gecko zzed
Grumpy Mod
When doing a bit of a cleanup of the nearly forgotten contents of cupboards at home, I discovered my old Amiga computer. Always willing to be diverted from the tedious task of deciding what to keep and what to throw out, I thought I'd see whether I had all its bits (it did) and whether it still worked. I connected everything, turned it on and held my breath. It booted up perfectly, so I had a look at some of the musical stuff I'd been working on with the Amiga, and in particular, with a midi composition application called Music-X. I discovered many fragments of tunes written in the early nineties; it was a cool trip down Nostalgia Boulevarde. Around that time I wrote a suite of 'classical' pieces (one of which, 'Procession', I've loaded onto my MySpace page). Since then, I've not tackled anything on that scale. Pondering on why that should be, I realised that partly the explanation sits somewhere in motivation and inspiration, but the other part sits in Music X itself. That prompted me to write the following thoughts.
Imagine you've been asked to build a skyscraper.
There are a number of building methods you can choose, and for this exercise, I'll pick three: horizontal incremental, horizontal modular, and vertical skeletal.
With horizontal incremental you construct the building by starting with the foundations, adding walls and and stuff for the first floor, then gradually building upwards (the way you would do with Lego).
With horizontal modular, you would prefabricate whole sections on the ground, then, when finished, lift each and place it on top of other already positioned modules. There are practical difficulties with this, so you need to imagine that these difficulties can be handled.
With vertical skeletal, you first build, say, a steel skeleton that forms the structure of the building as a whole, then you go and put in the floors and walls until the whole skeleton has its body.
There are a range of factors that will influence your choice of method, and these include height of the building, suitable technology, costs and so on.
We'll now leave the skyscrapers for a moment.
There are numerous music applications around these days. I've been using Logic since the mid nineties, and more recently, I've been playing with Reaper. But I've either seen or experienced Cakewalk, Cubase, Fruityloops, Cool Edit, Sibelius and many others. All audio and midi programs do pretty much the same things, but each is slightly, and sometimes, subtly different. These differences, though maybe small, are important. We all process information differently. Some people are 'big picture' people, others focus on detail. Some people prefer to plan ahead, others like to work things out as they go along. Some people are highly visual. Others are highly aural, and others are highly kinetic. For example, when someone asks you directions to find a place, a visual person really wants you to draw a map so they can see where to go, while others want to be told. If you give verbal directions to a visual person, it takes them longer to process the information, and likewise, an aural person doesn't find map-reading as easy as verbal instructions.
Music software is written by people who come pre-equipped with their perceptual preferences, and these then become incorporated into the software. Because software is usually produced by teams of programmers, and rarely one person operating alone, the software reflects the combined effect of all these preferences. So the differences are not huge.
However, when it comes to using the software, we will generally regard the application that suits are way of processing information to be more 'intuitive', more 'user-friendly' and more functional. If the software is less aligned to our way of thinking, we find it difficult to learn, counter-intuitive and lacking in functional power. For example, prior to using Logic, I had an early demo version of Cubase, and it and I never saw eye to eye. Though I could use it, I struggled mightily with it. When I got Logic, everything seemed to fall into place. Logic wasn't particularly easy to learn, but it all seemed to make sense. Likewise, the Music-X program on the Amiga was one that I had a strong affinity for. Another Amiga application around at about the same time ('Bars and Pipes') was one that had me flummoxed most of the time.
There are compostional and production benefits if we find a package that is aligned nicely to the way we think about things; the technology becomes an aid, rather than something we have to wrestle with. For example, in various other parts of this site there are threads relating to the benefits or otherwise of external control systems. Some people extol the benefits of physically moving sliders on mixers, while others prefer mixing 'in the box'. The debate often degrades to "mixing in the box is best", "no it isn't, nothing beats hands on". The debaters often don't realise that they are simply expressing unconsciously their perceptual preferences; people who are predominantly kinetic preferring the tactile, hands-on experience, while others preferring the visualness of the computer screen. Another illustration: I do a lot of live mixing, but being a highly visual person, I become extremely uncomfortable if I cannot see the performers on stage (because people get in the way), or I cannot see the desk (because it's too dark). Other live mixers are highly aural, and not seeing the stage is not a problem for them. Others are highly tacticle, and don't need to see the desk, they find their way around it quite comfortably in the dark, operating on feel.
Now . . . back to the skyscrapers. Logic is a program that allows you to build a musical skyscraper that is 'vertical skeletal', i.e. it is relatively easy to assemble a musical piece by developing a framework (e.g. a drum track) then adding all the bits needed wherever they need to go. Fruityloops, on the other hand, allows you to easily build 'horizontal modular' musical skyscrapers, because you create chunks and assemble these chunks into a musical whole. The Amiga's Music X, and notation programs such as Sibelius, are good for building 'horizontal incremental' musical skyscrapers; with them you can easily create music bar by bar.
With luck, you'll be using a package that suits your mode of thinking.
But there is another side.
When I switched from Music X on the Amiga to Logic on the PC, my classical compositions virtually ceased. One of the reasons was that I created these compositions bar by bar, which was easy to do in Music X, without necessarily having a clear idea of how they would end up. Logic was a program that pushed me into thinking more 'completely' about compositions, and needing to have specific objectives, and creating 'open-ended' compositions became more difficult.
This means that even if a package suits our mode of thinking, it can push us into a particular mode of operation. And that mode of operation can limit the creative options we could otherwise call on. We have in this forum the very fine creative efforts of Joseph (Icystorm) and Sean (Sedstar), and we have noticed their unique and distinctive styles. I now put forward the assertion that these styles, in part, derive from the applications they each are using. Joseph does wonderful things with Jamstudio, while Sean does likewise with Fruityloops. But now I wonder to what extent their compositional development is being hampered by the particular application. I'm not intending to be critical of Joseph or Sean, and I'm only using them as examples because their styles are quite distinctive and different. My speculation is that the software we use has a greater influence than we realise on our compositions. We may choose to accept this influence and continue on as we have been going . . . there's nothing wrong with that. We may loose something by changing (as I did going from Music X to Logic). But . . . we may gain a musical perspective that we might otherwise miss if we tackle composition differently.
I have to go now. I'm keen to get back and see if I can still remember how to use Music X.
However, I'm interested in others' views on this grand theory.
Imagine you've been asked to build a skyscraper.
There are a number of building methods you can choose, and for this exercise, I'll pick three: horizontal incremental, horizontal modular, and vertical skeletal.
With horizontal incremental you construct the building by starting with the foundations, adding walls and and stuff for the first floor, then gradually building upwards (the way you would do with Lego).
With horizontal modular, you would prefabricate whole sections on the ground, then, when finished, lift each and place it on top of other already positioned modules. There are practical difficulties with this, so you need to imagine that these difficulties can be handled.
With vertical skeletal, you first build, say, a steel skeleton that forms the structure of the building as a whole, then you go and put in the floors and walls until the whole skeleton has its body.
There are a range of factors that will influence your choice of method, and these include height of the building, suitable technology, costs and so on.
We'll now leave the skyscrapers for a moment.
There are numerous music applications around these days. I've been using Logic since the mid nineties, and more recently, I've been playing with Reaper. But I've either seen or experienced Cakewalk, Cubase, Fruityloops, Cool Edit, Sibelius and many others. All audio and midi programs do pretty much the same things, but each is slightly, and sometimes, subtly different. These differences, though maybe small, are important. We all process information differently. Some people are 'big picture' people, others focus on detail. Some people prefer to plan ahead, others like to work things out as they go along. Some people are highly visual. Others are highly aural, and others are highly kinetic. For example, when someone asks you directions to find a place, a visual person really wants you to draw a map so they can see where to go, while others want to be told. If you give verbal directions to a visual person, it takes them longer to process the information, and likewise, an aural person doesn't find map-reading as easy as verbal instructions.
Music software is written by people who come pre-equipped with their perceptual preferences, and these then become incorporated into the software. Because software is usually produced by teams of programmers, and rarely one person operating alone, the software reflects the combined effect of all these preferences. So the differences are not huge.
However, when it comes to using the software, we will generally regard the application that suits are way of processing information to be more 'intuitive', more 'user-friendly' and more functional. If the software is less aligned to our way of thinking, we find it difficult to learn, counter-intuitive and lacking in functional power. For example, prior to using Logic, I had an early demo version of Cubase, and it and I never saw eye to eye. Though I could use it, I struggled mightily with it. When I got Logic, everything seemed to fall into place. Logic wasn't particularly easy to learn, but it all seemed to make sense. Likewise, the Music-X program on the Amiga was one that I had a strong affinity for. Another Amiga application around at about the same time ('Bars and Pipes') was one that had me flummoxed most of the time.
There are compostional and production benefits if we find a package that is aligned nicely to the way we think about things; the technology becomes an aid, rather than something we have to wrestle with. For example, in various other parts of this site there are threads relating to the benefits or otherwise of external control systems. Some people extol the benefits of physically moving sliders on mixers, while others prefer mixing 'in the box'. The debate often degrades to "mixing in the box is best", "no it isn't, nothing beats hands on". The debaters often don't realise that they are simply expressing unconsciously their perceptual preferences; people who are predominantly kinetic preferring the tactile, hands-on experience, while others preferring the visualness of the computer screen. Another illustration: I do a lot of live mixing, but being a highly visual person, I become extremely uncomfortable if I cannot see the performers on stage (because people get in the way), or I cannot see the desk (because it's too dark). Other live mixers are highly aural, and not seeing the stage is not a problem for them. Others are highly tacticle, and don't need to see the desk, they find their way around it quite comfortably in the dark, operating on feel.
Now . . . back to the skyscrapers. Logic is a program that allows you to build a musical skyscraper that is 'vertical skeletal', i.e. it is relatively easy to assemble a musical piece by developing a framework (e.g. a drum track) then adding all the bits needed wherever they need to go. Fruityloops, on the other hand, allows you to easily build 'horizontal modular' musical skyscrapers, because you create chunks and assemble these chunks into a musical whole. The Amiga's Music X, and notation programs such as Sibelius, are good for building 'horizontal incremental' musical skyscrapers; with them you can easily create music bar by bar.
With luck, you'll be using a package that suits your mode of thinking.
But there is another side.
When I switched from Music X on the Amiga to Logic on the PC, my classical compositions virtually ceased. One of the reasons was that I created these compositions bar by bar, which was easy to do in Music X, without necessarily having a clear idea of how they would end up. Logic was a program that pushed me into thinking more 'completely' about compositions, and needing to have specific objectives, and creating 'open-ended' compositions became more difficult.
This means that even if a package suits our mode of thinking, it can push us into a particular mode of operation. And that mode of operation can limit the creative options we could otherwise call on. We have in this forum the very fine creative efforts of Joseph (Icystorm) and Sean (Sedstar), and we have noticed their unique and distinctive styles. I now put forward the assertion that these styles, in part, derive from the applications they each are using. Joseph does wonderful things with Jamstudio, while Sean does likewise with Fruityloops. But now I wonder to what extent their compositional development is being hampered by the particular application. I'm not intending to be critical of Joseph or Sean, and I'm only using them as examples because their styles are quite distinctive and different. My speculation is that the software we use has a greater influence than we realise on our compositions. We may choose to accept this influence and continue on as we have been going . . . there's nothing wrong with that. We may loose something by changing (as I did going from Music X to Logic). But . . . we may gain a musical perspective that we might otherwise miss if we tackle composition differently.
I have to go now. I'm keen to get back and see if I can still remember how to use Music X.
However, I'm interested in others' views on this grand theory.
