@PaulR said:
Yes - it was sad day in this country when they outlawed dueling.
That's all very well for people like yourself who have some eye to hand coordination, but for us dweebs, we have no chance. [:(]
Back on topic, there are times when real-time is the best way and times when step time is more useful.
For example, playing an ensemble patch with flexibility and rubato will always sound fake, because no two people will ever agree 100% (see this thread for details). The individual; sloppiness tends to get evened out, so that dynamics and timing errors are less drastic.
However. solo wind instruments can benefit from real time playing, as long as you are using a Breath Controller. Using silly things like Mod Wheel will cause it to sound stilted, because what sounds good is often at odds with what your brain tells you it should be. When I started to use a BC I found it very hard, and I was pretty bad at it, but now that I'm used to it, I can play most stuff in real time, as long as I don't have to think about the keyboard aspect of it. As soon as i have to think about notes, the advantage of using a BC is lost. If I was primarily a woodwind player I might consider using a wind controller, but as I'm not, there would only be disadvantages for me.
My last vague point to make is that the only way to improve is to listen to music and try to analyse why it wounds better than your efforts. Mocking up (what a dreadful phrase) pieces where you have access to the recordings is the best way to learn, if you don't get the opportunity to sit in an orchestra and observe first hand how it all works.
Regarding William's point about sample performances sometimes being better than the "real" thing is a very complex one. In all of this we are talking about recorded music and in this respect the ear is a far more complicated bit of kit than any microphone. Sit in a concert hall, and your ear can easily pick out melodies, counter melodies, poly rhythms etc. Stick up a stereo microphone and you stand to lose an awful lot of this, no matter how good the engineer is. This is one reason why even so called classical recordings often use multi mike set-ups. However, as soon as we have our recorded performance the ability of the ear to understand very complex things in a live situation is lost. Therefore sample based performances are already closer in effect to a recording of the real thing.
One other point that has already been touched on is that unless the orchestra is of the highest quality, a recording, whilst sounding real, is not necessarily better. There is no good reason that pieces that are written for samples should sound better with live players. It may be that the general technical awkwardness won't give the right effect with a live performance. It may be that the rhythmic complexities would be too complicated to give a tight enough performance. there are many reasons. All I would say is that if it sounds good, it is good.
Now to define good......... [8-|]
DG