Re:Loops vs Creativity
Thursday, July 22 2004 @ 10:45 PM CDT

Quote by: alanfraser I'll yield that 4'33 had some passing significance but how long does it take to grasp that silence is impossible. Anyone who's ever used a Marshall for any significant period is never going to 'hear' silence anyway.

I oversimplified that. And John cage did NOT just do that piece. He had a long, fruitful and influential career. The fact is, that (at least until now, when music is recorded directly by the composer) ALL music had certain things that the composer left to the performer, or chance to select. Generally earlier music left much to the performers discretion. Later composers kept working at getting more and more control for themselves. Cage showed the far end of the spectrum - in 4:33 all of the sonic elements you hear are left to chance (but you do still hear all kinds of stuff) and each performance is unique. Yes, its a pure concept piece, but it was effective. That it's still being performed today says a fair amount to me. Diss it if you want, but that's one of the influences that's shaped modern thought about what can and can't be music. I for one am glad that John Cage did that piece.

btw - another interesting concept piece was "One antipersonnel-type CBU bomb will be thrown into the audience" of course, the performance is to announce that the performance is cancelled.

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Friday, July 23 2004 @ 03:57 AM CDT

Quote by: Troy All that stuff I wrote and this is all you wanna talk about? My html skills? Are ya gonna denegrate my horrible spellink next?

actually... that wasn't HTML, lol.

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Friday, July 23 2004 @ 01:09 PM CDT

For Troy:

I generally agree with most of what you said. I think that while there is artistic and creative value to any effort, the degree of that value needs to be measured against the "use of concept, artistry and craft". To do otherwise is to create the artistic equivalent of moral relativism, where, if taken to an extreme, means nothing can really be judged at all.

On the other hand, to state that "if a piece of artwork must be explained, then that artwork is a failure" might just be testament to the strength of your conviction doing you a disservice. I found the explanation of Cage's 4:33 particularly insightful and helpful in evaluating it's artistic value. Face it, without that context, 4:33 is a whole lotta nada. Within the context of the explanation, the piece stands as an important contribution to music and musical concepts.

My appreciation of classical, while always significant, went up dramatically when I began to study it myself. The deeper I go, the more I understand, the better my education, the greater my appreciation. Clearly, having the art explained to me -- even by means of self-discovery -- is integral to my understanding the value of that art.

The ease and rapidity of understanding and assimilating a piece of work (it's popularity, by some measures) is a weak ruler to judging the artistic value of that work. (Think of all those pop hits you can't remember existed.)

Finally, to the use of clips themselves, there is a whole art to using them properly that I can definitely appreciate. To me their greatest value is a sonic tool, within the context of a greater piece. For example, if you take Linkin Park's "In the End" and remove the percussive scratch sample present through much of the song, it COMPLETELY changes it.

All-loop compositions hold far less appeal for me than those that involve some original performance, however, for many of the reasons you have stated. Personally, I would like to see the rating system changed to separate production and performance. I see loop assembling more as a production skill than a performance skill. In that scenario, I would simply leave "performance" unrated in rating such songs.

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Friday, July 23 2004 @ 01:14 PM CDT

mcsweb : "Personally, I would like to see the rating system changed to separate production and performance. I see loop assembling more as a production skill than a performance skill. In that scenario, I would simply leave "performance" unrated in rating such songs."

sounds like a reasonable idea.......

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Friday, July 23 2004 @ 04:45 PM CDT

My son and I like European Trance and Club music, especially Vocal Trance. We like Paul Oakenfold (Global Underground: New York). This music is largely loop-based. I think it is valid as mood-setting ear candy. Nothing wrong with getting in the groove with this stuff. It resonates well with a lot of people. I think it requires artistry to do loop-based music well. If not done deftly, it falls apart and gets monotonous. If free-form solo runs (voice and/or instrument) rise above the loop beds, well, then you might end up with rhythm and soul! It's all in the mix, the timing and the timbre.

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Sunday, July 25 2004 @ 12:43 AM CDT

Architects can't produce beautiful buildings without technically skilled workers. Painters can't produce their masterpiece without media technology (paint, paper, canvas, etc.), and musicians can't produce memorable music without the skilled craftsperson behind the instrument (or recording equipment, computer, or whatever). Art will always combine the creative process with some mundane technical component.

The late Michael Hedges - one of my favorite guitarist/composers - once recorded a complete acoustic guitar piece called Spare Change. Then he cut the tape up into segments so that each segment contained an individual note or chord. Then he spliced the pieces back together so that the song still played the original sequence of notes, but each note and chord played backwards. The result is amazing and obviously impossible to play live.

Now, he was a very talented musician (a guitar master) and songwriter, it's his original score, a creative and original concept, he recorded the parts live, processed them to be different, it took a lot of musical AND technical skill, and can't be performed. In effect, it's a "produced" piece. You can say that the song is a result of excellent musicianship, or excellent technical skill, or both. But it's still art and couldn't have been done without combining both artistic and technical skills.

Art is simply a form of communication. It doesn't matter how you say it (loops, performance, or both). It doesn't matter if people listen or understand it. What matters is that you say it.

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Sunday, July 25 2004 @ 08:32 AM CDT

hear ye.....hear ye......i completely agree with this proclamation..and i second this motion....

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Sunday, July 25 2004 @ 11:10 AM CDT

There's a lot of talk going on about loops and performance, etc, but not much being said about songwriting.

For me personally, songwriting is the primary creative endeavour, and production is really secondary to that. GarageBand, and its loops, gives you the opportunity to let people hear what you've got in your head when you write a song. For me, this is priceless since I don't have a band to record my songs with.

I look at the production side of things - the use of loops, for example - as a means to an end: that end being to let yourself, and others, hear the potential of the songs you've written...without having to hire a studio and a group of session musicians.

I hope the art of writing a song isn't forgotten about when we listen to each other's songs and consider the "creativity". Personally, I'd rather people concentrate a little bit more on the songs themselves, than anything else, when rating them.

Here's a quote from Neil Finn that sums it up for me:

"It's comforting to know, though, that if it were all to fail tomorrow, I could still sing my songs with an acoustic in hand."

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Monday, July 26 2004 @ 12:13 PM CDT

Song writing is critically important, and I see the category Song Content the category that addresses this. On the other hand, I see a backlash against the "loops are completely uncreative" camp that's basically taking performance and rendering as a "menial task". Ummm... performance is also critically important. Ask two guitarists to play the same lick and it can have completely different sounds. There are tons of exceptionally successful artists, many of whom who have won Emmys for having written not a damn thing, only performance. If performance weren't so important, what was the brouhaha over Milli Vanilli? When I listen to a piece I try to listen and differentiate: songwriting, performance (playing), production and the overall sound of the song. When I listen to loop-based music, I try to downplay performance as an important criteria and focus more on production for that category. My only quibble is that I would like to see production and performance separated (they currently are not). That way if someone has a great voice, but they sound like they were recorded at a train station, you can provide accurate feedback for both the strengths and weaknesses of the song. I would also like the option to not vote on a category if it is not applicable, such as performance in a loop-based song, without penalizing the artist or their song. Make sense?

Re:Loops vs Creativity
Monday, July 26 2004 @ 12:55 PM CDT

i hear ya brother...i hear ya.......