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I wrote this months ago (well, in july) and I just found it again. I agree with it mostly and I thought maybe it would spark an interesting conversation up in these here parts.
Here is my rant:
A cruch of electronic music making in general I think is the absolute and perfect mapping of one value onto another. When I pull my slider from 127 to 0, I know the corresponding action will take place perfectly in sync, and if it doesn’t, it is malfunctioning. This is very different from a traditional instrumental approach, which (despite a healthy obsession for instrument upkeep) tends to blame the performer for failure to properly manipluate the instrument when something goes wrong.
My instruments should err on that side - they should be environments to learn and manipulate, rather than slaves to an arbitrary set of rules I conjure up. I need to stop building laundry-list instruments, and start building imperfect instruments. The laundry list is the collection of moments in a piece I want to realize. I make the “bewww bewww” thing and I make the “chicka-wicka” thing, and the thing that chirps on offbeats, and etc. Working that way dooms my software to inflexibility though. Make methods and actions and behaviors, and tie them to something more interesting than 0-127. Drive harmony with a radio. Bang out beats with a contact mic. Stop pressing buttons and turning dials!
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10/27/08
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astroid
yeah dude
the instrument should allow plenty of room to discover more complex things than just the ideas you had while composing the patch.
10/27/08
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hecanjog
PS: So have I done it? Yes, more than I ever have, but not nearly as much as I should.
10/27/08
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hecanjog
Absolutely Scott - the patches etc i make that tend to fail or be discarded are always the ones that serve a specific purpose, and are mostly inflexible. Granted in max/msp this is actually a little more difficult to do than making something that behaves like a drunk uncle with a grudge, but i found myself shooting for things with specific purposes more often than not, and it gave me pause.
What's that brian eno quote? His favorite synth is the one the cat peed on? I guess it never really behaved the same after.
10/27/08
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astroid
i dunno, i havent used yr patches
that's why plain ol subtractive synth design can be great.
two oscs, filter, lfo, env, and then routing routing routing routing, and then controlcontrolcontrol
those can be wildly varied if you let them
i try to think about algo patches in the same way, where it'll become this thing where im trying to find these little musical sweetspots in a wild landscape of noise and ideas
10/27/08
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jdg
who's the instrument?
10/27/08
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everamzah
instrument/controller. an instrument can have controls and controllers. can a control have an instrument? (yes, of course it can.) is an instrument a controller? or is a controller an instrument. or perhaps there's a HUGE, HUGE GAP BETWEEN THE TWO. i don't know, i think there's none.
i guess the old tried and true: "the more expressive the better." but then the computer/controller wins. maybe it just takes longer to learn.
10/27/08
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Roshi
Eno had this quote I read in "Haunted Weather" wondering why synth companies didn't come up with synths that had six sounds that you could articulate expressively (and perform with!) rather than have six hundred really inflexible patches.
I build my sounds with my happy accident machines.
10/27/08
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everamzah
it's like having children
and then terminating them
10/27/08
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dkarma
interesting...
in most traditional music the idea is to learn your instrument and perfect it ...in essence to never make a mistake.
now that we have perfect timing, and perfect sync, the idea is to make it imperfect so as not to feel too sterile.
This is why I circuit bend.
I never really saw it the way you describe. Sure with quantize and midi sync you can't really make an error to an extent, but I personally am always looking at alternate ways of using instruments and sounds. To me a synth is an imperfect machine. It's like a guitar that takes 3 hours to tune. Getting that sound you want / need is half the fun. I almost started thinking this way about my ms2000 after 3 years of using it. Then i started to look at the modulation differently and eventually ended up using the mod sequencing to do things I never thought that little blue box could do...now I'm taking those principals and applying it in a new direction. I've recently started running all my synths through my new distortion pedal.
The types of controllers used are also important in this regard. The keyboard is a great instrument, but can lack that swing, emotion, or color --esp when notes are quantized. I've been using my midi sax more often and am looking for a midi guitar to change the feel of my synths.
Also remember that certain types of em are structured around rhythms and timing that repeats (obviously)...so chaos may not be as desirable in say a rave / trance track as a downtempo / ambient track.
But I digress
+1 for happy accident (chaos) machines.
10/27/08
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makethenoise
0-127 is so MIDI. Use OSC
10/27/08
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Roshi
It would be interesting to design synths/patches that you would have to 'fight' to a certain extent - such as some sort of random bias attached to each parameter or overall instability
10/27/08
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utofbu
I personally like doing things arbitrarily, wether or not your direct aim is to "Control" a method of synthesis, then go overboard in trying to forget why you made it, make mistakes in editing, make mistakes in processing and then interpret some performance against it, next thing you know the whole thing starts amalgamating an organic momentum outside of you or the initial method of synthesis. meh, what do I know...
10/27/08
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utofbu
i suppose this is the "Migus" mentality.
"You got the max[roach lol], you got the mistakes, now all you gotta do is keep your time in mind"
and the rest becomes an interplay of dialogue.
10/27/08
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utofbu
correction Mingus* whoo triple post... srry.
10/27/08
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adcBicycle
where's the "love" this blog button?
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