Throughout the entire history of humanity, save the last ten years, it has been innately understood that anything worth achieving takes tangible knowledge, hard work, and dedication.
Whether we’re talking about music or any other aspect of life; these days, it seems to me that people want something the size of a Game Boy to do everything for them.
There are so many ways to solve the perceived “problems” in this thread. There’s just no magic button is all.
If we’re not careful, we’ll end up spectators in our own lives.
I do something similar. I leave patterns 8 and 16 blank to create silent breaks. Each pattern can be different lengths depending how long I want the break to be. Works great when you want your effects to play out a little.
I saw OMD play Enola Gay live, touring the album it was released on, at a roller rink where I could get within metres of them, and they had a lot of backing tracks on tape. There was a big honking reel-to-reel tape recorder on the side of the stage. Just saying.
Bands in the '80’s went a long way on sheer energy, plus a lot of miming.
It’s a really interesting balance. Because tools enable us to do things that we could not do without them. But the tool still needs to be wielded with precision and intent to make something truly good. I feel like that we can conflate the hard work and dedication to making something, with the annoyances of the creation that go into it.
Like is what we are rewarding in artistry the drudery and difficulty that goes into creation? It makes sense to a certain extent. Like I am definitely impressed by the stories of the suffering that goes into making art, like Michelangelo going blind painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling. But that is also not really necessary any more.
I guess I am very interested in what tools can be created to ease that kind of drudgery and difficulty in artistic creation, and allow a more free flowing expression of ideas. But you are definitely right that it needs to be a balance of mastery of the tools and creation of new tools. Because the first time you use a hammer, it doesn’t feel great, but it is still an extremely useful tool once you get used to it.
I haven’t tried a lot of so-called grooveboxes but I really do enjoy buildding a whole song out of a single pattern by using the song mode on a Digitakt + trig conditions.
To create a song on a groove box you’ll still need to compose by pattern. If you need to compose something longer than four bars like on say a digi you can easily link two or more patterns and live record your phrase. There’s thousands of examples on how to tackle this problem with tools you already have.
I haven’t heard Wakeman himself opine on this, but from the comments of other Bowie sidemen, I suspect Wakeman was just handed the basic chord progressions.
Correct. I think most people on the forum would agree with you that finishing tracks on grooveboxes is possible / doable. But the devil is in the details. One of the beauties of DAW, I suppose, is its utility as a graphical organizer of clips/tracks. Without this convenient aid, we have to keep the organization of a piece in our brain (or in a paper notebook?). If we change direction partway through a project, the groovebox is going to be pretty unforgiving. With the DAW, no problem.
I think tangible knowledge is the most important attribute of the three that I listed; which, by default, encompasses hard work and dedication.
I think this debate extends to all aspects of living, and simply boils down to human achievement. That’s what respect is rooted in, after all, and why we all appreciate being acknowledged, or otherwise aspire to be.
To that end, it’s okay to admire others for their gifts and abilities. There’s a lot to be gained from that. We are not all built the same.
But we have entered an era of entitlement. That’s not say that you can’t have fun, stepping into someone else’s forum, with the aid of technology or A.I. But you can’t expect to be fully embraced or revered for it.
A quick story…
My brother called me, and said that my nephew seemed interested in making beats. So, the next time I went home to visit, I brought the 404 and the MPC with me, and I showed him the ropes. He seemed genuinely interested at first, so I offered to give him the 404. But then he pulled out his phone, and showed me an app that he’d be using, and proceeded to tell me how much easier it was to make beats with that. It was one of those apps that auto-generate beats, based on a few genres from which you could choose, wherein the only user-controls were a few sliders that introduced variations. When I said “but you’re not actually making those beats…”, he innocently reply “but my friends think it’s cool…”.
Game, set, match.
Sufficed to say, I kept the 404.
Again, if we’re not careful, we will end up spectators in our own lives.
I mean if all he cares about is having fun with his friends, who cares? I feel like we are acting like everyone should strive for one very particular idea of artistic success. I want tools to make things easier for me, not because I feel I deserve to be a famous musician. But because I like making little beats with my friends, and there are aspects of that process that are annoying and I would like solutions for.
I feel like it is a bit of an attitude of “making music should be hard, so that only the dedicated are able to make music” while I think this probably does result in better music, it does not result in more people enjoying themselves making music.
And personally I am not trying to optimize for the highest quality of music. I am trying to optimize for the most people enjoying themselves making music.
And I feel as though you’re gleaning the wrong message.
Either people get what I’m talking about here, or they don’t. Beyond that, as I said previously, I often find myself having to distance myself from these conversations, for this very reason.
All I can do is assure you that myself and my colleagues are not elitists or snobs. We have simply seen the value in what we do firsthand, and are happy to encourage anyone who aspires to learn, or get out there and do it for real.
agree. You could use the next bank as a place to copy all your patterns and swap them as you wish.
