I'm sorry for cluttering our lives with my garbage, but Wham City was just here for the past few days, and they've cluttered our hearts until full. So no chance to post.
But I would like to respond to some things since I started a silly fight, even though I very much agree with TC Dude.
Firstly, you definitely called me out on the Depeche Mode sample. Originally I was only using the guitar harmonics, but I stretched out the tail to show a friend the source, and decided that I like the sound of the drenched vocal being cut off and turning into a sine wave (which I do), but it totally betrays my intent. I really don't want my use of samples to be loaded with meaning or interpreted in any way other than their pitch, timbre, amplitude curve, etc. (The cut off vocal says nothing about our culture's inability to "reach out and touch faith" or that since the phrase was replaced with a sine wave {the simplest timbre} it signifies a simplification of the message. You can always draw lots of conclusions.)
What sampling below the phrase level does allow for though, is the use of these rich timbres without much work at all. It is a little lazy, though for making a two minute piece it is the difference between walking somewhere and driving there. This experiment took me maybe two hours to make - if I'd recorded everything, it might've taken me a day or more. I haven't been writing so much, so right now any process that can get me to make something is useful.
To contrast, This Beast took pretty long to make. It is made only with samples I've recorded myself.
Naturally, I'd like to take the process farther - I could do things like take the frequencies above 9k in an "s" sound, and blend it with the frequencies below 200 Hz in a jet engine, shape the amplitude curves of both, and call it a crazy bass drum. At that point I'm not sure if it would sound like anything recognizable, so appropriation might not even be the right word anymore.
Ideally, I'd really just like to be able to synthesize anything I want in a Max/MSP sort of way.
23 comments:
"PAY FOR THE PRINTER" >> I'm glad you've re-posted this. The idea of a Max patch that can produce anything reminds me of the short story "Pay for the Printer", by Philip K. Dick. Anyone else here read it?
To quickly sum it up: It's the future - post nuclear war - an alien race called the Biltongs have come to help the pathetic humans, who are crawling through the ashes.
The Biltongs are 'printers' -- protoplasmic blobs which can reproduce anything that is brought before them. The problem is, they're dying and everything they've been printing is turning to ash, not to mention the new prints are worthlessly shapeless.
I feel like the idea of using a computer to reproduce anything imaginable is interesting -- but a very dangerous road. Digital technology offers all of these great possibilites: quick recording, the ability to layer, undo... but it has so many shortcomings. It forces us to think in a digital way. We forget about things like performance and human touch.
Now, this song is really good. I'm not questioning the talent here -- and I do see your point about using samples to quickly acheive results, but that's sort of the moral of the short story, and Jurrasic Park as well: Ian Malcom :"You do plan to have dianosau--" wait! wrong quote... here's the one:
"You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could and before you even knew what you had you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now you're selling it, you want to sell it!"
So, I think the problem is, even though the samples you used had no specific weight in theory, someone like Total Cool Dude will recognize them and will make assumption about your intentions.. Wouldn't it be better to make totally new samples with instruments, or garbage cans and soda bottles?
It might just be this fetish I have with building libraries and things of that nature. I am a library fetishist.
EPN is awesome. I'll look into the PK Dick.
You're right, in ways I think I am starting to think digitally. I seem to want things to be more like math class and Star Wars, and less like english class and Fried Green Tomatoes. But I should heed your warning, for sure. A lot of people hate math class.
By the way, Ray Kurzweil has a crazy book about how those sorts of things that Philly Dick wrote about are becoming reality. Which is INSANE. It's called "The Singularity is Near". We should read it.
I DEF. need to check out that book. Ray Kurzweil wrote this really amazing article in wired back in like 1999 about the future of humanity being this quest to explode the universe and use the resulting energy as a MASSIVE storage device (like a hard drive) to hold a virtual reality where everyone who ever lived (and died) could live forever....
wooops gotta go, i'll finish this later.
ok, this is the third time i've tried to write a response to this, and failed due to mechanical error - hopefully it won't crash or i won't space out and close the window or something.
i've already said a lot in the other thread, but i'll continue to get into the nitty gritty of this.... while sampling (even beneath the phrase level) provides timbral depth, it can be texturally problematic - in 'silver birth blade', i find the textural disparity between the sampled and non-sampled bits jarring and distracting. it's really hard to make samples from lots of different sources sound homogenous. furthermore - even just the gesture of sampling is a loaded one. it is, of course, not a universally *bad* thing, but samples are always very easy to detect in songs. even more so when they are sourced from mp3. so even small samples, while they might not explicitly play off of the cultural resonance of other material, the implicit messages conveyed can seriously interfere with other goals. so it just bears examining: do you want that to be part of the message conveyed in your music?
if so, then you should push that envelope much further. max/msp is a powerful tool, but not entirely necessary - my friend frank (hearts of darknesses...actually a friend of many on this board, maybe he'd want to join) does very intense, digital/glitch cut-up stuff just using playerpro (at least thats what he used to use).
now, g-reg, of course, has just very eloquently called into question the use of digital techniques entirely, and i'm inclined to agree with his sentiments.
not that i should be held up as any example (i'm a tower of dilletantism, semi-competent at best), but personally, in my own music-making, i have entirely stopped using digital means of generating sound. i've found it makes me think harder about how to make sounds, and actually causes me to be more productive and creative. on the topic of "digital thinking" - it also has encouraged me to think of music less like a *grid*. programs like fruity loops and reason and the like (both of which i've used extensively), really box-in your thought. you find yourself visualizing the music as little boxes and circles and shit...not that that is necessarily horrible, but it's always good to change up your thought processes...
anyway, personally, i think it'd be pretty cool to hear you explore your non-sampled/non-digital sound generation options, drew. i bet you could come up with some pretty crazy stuff.
hey, i'm on dial-up, so i can't hear any of your songs, but i want to comment anyway.
"Naturally, I'd like to take the process farther - I could do things like take the frequencies above 9k in an "s" sound, and blend it with the frequencies below 200 Hz in a jet engine, shape the amplitude curves of both, and call it a crazy bass drum."
that sounds awesome. i like this idea of crafting sound almost microscopically. at first, i thought greg's jurrassic park comparison was ridiculous, but now that i think about it, your micro-sampling isn't that far removed from genetic engineering, in terms of process. engineering an artificial bass drum from specific frequencies extracted from a jet engine and a human hiss is probably as close as any musician can come to making a square tomato or a rat with a human ear growing out of its back.
and, not to put words in his mouth, but that seems to be the argument greg is making.
some (the surrealists, for example) would argue that this is what art is supposed to be. art is modern magic, alchemy, engineering, transforming the world into something previously unimaginable.
however, both greg and shawn seem to draw a distinction between sampling from "digital" sources versus "real" sources. to me, whether you're sampling from extant musical sources or from original field recordings or from sine waves, frankly, i don't see the difference. all artists sample. all artists use samples from pre-existing material to create "new life," if you will. even a painter of still-lifes "samples" various fruits, vases and dead birds and re-composes them. or, as marcel duchamp said, all art is always an "assisted readymade" because tubes of paint are readymade materials. whether you exibit a tube of paint, a paint-spattered canvas or the mona lisa, it's still the same material (paint), just arranged differently. the difference is not a difference in type, just a difference in degree of manipulation.
(shawn will probably not like this argument. it's the same argument i made in a different thread when i talked about sampling & he said i was espousing a "normative" postmodern ideology, or something).
but, to draw distinctions and say "it's okay to sample live sounds, but not pre-existing music" or "it's okay to sample anything as long as you make it unrecognizable" or "it's okay to use digital methods of generating sound, but don't get too carried away with it because we don't want to mess with mother nature" - or to set any limits whatsoever on art - seems totally misguided to me. there might be ethical considerations for a biotech guy who plans to release genetically-altered crops that could have unforseen catastrophic effects on the environment. we see this now, with genetically-altered crops that seem to be killing off bee populations in droves. but what ethical concerns could possibly arise from the introduction of a new type of sound effect? can sound effects kill? can they cause environmental devastation? unless you are a nazi who believes that "degenerate art" is a disease that infects and weakens a healthy population, leading to physical and mental degeneration of "the race," i don't see what "danger" (to use greg's term) could possibly arise from mixing, mashing, cannibalizing and montaging sounds from any source using any technology available. artists operate in a field of unlimited freedom and can make whatever is humanly possible by whatever means are available. i don't see why bioethics should even enter the discussion.
i realize, of course, that sounds can be used for terrorism. certain sounds projected at certain levels can cause spontaneous vomiting, seizures, etc. so, if you're working with sounds that can cause actual physical harm, of course, then ethical considerations probably should enter into the discussion. but we're not talking about that. we're talking about making a drumbeat out of chopped-up airplane noises. how is that unethical?
Bio-engineering is not what I was talking about at all -- but it's funny to think of what i said in that context.
No, what I was saying is that it's important to remember that performance is a huge part of what makes music great -- and even if Picasso "sampled" velazquez, he still had to paint with his own hands. I know that he ocassionaly collaged as well, but this was a breif phase in his art making. He also famously said that computers are terrible because they only can give you answers.
So, if you like the way that a vocal turns into a wave in a particular way -- then it would probably be more interesting to re create that effect and copy it in that regard than to *cut and paste.
The Jet engine idea is great, no problem there. But ideally you could go and make the field recordings yourself (obviously its pretty impossible in that sort of situation, but you get what I'm saying).
We all use short-cuts to arrive at places in our art more quickly than it would take us if we had to re-invent the wheel everytime. But like Armondo Prism was saying, maybe you can balance out each digital effect with a natural process. It might make for some unnexpected results.
@ logan -
you're right, i don't approve of said argument. i think such formal and procedural openness is actually reductive, and following that logic to extremes leaves one in a state of stunted awe, a slack-jawed perma-stoned status in which nothing is worth questioning, content to take the ever-spiraling chute of banal infertile hedonism.
ok, maybe that's a bit extreme. and yeah, your statements are things that are important to be aware of. but focusing on that, making the expression of said statements the primary agenda of your art produces boring material.
to continue beating a dead horse, take mash-ups. this is a musical phenomenon, dating back to around 01/02, in which artists would layer one entire (familiar pop) song over another (sometimes perhaps utilizing several songs). upon encountering a well-executed mash-up for the first time, one is struck with an immediate sense of awe. the conceptual shock is exciting, and the aesthetic effect can be pleasing. but after that initial *wow* factor - what is there? a prolonged monologue on the idea that everything is infinitely reproducible and basically nothing means anything. just as bad, it reeks of a spoiled, bratty sense of entitlement - "this is MINE, i can do what i want with it". most mash-ups, naturally, were generated using pirated mp3's. and please, no one try to assert that sampling the chorus of a pop song is the same as sampling some birds in a field - the cultural resonances and implications are massively different, not to mention the substantive procedural elements (cutting up an mp3 in soundforge is very different from taking a recording device out to a site).
really, the subversive impact of such explicit sonic appropriation, in actuality,was played out as early as the beginning of the 70's (both faust and residents utilized uncleared samples of the stones and the beatles). if not then, certainly by the early 80's, with plunderphonics and negativland, such extreme gestures of appropriation were pushed to their utmost (tiresome) limits.
yes, all artists draw on other sources - we do not exist in an insular environment. but, as discussed elsewhere in this forum, i think there is truth in obfuscation. as a general rule, the more bare and explicit one's points of references are, the more the resulting art will subsist on novelty, on that ever-dwindling *wow* factor.
really, i think it's a huge problem that so much of our generation, is afflicted by this. particularly those with purportedly subversive/transgressive intents, content to flounder about in this flaccid, almost semi-firm state of "whoa, dude...". this creative impotence and sterility are as culturally dangerous as genetically modified crops are biologically (i told you i was becoming a fascist).
it is also my opinion that the formal and sonic innovations that the laptop-era granted us have been pushed to their logical extremes (mego records, schematic records, akufen, perlon, etc). sonic clarity, flexibility, and yes - *freedom*...the freedom to take and utilize whatever material we want, the freedom to manipulate and generate sounds in whatever ways we can imagine...these things are the impediments to our pursuit of something new.
so greg just said:
"So, if you like the way that a vocal turns into a wave in a particular way -- then it would probably be more interesting to re create that effect and copy it in that regard than to *cut and paste."
and this reminded me of something that i heard once about hip-hop producer timbaland. apparently builds some of his tracks around samples - and then removes the sample, leaving only its 'ghost'. i like this idea, of playing off the sort of spiritual/spectral resonances of familiar sound bytes. it could be really cool to build a sort of abstract mash-up-esque track of almost-recognizable snippets, and then basically *cover* your own song using analog sources....
This is a problem with fine art, the beholding of fine art in a modern (lower case "m") context; we as viewers demand that art wow us on some kind of "booyah--slam" conceptual level. And I think THIS is mainly what creates this weird decadent state in which the piece of art I saw last year bores me this year, in which I demand that artists innovate and open doors for no one to walk thru, because I don't want to see the same concept twice. No one says, "Jesus would these Tuvan throat singers just move on already. They've really pushed the form to its limit." And that's because it's folk art. Somehow the form is powerful enough to withstand for generations and generations with growth, certainly, but without massive overhauling.
We are obsessed with intellectual property, and we indulge that obsession when we evaluate art. We first and foremost need to be certain that the artist has contributed enough to the piece creatively to rightfully call it his, even as we, being smart and post-modern, know that creation is an illusion. We respond to art under the assumption that the artist is saying, "Behold this thing that I have spoken into being out of the ether." And we say, "Not so fast, asshole. You are just an arrogant demiurge. I, filled with the divine spark, can see that your sampled drum track is but false light, a pathetic imitation of the pleroma. You have created nothing." We've got double-digit inflation in the economy of ideas. Let's fight back by engaging in pieces sensually and emotionally and maybe even intellectually, but engaging in pieces.
while i agree, and think intellectual property is an important/interesting component in the discussion here, i think it's equally important to bring up something you have brought up sort of tangentally/incidentally - that of the big dreaded "A" word...'authenticity'.
more so than intellectual property, i think we stress a different, broader, cultural aspect of ownership.
particularly when it comes to music, adherence to traditional forms is accepted/embraced/encouraged as long as it follows certain models of authenticity.
ie - a late middle-aged man from ireland singing traditional irish ballads is cool, a 20 year old dude from northern california ddoing the same is embarassing. and the wigger mc from missouri who is regarded with condescension or contempt.
of course, well-educated, middle-class (predominantly white) people like ourselves exist in a time without tradition, in a sense. thus the struggle for authenticity, for some kind of ownership, manifests itself in a feverish, desperate search for new forms. the compulsion to seek out new forms is as much a product of the individual's identity-establishment as it is a broader culturally-imposed imperative.
"People like ourselves exist in a time without tradition." That's an interesting concept. I think it's an idea that really resonates with a lot of people (like ourselves) even if not consciously articulated. We at least perceive ourselves to lack a tradition or behave as if we are outside of tradition, which is effectively like not having one. I think this stems from an over-privileging of the conscious mind. Our habit of staring into our own eyeballs has cursed us with an irreversible sentimental perspective. But I think we also overvalue its power in that regard. We have plenty of traditions; we just don't all cut our hair the same way, and we can make up whatever vows we want at our weddings and stuff.
Authenticity is a pretty problematic concept. Take Bollywood music, for example. At its genesis probably nothing looked more inauthentic: an absurd mash-up of traditional Indian singing over western chord progressions set to rock/spanish dance/tala rhythms, with surf/spy guitar and horn parts, and it's totally melodramatic, and not grassroots or anything either. It's movie music. But it's totally awesome and inspiring and whatever. It's a unique voice, totally worthwhile. Northern Californians can have a go at traditional Irish ballad singing and Missourians can rap if they want to. I mean, what if it's awesome? What if it's so awesome and we just love it? David Byrne wrote an editorial for the New York Times in which he makes a similar argument and much of this probably more or less taken from that. It's called "I hate world music". I think I read it on the Internet.
I'll also hazard that the particular way that we establish an individual identity IS culturally imposed.
see, i would make the argument that bollywood, IS in fact, an authentic movement (i'm nto entirely sure if you're talking about the films or just the music, but it applies for both). bastardized, yes. but it is a distinctly indian cultural product. the same goes for things like j-pop, funk carioca, tropicalia, etc. non-western cultures' puzzling, awkward (and frequently brilliant) embrace of the west is generally well-received here. not well-received enough to have any mass-cultural impact (at least yet), but certainly tolerated, and frequently lauded in cult/niche circles.
when dealing with authenticity and appropriation, it's important to remember that such thievery is acceptable (or even encouraged) when it is the marginalized source stealing from the dominant source. it is the top-down appropriation is frowned upon - thus the midwestern kid who apes poor, urban minorities becomes a target of derision.
"Northern Californians can have a go at traditional Irish ballad singing and Missourians can rap if they want to. I mean, what if it's awesome? What if it's so awesome and we just love it?"
yes yes yes! i certainly agree. i didn't mean to imply that 'outsiders' are cannot approach music that they aren't immediately culturally tied-to (err...although sometimes they SHOULDN'T, maybe). i certainly don't think that culture is sacred, and it's sanctity must be preserved at all costs (err...actually, maybe i do in certain ways, but thats a different conversation). plenty of great music has been the result of audacious misappropriation, of clumsy cross-cultural encounters, of people just drawing strange influences from surprising places. many post-punk artists dabbling in dub and african percussion, for instance. of course, for every success, there are hundreds more embarrasing midwestern wiggers and be-dreadlocked trustafarians, but hey, we're living in a smaller world every day.
"I'll also hazard that the particular way that we establish an individual identity IS culturally imposed."
good call. no, of course you're right. the way in which we forge an identity within a culture is, naturally, dictated by the culture we exist in. and of course, the individual constituents comprise the culture that imposes such order. it's a circular thing. or something. i just meant to to say that this drive towards novelty and formal innovation that informs much of our culture is not exclusively imposed upon us by some mass cultural superego-like force - but it also stems from people's internal, private struggles.
ps -
2 things. why doesn't bob 'the kid' properly join up?
and also, the link that drew posted for the "1000 pounds" song hasn't been working (i've tried altering the url and stuff, too, and i can't get to a song)...
I am so dumb.
Here it is
i am joined up. i'm not too savvy with this thing yet, and i write from different computers and sometimes i guess i'm not signed in.
ok, shawn said:
"@ logan -
you're right, i don't approve of said argument. i think such formal and procedural openness is actually reductive, and following that logic to extremes leaves one in a state of stunted awe, a slack-jawed perma-stoned status in which nothing is worth questioning, content to take the ever-spiraling chute of banal infertile hedonism."
The sexual metaphor is interesting. You seem to be echoing the Catholic Church's injunction against non-procreative sex, i.e.: art (or sex) is intended to be functional, not fun. To me, what you are espousing isn't Fascism; it's Puritanism. You're an artistic Puritan, a fundamentalist anti-pleasure Puritan.
Now, how a fundamentalist anti-pleasure Puritan art theorist can turn around and embrace the banal, infantile hedonism of Bollywood movies and J-Pop is beyond me. Your dogma obviously has some very elaborate loopholes.
I prefer the advice of Ludwig Wittgenstein:
"Never stay up on the barren heights of cleverness but come down into the green valleys of silliness."
As for R.M. "Bob" "The Kid" O'Brien (who are you??), you seem pretty awesome. You're a good writer.
I love your line: "We've got double-digit inflation in the economy of ideas." It took me awhile to get what you meant by it, though, i.e.: the relative "value" of contemporary ideas has sunk to about zilch, so when we enter the "marketplace of ideas" nowadays, we have to bring wheelbarrows full of currency (our worthless ideas) just to get a slice of bread. Let's say you're right. If so, what should we do about it? Printing more books of theory would be the equivalent of printing more paper currency during times of hyperinflation (in other words, the worst possible idea). The correct answer, economically speaking, would be to raise the interest rate (the fee paid to borrow money). In terms of our economy of ideas, "raising the interest rate" would mean raising the fee to borrow ideas (or raising the difficulty, if not literally the price). Rationally speaking, then, you should be advocating stronger intellectual property laws. You should be opposed to all forms of appropriation, so as to check the spiraling, out-of-control proliferation of ideas that you blame for the lack of sensuality, emotion and even intellectual content in today's art. A return to "authenticity" and "ownership of ideas" would be a pragmatic solution to the perceived problem of this "double-digit inflation" of ideas.
That would be your argument, and I would disagree with it.
just a quick comment @ logan:
i don't see this as a loophole. as i said, i privelege bollywood and j-pop, etc, as generative movements. bastardized, yes. infantile and banal? perhaps. these are, in large part, perhaps, because of geographic peculiarity (but also due to their haphazard hodge-podge influences), interesting, novel cultural movements. i don't think art needs to be UNfun - topically and aesthetically, it can certainly be humorous, joyous, and sure, even banal. it just needs to be pursued and explored in a serious fashion. you and i had a conversation about umbanda (a bizarre brazilian syncretic religion) the other day - i found it fascinating. when pastiche is an organic process, i find it fascinating - it's only the savviness, the exploitative attitudes that frequently pop up in our culture's approaches, that i find so repugnant.
as far as my puritanism: you're probably right. then again, allow me to quote k-punk's lovely paraphrasing of zizek:
"there is no inherently emancipatory potential in pleasure"
myopic hedonic pursuit is a dangerous trap, one responsible for the ultimate failure of 60's 'counterculture' movements. i think it's pretty stupid of us to repeat their mistakes.
oh, and for further clarification - jpop and bollywood are not even genres i particularly champion. italo disco and happy hardcore, however, are - and in terms of the infantile and banal, they can be hard to top (HH is practically synonomous with infantilism).
my fondness for said genres stems from several sources from their nervous, ambivalent relationship with hedonistic impulses, their uneasy embrace of capitalistic drives and the purely materialistic/consumeristic functions of music. their synth-driven, raucous FUNness is counterbalanced by their intermittent abrasive experimentation and their (comparative) obscurity.
of course, the real irony is that italo is a highly collectible genre, with 12"s going for upwards of $1000.
errrm
i need to leave the house.
The EPN is on fire!
logan - it's an interesting train of thought, but (for my specialized definition of "idea") it's the obsession with intellectual property that causes the inflation. No one owns the idea to make their throat sound like a ring modulator, so young throat singers can feel relatively welcome to participate. They can contribute to the form and even "innovate" if they want, but they don't have to reinvent the wheel every time. So, if anything, I would endorse a relaxation of the artist's ownership of the idea. But it's not just the fault of artists. It comes down to the audience, too. If we could experience art without assuming that the artist is claiming to be a genius, I think we could get a lot more out of it.
Also, I'm not the king of the world, and I doubt I ever will be. I don't have a five year plan to save art that involves not allowing people to nerd out with books and theory. That stuff's fine. I'll read those books.
(btw - the comic book scene comes close to what i'm talking about. in a comic book store the experimental comics and graphic novels are sold right next to the blatantly commercial titles. you've got writers who push the form like Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Who cross pollinate with the commercial titles. You've got really surreal comics or that comic with all the dots that was about like the napoleonic wars or whatever. either way it seems the comic book's main focus is to be really cool and fun to read. And if someone wants to push the form, they don't necessarily need to get a bunch of new nerd friends and ditch all their old X-Men friends. does that make any sense?)
tc dude - if you were to see a happy hardcore band that you thought totally killed it, would you ever go up to them and say "Wow. You guys really nailed with your ambivalent relationship with hedonistic impulses and your uneasy embrace of capitalistic drives tonight!" ?
errata - i clearly thought that happy hardcore was a subgenre of hardcore punk. whoops.
Is O'brien Tyler? Or Danny Gibson? Did this get answered somewhere else?
I'm Chet's friend. We went to Purchase College together.
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