Korgscrew
Group: Super Admins
Posts: 3511
Joined: Dec. 1999 |
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Posted: Aug. 13 2005, 04:38 |
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| Quote (TubularBelle @ Aug. 13 2005, 06:40) | | If Mozart was alive today and you took away his harpsichord and gave him a piano, he could still play, but put him in front of a synthesizer and he will go HUH! I do not see it as a NATURAL progression, I see it as a distraction or a career change for a 'real' instrument playing musician. |
I actually doubt it.
He'd of course not be immediately familiar with the synthesiser, but neither would he be immediately familiar with the piano and the use of its pedals. Mozart also played the organ, so I imagine he'd already have been familiar with the concepts of presets and sound layering, and that of playing sustained sounds on a keyboard (which he wouldn't have been, had he only played the harpsichord).
Synthesisers aren't electronic mutants that have sprung up from nowhere - they've been designed as instruments, for playing music. Anyone familiar with the concepts of playing music will also be familiar with the majority of the parameters of the average synthesiser (there are always obscure ones which nobody knows the functions of). That's not to say that the functions of everything will be immediately obvious, but rather that they're designed to give control over musical parameters - pitch (including vibrato, and the way pitch alters over time), volume (and the way that also alters over time) and timbre (and yes, you guessed it, the way that alters over time). That's the same as all instruments, though some don't offer the ability to control all of those things. Nothing that would seem odd to Mozart (things like the built-in reverb which some have might seem unusual to him, as the concept of artificial reverb would be entirely new to him, but he'd certainly understand the effects of reverb on sound), though of course, the electronic nature of the instrument would seem very strange to him. I'm not suggesting that he, or any other musician raised on acoustic instruments, would understand it immediately - there are lots of things on synthesisers which would be quite alien to those not used to them, but there are things on any instrument which are alien to those not used to them (consider a violinist's reaction on being sat at a pipe organ...also consider how players of each of those instrument would find the others' instrument to be disappointingly lacking in areas they might consider quite important to their enjoyment of playing).
In saying he has only one real instrument left, Mike is contradicting himself. He's played a lot of guitar on the album. Remember, when he says things like this, that he's a man who claimed to have bought his first studio computer in 2002 - he'd been using an Atari since the 80s, then a Mac...the device he was referring to as his first computer wasn't even a computer as such, but rather a hard disk recorder. Remember also, when he wildly sings the praises of Fl and how he can do everything with it, that he's probably being paid by them to say so (he's been featured quite heavily in their recent advertising, and quite likely has some kind of endorsement deal with them). He often goes back on such statements later - he once said that with his previous software, Logic audio, he had no trouble using it, because he'd been using it since it was first released, so he knew what it all does. On his switch to FL, he then said that he found Logic too complicated.
Let's not ignore what he's said about a complex Tubular Bells type album being too bound to the 70s...er...was Tubular Bells itself not too bound to the 70s, then? If it was, it didn't stop him re-recording and releasing it a couple years ago. If it's the case that music with that kind of structure is too bound with the 70s, why is it that Amarok sounds far more timeless than the at the time 'contemporary' (can't say it really was, but it was an attempt at being that) Earth Moving?
It's amazing they can still interview Mike sitting down, without his answers getting muffled by the cushion...
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