@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.
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Hi all.
I would say someone who creates, either on paper or in audio form (or both), music from their imagination. If you realise an audio rendition of music from someone else's score, you a programmer, not a composer. However, if you invent and program a musical sequence using samples, you are composing. Please note that I'm making no value judgements here, merely suggesting a definition of 'composer'.@vibrato said:
Depends on what is the classification of a composer?
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I would say someone who creates, either on paper or in audio form (or both), music from their imagination. If you realise an audio rendition of music from someone else's score, you a programmer, not a composer. However, if you invent and program a musical sequence using samples, you are composing. Please note that I'm making no value judgements here, merely suggesting a definition of '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?
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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.
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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.
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@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.
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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.
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Richard: It is easier to compose bad music than good music
Karl: Wennst's kannst, is eh koa Kunst, und wennst's nicht kannst, is es erst recht koa Kunst
Fritz: It is a mistake to consider all human beings equal
Albert: Between the ape and the saint, there is a whole scale
Karlheinz: We are at the threshold of a new terrestrial mutation
Sri: There are very few human beings far above the rest
Alfred: Le supermâle!
Karlheinz: The conciousness involutes on a new level soon
Fritz: The fear of the majority is that they will not make it
Sri: The last animal will be transformed into human bones in the middle of this century, then there will be no animal left
Albert: This will lead into a crisis
Karlheinz: Wars!
Sri: The discovery of the truth is a endless, never ending process
Opus: Life is life
Sri: Whether in a cat, or dog or man
Chris: Life is life!
Fritz: Matter is matter
Karl: These two distinct energies in the material world as we see it, sometimes interact and sometimes not
Albert: There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats
Fritz: There is no difference there between a cat or a man
Albert: The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage
Friedemann: When you stare into the abyss the abyss stares back at you
Richard: Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them
George: Yes! I have killed her, I - my adored Carmen!
Friedrich: Armseeliges christliches Mitleidstheater
Albert: In der Sprache des Meisters geredet: Unendlichkeit, aber ohne Melodie
Karl: Was die Leut allerweil nur mit dera Kunst habn, wenn ma's ko, is's ja koa Kunst
Alfred: The man of knowledge must be able not only to love his enemies but also to hate his friends
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You will never ever ever beat the sound of a real orchestra with professional players that have trained to do just that as long as I've got a hole my a$$ - and that's a fact of life that is indisputable.
And no - I don't want a debate about it - I am making a statement.
Hell and Angela Merkel will freeze over before anything orchestral beats a real orchestra that can play well as a unit(s).
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Yes - they are in decline because of what now has become all the financial cliches you can think of - certainly in this country and for quite some time. It's just normal real world reasons. An orchestral musician is no different to anyone else and needs a certain level of income just to pay all the bills - and with rising costs of just about anything, over the years many British orchestras no longer exist. Britain exists on debt.
It's like anything artistic - costs rise for an orchestra which means costs are rising for the public. What's the first thing that generally goes when audiences have a tighter income - luxuries. Going to watch an orchestra could be counted as a luxury - like watching films in a cinema for instance, although conversely, when times get hard, traditionally, cinema audiences tend to rise. This is part of the reason that Britain no longer, more or less, makes any films. They make films that should really be made for television and pander to nostalgia through costume dramas mostly now.
The current British government would rather pay £20 plus billion to host an Olympic games that lasts for 3 weeks in 4 years time - and then pay all the peripheral costs to keep all the olympic buildings going in perpetuity, just to pander to the moronic state of play that has now overtaken this country. Think about that for second - £20 plus billion. Don't for one second believe that stupid ninth rate harridan and her £9 billion. Someone is making some serious money right there. Think about how much orchestras get. Sport is the religion in England - not art and culture - so-called sport.
Yes - I had some fun working with a real orchestra recently in America and believe me - they could play anything you write and it sounds good. Crap sounds good when played by a great orchestra - not that there was any of that of course. Seriously powerful sound and great acoustics. Great players of course. I can understand you wanting that and one day you'll get it. But you can always use smaller ensembles - like they used to have to do in the 50's and 60's on American TV for example (or any TV probably) where budgets were limited. Goldsmith and Herrmann would be allowed say around 15 players and made great soundscores.
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That comparison is no fair. Yes, real orchestra has practice of hundreds on man years together, but there is no single person in the world who has 10 years of practice of using modern SW instruments. Composers using SW instruments are just amateurs in SW instrument use. And: There is no reason that using SW instruments one should emulation the idiosyncrasies of real players.@PaulR said:
You will never ever ever beat the sound of a real orchestra with professional players that have trained to do just that as long as I've got a hole my a$$ - and that's a fact of life that is indisputable.
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The existence of orchestras as we know them now through the monstrous ensembles of Strauss and Mahler is not very long. The normal orchestra throughout the time of Bach for example was tiny. An "Orchestra" then was what today people whould call a quintet or sextet, etc. So the size of orchestra is a factor in whether they can continue to exist. Is it any surprise that an ensemble of 60 strings and 20 winds is a bit too much for practicality, when four guys with guitars and drums have to work hard to make a living?
I think lgrohn made a good point in that samples have not existed for very long at all, whereas live instruments have for centuries. As Paul mentioned in relation to the 50s and 60s, it was normal to have smaller ensembles in studios, however it is also through all of the history of Hollywood except for the biggest. The trick has been to use much smaller ensembles in a clever way. I previously was admiring the Roy Webb scores for the Val Lewton low budget films of the 1940s, which had tiny orchestras that nevertheless sound excellent in the score due to great orchestration. I have far more admiration for that - makng a little ensemble sound perfect - than I do for a goofball who knows nothing about orchestration suddenly being able to use the London Symphony. I hate that kind of crap and you can hear it every day because people who have absolutely no experience with slaving away composing, orchestrating, COPYING PARTS BY HAND!!!!!!!!!!! are getting deals because of some schmoozing or knowing somebody or whatever and suddenly have a great studio orchestra play their block chord mastepiece.
Those people, Paul, SHOULD BE FORCED TO USE A GENERAL MIDI MODULE, let alone VSL, let alone a live orchestra. Of course Paul's score is very good and deserves a good orchestra, but I am so irritated by others in which a live orchestra makes a crap orchestration sound good. It should never be ALLOWED to happen.
Anyway, I have said this before - I severely disagree with the statement that live is always better. You think live is always better? Try having your music played by the live orchestras that have SLAUGHTERED mine. And they were not the worst ones available! I am so tired of everyone thinking that any live orchestra is an awesome ensemble of great virtuosi. That scenario has nothing to do with reality. Though the New York Philharmonic and London Symphony and a few others are better, 99% of all other live orchestras are FAR WORSE IN PLAYING ABILITY THAN VSL IS RIGHT NOW.
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As long it is not mandatory to go to the cinema, I have no problem with the crap they play there. However, if I will see the time when they play the music with samples in the opera house in Zurich or Milano, just to name the two which are next to me, well, then I get the synthesizers out of the storage room and join the orchestra again
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@vibrato said:
I am no expert on orchestral music and have never worked with one.
You really don't have to be an expert on orchestral music to get it to sound good. I already explained that did I not?
There's concert music - like modern composers that simply write for the concert hall going back to Mozart for instance. And then there's the filmscore writers who write to flicks.
There's an enormous amount of BS talked about 'being' in an orchestral setting when recording. There's sometimes a fear element mostly with musicians (writers) who can't read music and suddenly feel they should have had formal training. This is all rubbish because what happens is - you write something, and instead of VSL on the computer playing it - or synthesizers playing it - suddenly a whole group of people are playing it on orchestral instruments. Much more exiting than fearful I would say and something to look forward to.
Having said that - I never feel intimidated by anything. Orchestras like to get the work because they get paid money. That is why they play in an orchestra for the most part. If I felt an orchestra member was taking the piss - I would simply beat the crap out of them and tell them to take the piss again anytime they felt the need. Doesn't happen.
You may want to try doing an orchestral piece with VSL and replacing simply one instrument with a live player for instance and work your way in slowly. Let's be honest - there's no difference to you playing a real piano on a track to 12 violin players, apart from the space and the aggro making them all tea.