Hrm.

[spacebug]

Okay.

So I'm getting stuff together to jam on for two hours for this art opening.

I have a question for the music folks out there. Or any of you geeks, really...

I've long claimed the operating assumption that using presets and canned beats to excess is, in essence, cheating. Notable exceptions hold, of course, like reiterating existing loops and samples to make something completely new (Zurround did this all the time, so does a lot of perfectly respectable hip hop and other electronic music, etc.), or altering something enough that you've made it your own (I love collage-based stuff like Negativland or Evolution Control Committee), or using something with such an existing camp value that it comes full circle (Trio using the default beat on the Casio Sk-1) But... what about came-with-the-software, plug-n-play, royalty-free jobs, and you're not using it as a scratch pad? I've always thought of that stuff like hostess snack cakes- they're quick, they're convenient, they're cheap, everyone knows what they taste like and they're readily available, but they sure as hell aren't something you'd serve at a restaurant and try to get away with having people think they're a fine dessert, you know? Not that they don't have uses and all, BUT.

Here's the thing.
If I have a musical/programming weakness, it's the beats. Not that I can't find a beat, or play on the beat, or know what I like in percussion, but I have a big ol' block when it comes to confidently creating beats I like from scratch. (The one weird exception to this seems to be nanoloop. I really enjoy programming short rhythmic stuff with nanoloop on the gameboy, but that gets limited in a couple of ways.) Otherwise, it's very picky and time consuming and very rarely are my rhythmic tracks anything I'm *proud* of, necessarily- I find them mostly functional at best. The flipside of this is that I can make melodic/harmonic bits that I like that fuse together right off the top of my head that I find reasonably interesting pretty reliably All The Time.

I got to thinking that maybe this is a weird, self imposed, snotty sort of mindfuck. Is it? If I use the occassional canned loop or preset in "my" music, would you still respect me the next day? Should I rightfully feel cheap and dirty, or is this my classical music snob upbringing rearing its head in a different format and I should just fuck it and quit being so damned uptight?

My best guess is that it's neither here nor there, and the real answer is kinda fuzzy. This feels similar to admitting to liking a "less cool" genre of music somehow, like just having to shout "yes, fuck you, sometimes I LIKE certain progressive trance tracks and dancing around my living room like a total moron, OKAY?" from a proverbial rooftop and just getting it overwith, or like that thing that Jj had with Dolly Parton, but maybe it's not.

Thoughts?

Comments

[dangerdhotrod.livejournal.com]

if you feel that way just pitch shift it or take the sample and flip it upside down or do some little thing to make yourself feel like you made it your own and it is not 'cheating'. i don't think you have to construct every single patch and drum line completely from scratch to be genuine. coming from a visual arts background i see parallels in music that relate to this sort of thing - like warhol or duchamp and whatnot...

personally i wouldn't notice this sort of thing very often, it is more like i notice if something doesn't change for the whole performance or if it's obvious the drums are completely sequenced out to the degree of pressing play on the drum track. i understand how tough it is with just one performer though too (damn i wish i could clone myself or get other people to want to rock with me so i didn't have to try to do everything myself!) so i wouldn't stress about it too much.

what you're doing seems creative and musical enough that i don't think many people could fault you for such a thing. if they did they probably would be annoying and sucky so who cares what they think anyway?

[pied-piper70.livejournal.com]

Well, you know me and beats: they follow me everywhere...so I don't have trouble putting them together...

MY problem is finding the right sounds and templates to work with...But that will change soon...

So, in the meantime, what I've been doing is combining two or more preset beats into one...The combination is usually interesting and will alter the sound just enough to make it seem not like just another preset...or sample...or whatever...

Yeah, I guess what I'm trying to is, "yeah, get over it..."

....

Jj had a thing with Dolly Parton?!! I never heard about that from him...Bitch never tells me anything...

[sarendipatree.livejournal.com]

I had a thing with Dolly Parton, and boy are her -- nothing.

Actually, what C is referring are the following entries:
http://sarendipatree.livejournal.com/136732.html
http://sarendipatree.livejournal.com/131390.html

[kittekaat.livejournal.com]

I think that nobody else will judge you for it hard as you seem to judging yourself for it. So forgive yourself and start making the music you want to make, using all the resources you have available to you. Why limit youself with arbitrarily imposed standards? If you are happy with it, then it has served its purpose.

[r4c.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the beats are tough (unless you're a drummer I guess).

Layering multiple loops is good (either your own loop over another pre-existing loop or just 2 pre-existing loops, or program something over an existing loop and ditch the original loop), automated effects, take existing loops and chop them up or cut the individual sounds up and use them to make a new loop. Alternately, replace the sounds in an existing loop w/ new sounds (in sound forge, just do auto region and then paste new sounds into the regions). I think Recycle does kind of the same thing. In ableton, in the clip view use envelope->clip->sample offset to shuffle things around. Also, follow actions (random) can be good for making new rhythms from a bunch of loops. Generative stuff can also be a good starting place.

I've kind of come to the conclusion that I'd rather be making music than programming sounds for the most part (especially for compositionally intensive kind of stuff). I still do a lot of sound design but usually it's find something in the neighborhood of what I want, and then tweak it and "make it my own". Either that or take something and warp it beyond all recognition. VST plugins are your friend.

End of day, I think it's more important that the music sounds good and is uniquely your own than creating every tiny bit from scratch. I guess I just view every sound source as another tool or color in the pallette. So to sum that all up, I think there's a middle ground between using completely pre-fab and writing everything from scratch. As a recovering classical music victim, I completely understand where you're coming from.

[sarendipatree.livejournal.com]

What r4c said, mostly.

I've been finding something very helpful for me is sampling a bunch of loops that seem to be at the right BPM, and then altering start points, so that one'll start on the kick, one'll start on the snare, one'll start on an eighth note high-hat someplace. I sequence those as if they were kick, hat, snare that they start with, but then I have the potential of some "fill" left over at the end, which makes making the beat sound complete very easy.

After you play with beats enough, you start to realize that there are only so many ways to chop 4/4 (or any other time-signature, really), that actually work. This'll lose ya y'r guilt, but fast.

I don't think presets are cheating, especially if you make'em y'r own. I've been doing the same thing with the Evolver -- find a preset that's in the ballpark, and then editing to taste.

Another thing to do is the lay down a template (cheap'n'cheesy preset/sample groove whatever), and then when you have available time, if you're so inclined, replace it with something that sounds and functions similarly, but isn't the preset sample.

Some more fun can be had this way: turn on/open whatever rhythm module comes to hand, turn on the arpeggiator on the Ion's first channel, find a likely pattern, and play that. Now, turn on the second channel, turn on the arpeggiation, find a likely pattern. Wash/rinse/repeat. Experiment with triggering arpeggiation on off-notes. Record, sample.

The important part is getting to where you are happy within the constraints (time and artistic) of whatever you're doing. As long as that's the case, fuck whatever anyone else might think -- you're the arbiter.

[azure-armand.livejournal.com]

I think it depends on who you're trying to impress.

I use pretty much nothing but presets. I consider myself to be more of a "rock" musician, where no one really cares if you use presets, as long as you play your own instruments and use real drums. Drum machines and samples were, until recently, the sins of the rock world.

What interests me is the songwriting, and if I stop too long to tweak knobs, I'll get bogged down and my creative process will stop.

That's way different than in hip-hop, for example, where you are expected to use someone else's beat, and present it in a new way. But you better have your own lyrical style . . .

In the electronic world, you're supposed to tweak the knobs on your gear different than everyone else, because people will notice if you don't.

many Jazz or Classical people would be against any kind of synthesizer. Classical people might even avoid using any kind of electrical amplification. To them, that's what is considered cheating.

So, in conclusion, I like making beats.

[hexagonalcarbon.livejournal.com]

I would like to shoot out a bunch of uninformed, unsolicited options.

1) The key is not giving the wrong impression. Nobody minds sampled hip hop beats, because it is now understood that this is the genre. The same goes for sampling. The problem with lifting canned beats is that it's not clear that you aren't claiming authorship for them. If you could indicate the parameters of your music somehow, it would seem acceptable. You might name your songs after the preset names, or insert vocal samples talking about lifted beats.

2) I think we can all agree that any problem you have composing beats would be easily solved if you regularly spent time beat boxing into a tape recorder or sampler.