Digital Music as CGI

[pattycakes_]

other than "motion capture" (like eshun described) i think part of the appeal of the amen break is its really distinctive drone in the treble range. even if you can't hear the details, just catching that aspect of the sound establishes a specific vibe.

The papery fizz of the ride cymbal. The metallic raucousness of the snare. The tight but loose, sweet n sour driving force holding it all together. The syncopated displacement of the groove toward the end of the measure, and then that big crash at the end.

 

[thirdform]

I find Amobi irritating. Even though I initially liked his airport music for Black Folk. In fact prior to him, I had a similar relationship with lee gamble. Liked that dutch tvashar Plooms album he put out on Pan but the more he qualified his approach the more I was intensely angered. And I say this as someone who saw him at Phonica quite a few times do some pretty good dj sets. These people forget the number 1 rule of artistry in that they are the assembler of materials, the listener composes that data into intellectual forms to be appreciated and expounded upon.

 

[thirdform]

For people so obsessed with the eurocentricity of electronic music under capitalism they don't half operate in a western paradigm where the listener is a passive receptical to absorb the composers hi-falutin concepts.

Someone like Sote pwns all these people at their own game because he knows that any subtext to his albums is an after thought and his approach is all about constructing a mutant (othered) sound that cannot neatly be boxed into western/eastern, techno/electroacoustic, etc.

 

[wektor]

some arrangement styles these days really resemble marvel flicks dont they

 

[Woebot]

A trend in digital music is that it's not music it's modelling it's more like Pixar or any computer graphics company where the focus is on solving technical problems. Because the push is still towards mimetic realism, like painting used to be

they share that end which is making mirages.

it's very hard, probably impossible, to make digital music sound natural. not for any length of time measured in years.

that's the real axis of the uncanny valley thing - time.

i don't have a problem with it in a grandad/analogue fetishizing way but even if it fools one today - give it ten years and somehow the ear can no longer connect to it. it dates very quickly.

it's like food. you don't want to eat fake processed food.

there is a way around it which is to make deliberately digital music. i think that's what some people do. still sounds clunky though innit.

 

[luka]

I rowed back from that statement somewhat. It's not supposed to look natural anymore than Toy Story is supposed to look natural but it's supposed to look real within the parameters of its world if you know what I mean

 

[Woebot]

not being defensive (rather flattered at the thought) but i've never really pursued that photoreal CG. my stuff is more graphic:

Hollow Earth

alias@hollowearth.org

vimeo.com

 

[luka]

There are particular illusions they are trying to create in term of texture, material, density, acoustics, movement, 'physics' etc

 

[luka]

You can create music with a low gravity field for instance or can have the strength of that gravity field fluctuate

 

[luka]

if you're not recreating 'music' then what is it you are doing with these digital tools? That's the question isn't it?

 

[luka]

And how do you move from the arbitrary to the necessary

 

[luka]

music writers sometimes mistakenly assume that having a lot of drum layers or rich spectral complexity is just a matter of being a showoff, flexing technical capability--when it's actually a matter of achieving more vivid, beautiful animation.

just realized why do I dislike some of the hyperpop newschool stuff so much.
the sound design might be good but it simply does not make sense.
ie why in the fuck is this giant morphing blob opening a can of soda now?

 

[thirdform]

they share that end which is making mirages.

it's very hard, probably impossible, to make digital music sound natural. not for any length of time measured in years.

that's the real axis of the uncanny valley thing - time.

i don't have a problem with it in a grandad/analogue fetishizing way but even if it fools one today - give it ten years and somehow the ear can no longer connect to it. it dates very quickly.

it's like food. you don't want to eat fake processed food.

there is a way around it which is to make deliberately digital music. i think that's what some people do. still sounds clunky though innit.

hmmm. I dunno, I really rebelled against that whole turn of the noughties microdetailed digital dance music in the early 2010s but I've been going back to it. The cult of the analog can get equally as insipid and vapid when people use it to make bog standard hip hop beats or template dub techno. More about what ideas you have and their execution than the gear, innit. Like give me this over all that lo fi house any day.

 

[luka]

And how do you move from the arbitrary to the necessary

Which is to say, that blob is opening a can of soda simply because the click fizz of opening a can of soda is an intensely satisfying noise, excitation of bubbles, release of massive tension through a narrow aperture ahhhhh

 

[muser]

hmmm. I dunno, I really rebelled against that whole turn of the noughties microdetailed digital dance music in the early 2010s but I've been going back to it. The cult of the analog can get equally as insipid and vapid when people use it to make bog standard hip hop beats or template dub techno. More about what ideas you have and their execution than the gear, innit. Like give me this over all that lo fi house any day.

Is it a weird glitch or did you mean to post this video?


because thats whats come up on my screen and I agree.

 

[shiels]

Which is to say, that blog is opening a can of soda simply because the click fizz of opening a can of soda is an intensely satisfying noise, excitation of bubbles, release of massive tension through a narrow aperture ahhhhh

He’s also I think referring to

 

[luka]

That's the exact harmonic resonance of English Middle Class Women.

 

[luka]

If you had kids and you were collecting from school in a fashionable part of Hackney there would be a clique of them emitting those frequencies. They would give you the cold shoulder. They'd know you were not one of them.

 

[chava]

good example, same as the one i started the thread with where the hook doesnt work by dint of its hookiness but by the strange high definition pseudo-physicality of its sound

I've got tons of such records. Probably those are worth the least of my collection. Can't sell 'em anywhere. This sound is as untrendy as it goes right now.

Don't know what to make of it now. It does somehow lack a heart and I say that as someone highly sceptical of "soul" music.

 

[shiels]

That's the exact harmonic resonance of English Middle Class Women.