real vs. unreal
Simon Brown (zcfbm25@ucl.ac.uk)
Wed, 26 Jul 1995 13:45:24 +0100
I have to agree with Craig Willingham in that the note for note reproduction
effected by an orchestra can sound awfully mechanical - why I could have
done that on my Amiga!
A guitarist for 10 years I have begun to write stuff on said undersupported
machine - it handles samples and stuff brilliantly and is actually quite
impressive. I find that whilst I can wack out a tune in a couple of hours, I
then spend maybe a week making each bit different (so there are no repeating
sections) even if it's just slightly tweaking volumes and samples here and
there. This has the effect of introducing the randomness with which people
play instruments - it may not always have every single note or phrase / riff
sounding exactly the same. Why bother? Well if you'd ever heard me playing
anything other than guitar (and even when I am playing guitar) I sound a
little ... inconsistent.
Basically the real distinction ought to be drawn not between electronic and
'live' which is a fairly tenous separation - possibly even a continuum, the
distinction should be between material with feel where time and love has
been spent honing it to its present state, and material without feel which
is cack!
Simon Brown