I Could Do That!

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Something interesting is happening in electronic music because people are realizing that, as software becomes more powerful, it's becoming much easier for your average schmo to make tracks. The amount of "talent" required to piece together something listenable may be dropping.

Is this a good or bad thing?

Do you enjoy a piece of music less when you realize it's easy to make?

Did I ask this exact question already? (I feel like I did!)

― Mark, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

If I already asked this, maybe just point me in the direction of the thread & I'll take it up over there.

― Mark, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Replace electronic with... oh say... Rock. And software with... well... guitar.

― nathalie, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Do you enjoy a piece of music less when you realize it's easy to make?

I think it's a question of how to know if/when it's easy to make and whether that matters, surely.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Every internetkid has the software and their songs on mp3.com. But it's pretty terrible stuff.

Brian Eno said something like, in a couple decades people will look back and hear the same distinct flavour in computer music. Like the distinct flavour of 60's music is the wah-wah pedal. And the distinct flavour will be an overfussy, unfunky, "dead as stone" feel. I think he said "dead as stone." Because it takes some talent to make stuff that sounds good.

I'm listening to 'mp3 Killed the Radio Star' right now. I'm sure I could figure out how to do about the same thing, but I could probably never do it as good, and it's already been done.

Anyone can do it, but not many can do it really good. I mean, how many punk bands do you think have existed from 1977 to present? Worldwide. It's got to be a lot, eh. But 99% of them sucked.

Maybe someday there'll be a Nuggets sort of thing for all the kids with laptops who dreamed about being signed to Tigerbeat 6 or Mego.

― DylanK, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's really not hard to make music using anything, is it?

With computers, tho, the situation is different. To make something good, or interesting (which is what it takes, really) you still need imagination.

Most of my friends have at least tried to make music on their computers. When Average Joe Non-musician does...it sounds really f'ing bad. When you give a true musician a new toy, he'll do something truly worthwhile though.

― Keiko, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

For me, a good deal of electronic music (IDM in particular) exists primarily for the sake of its sounds. As much detail and intricate structure that a lot of the 'minimal' laptop type stuff has, or however complex your virtual sound environment has been programmed or whatever, its all flies on the wall to most listeners. What tends to get through is "oh cool noises.... what an interesting new *soundscape*" etc. etc. And after a good deal of exposure and familiarization, a lot of it becomes anonymous wallpaper, maybe fancier and more 'futurist' feeling but still hopelessly left to meander in the peripheral.

I think as this wearing out is happenning, and tons of kids are haphazardly throwing shit together into some poor man's Autechre/Kid606/whoever, the approach to software will be encouraged to change, if only to stand out of the crowd. Demystify granular synthesis and there'll be some who will want to take things further. Whether or not the music will improve as a result of this is questionable, but hopefully more stuff will sound like the result of personal application rather than plug-in cruising.

― Honda, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Most of my friends have at least tried to make music on their computers. When Average Joe Non-musician does...it sounds really f'ing bad. When you give a true musician a new toy, he'll do something truly worthwhile though.

I totally disagree. Give a musician new technology and he / she just tries to use it to recreate his / her idea of music, learned using a previous technology. eg. uses synthesizers to play guitar chords. Give a non-musician with good taste a piece of new technology and he / she will learn to hear the music that is intrinsicly inside it.

The reason DJ's make the best electronic music is that composing with computers requires a curatorial skill rather than a performative one. You need to know how to listen for the music in the machine.

On the "I could do that". No, I feel inspired by people who make music that sounds like I could do it. I want a musical culture I participate in. I want musicians who I can imagine having a musical dialogue with. I don't want performance virtuosi whom I'm invited to admire from afar.

― phil, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

You only have to look at the directorys of songs by users on soulseek to see it's very easy and just as effective to make electonic music yourself. It gets to the point when the muscian isn't the user but the creator of the software, maybe this gives autechre some kind of credibility because they apparently create there own software, or maybe they should just release software instead of inaccesable noise..

― jk, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

What I meant by "true musician" was someone who's tasteful & talented. I guess it's kind of an obscure definition, haha..

Honda, I totally agree with you re: "Oooh cool noises". They nevah cease to captivate me.

― Keiko, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah, it's easier to make music that's unfailingly in-time and in-tune with software now, and bears close resemblence to electronic music made by the "pro's", but that doesn't make it good.

It still takes creativity to make good music, and good ideas are still good ideas no matter how you execute them. Even if it were easy to reproduce/create all the sounds that Autechre (for example) uses, it wouldn't make the actual musical ideas in a lot of their tracks any less brilliant.

― Jordan, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

IMHO this is the most exciting thing to happen to music since Punk Rock. It's basically the same ethic. We did a gig up in Sheffield the other day at the Boardwalk as Autofire and it went down fucking well. We were supported by a band called 65*days of static who managed to combine the Protools drumming and effects with pure Post- punk guitar and bass skills.
There are communities of artists springing up (particularly on the internet - check tefosav.com as a prime example) able to communicate their tracks over large distances and share ideas with like-minded people and often collaborate doing this. Venetian Snares and Speedranch managed to do this using MSN and made a really coherent (and pretty hardcore) album.
All the same, I don't see how this can be a bad thing.
The concept of being a "true" musician by playing an instrument is ridiculous. Aphex Twin, Autechre, Plaid - I'm pretty sure and "trained" musicians but it is certainly more "musical" than, say a three-chord song by Kurt Cobain.

― dog latin, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Again, I didn't mean to imply that to be a "true" musician you have to play a "true" instrument. I meant someone who could approach anything, instrument or not, and make music, because they truly understand art.

― Keiko, Thursday, 27 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

on a basic level I think that computer aided composition and software composition are simply changing the conception itself of what is to be inteneded as musical "trained". realization of a piece of music on a computer can involve basic concepts of harmony, mixing, physics of sound..... it depends on the software and the methods we are using. there are definetely differences in the time required to master user-friendly softwares as reason and more difficult (but maybe funnier) stuff as super_collider, max or programminf directly in c_sound.

― francesco, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I like to record electronic music on a 4-track and play all the loops and stuff live. It's sort of a reaction to the whole lap-top thing.

― jel --, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

All rock and pop music is, is noise. The odd song has a good tune, but still noise is integrated. The trick is to make noise using things that haven't been used before, like Faust's pinball machines, and, which was the band, that used a pneumatic drill to drill right through the stage? In other words, if it sounds alright, does it matter how much talent the artist has?

― Anna Rose, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Anna: isn't that the defn. of "talent" though?

― Sterling Clover, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Keiko ... getting a bit academic, sorry :

Basically you can define "musician" by some criteria before you hear the music. Then we note that most definitional criteria eg. classically trained or virtuoso perfomance skills on instrument X etc. don't particularly correlate well with making great electronic music using machines.

Or, we can define "musician" after hearing the music, and saying "that was cool, that guy was talented, he must have been a real musician." In this case, all good music *is* made by real musicians. But the claim is tautological and pretty vacuous.

It's only the claim which could be interestingly non tautological, and I don't think anyone has found a good a priori definition of "musician" which correlates with making good electronic music.

All of which has NOTHING to do with the question, if a musician makes music that I could, can I still appreciate it? Well suppose I was a guitar genius? (I'm NOT) Couldn't I still appreciate other great guitar playing even if I could perform the same? Yeah, if it was beautiful and not just virtuosic wank. (If it was VW of course I wouldn't be impressed by anything I could do.)

― phil, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Funny thing is, the IDM/laptopper tracking things out on Cubase or ProTools is closer to the old composer working on a score than the songwriter knocking about on his guitar until something happens. Only the product is the "performance" itself, and not the blueprint for a performance.

― misterhungry, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I totally disagree. Give a musician new technology and he / she just tries to use it to recreate his / her idea of music, learned using a previous technology. eg. uses synthesizers to play guitar chords. Give a non-musician with good taste a piece of new technology and he / she will learn to hear the music that is intrinsicly inside it.

That is just not true. Give a non-musician ANY musical instrument, be it a guitar, a violin, a sampler, a synthesizer or whatever and the non-musician will produce painful cacophony. A musician will be able to produce music.

― Dan Perry, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark, is this question spurred on by idiot pitchfork webboarders who assert Fennesz sucks because they think he doesn't have to do anything to make his music? I have never understood that argument. Maybe in real life, the harder you work = the more successful you will be, but in art, although discipline and dedication are admirable qualities, there aren't any rules about how hard you have to work or how much you have to sweat in order to make something good.

But look at it another way: how do you measure how hard someone worked to produce music? Is it the time they spent? The number of brain cells they used (and then wouldn't smarter people always be "working" harder than everyone else -- or maybe they're working less than everyone because they don't have to devote as great a percentage of their brainpower to most tasks)? If intent and influence is impossible to measure, then how are people complaining that some new electronic is too easy to make?

― dleone, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Obviously a classically-trained virtuoso whatever, who knows nothing about electronic music/software etc. will probably not produce good electronic music. The point is that those who have a good ear for pitch and rhythm (skills that good musicians have) will ultimately be at an advantage. Equally there are plenty of 'non-musicians' who have developed those skills through listening and DJing.

― David, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I agree with dleone that hard work doesn't always equal good music. After all, someone can spend all day polishing a turd, and at the end of the day, they're still going to have a turd, albeit a shiny one. It seems truer to say that talent or musicianship produces good music, but as others have noted further up in the thread, the definition of talent and musicianship are tautological. We define someone after the fact as being "talented" or "a good musician" because we like the music that they have produce. You never hear about talented musicians who have never in their lives produced good music.

Notwithstanding those points, hard work is intimately related with the production of good music in something like 99.9% of all cases. I can think of very few musicians I enjoy who, as far as I know, don't work hard at their craft. The chances of just pushing a button and producing a great piece of music are pretty slim - unless you're pushing play on a CD player containing the latest Blackalicious album. And in that case, you couldn't really claim to be the one making the music. DJs blur the line between making music and finding music. But if the DJ isn't adding much to the original work, then why listen to the DJ instead of just putting on the original record? (This reminds me - I think there's a Hanatarash record which just consists of them playing cheezy muzak records.)

Are electronic tools making it easier to make good music? I sincerely hope so, but at the same time, I doubt it. Sure it's easy to produce a funky beat if you have a drum machine. But that's kind of like the example of just pushing play on a CD player. As soon as you start transforming the beat or combining it with other elements, it's no longer quite so easy to make it sound good. I think Eno is right to say that it's very easy to end up with a "dead as stone" feel using sequencers, drum machines, and samplers. "Airless" is also a good word for it.

― o. nate, Friday, 28 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Mark, is this question spurred on by idiot pitchfork webboarders who assert Fennesz sucks because they think he doesn't have to do anything to make his music?

Partly. Also, I read a review of the new release of the Max/MSP software, and the reviewer said the software was so powerful that anyone could be making decent generic IDM within a week or two. Key word there is "generic," of course, but the writer also said that he'd lost some interest in listening to electronic music, because 90% of it sounded so easy to do once you understand how Max/MSP works. I guess I could see this being true of any kind of music, esp. punk and so forth. Maybe part of the initial appeal of electronic music was wonder at how it was made, and that part of the attraction will fade, leaving one to judge on purely music grounds, like any other music.

― Mark, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Yeah but the difference with punk is that you have to leave your bedroom to do it. "Oh anyone can do that" - really? Sure, even a toddler could pick out some gtr riffs, but if most people were told to go onstage and encounter an unknown audience reaction to them maing a tit of themselves they'd discover they 'couldn't' rather quick. It's no mystery why IDM people are so purist about 'music not personality', because if you're sitting in your room like a spazz sucking your thumb all day you're not going to really have any, are you? (Not that I'm averse to such sloth at times) I think listeners are aware (maybe subconsciously?) of the difference between "music anyone could do" and "music anyone could have done for no reason except as a way of passing time when leaving the house is too intimidating"

― dave q, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Another problem on the micro-scale with IDM artistes is that they tend to work in isolation alot and thus don't work to any standards except self-imposed ones, which are ultimately meaningless to anyone who isn't them. It takes absolute colossal arrogance (obvious in such vocaly 'ego-free' people) to assume that "Because I labored intensively on this taking special care to avoid the derivative by relying purely on influences from my own head, everyone should recognise this is being good!" (I know a few IDM beginners, all of whom take great pains to ensure their creations sound like nothing else ever recorded, and surprise! They mainly sound similar to each other, like they all reached the same page of the Akai manual at the same time.)

― dave q, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

(Either that or it sounds like Enigma. If your raison d'etre as an artist is to be way out in front then it behooves one to keep up. I don't really care, but dance ppl [more than IDM even] are always the first to start throwing words like 'ground-breaking' into the mix. Other bugbear of mine is when you tell an aspiring IDMer that their track is boring or whatever and they sigh "Yeah, I know. It's because I'm using this outdated, crap gear. Wait until you hear the stuff I do when I get back from NAMM!"

― dave q, Monday, 1 July 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

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