RockViolin

Well, I'll try. But if I hear that Alvin and the Chipmunks have gone the full auto-tune robotic for "Here Comes Santa Claus"...there will be no stopping me from Scroogin hard.

I shudder to think of the what would be done to Robert Plant, Mick Jagger today. Mick is way off sometimes. Can't think of the name, thinking of that song that starts with, "I've been hauling ass along... ... ....dyin to meet you." The background vocals, the 'oohs' are pretty much all over the place. Double tracked but still clearly, audibly out of tune. Maybe they should have tracked him another time or 2 and had him zero in on it a bit better. The ear gets used to things, it has it's charm as it is, and I can't imagine preferring a version sanitized to today's *standards. Sanitized. Yep, that's about it.

Perhaps it might be worth noting, with all do respect to Confucious, and pottery, that no one with the nerve to stand in front of a few thousand people and perform the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto got there without countless hours of perfecting. It goes with the territory. It's what has to be done for it to happen at all. There were concertos that took me months of daily work... 4, 5, maybe 6 or more hours a day, shredding. It ain't improv. Obsession is the way. You live it. At first I'd just be getting a handle on it, finding fingerings and bowings that work for me, if what's on the paper doesn't already. Then on to working difficult passages to get through them and get them up to speed. Glueing it together and make it through without a breakdown is next, and then without a wrong note, and then all the way through without worrying about wrong notes anymore, but getting the music to happen as I feel it and so that nothing that's difficult will appear that way. Memorization just happens along the way for the most part. Then having mastered the piece and it's difficulties it's time perform, to just sing, and let go, be in the moment. Probably still hoping to be perfect, but something happens and well, there went that. That can be a relief in a way, as long as it wasn't too awful. That's often where it's possible to settle down and just play and express yourself, with the energy you have to bring at that time. One more time with feeling. It is impossible to play it exactly like anyone else, and no one can do it the way you do it. As I said in an earlier reply to a comment... from a piano teachers wall, I think. Perfection is something we never achieve, and we never quit trying to. Like everyone else though, there's only so much gas in the tank, and sometimes another take will have to happen after a nap, or on another day, and so the editing begins. Sometimes I wish it wasn't possible. Boy would that slow things down for some, and overturn the cart for others. No paddle, or a canoe, matches are wet, clothes are wet, feet are cold. .png.197c47f720636f02390cc2b0a33804da.png' alt='smiley-veryhappy'> Anyway, all to say that I think that there's no right or wrong amount of obsessing, or perfecting that can applied across the board. It depends on the gig, what the music seems to require and what a person can tolerate.

Not much different than a drummer who knows programming when he hears it, I suppose. Perfection is the game when you are a violinist though, especially classical. You never achieve it - and you never quit trying to. Welp, I hope they knock the orchestra off a good bit better before there are none. Your comment was one to give me pause, and I appreciate it more than I can currently put into words, BlueGreene. ;-)

Thanks BG! It's these new Man Vitamins I'm taking. They've got some kick. ;-)

"Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without." - Confucious

Hold 'em or fold 'em. Sometimes it matters more than others and the trick is to know the difference. Talent and or experience are enormously helpful in making the call, as is the light under which whatever it is is seen. Maybe it's fair to say that it just depends on the music, and what it seems to need, which is a matter of perspective. A conductor with, oh say, Wagner's overture to "The Flying Dutchman" at hand probably shouldn't be too worried about whether 16th chair 2nd violin is grabbing all the notes in certain spots. He/she likely is not, nor is anyone else for that matter. It's a shimmer effect anyway, ridiculously hard, nobody out in the hall will know one way or the other, and what's way more important is what's going on with the horns. But if it's Mozart's overture to "Cosi Fan Tutte", which also has it's difficult spots, anything but the right notes, in the right spot, in the right way will stick out like a sore thumb and 16th chair 2nd violin had better have their act together or they will get the laser beams. Sometimes it's the mood that's most important -Debussy Sometimes it's about the notes a bit more. -Paganini Balance, the main thing is the main thing, etc. There just maybe isn't a donkey to pin the tail on here though, really.

Thanks man. I'm cool. I see a plus right along with a minus in most every direction I look these days. It's not all good to me, and I guess I don't mind saying so. Maybe not so frustrated and perplexed as just wanting to decry what seems to me are sad trends in the music world/biz. Dang, is that, is that a soapbox I feel under my feet? At least people that go on AI, and The Voice have to sing like people have for millennia. Without any help. And you're right and I've been bearing it in mind in this thread and others. Nothing said here will change anything. Yelling into the wind as it were.

OK. What I spoke of in the remainder of my post is what's happening though. Composers no longer need orchestras, as you said. Indeed, neither do movie studios. FWIW, I watched a Pirates of the Carribean movie with my son last night. It was from 10 years ago. The music was a computer orchestra and I could tell in eh...less than 5 maybe 6 seconds. Uniformity and a governor, or flatness uncharacteristic of the real thing, as is often the case with sample based music. I checked later, famous music director, no orchestra credited. I'm sure the libraries and techniques are better by now. Maybe it might take me 10 seconds. Not saying that to boast at all, but more to rain on the parade. (As a former orchestra player, I feel for my peeps. My former gig just shortened it's season by a month and a half and has lost some really good players as well.) Anyway, I don't think it's really even close, and the things that are missing are important for the music to have real impact, on me anyway, and I know I'm not alone. I can echo much of what you say as far as the way we work goes, though my gear is different. I'm the eye too, ever since do it alls like Prince and Vai gave me big ideas. Good ideas are always welcome, but I'm rarely stumped when it comes to how my music should go. I know the life and light that a good player can add to core parts of the instrumentation though. I've got 118 sequencer tracks. I've never used all of them, but I do have a lot more going on than 4 or 5 guys can cover most of the time. It's just a trade off. One that I'd accept at the cost of some extra percussion, pads, a backwards effect, etc. I put together a trio some years back and we rearranged several of my songs rather easily. Good players laying into it with all the feel and zest is a breath of fresh air after being alone with my gear for a while, I've found. The tools are great, but there are some things they still cannot do. Sometimes it matters more than others. If its's just a 4 on the floor kick, there's probably not much difference between a drummer playing to a click with triggers and compressed, and a drum machine. The machines are always there though, unless the power is out. They don't come drunk, or limp with a broken heart, or coughing up a lung. But, to be frank, I feel like I'm just another stranded musician, playing over his automated music, and that no matter how much work I put into or how rare an electric violinist is, it it's nothing that bears much notice as such. I can't believe in it enough to push it, other than to see if it might fit some TAXI listing. As we used to say in Iowa when I was growing up, "Whoopieding." Sorry for my part in the derail Makzimia.

I would like to hear the work that was done with orchestral libraries that can fool me. But of course it doesn't have to, it just has to fool the musical palette of practically everyone else. There is of course an inevitable outcome when computer orchestras are used for the final product, not to mention steps along the way. It's already been playing out for some time. Fewer orchestras, and the players they consisted of have found other work. Moreover, I'm not very enthused about passing on the musical legacy to my son. Not as a career choice. He's getting enough to find enjoyable, to supposedly be good for him, and so I can see the grin on his face when we play together. The latter is of course music's highest calling IMO. He says he wants to be a marine biologist though, and I'm more than happy to entertain that thought. The world of people increasingly does not need accomplished musicians, or so it seems, and the world itself could use help elsewhere. I type this standing 5 feet from my sequencers and drum machines. They are invaluable to me as a composer, and sometimes I even manage to wring a goose bump or two for myself from them. I seldom have fully completed music in my head and I can realize things with said gear to the point where it seems done except for the part where I LEAP at the chance to have great players take it on. As an artist, I'm currently holding out for the most part. Even though I'm ' bout up a creek without a paddle. Maybe I know the difference too well between what it is and what it could be. I dunno:blah: various reasons:blah::blah: and bunch more typing.

I saw about 10 seconds of it and it was the Goo Goo Dolls, who appeared to me to be actually performing the music. Laugh tracks, fake applause, 'musicians' who would likely be unlistenable without the modern tools that make them presentable in some fashion... faking it for the performance. - It may be nothing new, but it seems to be getting worse. Humanity gets what it deserves. Maybe the latest technology is the chance to rush headlong into the making of the dust bowl. Or maybe it has heavily compromised/devalued an Art. It's the same blindness either way, IMO. To circle around to topic, and hopefully sum it up from here, perfecting isn't really a problem, it's a good thing. But when it comes cheaply and easily, is about minutae at the cost of the whole and mostly comes from the other side of the glass I think it is probably not for the greater good in the long term. The current idea of perfect tends to make people and their art more the same instead of celebrating their differences and what is unique it seems to me. Wrong Way.

Yeah. It's OK as a shortcut for time consuming, simple processes was the point. As the task gets more complex and refined, not so much. Sometimes process does matter. And if someone's music is minimalist, there may not be much there that would show the difference if it was made one way or another.

Thanks. Well, water boiled in a microwave makes tea as well as water boiled in a tea pot. The result is the same. There are other foods, potatoes for instance, the microwave maybe doesn't yield a result exactly the same as boiling, or baking but it can be acceptable if done right. Sometimes a bit of both is the answer. But, melted butter is melted butter, and how it got that way doesn't really matter very much. The result is the same. So, as is often the case, it depends.

You can cook a steak on a grill, in a skillet, or in the microwave. Will it taste the same each way? Which one would you want to eat? Like more than a few chefs, I think it worries some musicians...the tendency to copy /paste a song together rather than to actually play the respective parts for instance. There can be elements of flow, and phrasing that are compromised when a patchwork is made of things. Maybe the singer turns the phrase differently in the second verse. It might work to just copy paste the guitar from the first verse, but the interaction that might occur between the guitar and voice the 2nd time is negated that way. And to do things that way maybe is to say that one way is too much work and and not worth the effort, and nobody will know the difference anyway. A possibility for some actual magic to occur is obliterated in the name of convenience. Eventually fewer and fewer people will even be capable of recording a guitar part without this crutch and that brace. It certainly seems possible to me, anyway. While I did say that tools are tools, some are more tempting to abuse than others and foster a certain type of laziness IMO. And the paralyzed artistic genius has some warrant to robotic assistance while the able bodied one, it seems to me, does not. The world of music is beginning to look like a world full of easy make, GMO, TV dinners.

I think we're barking up the same tree, Ken. One of us is preaching and t'uther is the choir. My bead has never been on the tools, iirc. It's on the choices that are made regarding their use. FWIW I think White Zombie's album, Astrocreep 2000 is a great album. From what I've heard, they weren't around each other much for that recording. It can be done, I suppose. It's funny, I'm a classically trained musician, blah blah...Rob Zombie knows about four notes give or take, and sometimes he can sing 2 or maybe 3 of those notes in tune. Doesn't bother me much if at all. At least he isn't trying to fool anyone with some silly robot sound. Or by suddenly being far more consistently in tune than is characteristic of him, with nary a voice lesson or a scale or 2 involved. But anyway, all things considered, I'm thinking, what hath man wrought? And that music's best days for the most part, are in the past. Easily.

The green screening of this years production of The Nutcracker for DVD. All leaps will be higher, pirouettes will be faster and tighter, etc. The ballerinas will be prettier too, which is what is from now on most important because we've mostly got the other stuff covered. Dancers no longer have to be in time with some antiquated, expensive orchestra either. No coughs or chair squeaks here, and the music is programmed and synced to fit perfectly. No longer are we limited to what people can actually do, or manage to do under the stress of performance, so it's better than perfect, actually. Would you buy it? Would you?

Maybe somebody is a paralyzed artistic genius. Tools are tools. Erase and undo aren't the problem. .png.197c47f720636f02390cc2b0a33804da.png' alt='smiley-veryhappy'> If only more people knew where to find them. I would not applaud if I could tell, found out, or knew in advance that the machine was programmed to correct what had been predetermined to be a likely weak stroke. I would not applaud I say. I would not applaud a painting done in this way. The tools can be used in different ways. Using them to try make up for artistry and expertise on the human side rather than to display it in the interest of expediency and or budget is no fad, I'm afraid. Nor is being lazy. It's easier to get somebody to slave over a long list of edits than it is to tell everybody to go practice, or to have them bring it with the right notes, right feel, and in tune in the first place. I heard someone, Carlton? once did 60 some odd takes for a guitar solo on a Steely Dan tune. Going for that real gold you know. I seriously doubt if such a thing even comes close to happening anymore. We just slap those suckers together. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

OK, I'll take a stab at it. Because music, more than any other art other than perhaps film/movies, became the art with the most golden eggs with the advent of the recording. And as the years went by, the getting of the golden egg became ever more the primary goal, by whatever means was necessary. So all sorts of tools and technics were developed, not just for gathering golden eggs, or polishing them, but for turning silver, yellow, blue, even green eggs into golden ones. Or close enough to fool the average golden egg collector. And the end justifies the means. Many golden eggs have been made, or fabricated and then sold. The people who can tell the difference between solid gold and gold paint, gem version and the cubic zirconia, are about as rare as the gem version itself. And to everyone else, the golden eggs layed by the goose itself are nothing special anymore, really. The world is awash with those that are, one way or another, close enough as far as they can tell. And now they can make their own anyway, even though they often are nowhere near a goose let alone are a goose themselves, and present them for the world to admire. Eggs everywhere.

Imagine if Michael Jackson had said that having bits of steel in the soles and heels of his shoes and the magnets under the stage really helps with the lean move. And when the guys underneath move the magnets backwards it makes the moon walk so much easier. Dancing with complete abandon and confidence is no problem knowing that if anything starts to get out of control the magnets will keep it together. Would it matter very much anymore? Should anyone still be impressed? It seems theres all sorts of hullabaloo if someone gets caught photoshopping their waistline. But the rough equivalent is done all the time with modern music production. Authenticity matters in practically every other art more than it does in music, especially modern music production. Way more in some cases. Why? Anything goes until somebody claims they did the vocals and it was actually someone else. Gasp. AHA!

I think that once someone has gotten to the point where they are frankensteining they've gone off the deep end. The Glenn Gould approach comes to mind. Cutting it up into 2 second bits, a note here a note there. As an orchestra player I had some experience with this. In the end, there is something demeaning about it. It's not like anyone was underprepared I'm sure. It's just an approach adopted at the outset to fix even tiny flaws, maybe at the expense of the flow in the process of recording, and in the recording itself potentially. My parents had a GG recording of the Brahms Intermezzos that I used to listen to once in a while. They always came across as extremely careful to me. It was funny to later hear about his path to 'perfection' and recall the audible moaning and groaning in the recording that came with. Speaking of AT. I fessed up a while back that I have such a device here. The thought had been that a pain issue keeps me from being able to play for very long and I simply can't perfect before I record like I used to. But even so, there is something soooo not up to the challenge about using it to even fix an odd clam. I just couldn't bring myself to even print a mix with it involved in such a way. Hook or crook, I'm a violinist and intonation is the game. Or at least a very large part of it. You singers can use it all you want though. Anyway, it's easier for me to adopt a more Gilmore-esque approach. I play fewer notes thereby increasing my odds.

In The Hall Of The Mountain King - Edvard Grieg

Black Sunshine - White Zombie

Hmmm... you might want to put some work in to the ADAT-sequencer slaving thing. (OTOH, if you're simply playing the instrumetns in real time and recording them with no external MIDI, you're probably avoiding a passel of timing steadiness/latency issues.) But one of the reasons I don't feel too bad about my old late 90s work was that the synths and drum module never went onto ADAT -- I synched the ADATs (via my BRC) to MTC (MIDI Time Clock) and folded them in at mixtime on my analog board. So mostly only vocals and guitars went onto ADAT. (Actually, the synths mostly didn't benefit all that noticeably -- but I always felt the drums from my 20 bit DM5 module sounded a lot fresher going straight into the mix.) But on the OTHER other hand... putting them all on tape at the front means you don't have to panic if a module dies or you can't get your MIDI rig working right for some reason. (I would, on occasion, on very critical stuff, run each instrument onto its own ADAT track and put that cassette away for safe keeping.) Thanks Blue! I'm planning to do a few songs both ways so I can compare. And maybe always have a tape backup as you mention. Going to tape, my sequencers, (Yamaha RS 7000, Yamaha rm1x, Yamaha Su 700, Roland XP80,) got to contend for the honored path thru my Aphex 1100 mic preamp. It would be nice not to have to favor one or the other. Something is hanging it up. I might be able to put together the right questions. But I should take it to the KSS forum I suppose.

There is not enough room at Harmony Central for me to answer this question fully. Some basics could use a good going over certainly. Mr. Knobs recently explained to me that a TS plug will work in a TRS jack for instance. And I have some XLRs around here that are phase reversed. What does that mean? Pin 2 hot? Guessing? I have never sidechained. It's frequency based compression right? Got the hang of the dynamic EQ in my Finalyzer to a fair degree, but sidechain? Wo....that's a plunge. Maybe mostly I've not recognized a sitch where it was needed? Still have yet to make my Adats slave to my sequencers with any benefit. So instead of running the sequencers straight into the board and saving all my tracks for real instruments I put all my stuff thru the whole AD/DA wash. Studying a MOTU miditimepiece AV manual and stressing my Adats currently. Finally, you do NOT want to see me *wield* a soldering iron. My hands tremble, and always have. Just a bit. Got it from my Dad. (Ironic when one considers the delicacy of being a classical violinist. But that's another story)