Avenel, you clearly have a point. Virtuosity has its own appeal, and developed because of it. But it's music, so it's horses for courses. Plainsong doesn't even have beats and virtuosity wasn't a concern. Indeed, it would probably have been sinful if you were doing Plainsong at the time. Virtuosity isn't essential, unless the listener demands it. You're allowed to demand it for one's self, but ...for others?

I really dislike virtuosity in a sense. I don't like complicated stuff just for the sake of it. In my worldview (of antagonistic poles) simplicity is antagonistic to complexity: just as brevity is antagonistic to explication. You can't communicate much of Jung in a sentence, but what you do communicate doesn't demand a library of books to understand.

Falling apples or field equations of General Relativity? Which gives the better sense of gravity?

 

and for anything else try the MicroTonal music, there was a microtonal synth VST, can't remember the name, it was free.

 

yes i know many people hate virtuosism including most of my musician friends but what can i do ? i like it and there's nothing wrong in listening to some virtuoso music from time to time ... actually Tony Banks is not a keyboard virtuoso he's a great composer, for top notch virtuosism on keyboard you better stick to Jordan Rudess (Dream Theater).

the thing is, if we're serious about playing keyboard and composition we should know the boundaries of our tools of the trade.
like, who's the best keyboardist, what's the most difficult thing to play (jazz, classical), and so on, just to have a rough idea of what we're dealing with.

if you don't you may end up thinking EDM melodies are *technically* amazing, which they are not and never will, they can be beautiful and simple but technically they won't impress anyone, actually any decent piano teacher will laugh in your face so dont even try.

 

Most everything you said throughout the thread is undoubtedly somewhat true, but, for instance, Jazz and EDM are completely different worlds. I went through a period of listening to classical stuff and I couldn't stand anything else by comparison. And different taste, and era, is what it is.

Simple stuff is simple. Simple has all the qualities that simple has: immediacy but crudity; impact but little subtlety; power without distinction; primacy without secondaries; whatever. Complexity and sophistication have their own different qualities - the exact things that make it what it is. By definition.

To my mind, it's an old debate about high and low art. Classical opera is undoubtedly more sophisticated and virtuoso than pop music or EDM. In ways. That's an objective musical fact. But *my* experience of music is not entirely dependent on its sophistication, indeed, possibly the converse: I like simple. Drums around a fire. A single hand-carved flute. Plainsong. 4x4 trance.

I think it was Mick Jagger (maybe Keith, certainly one of them) said, "The more we make it 4/4 the more they love it."

I know I do. But some like a waltz. ;)

 

These words have limitation accompanying them. Genres, Instruments, Drums, Dance, Music, Pitch, Definition, Production, Market, Listener, ... . I never put any limitation on my experimentations with sounds.

 

Ugh - i hate microtonal stuff.......12 tones is too many for me! It sounds like tuning a guitar.

 

Nah, the limits are what make music. It's the confines that allow you to express the limitless.

 

Subtitle:
I felt varying degrees of insecurity around you know musicianship because I didn't grow up as a kind of virtuoso and like every teenager I played an instrument in a band for a bit you know that didn't capture my obsession and when I went into a recording studio I had that same feeling that I think people who have fallen in love with an instrument.

One of the things that I've always been interested in and continue to be interested in beyond composition or a way of putting music together and is the nature of sound itself in the landscape that something sits and I think can dramatically alter and emotional reflex to what you're hearing and I think the film, the idea of giving a unique identity sonically is part of the job of the composer.
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Please listen to the background music while watching it.

 

I watched Patriot's Day a while ago and remember thinking to myself that the score sounds like something Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross would do. Then I find out it was.

 

OK some more virtuosism here by Jordan Rudess :

he's so funnny ... he also published 50+ video about his techniques, highly recommended.

 

well maybe you're better suited at sound design ?
in any case you can do both .. being obsessed with sound is a good thing, there;s a lot of music that can be done with sounds alone or with little melodies.

i dont agree with the modular synth in the video, it's time to say fuck off to all the modular freaks .. this bullshit went on for too long already, in 2017 nothing can beat Reaktor there no excuse to waste 5-10K $ on a modular to show off your dick is better than ours .. these guys are ridicolous, even Vangelis stopped using analogs since the 80s and never looked back !

as for his sounds, great but guess what it could be done with omnisphere on a 300$ laptop.
dont fall for the analog luddists .. analog is dead and digital is here to stay.

 

me neither, i started playing using a sequencer with QWERTY keys, go figure.
then switched to a roland mute keyb, big step forward, then on a Yamaha keyb, but it took me many years to improve.

if you dont study musical theory you will never improve, simple as that.
if you dont keep playing often and trying new exercizes you dont go forward, you're stuck playing the same shit over and over.

nobody is born gifted, even mozart studied all day longs and was obsessed with music.

it's all up to you, anyone can play the most common and famous songs and join a cover band, really no big deal.
for anything else you need to make a step forward unless you alerady reached your limit.

so what is your limit depends on you but you can try at least.
claiming you're bad at playing is bullshit, you play bad because you dont study and therefore you cant improve.
skills dont grow on trees, simple as that, either you know or you just dont know, no middle way.

if you're really bad just give up and start DJing.

if you're obsessed with sounds it's good, you can become a good sound designer, but then again there;s an even bigger
investment to be done in terms of time and dedication.
are you a technical guy ? can you digest all the specs for any Synthesis technique ? if so, go ahead.
if not, first check if you've the basic requirements to go further ahead.
if everything fails, become a DJ.

it's never been easier to be a DJ than in 2017, but you will need a good marketing plan to get noticed, there's a flood of young DJs kicking and screaming,
some will even PAY to play a gig in the pub next door.

i dont know where the music industry is heading, but i see dark clouds at the horizon.

 

listen to Jazz, no limits and not much boring 4/4 tempos.

 

microtonal is great but the final result is disappointing apart for rare cases.

 

sure and i agree but a strict categorization of what a song is all about is mandatory nowadays considering there are trillions of songs available.
either that or it becomes impossible to find and discover a song.

and i would take it easy talking about experimentation, everything has been done to death already, unless you built yourself a new instrument there's little to talk about experimentation.

you guys think you can come up with a new sound made on a synth ? no way, even with Reaktor it would be hard.
music reasearch on synth is almost dead since a long time.

the research goes on in other fields, like Impulse Reverbs for instance (IR).

 

if we talk about money $$, Simple is always teh winner.
deadmouse is a millionaire and i'm pennyless, and i'm not even a virtuoso .. double fail !

common people will always prefer simple and linear things, and of course 4/4 beats.
this is the reality, nothing we can do about it.

but then again, is it wrong ?
whats wrong in simple music ? actually .. nothing.
it's just that it's so limiting and boring when you listen too much to simple music but the commoners barely listen music in the weekend or when they drive a car, they;re not obsessed like us, and they can't listen at music like a musician does, all they feel is a "whole" sound wall, they dont listen to single instruments or the small details like we do.

so we're different, musicians vs commoners, and we must accept it rather than ranting and raving.
people dont give a shit about what we think is good or bad.

if their favourite DJ plays deadmouse they will dance deadmouse and think deadmouse is the best thing since sliced bread, and good luck telling them otherwise.

 

eerm that's cool but I personally don't necessarily share the same opinion
Good to see u passionate about it tho

Please God let's not go there

Maybe again they offer a simple choice that the user can subscribe to and offer distinct advantages and disadvantages.
Analog doesn't always sound "better" but the two does sound different.
Again least to my ears anyway.
Choice is yours though and isn't that a great thing

We are all different for sure

Maybe "musicians vs commoners" be a good board game to play at like xmas with family & friends.
Get everyone round & like start a huge fight,
lol could be like no shit I wanted to play "nobility vs peasants" and

Well mmm

 

Luddists

 

I'm common. I don't always do anything.

There is a difficult line to tread between distinguishing "good/bad" art and being condescending, arrogant, superior, etc.

I can agree with most everything you say, but not when it veers into that territory. People can like what they choose. Often they don't even choose, it just happens. It doesn't diminish what you are interested in or what you like. You don't have to like crappy music, why would you? But there's no sense in being patronising or condescending about it.

Perhaps you mean 'common' in a different sense to how I interpret it. I don't disagree with what you are saying so much as the way you say it, perhaps. Dance music is simple - dush dush dush dush. There is nothing "wrong" with that. Simple things have an immediacy that complexity does not - by definition. The smartest people I have met like dance music. The best musician I know loves dance music. Liking simple and crude music doesn't necessarily make the listener simple and crude. And even then, what's wrong if it did? It needn't offend anyone much.....and there's no need for condescension about it, even if it is undoubtedly true that Opera is more sophisticated and complex than pop music (in general).

 

A good story:
What If My Music Sucks?
https://www.reddit.com/r/WeAreTheMusicMakers/comments/32piqi/what_if_my_music_sucks/

But I don't think my musics suck. I just think I've not found my target audiences in a vast amount yet.

 

Last edited by a moderator: Jan 25, 2017