Ultimately any analogy will fail, because it's just that, an analogy - while having a pattern in common things are still different. You of course may disagree, because I also somehow already expected that, in the hope for a lively conversation and discussion about this topic. Yet I try to stress these parts, where such an analogy would apply, and disregard those, where it won't. The painting artist may "sample" a piece from the sunny room where he's in, or have a look out the window and just paint what he is seeing there. Musicians are very limited in their possibilities to imitate nature. But both, composers and painters, could perform their art from materializing the things that cross their minds or how they feel it should be done. Also van Gogh followed common painting rules or formed up his own for a certain piece, so he wasn't completely free in his mind when painting, just like a composer who has to think of instrument ranges or possible playing techniques. With today's synthesis methods we could "build" a violin going down to A-2 - is that desirable? Isn't it more interesting to see, how a composer would solve the "problem" with the tools he got at hand, a score sheet, pen and paper (or virtually said: midi channels)? That's a different view of what van Gogh was doing with easel and paints, and the flower in the painting being virtual as well.

The way I see it, the difference is, that the tools for a simple or complex painting always have been affordable while the tools of composing were unaffordable for most, even talented and/or successful composers. Sample libraries do change that, guys like you and me are able to lay down fractions of their ideas. But we are limited - we can do what the tools allow us to do. If we want 3 horns, we could write that down on the staffs, the samples for this idea have yet to come. We can approximate by going along with 4 being similar in sound. However the idea was another thing. We adapt all the time to this set of unwritten rules, fooling ourselves constantly into thinking we would deal with the real deal. So I could also argue, that a huge number of notes in your composition also could be at least recorded with metronome in a few takes of certain sections and maybe even performed at once with enough rehearsals. Yet you unconsciously put up with what samples gave you, putting up sample after sample what was already there. If van Gogh could have produced a brighter, more colorful yellow or a darker black, perhaps those would have substituted things that seem "perfect" to us. Didn't you think once that a more harsh staccato would have fitted that passage better? The evolution has still many fields to approach to allow for painter's freedom.

All the best,
PolarBear

@lgrohn said:

"The painting artist may "sample" a piece from the sunny room where he's in, or have a look out the window and just paint what he is seeing there. " Artists don't do that way. They paint what they feel.

@lgrohn said:

Actually some visitors could distinguish out which painting on the wall that was "playing" at that moment.

Sappho and Alcaeus?

@PaulR said:

Many of these people should indeed spend more time in sunny rooms - surrounded by men in white coats.

Accurate definition, except for the sunny rooms

@lgrohn said:

Actually some visitors could distinguish out which painting on the wall that was "playing" at that moment.

This is an example of what I was talking about when I mentioned "rules" artists are applying to, unconsiously or consciously. It could be self-contained art if there was a single artist, but if there's two, one had to adapt the others concept and isn't really "free" in his mind. Otherwise both things won't match at all or the chance is ridicously little.

@lgrohn said:

"The painting artist may "sample" a piece from the sunny room where he's in, or have a look out the window and just paint what he is seeing there. " Artists don't do that way. They paint what they feel.

They can paint a flower because they (and we) do have an abstract concept about what a flower would look like. That also works for a chair or a table. It also has to do with how things are named: Ferdiand de Saussure described those concepts with a two sided picture of "signifié" (about a thing's content/concept) and "signifiant" (about the matierialized thing or spoken word). Artists may as well feel the concept of a scene like I pictured it, and portray it, which isn't really possible with music (just with things like a bird's tweeting or a thunder's rolling may be imitated). The art here starts as you said, when artists think beyond the real boundaries and start to create new concepts out of the exisiting ones to a point where the art's concept may not be recognized as a follow-up to existing concepts anymore.

PolarBear 

"Too many artists and musicians pretend that the rubbish they produce is what was intended in the first place.

Far too many people pretending to be musicians simply make noise and call it art.

Many of these people should indeed spend more time in sunny rooms - surrounded by men in white coats." - Paul R

This is one the most profound statements ever made about modern art.

BTW I like modern art. However I also spend time in gloriously sunny rooms surrounded by men in white coats.

Every once in a while there are thoughts thrown out there that reveal significant trends in the way we think.  This might be one of them.  For me, though, this string represents a potentially disturbing direction in the way we view music and music production.  I think it also reveals a separation from actual musicians and live performances that will  not help us at all in producing great digital/virtual music. Stretching a bit, it might also reveal very signficant unintended arrogance about the digital music field that, if adopted, could negativel impact the art of digital music production for a long time.

Not sure where to begin and definitely don't feel I'm equipped to respond, but I'll give it a shot.

Glenn Gould quit playing live performances altogether at the age of 32 and played only on the radio and in recording studios the rest of his life.  That said, I feel strongly that he would not agree with the idea that digital/virtual instruments would ever at any time now or in the future, be able to do something better than he could in making a great recording.  In any live performance there are parts of the performance that are more "genius" or "inspired" than others.  Gould felt that in the studio, you could play something a number of times and piece the "genius" or "inspired" parts of each one together to create a better result.  This is sort of like takig all the Masters golf tournaments that Jack Ncklaus every played and piecing together the best of each of the 18 holes, resulting in a 54, a score that has never been shot "live" (59 is the best "live" performance by a golfer).  However, I feel confident Gould would say it was still the inspiration of the human themself that allows the best recording to be made, not the sterile perfection possible through digital/virtual instrumentation.

And Glenn Gould is a near perfect anamoly among musicians.  Such an insignificant number of musicians and live music composers would agree with him that it makes using him as a proponent of digital music being more "evolved" a very weak pillar to stand on.  (Don't get me wrong, I think digital music has a huge present and future).

Toward the end of his career, Leonard Bernstein refused to allow anything he did to even be recorded unless it was a live performance.  Another famous soloist who slips my mind (Horowitz, Rostropovich or someone of that status) felt that way most of their career.  Almost every musician I know feels the best recordings they have done come from the live stage.  Why?  Because music is a HUMAN interactive medium where the audience, context, mood, day, time, place, humidity, etc. both challenge and inspire, creating difficulties as well as special moments that could never be reproduced in a studio.  To think that the most "evolved" music doesn't involve musicians is a bit like saying the most evolved Broadway plays do not involve any live performance or audiences, just digital voices, digital instruements, and laugh tracks.

Is this just a classical musician's bias? 

Oteil Burbridge, one of the great bass guitarist of our time says:  "If I could, I would only record live," he said. "I would just do live CDs and live DVDs, probably, for the rest of my life".

Removing the human being from any equation does two things.  It creates a more consistent result either good or bad, and in doing so, removes the possiblity for that special recorded experience that simply cannot be captured through the implementation of technology.  Technology cleans up the whole human mess involved in making music, it also removes the magic that comes from that humanness.  

The other thing that disturbs me about this is that in order to really begin to entertain this argument as an exciting present or even future possibility communicates to me that we have lost touch with the discipline and apprenticeship of learning music itself, and feel we transcend all those hours of daily practice because we can make it all happen digitally.  The best digital composers I know have the deepest roots in the disciplines of learning their scales, being able to make great music live on stage, and years of experience making music come alive in front of an audience.  Making that kind of magic gives us the imagination to begin to attempt to reproduce it in the digital world.  Thinking that we can fully capture it there tells me we probably never experienced it enough to realize how uniquely human the "inspired" experience is.

Just some technical support for this notion - There are a half dozen major schools of classical styles (German, French, Italian, Russiona, American, English, etc.), all with unique sounds (darker, brighter, richer, smoother, etc.), playing styles, etc.  Some are better at producing Mozart, others better for Stravinsky, others better for Pop, etc.  This is true of all the intrument groups.  VSL's samples are built almost exclusively from just one of these many schools.  Then you have the personalities of soloists who make the very same piece of music sound unique in each instance.  Then the venues, the audience "energy", and all the other variables that go into making music magical - let's be glad we can fool people and create a consistent product via the digital world.  And let's continue to strive to reporduce as best we can what happens in live performances.  The more we know and love live performance, the better we will become at producing digital music.  The more we think we've evolved into something better than the live performance, the more likely we will produce something the human beings won't want to listen to.

This post reveals the extreme bias towards performers and performance, rather than composers and composition, that is so characteristic of the classical music establishment.

For your information I was in that establishment for years, am a product of it, and find it a disgusting and snobbish System whose purpose is to enforce uniformity of thought and obliterate individuality of artistry.  I wonder what the film composers here would think if they heard the sarcastic and arrogant dismissal of all film music that was normal at the University music department I attended.  Film music is in fact the only truly vital music being done right now with symphony orchestras.  The concert music field is a government-subsidized snob festival that exists mainly as a fashion statement for the rich. So don't think that you are on a higher plane, illuminating the poor wretches who never understood what music truly is because they didn't graduate from a narrow-minded academic thought-control institute.

In your post you keep on stating digital music is cut off from musicians.

IS A COMPOSER A MUSICIAN? 

Answer that question.  No?  Yes? 

And if so, why is it wrong for that musician to want to use samples, rather than live performances, because he can control every element precisely, the way a painter is able to control the exact nature of his colors and brushstrokes? 

I do not view music as mainly overrated "virtuosi" showing off in a concert hall and "Oh, by the way, the music was written by so-and-so."  I view what the composer does as the essence of music, and that is IMAGINATION of sound within his mind. That is the true music.  And however it can be most perfectly realized is the best music. 

Also, as for Glenn Gould's eccentricity   - WHO CARES??? So your attitude is, "well that guy is a weirdo, so I am not having anything to do with him."  That makes me WANT to have something to do with him, because I am bored stiff by normal people.  And he was a serious composer, and would certainly LOVE samples as being a means of directly realizing the imagination of sound within his mind.

I find your whole point that this thread is "disturbing" because it takes music away from live performance absolutely wrong.  Because live performance is NOT the definition of music.  It is simply a recreation of what a composer imagined. And often a very poor recreation.

Does our favorite piece of music always evoke the same reactions? Even if we are in the mood for it? What is this piece of music about for us? Was that intended by the artistic composer? That exactly, those nuances of feelings we have even if we listen the same recording/mockup of it all the time? I keep myself asking that when thinking over what music is about, when thinking the composer would have done this because he thought it would fit. Fit me? Fit him? Fit the most? Is dead music nobody listens to still artistically worthwile? Is commercial music not to regard worthwile because we can't justify to see an artistry part in it? It's all the different intentions and emotions that make a piece lively, samples or live, rock or pop as well as symphonic. 

William,

You concluded that my "whole point is that this thread is "disturbing" because it takes music away from live performance."  That wasn't my point at all.   My point - Your conclusion that what you and I do in the digital world is more evolved than what happens in a concert hall is unhelpful to the future of digital music.  

Digital music is a great addition to live music.  But why create separation between the two and take an elitist's position regarding how much more evolved digitial music is from live performance?  You stated "The concert music field is a government-subsidized snob festival that exists mainly as a fashion statement for the rich.", while stating that what you do is more evolved.  Saying digital music is more evolved transfers that snobbery to yourself and devalues your argument. 

What concerns me and makes me write here is that if you decide you are more evolved than those who practice composition in a different form, you are creating a very limited view of the world for yourself and for others you work with.  Regarding live performance you said, "I find it a disgusting and snobbish System whose purpose is to enforce uniformity of thought and obliterate individuality of artistry.", and in the same breath you claim that you have the more evolved art form, which only enforces uniformity of thought and obliterates individuality of artisty by demeaning live performance as a less evolved way of expressing art.  Digital music is the most evolved form of art and anybody involved in live performance is a snob.  Hmmm...what other limitations do you wish to impose on those around you?   Your world will get very small very quickly if you believe yourself to be so above others.

People who see themselves as more evolved than those who came before them stop learning from those who laid the foundation. 

Also, I did not say anything like "digitlal music is cut off from musicians".   Digital musicians and composers are every bit as much a musician as live composers/performers.   What I will say is that if digital composers make the decision that live composers and their medium are less evolved, that they cut themselves off from the best learning environment available to making better digital music.  That was and is my point.  Don't put yourself above others who express their art differently than you do.   It won't help you create better art, just more arrogant art. 

PaulR,

In the winter I practice golf indoors against a wall, with a picture of Ben Hogan's backswing to look at constantly.  :)

Good post, Tanui.  If we see both live performance and digital production as valid art mediums, they are more likely to learn from one another and both will benefit.  If we pit one against the other we'll miss great opportunities to move both of them forward.  They both have very different purposes and very different benefits (economics being one of those for digital music).  Both are clearly better at some things and limited in ways that the other isn't.  We should learn from both, not build walls between them.

I tried not to involve anyone's music in the discussion, but I think it's not avoidable to make the point - Tanuj, as I read it from William's initial post, he meant that we would be there already with samples and perfection, well ok, later on he said almost and in some cases. So the artistry would really come availible for anyone at high quality, and as you say (which I also already mentioned in an earlier post btw.) at affordable prices. And also being affordable for artistry because a single artist can pull of a 80-piece-orchestra and doesn't need 80 or more people and doesn't need 80 times the time needed for just composing and recording the thing.

Yet some of you might have heard of the Lexus show, where 12 Lexus cars where "performing" an orchestral piece. Dunno if composer Chris Nicolaides or orchestrator Alistair King are member of this forum, but both have achievedwhat I regard as a quite well done mockup in advance to recording the LSO with the same piece. I'd recommend to have a listen to that thing, and in the order that you firstly listen to the samples version here: http://www.mailbigfile.com/a8b2d2ce7b835825aa7391866ce6efb9/listFiles.php Then go to the Lexus showcase site http://www.lexusorchestra.co.uk/ and download the recordings from the download section.

I'll not elaborate too much on this as I want you to get your own impression of it first. But too me these are two very different "performances" and I doubt I would call the mockup being perfect, yet there are only a few around with the quality it has. Surely some more tweaking would help it .If you want to follow the original discussion please visit the original VI-Control forums thread: http://vi-control.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7041

All the best,

PolarBear 

Actually the Lexus stuff I referred to was to show off the other way around, like William proposed it - having the samples in first place, nothing else would make it to the recording of a top world orchestra. While being great composers and orchestrators, still the artistry is limited to what was captured in samples, let aside the special things VSL offers us already. I didn't intent to pull off another dreaded live vs. samples discussion with this, where people do mockup a 24th variation of existing recordings. They may be an interesting approach to see what's possible, but you will agree that usually one wouldn't spend that much care for every little and smallest detail like if you were to imitate an Itzhak Perlman. And in my opinion that is showed off quite well be the Lexus stuff which was going the other way around - the expressiveness the mockups perhaps could have is almost easily outrun by the recording. A mockup of these recordings would definately soudn different than what was presented for demoing purposes. So for me it's still a no, we're not there with samples yet. We can show off ideas convincingly enough for a fraction of the price. But not the samples nor the artists can create an equally pleasing rendition with samples. And I'm not picking on anyone's abilities here, as I would do a by far inferior job at things like this.

PolarBear

Great recap - thanks.