on a drawing a real artist? Is it sufficient that he or she "looks like an artist?"
II think the issue is that people never learn the skills to sing in tune. It's not something one has to inherit, either. Singing in tune is kind of a fundamental skill, for a singer... kind of like how novelists learn to read and write.
I've often wondered that... it doesn't very long to learn to read music... yet so many pop musicians can't do it. Why don't they make the effort? It's a good thing Shakespeare and all the other famous writers/poets learned to write.
Anyway, 99% of the "music" released today is pretty much garbage, but I guess the target audience is what really matters.
more than one open source operating system out there? Will Slashdot survive? It cracks me up that a bunch of posts talked about how hotmail once ran on "linux" and qmail. Can't even say the name, "FreeBSD."
Seriously, this isn't surprising... NetBSD runs on everything. The NetBSD team spends a significant amount of time supporting a large number of platforms - be it a modern X86 server or a sun pizza box.
You'll notice that commercial entities like the BSD license (see: OS X) And, I don't think that the NetBSD developers will suddenly panic: "Someone's going to steal our code!" Contrary to what some here might feel, there is room for more than one open source operating system and, believe it or not, more than one license.
Back in the old days, slashdot had the BSD link right on the front page.
ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.4/i386/install44.iso
OpenBSD has been posting the install ISOs since at least 4.3. If you want the fancy 3 disc package (that boots multiple architectures on a single disc, you'll have to buy the official distribution.
I like to read, too... but you just threw all your creditability out the door by saying you're an IT guy. All the developers think they're 100 times more intelligent than the average IT guy. I guess it's because they "code" (whatever that's supposed to mean.)
On the other hand, I pray that there is never a truly accurate IT novel. I think a riveting tale of viruslook troubleshooting, blackberry support, and "restore from tapes" isn't what the doctor ordered... although, I suppose a very graphic account of a complete recabling job of a datacenter would put the novel on Oprah's list. It would also put the sleep aid vendors out of business.
That's the most wonderful thing I've seen in years... I now have visions of SAS drives, containing sharepoint, exchange, and ms sql installations, rolling down the belt to the shredders.
That's probably true. More than likely, the US would only collapse under a natural disaster or economic disaster.
What's pretty amusing is that the far left and the far right both want to clamp down on the bill of rights... just different parts.
While I don't think we should remove the 2nd amendment, I don't think it's the safety switch that major proponents make it out to be. I've heard the argument, "the 2nd amendment is there to defend the other amendments." How come the people don't take to arms when the first or fourth amendments are trampled on? How come the patriot act didn't cause the people to take arms? It's probably just the general apathy of people. Perhaps people would have done that in the past... though the Alien and Sedition acts didn't seem to be sufficient for people to take arms.
I know people who own strads... for the violinist, it's mainly about control. A friend of mine said it was nearly impossible to produce a bad sounding pitch on a strad.
Cheaper violins often show their weaknesses on more difficult music. A friend of mine cannot play certain orchestral excerpts on her violin, but can easily play them on other instruments. Her instrument is not as responsive as the other instruments, though it has a decent tone and works well for most things.
$600's probably what Verizon would charge for a T1, and they usually are the most expensive.
The real tragedy is that people are still charging several hundred dollars for a T1 line and it usually takes several months to acquire. Verizon's the likely culprit in both of these problems.
Violin, viola, cello, bass strings were never actually cat gut. They've pretty much always been sheep gut. I'm not sure why they call it cat gut... maybe it's because of the screeching sound beginning violinists make?
Sheep gut strings are still quite popular, though, as well as lizard skins for part of the bow (not everyone uses it, though.)
Your point is still quite valid, though. I'm guessing ebay won't do much as they'd lose a decent chunk of money, banning leather and all.
It depends on the age. The pianos I had growing up were quite old and all had Ivory veneer. As far as I know, the actual key mechanism is always wood, with the veneer... the same is usually true with modern pianos - wooden key with plastic veneer.
Even ignoring the fact that someone killed an elephant to get the ivory for the keys, I've always hated playing on ivory keys as they would break more easily than plastic.
Slashdot Mirror
Some instrumentalists can't practice as long due to physical limitations (say, brass and voice) but they still do practice. Composers will spend a couple of days working on a couple of measures. Creativity takes work.
There's nothing wrong with you using Melodyne to touch up your singing. More than likely, you don't sing all that much, and consequently, you're not practicing it enough to sing it in tune effortlessly.
My objection is that the record labels keep on popping out "faces" with little or no musical skill. In this case, the person is supposed to be a singer, but he or she doesn't have the simple skill to approach the correct pitch. Not singing in tune is one thing, but to have the record labels doctor it up and pass it off as someone with great vocal skills is disgusting. They know that most people aren't musically discerning. They know that the singer's looks are way more important than what the singer's voice is like.
People like to say, "he may not sing in tune or in rhythm, but he sings with feeling." You know what, most people who are serious at music sing or play with feeling.
Oh well, the record labels will always win... especially if we constantly embrace mediocrity. If everyone on slashdot's okay with this, why does everyone object to paying the record labels for their records? At any rate, the days of the vocalist are numbered. It will all be done on a keyboard or with MIDI some day.
yeah, but almost all famous writers can speak and write. That was my point... it only would only take most of them a week to reach a minimum reading proficiency. Oh well... quite a few opera singers aren't terribly proficient at reading music, either. It must be a singer thing.
Would you be willing to spend the big bucks to go to the Olympics if you knew that they grabbed some average joe off the street, put him in front of a machine that fired an arrow dead into the bullseye automatically without any effort from him other than turning it on and pushing the button? Would that be an archery competition worth paying money to see? Why do we celebrate skilled athletes, but not musicians? What if the Olympics were all about watching rather unskilled athletes use electronics to make them inhumanly good?
Works for Microsoft, I guess... but people here wouldn't let the comment "Microsoft's laughing all the way to the bank" stand.
I think the problem with the pitch/rhythm correction use in the last couple of decades is that the performers are being presented as something they are not.
If I had some sort of electronic device that could complete automate surgeries by taking control of my hands and arms (and without me having to think ,) I think it would be very disingenuous for me to call myself a surgeon.
At any rate, recordings have done a fair amount of damage to music overall... not just pitch correction. Classical music has suffered because young students have been lead to believe that every professional plays perfectly all the time. In reality, the recordings are usually a series of takes. The performer might be able to play the piece perfectly in a given performance, but he or she (or the producer) might not be happy with one note out of 12,000 in a given piece - and will make another take, and/or splice in the given pitch (pitch correction doesn't work very well on multiphonic recordings.) Anyway, the young musician will be discourage because he or she can't play the same piece perfectly in a recital, but so and so played it perfectly on the recording.
I remember reading an article in Sound on Sound a while back. They were interviewing some hot shot recording engineer. He started talking about how high the industry's standard for vocal performance was. That's the real kicker: Slashdotters are usually going to argue that it's perfectly fine for a person who can't sing to have a recording engineer tweak his or her voice and produce a vocal track that is inhumanly accurate in both pitch and rhythm. Even more amusing: most of these programs will allow you to insert a little random detuning and/or rhythmic variation to make it sound more natural. Pretty funny - take some to perfection, and then tweak it so it doesn't sound perfect.
So, am I a doctor if I apply a bandage to someone's cut? If it's just a game of semantics, then, yes - applying a bandage is enough to make one a doctor.
Is a person who doesn't have the skill to use a drill or a hammer a carpenter? Is someone who creates a little javascript using a wizard in an HTML editing program a programmer? By slashdot's standards on musicians, I'd say yes.
Not exactly an exact comparison... you're talking about using the effect to enhance a work... the use listed in the original post is to cover up complete lack of fundamental skill. The original post didn't mention the fact that these tools can adjust rhythm, too. So, what's left? The person can't sing in tune... and can't sing in rhythm. There's nothing wrong, per se, in doing that. But, I'm not going to waste my time calling these people "artists." I've used Melodyne (a direct competitor) - you can take pretty much anyone and dress up the output.
How about learning how to sing in tune? People have been doing it for centuries. Is that bar too high? Talking about articulation isn't very useful if you can't perform the most elementary tasks on your instrument. Is someone who uses gimp or photoshop to run some filters on a drawing a real artist? Is it sufficient that he or she "looks like an artist?"
II think the issue is that people never learn the skills to sing in tune. It's not something one has to inherit, either. Singing in tune is kind of a fundamental skill, for a singer... kind of like how novelists learn to read and write. I've often wondered that... it doesn't very long to learn to read music... yet so many pop musicians can't do it. Why don't they make the effort? It's a good thing Shakespeare and all the other famous writers/poets learned to write. Anyway, 99% of the "music" released today is pretty much garbage, but I guess the target audience is what really matters.
Seriously, this isn't surprising... NetBSD runs on everything. The NetBSD team spends a significant amount of time supporting a large number of platforms - be it a modern X86 server or a sun pizza box.
You'll notice that commercial entities like the BSD license (see: OS X) And, I don't think that the NetBSD developers will suddenly panic: "Someone's going to steal our code!" Contrary to what some here might feel, there is room for more than one open source operating system and, believe it or not, more than one license.
Back in the old days, slashdot had the BSD link right on the front page.
ftp://ftp.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/4.4/i386/install44.iso OpenBSD has been posting the install ISOs since at least 4.3. If you want the fancy 3 disc package (that boots multiple architectures on a single disc, you'll have to buy the official distribution.
On the other hand, I pray that there is never a truly accurate IT novel. I think a riveting tale of viruslook troubleshooting, blackberry support, and "restore from tapes" isn't what the doctor ordered... although, I suppose a very graphic account of a complete recabling job of a datacenter would put the novel on Oprah's list. It would also put the sleep aid vendors out of business.
That's the most wonderful thing I've seen in years... I now have visions of SAS drives, containing sharepoint, exchange, and ms sql installations, rolling down the belt to the shredders.
That's probably true. More than likely, the US would only collapse under a natural disaster or economic disaster. What's pretty amusing is that the far left and the far right both want to clamp down on the bill of rights... just different parts.
While I don't think we should remove the 2nd amendment, I don't think it's the safety switch that major proponents make it out to be. I've heard the argument, "the 2nd amendment is there to defend the other amendments." How come the people don't take to arms when the first or fourth amendments are trampled on? How come the patriot act didn't cause the people to take arms? It's probably just the general apathy of people. Perhaps people would have done that in the past... though the Alien and Sedition acts didn't seem to be sufficient for people to take arms.
in basement apartments
as my email address. That way, anyone can learn anything they want to know about me.
is just my Social Security number.
I know people who own strads... for the violinist, it's mainly about control. A friend of mine said it was nearly impossible to produce a bad sounding pitch on a strad.
Cheaper violins often show their weaknesses on more difficult music. A friend of mine cannot play certain orchestral excerpts on her violin, but can easily play them on other instruments. Her instrument is not as responsive as the other instruments, though it has a decent tone and works well for most things.
$600's probably what Verizon would charge for a T1, and they usually are the most expensive.
The real tragedy is that people are still charging several hundred dollars for a T1 line and it usually takes several months to acquire. Verizon's the likely culprit in both of these problems.
I'm betting that the majority of ivory used in piano keys was from elephants...
Looking online, looks like some people are still selling it:
http://www.elephantivorytusks.com/ivorypianokeys.html
Again, I've never really liked ivory keys, but I've never played on new ivory keys, either.
Violin, viola, cello, bass strings were never actually cat gut. They've pretty much always been sheep gut. I'm not sure why they call it cat gut... maybe it's because of the screeching sound beginning violinists make?
Sheep gut strings are still quite popular, though, as well as lizard skins for part of the bow (not everyone uses it, though.)
Your point is still quite valid, though. I'm guessing ebay won't do much as they'd lose a decent chunk of money, banning leather and all.
It depends on the age. The pianos I had growing up were quite old and all had Ivory veneer. As far as I know, the actual key mechanism is always wood, with the veneer... the same is usually true with modern pianos - wooden key with plastic veneer.
Even ignoring the fact that someone killed an elephant to get the ivory for the keys, I've always hated playing on ivory keys as they would break more easily than plastic.