Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
|
Posted: May 14 2005, 00:02 |
|
Quote (Blue Dolphin @ May 14 2005, 02:18) | Well, it good to hear that he has signed at a new record company (frankly, I didn't like him being at Warner "Spain"! Why just not Warner? That was good enough, great releases like TB2). I wonder if Mercury Records does some nice promotional things, we'll see. |
It was Warner UK he was at before. I think the reason for the switch was probably to do with sales. Let's hope Mercury prove to be a good choice.
Quote | So why the hell doesn't he get of his lazy bum and use all sorts of equipment? Tom Newman critized him on that long time ago. It's more fun and more creative. |
I don't think everyone finds it more fun - some people just find hardware annoying (I don't, by the way), which is why they're getting rid of it and replacing it with software. I don't think it's more creative either way - creativity is the way you use things, not what you use.
Quote | I believe an instrument has to be used as it was originally made. A voice has to be sung by a human. A piano sound has to be played by a real piano. A flute has to be played by a real flute. And with synthesizers: well, it's like how Bob Moog said it. A synthesizer is made to create sounds that you can't produce with acoustic equipment, and not made to emulate flutes, pianos, brass etc. So I'm disgussed of this virtual vocalist program. |
And a recorder has to be played by a real recorder and not using a bad analogue clarinet emulation? I really agree though, I don't find it generally works when people try and use multisamples to emulate instruments. But...if you say an instrument has to be used as it was originally made...what about sampling it and doing something with the sound which wouldn't be possible acoustically?
I don't necessarily see anything wrong with the virtual vocalist idea, but it comes down to how it's used, and I do fear that it will end up being used in the wrong way (just judging from the uses I've heard of vocaloid so far). I don't see any difference in principle between virtual vocalist software and tools like formant filters and vocoders, though (though technically speaking, there is a big difference, as Vocaloid is sample based. VirSyn Cantor isn't, though) - you're basically just allowing a synthesiser to make vocal-like sounds. Is there any reason why we shouldn't have a tool which will allow us to create singing voices which could never exist in the real world? Should we be forbidding people from using these as yet unheard, sounds?
How Mike has used the technology remains to be seen (or heard), and I have to say that I haven't yet heard anything from Vocaloid that doesn't sound rather cheesy (people do tend to go down the route of using it in place of a human singer), but I'm sure it's possible to do something extremely interesting with it if it's approached in the right way.
Quote | Don't get me wrong, it's nice to use software synths (I'm guilty of using it too) from time to time, but just use a little and don't make a complete album of it. There has to be something human in it too. |
Depends what we're talking about here. If you mean to say that using hardware synthesisers makes it more human, I disagree. I have digital synthesisers which can also now be bought as a software version. There's next to no difference in sound, if any at all, and certainly the hardware one isn't any more human sounding than the software one. I also doubt that anyone could tell the difference between parts I've recorded straight to audio and those which have been recorded to a high resolution sequencer first. I therefore contend that there's no difference between playing a digital hardware synthesiser straight to tape/disk and playing a software synthesiser via a part sequenced from the same MIDI controller (apart, perhaps, from latency issues). Analogue synthesisers are something else, of course...
I agree on the basic concept that the human aspect is vital (usually - sometimes there may be an artistic reason for removing that, but I think it has to be immediately recognisable as having been done for effect), but I don't feel that using software necessarily removes that aspect any more than any other electronic music device does. I don't think it can be boiled down to any hard and fast rules either - there are many ways of getting an organic result, and I think the important thing is always the creator. Certainly some tools seem more predisposed to certain ways of working (the software tools do often seem to be created for instant gratification, for example, and so probably do have a fair number of preset-cruisers amongst their users), but there's nothing stopping anyone from misusing those and getting something more interesting out of them.
Quote | I was listening to Tubular Bells 2 recently and it's such a masterpiece, played hand by hand and with some nice synths. |
Played by hand, then chopped up into little pieces and quantised, with some heavily sequenced synths! It's not the album I'd list as being his most organic, though it does feel like it spent less time in the pressure cooker than his more recent albums have done.
Just how long Mike has left the upcoming album in the pressure cooker, and how much he'll have allowed his new tools to shape his work is something which we can really only speculate on, though I think it was fairly clear from the start that he wasn't buying "all the latest software" in order to make an acoustic folk album.
|