Artistic tapestry, anyway:

http://www.synestesia.com/

But I am interested in seeing what I will come up with in writing a strictly "virtual" kind of music - something that simply *can't* be played live. -jbm

I am also interested in this as there are many things that samples can do - contrary to what people usually state - that live players cannot or don't want to do.  For  example, immensely long droning tones,  extended high registers, different tunings, impossible combinations of time signatures, etc.  All of this is not only practical with samples, it is child's play.  So to use those things specifically is very important. I feel that certain compsoers of the past like Ligetti were writing things like that before samples existed...

@William said:

...For  example, immensely long droning tones,  extended high registers, different tunings, impossible combinations of time signatures, etc.  All of this is not only practical with samples, it is child's play...

@jbm said:

But I am interested in seeing what I will come up with in writing a strictly "virtual" kind of music - something that simply *can't* be played live. .

Here you wiil find one key piano glissandos:

http://www.kolumbus.fi/lauri.grohn/exp/experiments1.html

Birds:

http://www.kolumbus.fi/lauri.grohn/exp/birds2.mp3

"But I am interested in seeing what I will come up with in writing a strictly "virtual" kind of music - something that simply *can't* be played live." - jbm

I would say that about 95% of what is written for samples cannot be played live.

Not because it is new and original as jbm is  thinking (quite admirably), but for a much more mundane reason, the same reason that 95% of film ideas cannot be filmed.

Commerce.

The unfortunate fact is, live symphony orchestras cost a huge amount of money. And most composers who get their music played are mainly businessmen who know how to sell and promote.  Far more than they know how to compose in most cases.  The greatest composers are utter klutzes when it comes to promotion and selling.  Just look at the entire history of music -  Schubert's 9th symphony sitting in a drawer for years after he died is the one that sticks in my craw - and you will understand what I mean.

So that is what I ultimately mean about using samples for art - it is a revolution in that it allows people to bypass this degradation by money that has existed throughout all the history of music. 

@William said:

The unfortunate fact is, live symphony orchestras cost a huge amount of money. And most composers who get their music played are mainly businessmen who know how to sell and promote.  Far more than they know how to compose in most cases.  The greatest composers are utter klutzes when it comes to promotion and selling.  Just look at the entire history of music -  Schubert's 9th symphony sitting in a drawer for years after he died is the one that sticks in my craw - and you will understand what I mean.

So that is what I ultimately mean about using samples for art - it is a revolution in that it allows people to bypass this degradation by money that has existed throughout all the history of music. 

There seems to be businessmen who realise music by using samples for composer businessmen who sell they products to film directors.

 What do you mean?

@William said:

 What do you mean?

There really are people who are not composers but who create VSL music used in real movies from scores of composers.

Hi all.

@vibrato said:

Depends on what is the classification of a composer?

@vibrato said:

Depends on what is the classification of a composer?

Perhaps I was not clear enough. The time tables for film music are very tight. There are people who render the score (created by a composer) to music to be used as such in films. Why, in fact, the composer should his time for this "playing" of the music? Of course he has the final word. So there is composing ART; and performance ART using VSL etc. May be in the future only amateurs do the both phases themselves?

 I don't think that will happen, because it is cheaper to have one guy do both.

@William said:

 I don't think that will happen, because it is cheaper to have one guy do both.

For professional film composers it time not cheapness that matters. Amateurs are different.

 Oh yeah? Tell that to any producer and he will laugh you out of the room.

 Of course I am a very cheap professional.  I am not in the luxury league of hot shot composers who get everything they want.  However, without showing a case of sour grapes I must add I never had much admiration for those composers, with the exception of three - John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith  and Miklos Rosza.  You notice I did not list Bernard Herrmann the greatest film composer of all. Because many of his scores were done with low budgets. For example, De Palma's Sisters in which Herrmann's fee was the largest item in the budget.  The orchestra was quite small. Or many of his television scores, in which he simply had to write for lower budgets.  Another example of a great professional who used low budget brilliantly was Roy Webb, who wrote around 300 film scores, and his best were the Val Lewton series in the 40s, in which he had at his command about 12 strings, 4 brass, 2 percussion and 7 woodwinds.  And they are among the most inventive orchestrations of the time. 

 Didn't see the word "future". But it is already happening.

Mimicing western culture?  That is total bullshit. Bollywood is its own world, with its own style that is very charcteristic of the storytelling of India and is not a mere mimic of Hollywood, if that is what that bigoted statement refers to.

Also, what vibrato is talking about actually sounds the same as what happens here, with budgets being cut, etc.  It is only on the biggest union films that things are different.

@vibrato said:

Hopefully things will change soon.

Not wishing to be funny, but how?

Making stuff that seems to be good enough to the typical purchaser, but that is made more cheaply because of new technology, is basically the history of the developed world since the Industrial Revolution. Computer technology replacing warm bodies is practically the economic story of our times, and I see no sign that that trend will reverse, particularly for occupations where the activity is labour-intensive.

Indeed, there is even a technical term in economics for what's happening to orchestras in places like Bollywood (and Hollywood): a Schumpeterian wave of creative destruction.  It's what happens when some new piece of technology so fundamentally changes some aspect of how a market works, that there is a sea-change in the behaviour of consumers and producers in the market.

The classic example is the invention of the automobile, which destroyed demand for many skilled occupations, such as blacksmiths and buggy-whip makers, while creating whole new ones, such as engine mechanics and driving instructors. 

If orchestras can find a way to respond to the threat of computers by re-positioning themselves, much as the Swiss watchmakers did once quartz watches trampled the cheap mechanical watch market to death, there might still be some money in it for them, albeit in a significantly altered market.

But if the orchestral players don't actively engage with the possibilities of new technology (or, worse, expect their union or the public to do it for them), then, with regret, they're outta here. 

That is true about technology, but live orchestras are not comparable to mechanical watches.  In recordings and commercial music they are disappearing, but they never will in concert situations because there the situation is like theater vs. cinema.  It doesn't matter that you can capture actors, dialogue, sets etc. in cinema because the liveness of theater is the whole point.  So in situations that the "liveness" makes a difference, there will always be a need. But in areas where it makes no difference - as is approaching with sampled recordings - there will not.