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spacebugOkay.
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?
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?
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Date: 2006-03-28 06:35 pm (UTC)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.