Let me throw in my 2 cents (that's all it's worth).

These discussions would go great at the 'Faculty House' - the idea that everything is all about 'good writing' is absolutely true. However, most of you guys (me included) are not writing for a 'real' orchestra. That's why you term what you do as 'mock-ups'. Great writing also applies to what you do using virtual instruments. All the tricks you can use to 'fool' the ear are valid as long as the final product sounds 'real' to the listener. I don't get the point of the argument.

If a legato sample is not long enough you pull every trick from every technical corner to make it sound as if it is. Just look at the threads in the VSL forum - it's all about tricks. Even Evan Evans uses tricks which he keeps close to his vest - his stuff sounds great - so what?! 'Nuff said.

drg, to what or whom are you referring? I don´t get you.

QUOTE: "Tricks" are for fools and prostitutes.
There is only good writing, or bad writing.

Hi Mathis,

Sorry for the confusion but I was referring to the 'academic' discussion following William's quote above - it just set me off.

What do you mean? I like irritating discussions too, but didn't understand what you were getting at.

Hey All,

I think William's irritation is well directed... "tricks", with reference to orchestration, aren't really tricks at all, but rather technique. Technique can't really be kept secret, and if it is, it's to the detriment of music as a whole. At the same time, though, there are many "tricks" to making something sound 'live' using samples.

Mind you, one of the best still seems to be that of making every effort to be true to the instruments themselves, and to treat the samples as though they were small fragments of a performance, which you're kind of reanimating... like Dr. Frankenstein. After all (and this is even more the case with VSL than most libraries) that's exactly what they are -- severely fragmented performances. When you put them together in a way that would make sense as an integrated performance, they sound better... surprise, surprise! But then, this isn't really a "trick" at all, is it?... so, William's still got a point.

J.

That is what I meant, yes, JBM. If you are really a composer, i.e. if you have any composing talent at all - everything else is mere technique, which you can either learn from a book or from a school or a big shot composer or just figure out on your own if you simply work at your own music carefully. There are no secrets or tricks. That is bullshit. The ultimate "trick" is love of what you are doing. That will teach you everything you need to know.

I would never make it as a teacher. I'd send everyone home after one day.

@William said:

....There are no secrets or tricks. That is bullshit....

That statement will have Shore, Howard, Zimmer, Elfman, Grusin and the boys rolling in the aisles. Academically, what you say is true but naive - it does NOT apply to the world in which I've been making a very comfortable living for 25 years. There are secrets and tricks and that's no bullshit!

They're not secrets or tricks to me - everything discussed here is nothing but technique, and can be learned with a little application.

You guys are in some sort of semantic/ethical battle... There is something kind of smug, though, about calling techniques "tricks", and certainly about keeping them secret. I think that's what's annoying William. I mean, can there be "secrets" in a score of Bach, Mahler, Berio, or Rihm? Of course not. Because they're published for everyone to see and to learn from. It may be the case that someone "did it first", but that means little once a new technique has become established. After that point, everyone uses it according to their taste, and a dialogue begins -- a process which provides the basis for developing a musical culture. If we all walked around speaking our own secret languages, we wouldn't get much done... But then, this is all "academic", isn't it?

The keeping of secrets may, on the other hand, be one of the things that keeps "very comfortable" composers very comfortable! [;)]

My secrets:

1) that quintuplets are the new triplets
2) that ornamentation is long overdue for a comeback
3) that multi-octave scales produce the best polytonality (and the most
bearable kind of homophony - see 4)
4) that homophony should be reserved for special occasions only
5) that key signatures should be banned, regardless of whether
the music itself adheres to a given scale
6) that the closest one should come to direct repetition is to repeat
the pitches while varying the rhythm, or vice versa, but never to repeat
both verbatim

Now everyone can make music exactly like mine! (huh? wait a minute... come to think of it... why would anyone want to?...) [;)]

J.

Hi William and JBM,

I'm not trying to start any kind of argument. I essentially agree with both of your positions. But I'm not talking about music the way it used to be done. I can't tell you how many hours I've spent reading scores and then listening to recordings - trying to figure out how these guys did what they did.

But I'm referring to the highly techological world in which we now find ourselves living and working. It does all boil down to semantics. What William calls technique, I'm calling 'tricks', let me now call them 'techniques'. There is no one I know of in this business today who doesn't have a host of 'techniques' which thet're not willing to reveal. It's a highly competitive business after all - why give away 'trade secrets'?

I could sit here and try to figure out what some guy is doing but by the time I figure it out, the train may have already left the station and some other guy with a 'bag-of techniques' is making hay.

Just try to write one of these guys who are successful - asking them how they do 'such-and-such' - just don't hold your breath waitng for the answer. It ain't coming! But there's nothing wrong with that, at least, I don't think there is. This is not academia - I know, I've spent many of years in that environment and I loved every minute of it but now, I have to pay for my tuna sandwiches at the 'Faculty Club'!

At the end of the day, it's really is a pleasure to exchange ideas with you - I appreciate all your work and your dedication to music. Thanks.

Just a sidenote: I was never interested in keeping any secrets. My experience is that whenever I told of something unusual I did (maybe a trick?) I got something new in return. That way I learned most of my techniques. That´s also the way how this forum works and why you and I can aquire an amazing amount of knowledge here.
Keeping secrets is therefore not recommended.
(Well, actually speaking of myself, I couldn´t do no other anyway, that´s how I´m constructed. [[;)]] )

jbm, I love your secrets. Watch out, I´ll steel them! [:D]

cheers, drg

I kind of figured you were talking specifically about the technological feats of production, but I do generally agree with William. I guess it's very common for producers to have their own "trade secrets"... Like the guy who used to record the great Canadian prog-rock institution, Rush -- he'd actually tape two PZMs to the drummer's chest to help get a more realistic stereo imaging! Or at least that's the rumor...

Maybe it's really in the nature of music technology to breed these sorts of "secrets"?... hmmm... I know that a producer friend of mine is quite secretive about some of his tracking and mixing techniques, since these are what make his albums sound like nobody elses (thus getting him hired by anybody and everybody who wants that sound -- a point you made clear). But you know, if I think about the "great" composers, or the tradition of Great Composers, I'd imagine it was a matter of pride to reveal one's scores (and the secrets therein), since the score alone could provide concrete evidence of the brilliance of a particular musical invention -- kind of like the Master Criminal who harbors a deep desire to be caught, so that all the world will recognize his genius. But our culture is no longer so enamoured with the text itself. We are not a literary culture (think of the way that email correspondence has become a sort of transcription of verbal speech, not "proper" writing). We are culturally more attuned to recordings, and recordings occupy a sort of semiotic middle-ground. Unlike the score, the CD can only imitate the performance, not anticipate it -- it is not a legible documentation of the process of composition, just a sort of "copy" of its realization in sound. So, in a sense, music may be releasing itself from the text again, and thus becoming more 'mysterious' than it has been for the past 300 years or so... an intriguing possiblity?

Anyway, point well taken.

J.

Hi JBM,

You've hit the nail squarely on the head. What we do now is so intertwined with technology that the technology itself becomes part and parcel of our music. I write my 'stuff' down and I'll show and talk about it to anyone but to protect myself, I have a way of 'producing' the 'sound' my 'clients' like to hear. This 'way of producing' is what I was referring to - call them tricks, techniques, whatever - they are in essence my (our) 'trade secrets', what can be generically called 'intellectual property'. However, we have no way of copywriting or otherwise protecting what has taken years to develop. Going back to William's initial statement that 'tricks are for fools and prostitutes' - I hope you can see why I got a little irritated and then started this whole thing. But now i hope we can put it to rest.

PS: Mathis, I hear you loud and clear and were those ideas applicable to the environment in which I work, it would be a Utopia and I'd be a very, very happy man. Now, I'm just a very happy man. Long live this Forum!

drg, what is your environment? Maybe you want to change it?

I worked and work in a highly competitive environment, probably like you. My goal was and is always to offer something which is not dependent on tricks or techniques, whatever you call them. I want to be hired because of my taste, my artistic contribution, my sensibility.
However it is true, that there are only few which can recognize these capabilities and then even less which value them. But I would feel extremely empty otherwise.
I have no problem sharing tricks and techniques because they don´t mean anything to me. And usually the guys I´m talking to recognize this and don´t feel used if they tell me one of their techniques.
In fact, my experience is: The more mature and "professional" someone is the less protective he is. I made this experience in Europe as well as in the States.

Still most people get hired not because of talent and also not because of tricks. They get hired because of business relations and money. Stupid.

"I have no problem sharing tricks and techniques because they don´t mean anything to me." - Mathis

That is the essence of what I am talking about. It is being so confident in your own knowledge that you couldn't care less about sharing it with everyone - because they cannot even begin to touch you in what you do.

Also what JBM says is true - the great classical composers had more tricks than all the current film composers - and published everything they did right upfront. For everyone to see.

However I disagree the CD is necessarily a mere reproduction of something "real." The final artwork can be a CD just as much as it can be an oil on canvas, or a marble sculpture, or a piece of music paper moldering away in a drawer somewhere...

Yeah, William... I agree -- I wasn't too clear on that. I think I was still in score-head when I wrote the stuff about CDs and scores... sort of thinking out loud about some of the inherent differences between the two media, and the way in which our musical culture has changed with regard to "classical" music. Of course, a piece intended from "bar 1" to be realized as a recording is in its final and complete form on CD. Absolutely. And actually, this is where I think the lines become somewhat blurred between what is "secret" and what is public knowledge. To a certain extent, it's impossible to reveal absolutely everything about a final product like this, short of handing over your sequencer files, all your samples, audio files, bounces, masters, rough mixes, and so on. There are just too many variables when we talk about the *final* product (which, of course, a score can never be - it's always a step behind realization).

And this is actually why I feel my position somewhat shifted by drg's statements... I mean, I can at least see how a particular recording or mixing technique could become an integral part of the "intellectual property" of the work, when the final product *is* the mix itself. I don't, to be totally honest, think this applies at all to Evan's "secret", which started this whole debate, since that's only a hair's-breadth away from a traditional, score-based example (I don't know if that made *any* sense). But in cases where something about the production of a sound, or the processing of it, is absolutely inextricable from the final musical entity... well, I'm not so sure. Maybe such a technique really does become the intellectual domain of that particular composer. The difficulty is that when we're talking about pieces which, for all intensive purposes, sound like live recordings of "classical" music, then I think we're still within the realm of "the real" being simulated. Thus, the parameters fall toward the traditional bounds of orchestration, and I don't think there should be any "tricks", since the entire product should be possible to capture in score... Of course, I'm already seeing a great fuzzy cloud developing as I write this, and I'm beginning to feel an uncontrollable urge to retract everything I'm saying!!!! Aaaack!

Indeed, it's a very interesting time to be a composer! Provided you're somewhat cognizant of what you're doing... which I believe we all are.

cheers,

J.

In a discussion on this Forum in March and April of this year. I read with glee as William, Bruce Robertson, Andy, and others kicked the ass of some Juilliard-trained elitist who attempted to disparage Andy's great piece of music. Michael Hula of VSL chimed in with this (addressing the elitist):

"...this conclusion is simply not true. without any insight to our work it's probably hard to understand, why a accomplished pro bassoonist or oboist will go all the way to the silent stage just to cut his own throat. [we are not going to share all our secrets], but i can asure you, one reason why it's very well possible to get the best of the best is - vienna."

Notice the statement in brackets (which I added for delineation). Even VSL has their 'secrets' and why not - I don't care what they have - I'm not interested in stealing them or asking about them. The one thing I care about is the product they produce. In that sense I feel exactly the same as William and Mathis. However, to deny that that such 'secrets' exist and/or should be shared with anyone, is truly naive.

BTW Mathis : I don't intend to 'change' my environment - I see as it is - and I adapt to it - (as Dave Connor said "just like a cockroach") - and it has been very good to me.

I was starting to feel all warm and fuzzy and then drg used the word "naive" again. As Moose Malloy said "You shouldna done that."

I was never refering to sound mixing, technical sound production aspects, etc. I meant strictly orchestration and composing. I thought that was what this was about. It seems the topic has shifted. I deny that anyone can really have orchestrating secrets because I will learn them as soon as I hear his music. [[;)]] Or somebody else will. The best example of this I've ever encountered is the amazing work of John Morgan. He is the orchestrator for William Stromberg who has done a series of great recordings of early film scores including the Val Lewton films by Roy Webb. There was no orchestration, no score at all, no separate music track - just the movie with dialogue and FX from which he reconstructed the orchestration flawlessly. Try keeping an orchestration "secret" from those ears.

However I do think there are a slew of secrets on the digital-technical side and agree with the reason JBM mentioned, that the sound becomes inseparable from the technique.

Ah, William - Right On Bro!!! I just removed 'naive' from my lexicon. It's the production techniques that are well protected. What we do is so closely intertwined with the technology that it becomes impossible to separate the composition and its orchestration/arrangement from the techniques used to produce the final product. But as you said before, that's our new instrument. We have to continue to adapt without ever losing our primary goal as musicians, i.e., to produce good music.