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As an artist, i've always considered myself more of a composer than a musician. At the same time, I like the idea of working with instruments in real time. It has a much more organic feeling to me, and the slightly chaotic nature of it makes the music feel much more alive for me as well.
I've started adopting guitar and the like into my own work which has always been fine. I've also tried (unsuccessfully) several times to collaborate with others and "start a band", but it just never seems to work for some reason. I get the feeling that I just don't know how to communicate my ideas well enough, because I have no real experience playing instruments along with others. I try and explain things in terms of mood, color, brightness, and tone which more traditional musicians just don't seem to comprehend, at least not to the extent that's needed. They want specific notes and chords, which I'm not familiar enough with to give. Collaborations with just me and another person seem to work ok for a song or two, but then it just falls apart. Three people, i've started to not even bother with at all, cause I just get the feeling it's failed before it's started.
Has anyone else run into this problem before? Did you find a way to work around it? Any tips for someone like me, about how I can communicate my ideas more easily without coming off as bossy or complaintive? | |
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01/18/07
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zfigz
I've always wondered how I'd be able to collaborate with friends of mine who play traditional instruments. I really can't play an instrument worth a damn. How does a computer composer work with those that are more acquainted with traditional musicianship?
I have a couple of buddies I went to university with that are going to be in Korea during the same time I will be...I'd really like to collaborate with them, but I really don't know how I'd go about it since I'm such a computer junkie. We all used to pretty much live together and jam out on various things. Then they got super serious in learning guitars and making annoying rock clamor jams. I got a girlfriend as this point and would usually just come out to tell them to shut the fuck up since they got so pretentious about their jamming time.
So what I'm saying, how does one who is influenced and used to the computer domain of music making collaborate with those who have only had experience playing an instrument? Do I just patch them in and record them and add effects as I see fit? As a computer composer I'd feel so inadequate, especially during the real time jams.
I don't know, sometimes I think I'd just be better working alone...or maybe with someone else who has a computer for music making too :o)
01/18/07
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ejectorset
i do not see how either of you keep throwing around the word composer when neither of you seem to be musically trained/and/or able to read/write musical notation.
im not fronting, i cant read music very well, but i can play lots of instruments, i do know some notes and chords, and in a million years would never call myself a "composer".
do you mean producer?
i am confused.
edited: Jan 18 2007
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zfigz
uh...but I compose...a musician plays instruments, not a composer (but they can if they want).
and I just don't like the word producer...everyone and their mother is or wants to be a producer...i.e. Jerry Bruckheimer.
edit: oh and I can read music, just not fast enough to play in real time. I've also had over a year of piano training...yep, a whole year!
01/18/07
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utofbu
well. Composer denotes some sort of discipline if you ask me. I went to school for it. We used to study 20 obscure pieces spanning 300 years and then they would play 3 seconds or so and you would have to tell them the mvt, the composer, the name of the piece and the history behind the creation of the work in a short summary. (drop the needle anyone?)
I believe that composer denotes a discipline and a prior knowledge that is a bit more than just writing. But that is just me. I only went to school for it.
my aural theory teachers would play a minute of 4 part harmonies and you would have to write them down as they played it.
How about being able to transcribe from ear. Or write piano reductions from orchestral scores. There is alot to being a composer. Not everyone can do it, but those who can are in good shape.
You can call yourself one but I suggest you attempt some of this in order to see my perspective. But you dont have to, no one does.
Not trying to sound like an asshole, I just dont like how deflated the word composer has become.
01/18/07
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ejectorset
zfigz, i guess my reply was aimed more at panda then, as he said they want specific notes and chords and he isnt familar enough to supply.
i hate the word producer too!!!
edited: Jan 18 2007
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zfigz
All I was trying to say was that a composer doesn't need to play a particular instrument...but more importantly he/she must be able to understand the language of music, that is the western tradition of music study. I can understand how you feel when others who just have a knack for computer music and thus call themselves composers. You also have to realize that our world is changing and the line that once differentiated a composer from others that dabbled with music is becoming much more thin. Anyone with a computer has the ability to paint worlds with sound and I really don't think it's a bad thing when they consider themselves as composer...because really, that's what they are. Just like a painter, a composer paints their mind's eye and then instructs others to play that world to others. Whether you're instructing other humans or microchips, it really is all the same...
01/18/07
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zfigz
"zfigz, i guess my reply was aimed more at panda then, as he said they want specific notes and chords and he isnt familar enough to supply."
- Ah ha! Bah, Panda, get a simple music theory book and you should be fine. For real basic stuff get the Idiot's Guide to Music Theory, very simple to digest. Also, I've had my eye on this book for a while and the author is a fellow forum poster at bigbluelounge...here's the amazon link for the book . . . [url=]http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1593373244/ref=pd_cpt_gw_3/104-5398770-6078346[/url]
01/18/07
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prugelknaben
how about electronic musician? sound artist? sound designer? i dont have a problem with composer but i know that many have.
and... dont stress with not being able to play an instrument. your friends will love having a friend that knows his way around a computer and can record them and mess with it, making new music.
01/18/07
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astroid
look at how they talk about mussorgsky!
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, on Mussorgsky's manuscripts:
"They were very defective, teeming with clumsy, disconnected harmonies, shocking part-writing, amazingly illogical modulations or intolerably long stretches without ever a modulation, and bad scoring. ...what is needed is an edition for practical and artistic purposes, suitable for performances and for those who wish to admire Mussorgsky's genius, not to study his idiosyncrasies and sins against art."
Anatoly Lyadov:
"It is easy enough to correct Mussorgsky's irregularities. The only trouble is that when this is done, the character and originality of the music are done away with, and the composer's individuality vanishes."
Edward Dannreuther, in an early edition of The Oxford History of Music:
"Mussorgsky, in his vocal efforts, appears willfully eccentric. His style impresses the Western ear as barbarously ugly."
Gerald Abraham, musicologist, an authority on Mussorgsky:
"As a musical translator of words and all that can be expressed in words, of psychological states, and even physical movement, he is unsurpassed; as an absolute musician he was hopelessly limited, with remarkably little ability to construct pure music or even a purely musical texture."
01/18/07
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zfigz
yeah...I used to fret all the time about not being able to play an instrument as competently as I would like...but.
I'd really like to work on my vocals and get a sweet baritone goin' like yours prugel ;o)
I sing a lot, but I never make words because I can't think fast enough and don't know any non-pop songs. I just make up weird languages and focus on the sound and tone of my voice rather than the words. I love foreign vocal music that I have no idea what they're saying...it's so beautiful.
01/18/07
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gasper
i think that if you want to play with other people, learning how to play an instrument is very important. waaaaay more important than writing or reading music or any of that. are you really looking to find 'session' musicians that will just play your songs? i've been playing in bands for 17 years and i have only a very rudimentary understanding of written music. i agree with those who said it's best to find people you relate to and who you get along with. i think it's possible to find a way to interact with live musicians using a computer or gear, especially with software like Max or Pd, or even Ableton, but i've found that's not as much fun as really playing an instrument in real time with other humans. However, combining electronics and live instruments is really fun!
01/18/07
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zfigz
" i think it's possible to find a way to interact with live musicians using a computer or gear, especially with software like Max or Pd, or even Ableton, but i've found that's not as much fun as really playing an instrument in real time with other humans."
- yeah...you usually have to have something already preconceived in order to jam with a computer. percussion via the computer is always easy as long as your interface doesn't bog down too much while recording analog ins.
01/18/07
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zfigz
latency . . . latency . . . latency
01/18/07
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ejectorset
the trick might be to approach it from a non-realtime jammy jam kinda of thing.
in other words, make some beats or melodic ideas, not too fleshed out, just ideas, then have a guitarist over. if he likes some have him come up with some ideas.
record those.
then have him overdub some extra guitar parts for you to "mangle" using whatever methods you do.
have him back once you have "processed" some of the extra guitar bits and made some more beats or melodic ideas however you normally work, so both of you can work on the arragement and mixing.
the trick is finding the right people to work with. with the right people the process, however realtime, or not can be extrememly fun, statisfying, comfortable and easy.
edited: Jan 18 2007
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mrpanda
Well I know wouldn't consider myself a composer in the traditional sense of the word. I can't conduct an orhestra, but i'm not a musician either. Composer just seems to make the most sense to me. It applies the best. I don't think you have to know how to write sheet music though to be a composer either. Lots of modern composers use their own notations and structures.
I think one of the biggest ways I differentiate myself from musicians, in my mind, is that when I look at an instrument, I don't look at a guitar and say "that's a guitar, you play it by plucking the strings". Rather, I just see it as a tool, which could enable me to do lots of different things. I could pluck it's strings, sure, but I could also use a hammer or bow, or an electric sander, or I could throw it down the stairs, or lots and lots of different things. It's the musician who looks at the instrument and says "this is how you use it", but I think a composers job isn't to see it as an instrument, but just as something that makes a sound - any sound that it can possibly make. it's not that I don't know how to play an instrument, it's just...who is anyone to define how it should be played.
I think I have the tendancy to think abstractly about the creative process, because i'm never trying to get a specific note or chord, just a type of sound. You don't have to know music theory to know that two things sound good together. Indeed, I think some things sound good together that someone classically trained would scold themselves for considering because "that's not how you're supposed to do it".
I think it's just a completely different process and while the intentions are good and the goals are the same, I have trouble (sometimes) thinking rigidly, and musicians have trouble (sometimes) thinking abstractly. That's not to say that I don't know anything about music at all. I know a little bit, but I don't get caught up on it.
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