Well everyone had a good Easter I hope? I'm off to visit the Benedictine monks down at my local Abbey and ask forgivenes for swearing. I always get that too. It's a great deal and I've never understood Henry VIII's problem. [:@]

Anyway........

Very interesting post(s) there from civilisation3. I have a duty to protect Erik however. Erik doesn't rant. Ranting is a different thing. Erik has high musical moral standards that you and I certainly will never be able to fulfill. 

I take all your points on board though. One of the really big issues that sampling brought to light all those years ago now, it seems, is the interface. The interface is almost always a keyboard. I have been guilty on many occassions of getting uptight because people can't play. When you think about it, a lot of musicians are NOT keyboard players. They have had to learn in one way or another to play the damn thing as best they can, or more usually, they get into doing it through Sibelius or Finale etc. In other words, notation. For instance, if you're a guitarist, playing a keyboard into Logic etc must be horrendous when you've really no way of getting anything near what you're hearing in your head.

Yes - the keyboard interface has a lot to answer for. Any sole interface would.

That said, I am a pretty good keyboard player and it was my first instrument when being taught. And I still can't get anything to sound the way it should because I can't be assed with programming. You get taught an instrument but you don't get taught programming. So what's happened over the sample library invasion -  to make up for the lack of being able to play the interface and the inability to play it the way they would want, programming became the next best substitue. If you can play AND program, you're going to get these incredible sounding works done with samples that you hear from time to time. It's no good anyone saying that samples will never be as good as a real orchestral section. That's become a waste of time because hardly anyone has the budget for the real thing anymore, and sample libraries are a sound and rule unto themselves and further comparison is futile.

But programming, like civ3 alluded to just isn't going to be enough for working writers that have deadlines. They need stuff that sounds and fits into their musical panorama that's QUICK. And Erik is going to have live with that and it's not going to go away. You can't uninvent the bomb Erik.

  Please Errikos, correct me if I am wrong, but I think the point here is actually the attitude with which many composers face composition nowadays. The kind of sample libraries he mentions are just expressions of an increasingly dominant current in which creativity is willingly being replaced by productivity by both parts, composers and library developers alike, maybe under the pressure of that "reality" we call music industry (we are accepting, creating and supporting it in this way in any case, so we would be indeed under the pressure of our own creation)

  I think the problem has nothing to do with clichés. We need clichés; our cognitive process and communication abilities rely upon them. The only problem is the level of abstraction of these clichés. Take a Romanesca, for example. It's a harmonic schema found everywhere in Baroque and Classical music. Every composer used it at that time. There was no problem or confict about it. Or an Alberti bass, an instrumental pattern every keyboard composer used. It's in fact a loop. The library developers of the time could have done much money sampling them. Mozart, Hadyn, Beethoven... not bad composers (^_-)... would have surely used these libraries.

 The main thing here, I think, is just this: the Alberti bass was an accompaniment figure, so it was quite concrete; even then, library developers should have allowed not only key and tempo changes in their lopps (as Paul said) but also implemented the entire harmonic classical vocabulary with its different inversions, spacings, etc. in order to be used by those composers. Still, no one is regarded as a great composer by having written great Alberti basses... It's just absurd. But if we take the Romanesca, that's another story. As a harmonic figure, it was much more abstract, and not only any key, tempo, inversion, voicing, spacing, etc. changes could be applied to the schema, but composers were free to use any melodic or rhythmic motive, any contrapuntal texture, not to mention instrumentation. There were not enough hard disks at that time to record so many variations... so no serious composer would have used a sample library for that. Still, no one is regarded as a great composer by having written great Romanescas... We could go on to any level of the musical structure, but I think you all understand what I'm trying to say. Composition is much more than that. A dictionary can't make a Shakespeare. That's is not to say we shouldn't have better and more comprenhensive dictionaries. We certainly should. It would help good composers. But in the process, we are bound to remember we can not make one thing into another, because if we do, instead of helping good composers we can create a myriad of mediocre ones. Anyway, I don't actually think we can avoid that. It's just the price we have to pay.

  So, I think Errikos is furious against the lack of creativity, or even more, the lack of perception we are indeed sacrificing creativy for productivity. He put as an example this new library, because it's part of this game (not the game itself). I myself don't have a problem with commercial music and its many aspects. But I am not deaf enough to deny the fact that any of these various aspects has barely anything to do with the actual quality of the music. We can not uninvent the bomb, Paul, that's true... but how would it be if we could just not throw them every two senconds? Are we bound to be that compulsive? (^_-)

  Just my point of view, anyway.

Many thanks to William and Paul for their kind words.

@civilization 3: Your posts in this thread are the very first ones I have read where there is a conscious effort on your part to argue intelligently and offer a clear, if different point of view, instead of just saying that Mozart and Tchaikovsky wrote puerile melodies, and other inanities. Even though you still pigeon-holed me again (something you repeatedly accuse me of doing to others - contradiction there), I still have to offer my congratulations. You managed to articulate your thoughts this time.

Pity those thoughts had very little to do with what I was saying... This perpetual inability of yours to discern my points, and thus counter-argue effectively, smacks of lack of intelligence (sorry). Although you came up with a great induction - it's an historical process. the less we can get away with doing, the less we'll do. We'll become weaker and weaker still until, right, no one remembers, no one knows, it will be a regurgitation of old loops - ie., ultimately who'll make the loops? - you just lost yourself again due to ignorance of matters musical. So:

1) I am always referring to Symphonic Music! Can you please try and remember that in the future? It will save us both a great deal of time. I don't expect or require of Beatles, Vangelis, or ethnic musicians to be able to notate their music. Although a lot probably could, it is not a requirement by most means. Do you know why? And pay attention now:

It is because the actual performance/recording of their music is AS important, if not MORE important, than the music itself. It is a package! A cover of Beatles or Vangelis (or whomever you'd care to mention) is NEVER as important as the original. This is not the case with classical/symphonic music which exists in abstraction, as an idea of which the notation is a guide to the performer/s' ATTEMPTED approximation of the unnatainable by definition! For example, Stravinsky's own recordings are considered by most very interesting (for self-explanatory reasons), but hardly definitive... In symphonic music the work is ALWAYS more important than any performance/recording.

So I'll reiterate - for I know you have forgotten already, I am always referring to Symphonic Music in what you refer to as my "rants"... You can sit in front of your terminal for your whole life as far as I'm concerned doing the music you do, for I know it has little to do with what I am talking about - and using some strings and flute in one's composition/arrangement, doesn't qualify that work as symphonic music.

2) Look at my signature again (and as many times as it takes - no one's the same). I have "allowed" for inspired people who can perform/program their ideas into a DAW, as opposed to them having to notate first. I have no qualms with people that are not traditionally trained, although they are missing out on quite a few things, and the smart ones know it. However, lack of schooling has not prevented many of them to become by far greater composers than hordes of trained ones in many cases. It's inspiration that counts, but the training does provide palpable wings to one's imagination. The same could be said for a computer novice that could hardly take advantage of all a DAW can offer, and would not be able to convey his great music through a recording due to his ignorance of things electronic.

So, if you can perform it or program it, it is your composition. HOWEVER,

How can one call themselves a Musician, if they can neither think, nor write, or perform music?! By what warped definition do I have to recognize such a person as a musician?!... In any genre?! And THAT is what I object to! Finally,

3) I have repeatedly said that I have nothing against the pre-programming of all generic and characterless note-groupings (scales, generic arpeggios, etc.). Further, I always say that  S O M E  of the people that buy software like Anemato, Instantaneous Orkestra, Strings MacSessions, Cine Ork, CineScamples, Orkestral Licentials, etc. are professionals without time to waste (as opposed to me writing this).

However, most buyers of those libraries are a chromosome apart from those professionals and myself, and it is for such buyers that those libraries were developed, let's not kid ourselves (like most opium is not grown for pharmaceutical reasons...).

P.S.: I wouldn't make that rent-bet with me if I were you; how will you generate those endless loops when you're homeless and without electricity? You'd have to play an instrument![:O]...

@Paul: I'm with you Paul; at the very end of the day you have to be able to play, and all composers of any note have been able to do so. There are notable exceptions such as Berlioz, Wagner, and a few others, but they are just the exceptions to a rule applying to hundreds if not thousands, almost every rule has exceptions, and even those few composers could play a little (compared to the virtuosi). Even so, they struggled financially for it, as they could not compete in the bread-and-butter publishers' market of the time, which was piano- and chamber-music, and they were unable to concertize (solo or chamber).

I know that some will say that a DAW can be considered as a musical instrument, but most of these people will be ones that don't play, thus cannot know the immeasurable differences between the two. I generally feel sorry for the composer who cannot perform on any instrument, as performance offers a tactile outlet of one's ideas (it is you who are making the music - not a machine whose button you've pushed), it is a great compositional tool through improvisation, it offers the capabilities of making music with others in the same room (no, it's not the same as people tapping on the mouse at the same time), and of expressing the actual moment - as opposed to a final mix, which has more in common with conducting.

I'm a scheiße programmer, and now that film-music has shifted into the Gaga paradigm I mentioned before, where the performance/recording of a work is as, or more important than the work itself, orks can bowl a stupid director over with a polished recording of an utter fartloop much more efficiently than I can with a lackluster recording of a great track. Because directors today (drowned in MTV) will "look" at the demo as a package (like a band performing), and not as a composition that can subsequently be recorded properly by their engineer. Congratulations to all of us!...

P.S.: My Easter is coming up. I hope you had a good one, and that you went to confession exhaustively... [:$]

@Servandus: I think I have mentioned the Alberti bass in one of my erstwhile posts. I also found the comparison quite apt. There are differences (some of which you mention or hint at): a) the people who used it were musicians; i.e.: they didn't use the device as a crutch, and b) the bass itself wasn't the main subject of the works.

The vast, motley armies of Zimmer-worshipping clones are following that particular composer, not because he is great, but for the simple reason that he's a peach to imitate. His spewccati are the main/only musical idea in a lot of his soundtracks, and that enables the orks to entertain notions of writing for orchestra. Whomever thought that one could write for orchestra using loops exclusively?! - Don't think Glass, Reich, etc. Huge disparities there...

If you bother (don't really) to check the web-videos of those libraries I mention above, you will find that they don't just offer spewccati, scales and arpeggios, but complete and fully orchestrated chunks of music (sometimes comprising 4-5 bars!), with many a successful passage that SOMEONE ELSE came up with, and a lot of the time you can tell who it was too...

While you and I can hear it when a piece of music is splashed and collated together (for the chimps don't realize that no matter how well they audio-engineer it, stacking musical slabs next to one another with spewccato-glue always shows at the seams), directors and producers for the most part cannot, and they hire these people on false premises, and that is just unfair and charlatanistic, and that's exactly what they all are!!

@William: Mahler's 2nd Bill?! A lot of people here couldn't make heads or tails of it... Where are the loops man?! Where's the beat? I can't find any "stabs" or "runs" in it... And wtf are those strings doing?!?

I agree with Errikos - there are many good types of music that either do not require, or exist outside of, notation.

But, here is where it gets interesting, and an example of the "dumbing down" process that really hurts.  At the church I attend interest lies more or less strictly in loud/contemporary electronic music.  To the best of my knowledge, only one of the main musicians is even able to read music.  There is a desire to put together some sort of cohesive musical for next Christmas (text already provided), but from what I have heard, no one has any idea how to even begin to approach that sort of project (the one person who does read does not feel up to the task).  I did not go to the previous Christmas presentation - I value my ears, and there are certain types of performances I prefer to avoid, but there was some indication that what was achieved was rather less than what was hoped for.

While some types of music can excel apart from notation, as in the case above, other types of musical expression become extremely difficult, unless notated, even if using just a series of lead sheets to develop melodic motifs, etc.  In the above situation, even a lead sheet would be near useless, given the ensemble's limitations.

@noldar12 said:

But, here is where it gets interesting, and an example of the "dumbing down" process that really hurts.  At the church I attend interest lies more or less strictly in loud/contemporary electronic music.  

What church is that??....

Errikos, while the church question is a fair question, I'd rather not answer that in a public forum.  I will simply say that the ensemble is indeed very good for what they do.  The intent was simply to point out that however "good" they may be, the lack of a traditional music skill - reading - limits what they can do in certain ways (just as my own limitations mean that I will never be a good contemporary/rock/pop musician).

@Errikos said:

What church is that??....

Dies irae indeed...

@noldar12: I thought that all churches actively encourage proselytism, but of course it is up to you to practise it or not. However, why don't you propose to them to undertake the production of that musical yourself for the following Christmas, involving singers backed by a VSL recording. If pushed, I'm sure you can arrange it so that these """"musicians"""" you mentioned can """"contribute"""" a little by strumming an easy chord here and there...

Sorry to chime in late here and I didn't have time to read the whole thread but I recently purchased EW's Silk and there are some one note performances in that library that I have mixed feelings over.  On the one hand, I agree with Erik that a composer can't call himself a composer, with a strait face, if he/she is leaning so much on these software "crutches" if you will.  In fact, they are more like "wheelchairs" and "retirement homes" for some so-called composers out there.  If they're just runs or tremelos I don't have a problem with that. 

On the other hand, I wasn't familiar with the abilities and attributes of some of the exotic instruments sampled in Silk so the one note performances saved me a lot of research and Google searching.  I must admit that I did apreciate that.

I can honestly say that I never incorporated any of the performance samples from Silk in any of my compositions.

Of course there is nothing wrong with educating one's self by those means. The problem begins when one confuses the absence/waiving of legal copyright to those performances, with the delusion that somehow those performances belong to everybody. It is so lamentable and hilarious at the same time when you visit composers' websites or hear demos where those same IKEA modules occur persistently from one to the next, and all these people claim the compositions for their own...

One of the interesting conundrums of my forefathers was the following: If you own a boat, and you begin replacing one plank with a new one, every bolt with a new bolt etc. weekly, until after a few months all of the original parts have been replaced, is it still the same boat?

@Another User said:

P.S.: I wouldn't make that rent-bet with me if I were you; how will you generate those endless loops when you're homeless and without electricity? You'd have to play an instrument!...

I should produce some loops, professionally since it's something I could get paid well for if I find a way for placing them. I through-compose based in improvisation. I never use someone else's rhythm, basslines, etc.. It's anathema to me. I am so far from fitting your sad attempts to slap up a straw man it's insane. So I endeavored to make myself clear in the first things I typed. Which you decided to forget, or something, in your haste to justify your bs.

If you would like to wager real money that you can provide me with a useful transcription of particulars of my music, I really could use the money. I have no doubts here. It will be a gobsmacking amount of work. I'm in, you?

@civilization 3 said:

Notation for me is a middleman in the thought process I don't need or desire. It just isn't the thing in itself. Before DAWS, it's how we recorded the idea we know we'll forget, and beyond that the convenient means for communicating the idea to another musician. It is utterly inadequate

Yes, notation is so inadequate -  like Mahler's 2nd Symphony for example.  I was just watching a very well-done documentary on it, so it came to mind.  Anyone today would have done so much better with a DAW, wouldn't they?  Notation is so old...

If you would like to demonstrate Mahler's 2nd by a notation program, render VSL, what-have-you from that, my point about its being a short hand of signs to indicate what to do, while the performers behind a conductor provide the missing ingredients, will be revealed in full. Don't kid me about this.

@jasensmith said:

Sorry to chime in late here and I didn't have time to read the whole thread but I recently purchased EW's Silk and there are some one note performances in that library that I have mixed feelings over.  On the one hand, I agree with Erik that a composer can't call himself a composer, with a strait face, if he/she is leaning so much on these software "crutches" if you will.  In fact, they are more like "wheelchairs" and "retirement homes" for some so-called composers out there.  If they're just runs or tremelos I don't have a problem with that. 

On the other hand, I wasn't familiar with the abilities and attributes of some of the exotic instruments sampled in Silk so the one note performances saved me a lot of research and Google searching.  I must admit that I did apreciate that.

I can honestly say that I never incorporated any of the performance samples from Silk in any of my compositions.

The EWQL tunings are also not documented so it's largely a matter of trial and error. Many of them are names that do not have much meaning to a musician of the particular school in fact. And frankly if you rely on google for your understanding it will remain sketchy.

I entirely agree with the idea someone is a joke as a composer if they do not have this understanding and only ever have relied on prefabrications they bought. But the thread title is so bellicose I'm surprised it's even allowed here. 

Civ - I never got a grade above A as far as I can remember. [<:o)]

The fact of the matter is - there will be more and more sample libraries that are solely or include loops of recorded phrases played by orchestras. There are in fact, quite a few sample libraries now that include tutti notes. One of the old ones in samples is effects usually played tutti. I remember doing an orchestral job where we'd set up one or two of these sample orchestral effects and then set about taking them apart in order to notate them for a real orchestra. How insane is that? Didn't take as long as I thought it would though.

The bottom line is the type of films made for current audiences. Films haven't been made for people like me for donkeys years. Ergo, filmcore music is going to be also for current audiences. Let me try to quantify that.

Yesterday, being driven back from an auction, for fun I counted how many drivers I could see, driving while on their mobile telephones. Over a mile distance, I spotted four. Films today are for people who like to drive and use their mobile phones at the same time. And so is the music. It's mainly made for and by people with poor attention spans. Loud noises and big CGI is what they want. And that's what they generally get. That's the big money today. So I wouldn't get too worried about looped sample libraries.

I had a delusion for a very short time of being a classical soloist. I expected to get graded worse by that Henry Meyer, having the gall to play that one. Maybe he felt sorry for me. 

I don't watch a lot of movies. I am watching the tv program "Fringe" now and I have found the music of this guy Giacchino quite distasteful. I think where he isn't strictly from pedestrian (or minimal) he's copying someone's score. Clever boy, but...

Sure the world is going right down the tubes... I would hope my POV on the prefab use and people that are not, will never be musicians and in my experience disrespect musicians out of a special resentment, is clear enough. I found myself tilting at windmills and decided to step back. But as far as these libraries, it's just some tools. I haven't bought any of them. There was that one Zero-G thing more or less for horror movie composers I was looking at, I think it was kind of innovative.

I used to hang at another forum that can get to quite contentious, and I tell you what, a thread title like this thing has would not be tolerated. 

@civilization 3: (with the risk of providing too much entertainment for moderators and friends)

1) Don't try at this late stage of the game to contradict yourself, it's too late for that sadly... Never before have you "agreed" that using sets of fully composed-orchestrated-performed measures of music was (as you chose to say) an anathema, which is all I ever said really. But what am I saying? You have a split personality (apparently war-tugging for that single brain-cell). In the same post you suggest that when you call someone to extemporize on your chords/rhythm/whatever, you still consider the whole piece to be your music. Well, legally it is (I never addressed legalities - you can spew out a whole track made completely out of Symphobia-stencils and legally it's still yours...), but in reality, those measures that any other musician contributed from their own imagination are a collaboration! And don't bring up examples like Lutoslawcki, Ligeti, or Cage (not that you would/could), I have explained about them in older posts. And of course I have in the past qualified my objections to such practices by admitting that true professionals who actually can notate/program those performances, sometimes use these softwares for reasons of expediency or quality of sound (as they are actually recorded live), so again, line 1 of this paragraph...

2) This is a symphonic forum, the Vienna Symphonic Library forum. My signature pertains - and always has - to symphonic music and I include film-symphonic-music to my definition. Although I believe that a composer in any genre must be able to either write/program or play his music (or he does not merit the title), in this forum I am concerned almost exclusively with symphonic music, so don't talk to me about my signature.

3) Your "lack of articulateness" is a given. And there was never a "desperate attempt to dismiss" what you have said on my part, I just never addressed anything that was off-topic (see symphonic music pertinences)

4) Maybe you should restrict yourself to that other totalitarian and politically correct (hence, retarded) forum where they sensor free expression when it is considered offensive. Lest we forget, my title here is not targetting anyone specifically, unless... you read too much of yourself into it?... Which leads us to 

5) If you feel the need to tell us what a great musician you are by citing Meyer (who knows, maybe he liked your  t i t s - I can see Hal flashing Dietz), it is too late for that as well. In fact, you know nothing about music, do you? At all I mean. I'm greatly surprised to see PaulR is even bothering with you... I can safely make that kind of generilization since you believe that the most gifted composers of the western tradition (~1750-~1910) "wrote puerile melodies". That includes Mozart, Schubert, Bellini, Chopin, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, etc., while you NEVER refer us to any superior composers of melody. Further, you publicly suggested that Wagner's entire contribution to music was the invention of "some horns"(!!). Don't make me waste time digging up that post of yours...

And don't say I am being elitist, since a) I at least have never heard anybody from Jazz, Rock, Ethno, or other kinds of music, disrespecting or failing to appreciate the incredible melodic gifts of the above composers, summarily! And b) I am not necessarily ensnared by the masterpieces of the classical tradition, nor do I make "gods" out of a specific kind of composer. Each to their own in matters of taste of course, but for example, in the proverbial desert island scenario, I will take the entire oeuvres of Pink Floyd and Abba with me, rather than those of say Glazunov and Nielsen (to cite well known composers).

P.S.1: You have a syndrome against notation. No one said it's perfect, but I think it is because you know ****-all about that as well, so it scares you. I'm certainly game to take you on with that bet of yours - I certainly will use the money, provided it is worth my while, and that you remember that 'music notation' provides for its own meta-typography, and even verbal instructions, regarding musical passages that cannot be "conventionally" scripted. That includes the use of symbols and drawings for when the effect is more important than the actual pitch or rhythm (see Penderecki, or for more extreme example, Logothetis).

P.S.2: Will you please stop sharing your straw-fetish with me henceforth...