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Craig --- Could we get a dedicated electronic/computer musicians forum?


ryan7585

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This forum is great but it's kinda slow moving... I feel like I never came here because it just always seemed like "Craig's forum" rather than an electronic musicians forum.

I respect you a lot and that stuff is talked about in here, but this forum is sort of vague in that it covers the work of engineers, soundmen, producers, really anyone involved with music at all.... And these days computer musicians are becoming more and more prominent and are growing in number. Has to be a huge part of the MF customer base

Everyone else gets their own forum, why can't we?? cry.gifwink.gif

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Until we get such a forum - if we do - please feel free to post computer stuff here. Especially if you're intelligent, witty and/or friendly, in which case you should post here constantly! biggrin.gifbiggrin.gif

Seriously, we do discuss computer stuff often, and I've gotten some great advice here, so post away.

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Quote Originally Posted by UstadKhanAli View Post
Seriously, we do discuss computer stuff often, and I've gotten some great advice here, so post away.
What he said smile.gif

Consider this your dedicated computer music forum for now. There's a lot of computer-related content here, and based on the posts, I'd say no one would object if there was more. Start them threads, and I think you'll get a response.
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Quote Originally Posted by UstadKhanAli View Post
This forum has saved my hide more than when I was experiencing computer woes or in helping to point the way when making decisions that were computer-related. I've also gotten a lot of help with creating websites here as well.
Based on who was asking, my guess is that he was looking for a forum to discuss making electronic music using techniques and programs to create combinations of computer generated sounds rather than modifying and arranging previously recorded sounds. I don't think he's looking for a special forum for general computer discussions, choosing computers or software, finding and fixing or working around bugs, and creative ideas for things that use a computer.

Nothing wrong with discussing, for lack of a better term, pure computer generated music here, here as long as there are enough visitors who take an active interest and can sustain discussions. Same as with any forum.
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Quote Originally Posted by MikeRivers View Post
Based on who was asking, my guess is that he was looking for a forum to discuss making electronic music using techniques and programs to create combinations of computer generated sounds rather than modifying and arranging previously recorded sounds. I don't think he's looking for a special forum for general computer discussions, choosing computers or software, finding and fixing or working around bugs, and creative ideas for things that use a computer.

Nothing wrong with discussing, for lack of a better term, pure computer generated music here, here as long as there are enough visitors who take an active interest and can sustain discussions. Same as with any forum.
i think he's looking for people making electronic music under 40 idn_smilie.gif
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Quote Originally Posted by Goobers View Post
i think he's looking for people making electronic music under 40 idn_smilie.gif
This, Although I feel comfortable here as I'm sure most of us do here at the "Old Folk's Home".

At least no one has hollered "Get OFF the stage Grampa!" yet(I know that day is comming).
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Quote Originally Posted by blue2blue View Post
I'm thinking he's probably less concerned with chronological age than a contemporary orientation. More Skrillex than Switched-on-Bach, so to speak.
haha that's not all wrong, but i would kill myself before listening to skrillex. I make stuff kinda like four tet, tycho, flying lotus, etc. I also do abstract improv, going between ambient and noise and whatever depending on what I feel like doing that day

But yeah I really do appreciate that this forum is here and it is a wealth of information.. But honestly I just can't get excited here. It's too method oriented and there's not any discussion at all about the amazing things people are doing in the more experimental scenes.

The ideas that are proliferating through those scenes are really interesting and usually employ techniques that have never even been used before. If we could have a place here to talk about all that then we could all learn together and get excited about things together, etc. Build on it all.. It would be really awesome

There are some forums like that out there but they're small and usually sort of localized.

Would it be hard to get that accomplished? Another forum .... Electronic/Experimental? or is that just too much to ask with all the server issues and red tape?
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Also, there's no conceptual discussion on HC... nowhere to talk about how our music relates to the world and the times we're living in... nowhere to discuss what makes something revolutionary or have staying power. It's in the experimental and electronic scenes where these things get talked about the most.

it gets brought up some, but only in passing. It would the community so much if we had a place to go. I know there are a lot of HC users who are into this stuff and it would only spread after that

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Quote Originally Posted by ryan7585 View Post
haha that's not all wrong, but i would kill myself before listening to skrillex. I make stuff kinda like four tet, tycho, flying lotus, etc. I also do abstract improv, going between ambient and noise and whatever depending on what I feel like doing that day

But yeah I really do appreciate that this forum is here and it is a wealth of information.. But honestly I just can't get excited here. It's too method oriented and there's not any discussion at all about the amazing things people are doing in the more experimental scenes.

The ideas that are proliferating through those scenes are really interesting and usually employ techniques that have never even been used before. If we could have a place here to talk about all that then we could all learn together and get excited about things together, etc. Build on it all.. It would be really awesome

There are some forums like that out there but they're small and usually sort of localized.

Would it be hard to get that accomplished? Another forum .... Electronic/Experimental? or is that just too much to ask with all the server issues and red tape?
I would love for their to be a forum like that. I see what you're getting at. I was bleary-eyed and didn't realize what you were getting at before + not many people listen to experimental, ambient, or electronic music here so I wasn't expecting that. I like Four Tet, Flying Lotus (he's a local guy here, and I traveled with his cousin Oran to India and knew Alice Coltrane before she passed away as well), clouddead, Sun Araw, Solid Eye, some of the Spoek Mathambo stuff, and from a while back, I also liked some Oval, Pole, Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, Vidna Obmana, etc. from a little farther back. And I also like ambient stuff, like the stuff we make here as The Mercury Seven:



The one issue is that most people on this forum, at least from what I've seen, don't listen to experimental music, but it sounds like you have seen a lot of HC users who are into this, so who knows. As for discussing what makes something revolutionary, occasionally, conversations like that fly, but some of it gets derailed. I do enjoy some of the more philosophical threads that have gotten going in the past more. When this forum was housed on musicplayer.com, we had conversations like that more often, and I do miss that.
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I find these examples to be appropriate background music (which sounds like at least most of it was played by a human rather than a computer program) for a video that I got bored with very quickly. But then there's no accounting for taste. What I like about you, Ken, is that you can dig this sort of music and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band as well.

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Quote Originally Posted by ryan7585 View Post
haha that's not all wrong, but i would kill myself before listening to skrillex. I make stuff kinda like four tet, tycho, flying lotus, etc. I also do abstract improv, going between ambient and noise and whatever depending on what I feel like doing that day

But yeah I really do appreciate that this forum is here and it is a wealth of information.. But honestly I just can't get excited here. It's too method oriented and there's not any discussion at all about the amazing things people are doing in the more experimental scenes.

The ideas that are proliferating through those scenes are really interesting and usually employ techniques that have never even been used before. If we could have a place here to talk about all that then we could all learn together and get excited about things together, etc. Build on it all.. It would be really awesome

There are some forums like that out there but they're small and usually sort of localized.

Would it be hard to get that accomplished? Another forum .... Electronic/Experimental? or is that just too much to ask with all the server issues and red tape?
check this out:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/
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Quote Originally Posted by MikeRivers View Post
I find these examples to be appropriate background music (which sounds like at least most of it was played by a human rather than a computer program) for a video that I got bored with very quickly. But then there's no accounting for taste. What I like about you, Ken, is that you can dig this sort of music and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band as well.
Thanks.

I love music and don't place any parameters over what I "should" like and "should not" like. I don't care whether the music has vocals or not or whether they're in English or not. Or whether they use electronic instruments or acoustic. Or whether they come from the Congo or from Hackensack, New Jersey. I just try and stay open to the experience and not automatically shut something out, and if I like it, great. I'm not saying I don't have personal tastes, but that I stay open to stuff. It's just music. It's just sound.

I always get people coming over looking at my collection and saying something like, "Your music collection looks like you invited 50 very different people over and told them to bring their 50 favorite albums." biggrin.gif
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Quote Originally Posted by UstadKhanAli View Post
Thanks.

I love music and don't place any parameters over what I "should" like and "should not" like. I don't care whether the music has vocals or not or whether they're in English or not. Or whether they use electronic instruments or acoustic. Or whether they come from the Congo or from Hackensack, New Jersey. I just try and stay open to the experience and not automatically shut something out, and if I like it, great. I'm not saying I don't have personal tastes, but that I stay open to stuff. It's just music. It's just sound.

I always get people coming over looking at my collection and saying something like, "Your music collection looks like you invited 50 very different people over and told them to bring their 50 favorite albums." biggrin.gif
I feel exactly the same way thumb.gif

I have wildly different tastes. the music I used to make a while ago reflects that a lot... I couldn't even stay focused on one style for more than like 2 minutes, so it just jumped all over the place and ended up being this really awkward social collage of an album

I had to actively decide NOT to do that in order to get anything cohesive made. I finally came out with a full EP like a month ago

The video you made is really nice! I'm working on making videos for our tracks now, actually. I'll post one up when its done
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Quote Originally Posted by ryan7585 View Post
There are some forums like that out there but they're small and usually sort of localized.
That's the biggest problem, of course...how to keep that from happening here. I keep going into the DJ forum and trying to stir things up and get discussions going, but it's really hard to get traction.

Of course, we could just wait a year until the DJ and electronic scenes merge, and do it that way smile.gif

Seriously, I'd like to see something like this happen, but what would be the best way to get participation? It almost seems like we need an active forum to tell people about an active forum...
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Quote Originally Posted by Anderton View Post
That's the biggest problem, of course...how to keep that from happening here. I keep going into the DJ forum and trying to stir things up and get discussions going, but it's really hard to get traction.

Of course, we could just wait a year until the DJ and electronic scenes merge, and do it that way smile.gif

Seriously, I'd like to see something like this happen, but what would be the best way to get participation? It almost seems like we need an active forum to tell people about an active forum...
Well the DJ and electronic scenes have pretty much merged already. But even still, when people think of a DJ they think of people who play and mix other peoples' songs. For the most part it seems like any musician who produces their own stuff and performs like a DJ would never call himself a DJ, unless he's a part of the hip hop or techno scene. There's a little bit of a stigma on the word "DJ" itself for a lot of people

But yeah as far as participation I think that will happen on its own. But just to be safe, we could always do exactly what you said, and tell people about it on other forums. Comb the local forums in a bunch of areas where there are good scenes, find some of the bigger forums, etc and just make a post telling them that this one is opening up.

We could even hype it up a bit. Start telling people about it before it opens and talking about how great its gonna be.. Then when they all come, expecting that, it'll naturally happen
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Thanks! That means a lot coming from you. I have a lot of respect for the work you've done and I have a lot of similar goals

I've just started getting more into reading published books on subjects like additive and modular synthesis, circuit design, and the like (I actually have a couple of yours in the mail), after years of learning only through experimentation and working with other people doing the same thing.. And it's really been great at helping me flesh out my ideas into something professional and marketable. I finally have the confidence to follow through with anything I want to try!

Lately I've been trying to get people around me to get past what makes them intimidated by these kinds of books. When I started looking into it, I thought I could learn everything I needed to on the internet, and that if it was in a book then it was probably something I didn't have the "prerequisites" to understand. But what I found out is that it's actually easier to learn from the books, because it's laid out just as simply (if not more), it's made by actual professionals, and it's put together in a cohesive format, making it all more clear as a whole.

Since then, it seems like the quality of output by everyone has just blown up. Especially since they're already used to networking and sharing information, and they're all reading different books.

But it's a little frustrating that that kind of culture and cross-pollination has no real presence on the internet. So I thought this was the obvious place to try and make that happen. You did coin the term "electronic musician" after all biggrin.gif

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