Fatis,

You have handled yourself admirably in spite of the childish and petty behaviour of others.  Thank you for sharing your insight and regardless of whether or not your views are shared by others, your ability to stay grounded in the face of such intellectual arrogance, reflects on your character, as their posts reflect on theirs.

Much respect,

Dave

There is nowadays a disturbingly gross inflation of the presence and influence of memes - not only as visual images and spoken phrases, but also musical memes and behavioural memes. This inflation is now obviously far beyond the natural needs of a healthy and robust culture.

Cui bono? Who benefits from masses of people all perceiving, feeling and acting so uniformly and predictably? Yep, narcissists do. Control is their big thing. They do not want people being naturally independent, dynamic, authentic, imaginative, creative, and hence less easy to predict and - above all - control. Narcissists, great and small, are today's worst enemies of any living culture.

Small-time narcissists make up the great bulk of what recent academic studies have posited as an epidemic of narcissism. It's now like dealing with flies - whack one and straight away there's another in your face; and more in the human sphere, they can be very tribal - kick one and they'll all limp, lol. But seriously, we can and should use whatever skills we can muster in lively, robust, genuine and accountable criticism of the misdeeds of narcissists, and in scotching their endless attempts to direct - i.e. to mislead - dialogue and narrative.

Speaking of the product named in the title of this thread, for me it reeks of narcissism in both its origin and intended market. Anyone who uses it is of course not automatically the antichrist, lol, but we might well want to carefully consider their motives - not that getting honest answers from 'suspects' is in any way straightforward!

Is this stance too draconian? Certainly not in my book. I happen to love and care about my culture and will go to great lengths to protect it from harm. But I also go further - I'll back others outside my culture as far as I can, in their love, care and protection of their own culture, wherever this insidious kind of incursion is in progress.

@Macker said:

There is nowadays a disturbingly gross inflation of the presence and influence of memes - not only as visual images and spoken phrases, but also musical memes and behavioural memes. This inflation is now obviously far beyond the natural needs of a healthy and robust culture.

Cui bono? Who benefits from masses of people all perceiving, feeling and acting so uniformly and predictably? Yep, narcissists do. Control is their big thing. They do not want people being naturally independent, dynamic, authentic, imaginative, creative, and hence less easy to predict and - above all - control. Narcissists, great and small, are today's worst enemies of any living culture.

Small-time narcissists make up the great bulk of what recent academic studies have posited as an epidemic of narcissism. It's now like dealing with flies - whack one and straight away there's another in your face; and more in the human sphere, they can be very tribal - kick one and they'll all limp, lol. But seriously, we can and should use whatever skills we can muster in lively, robust, genuine and accountable criticism of the misdeeds of narcissists, and in scotching their endless attempts to direct - i.e. to mislead - dialogue and narrative.

Speaking of the product named in the title of this thread, for me it reeks of narcissism in both its origin and intended market. Anyone who uses it is of course not automatically the antichrist, lol, but we might well want to carefully consider their motives - not that getting honest answers from 'suspects' is in any way straightforward!

Is this stance too draconian? Certainly not in my book. I happen to love and care about my culture and will go to great lengths to protect it from harm. But I also go further - I'll back others outside my culture as far as I can, in their love, care and protection of their own culture, wherever this insidious kind of incursion is in progress.

It's a very interesting point of view, even if I'm not sure if I get the link between narcissism and the topic.

But to mutually share our points of view, I'm not going to use the Orchestrator for any of my projects, because I make a totally different type of music. (I just own it due to subscription, because I use the Choir, and I hope the new player will make it work better).

Being a musicologist I had the "professional deviation" of analysing trends and facts, and I found some academic and social explanation for the trend object of this topic, that correlates with education and business.

I'm not really feared by this type of tools being produced and sold to any type of musician, because I think that in the hands of good composers whatever the tool makes good music, while in the hands of poor composers it will only produce ridiculous and cliche crap.

I suppose that some clever artists will be able of earning work and money with a clever application of the tool, and that some poorly educated and instinctive audience will perhaps enjoy the result: 

in my opinion we don't have to be sad for that, but we may ask ourself some questions and if we think that it's a pity that the audience waste time on this music instead of listening something better and more elevated from spiritual and artistic point of view, we have to fight on the field of education and be ambassadors of the great western tradition of educated music that is the legitimate mother of the majestic sound of the Symphonic Orchestra. 

I hope it clears up a bit the previous set of misunderstandings.

@Acclarion said:

Fatis,

You have handled yourself admirably in spite of the childish and petty behaviour of others.  Thank you for sharing your insight and regardless of whether or not your views are shared by others, your ability to stay grounded in the face of such intellectual arrogance, reflects on your character, as their posts reflect on theirs.

Much respect,

Dave

+1

Those of you who have already purchased Opus I am wondering about the rest of the Opus player whether they have increased the number of keyswitched instruments compared to PLAY or not?  I guess this forum is not really the right place for that question though.

Honestly, I have very little use or interest for this Orkestrator thing...though if I were in the business of cranking out quickly-done work for a living, I would probably feel differently about it, its just a tool like any other, but I feel tools like that will lower the bar when media producers realize for a fraction of  the price some kid with a laptop can crank out something that is "good enough" for nearly free.  but the truth is that much of the intended audience won't care about that either...so...a tool like this lowers the cost...but also lowers the bar for what people can expect.  Just my opinion... sorta sad...but that's progress I guess.

I don't do this for a living personally, so its of no use or interest to me.  How much fun is it to play some chords and render out a bunch of easy stuff?  Fun for about 5 minutes and then quickly becomes boring.  FWIW I never found much interest in arpeggiators and other such devices for the same reason.  

But anyway, there are some interesting tools like Synfire, RapidComposer and so forth that are kind of interesting to explore and perhaps can even quickly render some sections here or there, some typical repetitive ostinato sections or whatever...save some time...I'm fine with that.  By the way, VIPro has had this kind of capability already for years already!  Doesn't get used by me pretty much ever.

While I am not taking any sides with the interesting and valid view points here, I was thinking that I will probably never buy this software. Thats just my choice.

Even if I spend a lifetime learning how to orchestrate  (i.e. ,train my ear using "old fashioned" methods), I would be happier than having a tool do it for me. For one I think s software tool cuts down the most fun part of making music, which is learning the craft and letting your brain work wonders and know that the music is entirely your own creation. After all, as I often like to say, the brain is the greatest sequencer. We just need to compare the music of Ravel, Prokofiev or any other great master of orchestration, or even todays John Williams, to what is produced today with the most sophisticated computers and software (which I am not against as I do use them for scientific work). The former is done purely with the brain, pencil paper, and the latter with software. Of course they could serve different purposes. But I choose the former approach even if I may never grasp it for the rest of my life. Again thats just my choice.

I just find it utterly fun and fascinating how the craft of orchestration was built over centuries and provided us with the most powerful sound ever created.

As Bill was saying earlier, I do find this process fascinating as a physicist, since the methodology of orchestration is highly systematic just like the scientific method. Except in music, there are no laws that cant be broken, only rules which are guidelines and hence flexible. So its even more fun!

Anand

My conclusion, part 2.

The traditional word "fidelity" (not to be confused with "fealty") denotes the normal human inclination to shape one's own conceptions, feelings, judgments and acts of will, in light of those of another. Society's fundamental coherence and form have always depended crucially upon fidelity.

Fidelity can in some cases extend to the ability to see 'through' the eyes of another and to hear 'through' the ears of another. This is where the fine arts come fully into play.

Fidelity depends entirely on the normal human ability to form, develop and maintain subconscious 'models' of others. This is thought to be precisely where narcissists and psychopaths are disabled (e.g. A. Damasio, 1994).

To use today's parlance, narcissists are incapable of emotional empathy. So how can narcissists engage in music creation? Obviously, they can't - not in any normal, healthy, honest way.  That's why I advocate seeking them out and wresting their hands off our music, by whatever means possible. They just do not belong in music making of any kind.

Likewise, as neurologist Paul D. MacLean lamented, long-term over-exaltation of the intellect can lead to very similar empathic blindness; the resulting ineptness is what we typically mock and shun when nerds and geeks candidly try their hand at music-making. (Indeed MacLean speculated that since the human intellect is so prone to to this functioning-in-isolation issue, perhaps the human brain is destined to be a Darwinian blind alley.)

So in this day and age, when "the rise of the small" is all the rage and all kinds of moral and social dysfunction are touted as the new norms, it's no surprise to find that narcissists, nerds, geeks and "the new helpless" not only can hide in plain sight, but moreover are busy infiltrating many kinds of computer-based music-making endeavours in which they can masquerade as being musically competent. 

Inevitably, since the highly-mechanised tools now available can - to a limited extent - stand in for and cover up gross incompetence in music-making, programme music for media has become what it is today.

Also, even today, centuries after super-geeks Descartes, Locke, Hegel, et al. blathered their barmy bilge in praise of the seeming sovereignty of the intellect, we still find those who advocate "educating" audiences in order that they may better understand, appreciate and enjoy the utter tosh dished up as "educated" music by academic geeks. Oh dear God Almighty, it's as if nobody's learned a damned thing from the abject failure and collapse of the dreadful Marxist-Leninist experiment in designing utopia. (Marx had been one of Hegel's students at Berlin University. Hegel was an intellectual fraud who plagiarised - and fatally bastardised - the ancient Oriental Taoist understanding of the dialectic, and peddled the result as his own doctrine of "the Absolute".) 

If I may offer this as general advice (and if the vast majority of adept musicians will forgive me for stating the bleeding obvious, lol): it pays to bear in mind that no matter how much it may seem to be,

the intellect is not sovereign within the human organism.

...

Thank you to everyone who participated in this discussion and offered their considered viewpoints, one always benefits from learning something new - I, for example, was unaware of VapidComposer...

Observing the international cultural milieu and the denizens' "musical" preferences in the 21st century, I am so genuinely and happily surprised that the entertainment industry still elects to employ symphonic forces for its films and games, albeit in the puerile manner explored in this thread. So long as the industry keeps sustaining all those musicians and recording studios, we -others- will continue to enjoy the great benefits of the development of great sample libraries and sophisticated notation/recording software, that allows us to compose and record our own work. 

And who knows? Even against great odds, we can still harbour statistical hope for the future.

P.S.: I am not writing this to provoke further discussion, as welcome as it would be, I wasn't planning this, but I just happened upon the following:

Basically, all the Oscars for music 2000-2020 in one short video. Some good ones, many repulsively politically #motivated, but in any case so great that there was no chance for any of the soundtracks of the first three Harry Potter films or the three Star Wars prequels... And on a couple of those occasions, I would personally have presented the award to Hans, compared to...

Sorry you said no discussion but I couldn't resist.

Ive always felt that the Oscars are a brilliant propaganda and marketing machine for Hollywood, and nothing more. So its unsurprising that anything of quality is passed over, as happens quite often. They managed to sell this idea that there are 'best actors', 'best composers' etc., and a new one every year that too, as absurd as this is. But a brilliant sales idea nevertheless, resulted Hollywood dominating world cinema over a century.