Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
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Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: Dec. 29 2004, 13:26 |
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| Quote (TubularBelle @ Dec. 29 2004, 07:08) | | I still believe it takes more talent to be able to play a traditional instrument. |
This ought to put a cat amongst the pigeons 
I suppose this can be approached from a number of levels. If we take an electronic instrument, like a synthesiser (but could equally be an electronic organ, theremin, trautonium or anything else with electronic sound generators), we can see that its sound is coming from an electronic oscillator. No matter who is playing the instrument, that oscillator will create the same sound - even someone with no musical training can get it to make a sound, and more importantly, the same sound as when a skilled musician plays it.
Compare that to something like the violin, saxophone, guitar (especially electric), or any number of other instruments, where it can take years of learning before the player can get a really pleasing tone from the instrument (and yes, much of the tone of an electric guitar comes from the player - I'd say that distorted electric sounds are particularly unforgiving to players with the wrong touch). So, real instruments are harder to play, and the electronic ones are cheating because they're making the sound for you, right?
Well, we could say that, but then we'd look a bit silly when someone shows us a piano, which also takes care of making the sound. Even a cat can get a good tone from a piano - I've heard them do it (I've also heard them do quite a convincing Axl Rose impersonation, but that's another matter...). The issue is therefore rather more complex than it might at first appear.
I can't say that playing a synthesiser is any easier than playing the piano - the technique's fairly much the same. Of course, with the synthesiser comes the possibility of using its controls to expand its capabilities. You can play a lead line just as you'd play a melody on a piano, but it might not always sound as interesting as it could do...playing it with careful use of the pitch bend and modulation controls starts to make things more exciting, as would taking advantage of things like aftertouch, if on offer. Even more interesting is working with the instrument to change its sound, which could be compared to voicing a piano to suit a particular playing style, except that the possibilities are far wider. Programming synthesisers is something which players no longer have to do if they don't want to, but even small tweaks of existing preset sounds to better suit the use the player wants to put them to can bring considerable benefits. With fully analogue synthesisers (and those digital ones whose design, and often sound, is inspired by them) where there are controls for every parameter on the front panel (like for example the common trick of tweaking the filter cutoff frequency whilst playing a phrase), the player has further possibilites for adding expression during a performance, which need to be explored if the instrument's full potential is to be realised. That element to the use of synthesisers actually makes them harder to work with, demanding a wider range of skills than with playing an acoustic instrument...of course, a player can just use the presets and be done with it, but having preset sounds doesn't make it any easier than the piano, which also offers a preset sound.
A big aspect of learning any instrument is knowing how its sound fits into pieces of music, and being able to vary the tone colour to fit a particular piece...with the majority of acoustic instruments, that's a lot to learn (perhaps especially in rock and similarly more 'popular' forms of music, where a lot less is dictated to the player than in classical), but when the instrument is capable of creating as wide a range of sounds as the average synthesiser, the knowledge demanded is really quite vast. Of course, it's always possible to fall back on tried and trusted formulae, but then, that's not then skilled use of it.
I suppose it could then be fair to say that it's possible to use many of the more modern synthesisers in a lazy way. I'm not sure that's necessarily any worse than people using guitars in a lazy way, which they've been doing for years (go down to your nearest open mic night and listen out for how many people turn up and just do the same strumming pattern on their acoustic guitars...).
There are some software instruments now based on sample libraries, which contain all the elements needed to put together a fully produced sounding track, and being based on loops of real players, it doesn't sound like samples. It would also be easy to point a finger at those and say that there's no talent involved in making music with computers nowadays...which would perhaps be true, if what came out of these things didn't sound like the library music that's been around for decades. There's not a lot of skill involved in pushing the button and setting off one of those loops, but using a computer setup to create interesting, creative, personal music is something quite different.
Being someone who works with both acoustic/electroacoustic and electronic instruments, I can't honestly say that I find that one kind demands less skill than the other - they both demand the same musical ear, the knowledge of what sounds to use where, and what techniques to use to get the best results. That does cross over with arranging and compositional skills (especially with instruments like the synthesisers which can produce so many different types of sound), and I'd not really be able to say exactly where it stops being simply knowing the instrument well and where it starts to become arranging (which is knowing how to best make use of instruments to suit the music...an arranger needs extensive knowledge of how to best use each instrument, and the player needs knowledge of how to best use his/her instrument to suit the arrangement, and in the case of styles which don't rely on written arrangements, the player often has a role in creating the arrangement).
This is where Mike really has shown his skill - he may not be the world's greatest mandolinist, for example, but he's been able to use the mandolin to great effect in his work, by knowing how and where to use it in his compositions. The same goes for the synthesisers - I think that listening to Amarok and The Songs Of Distant Earth together would display his knowledge of how to use them to best effect (the fact that most people wouldn't even name Amarok as an example of the use of synthesisers goes to show how well used they are there, I think). That's not to say that there haven't been times when he's used them rather less effectively...
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