The Logic Off Topic list

>Next question: if Bach was born today, would he ever get airplay, or
>would he be drowned out by all the dance-trance-whatever?
>Or (here's a horrid thought :) would he be one of the major
>trance-composers???
>
>And no, I don't expect a serious answer... :-)
>
Why not?   ;-)

Bach composed by carrying "information" by the sequence and consonance of
notes. This simply means (for example) that a Cmaj after a G7  (V7 - I) is
sth. different to a Amin after a Cmaj (I - VI). Everyone can easily tell
the difference just by listening.
That kind of "information" or sense or meaning can be transformed without
losing it´s content: Play his E-Major-Partita on violin, or if you like, on
guitar, it will be the same piece. So the "sound" isn´t very important, and
running it thru a 24dB moog filter won´t ever change the beautiful
polyphony, or even add anything meaning- or useful to it.
One could compare this with handwriting. It´s of high importance *what* you
write down, but it don´t mean a thing if you use black, or let´s say pink
ink.
Building "musical" tracks on slight variations of synthetic sounds only
(not to forget the underlying 1/1 quarter beat) and almost refusing melody,
harmonic progressions, rhthym etc.  is just like smearing ink over a paper
with printed squares (that one which is used for maths in school)
This may look pretty, but - to go back to our question above, Bach was a
composer, he didn´t smear ink on paper (in fact his handwritten music
sheets look amazing!)

Yours,

Tobias

PS: All the great composers of the past had a lot of "airplay". Mozart died
poor, but he had an income comparable to Michael Jackson, if you compare
the value in relation to the historic time. He just wasted his money by
gambling.
So, Bach was more successful than the sugar cube composers of his own time.
But times have changed.