The Logic Off Topic list

>  > Gawd, do I really have to put a smiley after every stupid remark I
>>  make...?  Then all my msgs would contain more smileys than remarks
>>  :-).
>
>No, of course not - but I smelled a bit of that "better learn how to play
>your instrument" thing again, as in one of your contributions to the trance.
>I know that such comments, especially coming from an obviously clever person
>can't be taken 100% serious, but there's a bit of truth in them though, no?
>Now admit, goddamnit! :-)

OK, I admit...  Yes, there is some truth in my jokes.  I'm not that 
much of a musician myself, but at least I know what a Dsus4 is.  And 
I do seriously think that a lot of contemporary music would benefit 
from a bit more knowledge in this respect.

What annoys me is illustrated by the following anecdote:
I'd just bought Logic and the Digi 001, and had hooked all gear up, 
booted LA, and started playing some piano on my synth while recording 
in LA.  You know, the first fooling around with new toys.  After some 
100 bars, there seemed to be a midi problem -- random notes, note 
bursts, etc.  Later this appeared to be the now well-known midi bug 
in the 001.  However, I phoned my dealer, told them about the 
problem, and they said they'd never heard of it or encountered it 
themselves.
After some more experimenting they were able to confirm the problem, 
which only seemed to surface after sufficient time had elapsed, or 
after a sufficient number of notes had been played.  Of course I 
asked them how it was possible that no-one had ever reported the 
problem and why they hadn't run into it before -- after all, _my_ 
Digi001 wasn't the first they sold.
The answer was revealing: "we don't try out equipment for 100+ bars 
ourselves (which imo is reasonable), and (and that's the annoying 
thing) apparently none of our other customers plays 100 bars of 
piano.  Probably most of our customers play 4 or 16 bars and start 
cutting and pasting."

I don't care if some individual gets by with copying and pasting, but 
if apparently the majority of the music-making community do it this 
way... well... then I seriously start wondering what happened to 
music while I wasn't paying attention...

>Actually, not too long ago I was saying such things almost all the time, and
>yes, I was almost serious about it. It actually changed when I've been to
>some kinda of pretty much "underground-ish" rave. Not that I really liked
[...]

Sure, I know the experience, and there absolutely is talent out there 
-- even in the copy & paste league.  In once saw a DJ perform solo 
with just two turntables and a record collection -- doing this "fast 
flipping of records and scratching" thing (is there a name for 
that?).  And this guy was bloody AMAZING.  Really incredible how he 
managed to make an entirely new (and interesting!) piece of 'music' 
with just a bunch of records and turntables.  Went on for 15 minutes 
or so, and the audience was dead quiet all the time.  I was really 
holding my breath, and when he was finished people almost tore down 
the hall -- yelling, screaming, applauding.  Absolutely wonderful, 
and probably one of the most musical performances I have heard during 
the past years.

>I'd be more interested in really integrating it, both by means of
>sound and composition. Btw, I think Massive Attack and Portishead for
>example do a great job on that.

Massive Attack is ok at times, although theyalso have some extremely 
boring stuff imo.  Portishead is indeed amazing in a way.  Muscially 
they're not very talented -- simple schemes, rather lousy musicians 
-- but theysomehwo manage to get a maximum effect out of their medium 
talents.  Which I admire greatly.

I saw them play live once -- the DJ I told above was their support 
act -- and that was rather mediocre.  The lady sang out of tune quite 
often, and the piano player clearly had a hard time playing the 
bluesy piano lines live.  All in all the DJ was more impressive than 
the band :-).  Still like their CDs though.


cheers,
HJ
-- 
     Hendrik Jan Veenstra
     email: mailto:h@...
     www:   http://www.ision.nl/users/h/index.html