Rant: Spend your time wisely

[skuller]

The 'rules' and commonly accepted ways of doing things naturally overrode the original content.

 

 

aka: the law of paradoxical intent.

 

 

The Law of Paradoxical Intent reflects the Law of Magnetism in warning that you'll only get a return of your own negative energy. If you're desperate to make something happen, that repulsive vibration will push it away, turning away the very people and situations that might bring your desired outcome. Your desperation, therefore, creates the paradox-or the opposite-of your original intention, leading you to failure instead of success.

 

Quoted from.

[Gribs]

I am finding it impossible to compose a rebuttal to the "dozen times smarter than you" statement without sounding like a completely arrogant ass.

Otherwise that was a good read.

I am into music, electronic and otherwise, for fun and relaxation. I try to leave the mathematical modeling, algorithm development, code writing, and number crunching at work. I guess that is why I bought Komplete and then never got much into making Reaktor ensembles other than going through the tutorials. It just feels too much like work.

'Grats on the kid; I hope all goes well during the delivery. Get your piano practicing in now. My kids do there damn best every single evening to make it impossible for me to concentrate on anything. Ever try practicing some Bach while a two-year old girl is screaming "Want Hug Daddy!" above your threshold of pain while simultaneously pounding the keys in the upper register, a three-year old boy is whining at the resonant frequency of your skull because he didn't get to flush the toilet all the way by himself and your wife gave up and flushed it after he pumped the lever about 20 times half way, and your ten-year old is running around singing Weird Al Yankovich songs and jumping on the couch?

Forget composing. I just want to relax and hear myself play. I want to hear myself think. I have seriously, SERIOUSLY, been considering getting a weighted hammer action digital piano for my office so that I can close and lock the door and practice with headphones on.

[pogo97]

I think what a person needs is the right balance of skills (theory, technique, something to say) to achieve what they want to do. Of course, you need to know what it is you want to do.

 

My own weakness has been technique. I'm lazy and don't practise properly, just improvise and noodle and I've been like that all my life. Then I frittered away about 15 years just dicking around at a variety of jobs (and dadding) rather than getting down and making music. Finally, though, in my fifties, I'm putting in the woodshedding necessary to have strong dependable chops to express my musical ideas.

 

Of course, at 53, I'm 'way too late to make any money at this--popular music as a career is for the young and sexy at least to start. But I can fulfill my ambition to be the best musician I can be before I start going downhill with age. I'm still improving (a lot, it's surprising) and that's what matters most to me right now. My economic contributions to my family are minimal, but I keep the home chugging along and full of music and my own contentment.

[Metrosonus]

 

Of course, you need to know what it is you want to do.

 

 

that's the whole ball game right there.

[Cydonia]

What is time anyway?

[Cydonia]

WWDLPD???

Indeed, WTFWDLPD? :eek:

[Yoozer]

Thanks for the congratulations; I didn't announce it earlier because a picture of an ultrasound in the New Gear thread of October 2008 would've been premature .

I am finding it impossible to compose a rebuttal to the "dozen times smarter than you" statement without sounding like a completely arrogant ass.

No, do so. It all depends on your background; I should've added that.

If, given no previous specific education in these matters, you were ordered to somehow build a physical model of a wind instrument, how would you start? I know I wouldn't be able to.

The good people of AAS and Pianoteq tackle this with hard math and modeling and measure their time in years to figure this stuff out, and there's the added bonus - the translation from the math to actually working code, while most of us here will either not have the tools or the math under the belt to do this, and those that actually do may lack the time.

Say you spend a few years to pick up the material; that time could also have been spent on composition, playing and theory. The former can be outsourced since we already have physical modeling plugins and instruments, but the latter can't - nobody can do that for you. In terms of synthesis it's not often used anyway since it's still too weird, new and hasn't carved a niche with signature sounds for itself yet, so what I mean is that it's not -that- big of a deal to drop the ball on (even if it presents a field of study that's more complex than both analog and FM).

Forget composing. I just want to relax and hear myself play. I want to hear myself think. I have seriously, SERIOUSLY, been considering getting a weighted hammer action digital piano for my office so that I can close and lock the door and practice with headphones on.

Getting my Roland FP7 was one of the best decisions I made, gear-wise, even if it gnawed at my wallet. I sit in the living room instead of upstairs in the studio and don't have to worry about drifting off to forums or IRC - I just play. It's improved my playing, too .

I'd love it if I could get my kid to pick up dad's weird hobby, but they're not gonna be carbon copies of myself. Which is hopefully a good thing .

[AfroRouge]

But who are you outsourcing to? If someone wants to outsource patching together some interesting sounds to me, I'm game. In turn, I'll outsource songwriting.

[Gribs]

Thanks for the congratulations; I didn't announce it earlier because a picture of an ultrasound in the New Gear thread of October 2008 would've been premature . No, do so. It all depends on your background; I should've added that.

Ph.D. EE, postdoc applied math, specific expertise in continuum mechanics, electromagnetics, micromagnetics, noise theory and signal processing, heat and mass transfer, and non-imaging optics. I have been making my living by doing applied physics, mathematical modeling, and computation for a couple of decades now. So yeah, I do have the background and the experience. I do not have exactly the specific expertise in acoustics of musical instruments but much of my background is transferable. Where I work (3M R&D labs) most of us change major focus every few years; that is the way it works in industrial research.

When I was in graduate school and working on inverse problems as a summer intern at Eastman Kodak, I got a hold of and read a copy of the famous paper "Can one hear the shape of a drum?" by Mark Kac (Amer. Math. Monthly 73, No. 4, Part 11, (1966), 1-23. This paper asks if two drums that vibrate with the same set of characteristic frequencies (spectrum) must have the same shape. The answer is no. Whether one is trying to back out the relative concentrations of dyes in a film emulsion by looking at their color spectra or trying to back out the shape of a drum from the noise it makes both problems are very strongly related to the spectral theory of operators.

Karplus-Strong is not really a physical acoustic model. It is mathematical construction in the form of a simple digital delay network that models the behavior of a vibrating string at a very elementary level - like a lumped parametric model. It is not really a physical model for a vibrating string as derived from the equations of elasticity. Does it really matter if the sound is close to the same? I am not sure it does, but the problem with Karplus-Strong is that it fails to be a predictive model without some sort of predetermined correlation between what sounds "right" and for what set of model parameters. I cannot take a set of physical parameters for a violin and make a violin sound with it directly from first principals (equations of elasticity, 3D model of the violin, strings, and bow, and constitutive laws for the materials).

About ten years ago, I worked on elastic (acoustic) waves in thick vibrating bars (thick pipe-like tubes actually) for a very strange experimental process that had to do with the cladding for large core light fiber (3M Light Fiber ™). In that case I was interested in the wave shapes, "play" (maximum excursions in location), and elastic (acoustic) power dissipated in my the system (I had to design my specific process to overcome this). I wrote a code to solve and analyze the time-dependent equations of elasticity for the vibrating tube in my process. So I am very familiar with the equations of elasticity and acoustic waves even though I have not worked on musical instruments.

I am writing all these things to help you see that this is the way things are in industrial applied mathematics. We develop a huge set of tools and experience that allow us to transfer from subject to subject quickly as needed. These days I work in non-imaging optics and don't do anything in elasticity theory (or micro-magnetics of the read/write process for magnetic tape, or noise theory for the magnetic recording channel, or laser-induced thermal transfer of LCD color filters and OLEDs, or design of respirator cartridges, or neon-alternative light fiber manufacturing processes, etc., etc.).

The question is whether I would want to spend my free time making music or modeling an instrument, developing algorithms, and writing code to crunch the numbers to do the physical modeling. I have thought about the physical modeling thing but decided that doing this would be too much like work. I would rather play the piano, fiddle with making silly noises on my synths, and also play with other peoples presets. In this way I am sorta like DLP - just having fun with it and not stressing out about what I am doing with music. My goals are just different than those of a professional musician.

Heck if someone wanted to pay me lots of money in a stable employment situation to do R&D for physical modeling of instruments, I would consider it quite seriously. Anyone want my resume?

[girevik]

 

how many folks use alternative tunings .... you'll be dealing with music theory .

 

 

Yoozer, you need to meet with alternative tuning/microtonal composers in your own country, or at least your continent. Can you really write a decent piece in Huygens-Fokker Tuning without knowing what the {censored} you're doing, theory-wise? And what did Birdie, our resident microtonal composer, ever do to you to warrant your insulting him by implying he doesn't use music theory to compose?

 

Good post, otherwise.

 

And seriously, congrats on your impending dadhood

[Yoozer]

Can you really write a decent piece in Huygens-Fokker Tuning without knowing what the {censored} you're doing, theory-wise? And what did Birdie, our resident microtonal composer, ever do to you to warrant your insulting him by implying he doesn't use music theory to compose?

 

Whoa, whoa, I'm not insulting these people at all; I'm merely stating that they're relatively rare. I should've phrased that better; yes, there's just as much theory in there, but it's not the conventional circle of fifths etc. deal unless you use the method to get out of the compromise of well-tempered tuning, like a manual kind of Hermode tuning.

 

I mean, stuff like

and the rest of the series is really interesting, no question about it.

[mildbill]

... Anyway, what I've come to realize is that I personally have been focusing on the wrong thing; and worse, I've been limiting myself. ...

 

 

 

Just curious as to what you now consider to be focusing on the wrong thing?

The technological side of music maybe?

 

From the rest of your statements, I take to mean that the right thing for you to be focusing on now is music theory and playing skills?

[girevik]

 

Whoa, whoa, I'm not insulting these people at all; I'm merely stating that they're relatively rare. I should've phrased that better; yes, there's just as much theory in there, but it's not the conventional circle of fifths etc. deal unless you use the method to get out of the compromise of well-tempered tuning, like a manual kind of Hermode tuning. I mean, stuff like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luLEthFtxrY and the rest of the series is really interesting, no question about it.

 

 

Cool, glad you cleared that up.

 

Most of the microtonal music theory discussion I've seen really just boils down to identifying intervals to functionally replace the m3, M3, m7, M7, etc. intervals of standard temperament, with the remainder being devoted to musical constructs that represent more extreme breaks from the meantone-based heritage that still dominates conventional music theory... and interval sets used in various ethnic musics. Arabic and Persian have been of interest to me because I took lessons in the latter - some of their scales have a neutral (in between major and minor) intervals.

 

Anyway, I didn't want to digress too much. The gist of what I'm getting out of your opening post was you need to record more. I need to record more, myself. Even if I record the aural equivalent of a pile of steaming dung, it's still a great learning experience - the process of recording and assembling a mix enforces a certain amount of discipline and critical thinking that I always find beneficial in the end, even if I'm cursing at myself for mistakes made during the process (muffing up a note, accidentally deleting a track, etc.). It doesn't matter if the recording is later shared with the public or not - the point of it is the learning experience and refining of skills (playing, production, etc.).

[coyote-1]

It's the final currency. It's the only thing that's really yours to spend - and none of us realy knows what we have left in the bank.

What is time anyway?

[coyote-1]

"'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.'"

[Yoozer]

Just curious as to what you now consider to be focusing on the wrong thing? The technological side of music maybe?

Yes, and the idea that that would be as useful as other things.

From the rest of your statements, I take to mean that the right thing for you to be focusing on now is music theory and playing skills?

Exactly. But I typed it because I felt I needed to get it off my chest, not to look for a solution .

[Metrosonus]

 

Originally Posted by mildbill View Post Just curious as to what you now consider to be focusing on the wrong thing? The technological side of music maybe? Yes, and the idea that that would be as useful as other things.

 

 

just as an honest observation, i dont see how you have time for playing with your famous ability to post esay long responses to even the most trivial of questions. Not to say that it was all for naught, but I think maybe drawing a line and taking some time to focus on you may be a great help.

 

now that i've pretty much definitely rounded out my gear, i find myself wanting to post less and less. talking about gear isn't the same as using it. it's a substitute for sure and works in a pinch to cure boredom, but it's not the same thing as using what god gave you to create something out of nothing.

[Yoozer]

just as an honest observation, i dont see how you have time for playing with your famous ability to post esay long responses to even the most trivial of questions.

I can type pretty damn quick . I have Ableton running on one screen and Firefox on the other.

Not to say that it was all for naught, but I think maybe drawing a line and taking some time to focus on you may be a great help.

It is. But it's not that easy to kick the habit. I like typing long essays, hoping that eventually someone ever uses the search button.

now that i've pretty much definitely rounded out my gear, i find myself wanting to post less and less. talking about gear isn't the same as using it. it's a substitute for sure and works in a pinch to cure boredom, but it's not the same thing as using what god gave you to create something out of nothing.

That's one of the walls I kept bumping into. It's gone down a lot since I've switched sequencers; recording was much less of a deal. When I sit down here, I always have the nagging feeling that something's not right; either things aren't hooked up correctly, or I have to throw the placement of synthesizers around again; pushing myself to do something instead of writing something is still not easy.

 

It's probably easier because it feels better when I get a thank you here rather than a no thanks in the studio .

[Metrosonus]

did you ever consider writing professionally? what happened to the website you mentioned along time ago? (or something of that nature). you could start off reviewing the gear you already have and build up a site. you probably already have a decent size fanbase; get it all in one area and you'd quickly build up some clout.

[ElectricPuppy]

When I sit down here, I always have the nagging feeling that something's not right; either things aren't hooked up correctly, or I have to throw the placement of synthesizers around again;

THIS is my constant struggle. I never feel like my setup is quite right, that something is preventing me from doing something I want to do. But then, when I don't have that feeling, I just sit and stare at my gear like a blank canvas and don't know what to do with it all.

[Metrosonus]

that's why i like my remote setup so much, on a such a large desk. plenty of room and nothing to touch except the controller and ableton.

[AfroRouge]

I've figured out what's wrong with my setup: my computer is attached to the Internet. I've thought about picking up a used DAW that I can use for audio recording (my requirements are rather minimal) and moving my lolfactory computer to another place.

[Khazul]

THIS is my constant struggle. I never feel like my setup is quite right, that something is preventing me from doing something I want to do. But then, when I don't have that feeling, I just sit and stare at my gear like a blank canvas and don't know what to do with it all.

It is most liberating when nothing is plugged in at all what you have it a heap of gear and a heap of cables to produce whatever wierd sound and processing change takes you fancy - you worry too much

The next best thing of course is a load of patch bays with everything routed through them.

[Diametro]

[Khazul]

@Yoozer - interesting post.

I guess it all about figuring out why you bother with fiddling around with musical instruments at all (vs just sticking on a record) and having figured that out, figuring out what masters to you in terms of where to focus your efforts.

What kind of categories do we fit into here? I know there are a bunch of people who just love tweaking sounds and/or just playing - because its very therapeutic in an increasingly stressy world. TBH - this is what got me back into music again. Even DJing has a place for this.

For me there is no better way to clear away the crap of the day than half an hour of near mindless playing stuff on a paino or synth and/or tweaking sounds. If I remember to hit a record buttong somewhere and I can be bothered to go back through it later, some of my most 'musical' music comes from this, and to that end, playing skill and musictheory for just find the right progressions and chords, harmonies, melodies that go together helps. Its literally just random {censored} that I will play, bits of other stuff of mine in whatever styles suits the mood with whatever random layering of sounds that is conveniently selected or selectable at the time without thinking too much. No drum machines or sequencers to force a tempo, just play and see what comes out.

Sometimes I may do the equivalent on my decks, mixing random stuff together without even bothering to worry about if it should mix together or not and sometimes you find some really fun, mashups in it all - sometimes ill even remember to write down what I found, but usually I forget

The real question is how many folks actually have another purpose with their music and ever actualy go beyond the fun therapeutic aspect and thus need to figure out the why and how and where to focus etc?

Are you in a band - do you write in that band, or just play covers and so spend hours learning to play, or play what you're given to play? Do you actually write (or want to write) whole tracks, do you get stuck after a few bars? Are you a wannabe producer? are you an actual producer of you own work and perhaps that of others? Are you a DJ too? (Yes thats very relavent for some of us), are you a remixer, are you a sound designer?

Some of us end up being allmost all of the above and get nowhere, some maybe just one of the above and go along way - perhaps that tells us something

I think the hardest bit of focus to sort out for anyone who participates in forums is not to be persuaded by tweakers that you need to create all you own sounds from scratch, the purist who say never use samples, loops etc, the gear junkies who say you need this or that, the producers who say you need to great at mixing and mastering, the musicians who tell you you need to be a great musician with a solid base in music theory before anything else etc and they probably also tell you that the only thing you need is a piano and it has to sound perfect ... etc

Music theory is good (even to a DJ its useful) - to a point - that point depends on what you are trying to do. Musicianship is is good to a point too, again, it depends upon what you are trying to acheive. Accepting your limits and focussing on what you can actually do right now, and using others to fill in the gaps however can make the difference between messing about forever or getting something done and signed by a label and published etc, or getting loads of gig bookings etc (or whatever it is you want).