I raise this point following Andy Blaney's masterful mock up of Jupiter but have started it as a different thread as i didn't want to hijack his thread (again)
What is the motivation behind creating mock-ups of classic repertoire. I suspect that most mock ups done so far are about showing off (in a positive sense) the quality of the samples and the skills of the mock up artist and that the aim is to achieve as close a perfect imitation of a human performance as possible. We often see comments about adding audience and player sounds to make it sound more real and comments that it sounds too perfect because presumably there aren’t any mistakes in notes, tuning, rhythm etc. I suspect if Andy had unlimited time at his disposal that he could do all of that stuff and make Jupiter sound even more human.
But is that so desirable. Many would say that you will never be able to perfectly imitate a human performance and I suspect that may be true for very astute sensitive musicians although I also suspect that for the vast majority of music going public they would not realise that Andy’s mock up is not real.
But is there a place for creating mock up performances of classic repertoire purely for the purpose of the performance. Could such a performance compete with recorded human performance? Could there be aspects of a Computer rendered performance, which could improve on a human performance.
It is actually quite nice to hear a score performed note perfect, intonation perfect, rhythmic perfect it can be a revelation particularly with complex modern scores. Of course that will be different to a human performance but could it not be equally valid? It should be possible for a gifted musician to programme a musical performance with their interpretation of the score just as a conductor imposes their interpretation. And then there are the subtle possibilities, phrasing which might not be quite possible for a human, the same for dynamic levels and cres/dim etc. Of course a sensitive musician would spot that a human probably couldn’t do that but why should that detract from the worth of the computer rendered performance.
I am not for a moment suggesting that computers should replace humans (although so much of the baggage that you find at concert going these days is a huge distraction from the listening experience) but that it is becoming increasingly possible for a computer rendered performance to be as musically valid and to excite emotion and feeling the equal to other types of performance and indeed add possibilities that other types of performance can’t achieve. And that perhaps mock up artists should aim more to creating the best musical performance that their skill and tools can achieve and be concerned less with imitating human performance.
What say you?
DaveTubaKing
What is the motivation behind creating mock-ups of classic repertoire. I suspect that most mock ups done so far are about showing off (in a positive sense) the quality of the samples and the skills of the mock up artist and that the aim is to achieve as close a perfect imitation of a human performance as possible. We often see comments about adding audience and player sounds to make it sound more real and comments that it sounds too perfect because presumably there aren’t any mistakes in notes, tuning, rhythm etc. I suspect if Andy had unlimited time at his disposal that he could do all of that stuff and make Jupiter sound even more human.
But is that so desirable. Many would say that you will never be able to perfectly imitate a human performance and I suspect that may be true for very astute sensitive musicians although I also suspect that for the vast majority of music going public they would not realise that Andy’s mock up is not real.
But is there a place for creating mock up performances of classic repertoire purely for the purpose of the performance. Could such a performance compete with recorded human performance? Could there be aspects of a Computer rendered performance, which could improve on a human performance.
It is actually quite nice to hear a score performed note perfect, intonation perfect, rhythmic perfect it can be a revelation particularly with complex modern scores. Of course that will be different to a human performance but could it not be equally valid? It should be possible for a gifted musician to programme a musical performance with their interpretation of the score just as a conductor imposes their interpretation. And then there are the subtle possibilities, phrasing which might not be quite possible for a human, the same for dynamic levels and cres/dim etc. Of course a sensitive musician would spot that a human probably couldn’t do that but why should that detract from the worth of the computer rendered performance.
I am not for a moment suggesting that computers should replace humans (although so much of the baggage that you find at concert going these days is a huge distraction from the listening experience) but that it is becoming increasingly possible for a computer rendered performance to be as musically valid and to excite emotion and feeling the equal to other types of performance and indeed add possibilities that other types of performance can’t achieve. And that perhaps mock up artists should aim more to creating the best musical performance that their skill and tools can achieve and be concerned less with imitating human performance.
What say you?
DaveTubaKing
