pouët.net

Help needed for getting back into creating music.

category: general [glöplog]
agreeing with gargaj. burial is well overrated and in fact the most uninsteresting act on hyperdub.
added on the 2009-09-14 11:56:33 by dipswitch dipswitch
Or you just fail to hear subtleties because you listen to that horrible metal shit all the time! ;)
added on the 2009-09-14 11:57:11 by Rob Rob
That was for gargaj.

And yes, it always looks very cool to kick down the most popular acts! Look at me! I am fucking hip!!
added on the 2009-09-14 11:57:50 by Rob Rob
*pulls up a chair and gets a cup of tea" ;)
I like using trackers. It's just hobby for me, and trackers make me focus more on the music and less on the thousand knobs in Cubase and stuff :)
added on the 2009-09-14 12:15:46 by jua jua
Quote:
Gloom, I noticed something funny. In the generative systems thread you say:

Quote:
<Skrebbel> gloom, how about making the soundtrack generative.
<Gloom> Skrebbel: What on earth for? :) Such music is pretty much always crap


Whereas now here you say:

Quote:
<Gloom> The way to learn how to produce well produced dubstep is to listen to a lot of dubstep. When it comes to well-defined genres such as dubstep, there isn't really a lot of "out of the box". There is a tried and true formula with variations on top, and that's it.


An interesting juxtaposition.

Is it? You do know the difference between "generative" and "generic" right?

In the case of "generative music" (as in: letting some mathematical equation feed on random seeds and control it by the power of simple AI) the result is, as I said in that other thread, pretty often just garbage.

In the case of learning any particular genre, the trick is to analyze the genre and learn what makes it tick, and then putting those learnings into practice in your own tracks.

How are those two statements even remotely comparable?
added on the 2009-09-14 13:07:24 by gloom gloom
When I talk about "generative" I refer to the definition of Philip Galanter.

Quote:

Generative art refers to any art practice where the artist uses a system that operates with some degree of autonomy, and contributes to or results in a completed work of art. Systems may include natural language instructions, biological or chemical processes, computer programs, machines, self-organizing materials, mathematical operations, and other procedural inventions.


In his definition there is nothing in the word "generative" that imposes the use of noise (random function) or even A.I. In a way, the random function is the "lens flare" of generative art.

Also, note that he also includes the existence of "Natural language instructions" such as rules and steps on how to proceed from one point to another.

You may not write down the rules that one follow when creating a track of a certain genre, however you appear to subscribe to the opinion that you follow a "formula" (it's your own word) to produce works of a certain genre.

Of course you might argue that it makes it algorithmic more than generative. The difference between the two being the "degree of autonomy" that P.Galanter mentions. I won't dispute that, however I'm unsure about the distinction between algorithmic and generative, and what autonomy really means here, especially in the case of natural language instructions.

In that sense, the blueprint of a genre is a generative art system.


added on the 2009-09-14 13:27:11 by _-_-__ _-_-__
Also permit someone to smile at your phrase:

Quote:

simple artificial intelligence
added on the 2009-09-14 13:28:27 by _-_-__ _-_-__
He talks a bit about the autonomy part in here

Quote:

But the most exciting generative work I've encountered in the past few years is by an artist we will never know. Most folks know about the prehistoric cave paintings found in France and elsewhere depicting animals and so on. The oldest of those is about 35,000 years old. But in 1999 anthropologists discovered the oldest known artwork, and this work is more than 70,000 years old. It consists of triangular tiles inscribed in hand sized pieces of red ochre. It is an exploration of pattern and esthetic form that would be clearly recognized as such by someone like M. C. Escher or generations of Islamic artists. And it is generative in that an abstract autonomous system creates the form rather than the moment to moment intuition of the artist. Tiling systems are algorithms that existed long before there were computers.

As I like to say, generative art is as old as art.
added on the 2009-09-14 13:32:36 by _-_-__ _-_-__
and

Quote:

But yes, of course, by definition generative art involves the artist releasing control to an external system. In my view, however, this is actually yet another reason to consider various ancient art forms as generative. Keep in mind, first of all, that the notion of the individual heroic expressive artist is a relatively recent and western idea. The vast majority of art worldwide is not about individual expression, but serves more as a sort of cultural glue and shared memory system. Art is one of the ways that cultures maintain and propagate themselves into the future. From this point of view the autonomy of systems for tiling, weaving, decoration, border patterns and so on is a strong survival adaptation. The culture survives even as individual artists come and go.

In addition, before the industrial age people had to manually execute the work we now trust to machines. Generative methods, such as tiling patterns, allowed a designer to utilize less expressive artisans to get the job done. It is exactly the self-contained autonomy of tiling patterns that allows the head architect or fabric designer to not worry about handing off the work. In pre-industrial times this was a great practical advantage offered by generative methods.
added on the 2009-09-14 13:33:59 by _-_-__ _-_-__
you're rowing the boat longer away from the shore with every quote-post....
added on the 2009-09-14 13:48:13 by Puryx Puryx
A: My dick is longer!
B: No, mine is!
...
added on the 2009-09-14 13:59:45 by decipher decipher
There are tons of Sequenzers and Trackers to make good musicstuff.. Its not important what you use.. Its important to know what you do.
added on the 2009-09-14 14:01:04 by .. ..
Puryx, I'm quite confident it is still on topic, especially with:

Quote:
The vast majority of art worldwide is not about individual expression, but serves more as a sort of cultural glue and shared memory system.


In the context of discussing music genre, it's pretty much the way they are perceived.

added on the 2009-09-14 14:17:04 by _-_-__ _-_-__
But as Gloom already pointed out, "generative", in the above quote from Skrebbel should be interpreted as "let us write an algorithm, that can calculate the music for us" (to put it in a simple way).

No need to dig up whatever the "exact" meaning of the word is, if the meaning is that the music should've been fully generated by the algorithm.
added on the 2009-09-14 14:21:02 by Puryx Puryx
This is turning into an exegesis..

You're saying Skrebbel's quote is "Let us write an algorithm, that can calculate the music for us"

Whereas Gloom late tells us a recipe (an algorithm) is what's necessary to generate music in a given genre.
added on the 2009-09-14 15:26:51 by _-_-__ _-_-__
i think there's a difference between "algorithm" and "formula"
added on the 2009-09-14 15:31:22 by Gargaj Gargaj
Knos: I'm pretty sure you know what I mean. If you want to continue to debate the above, you can debate it with yourself... I think I made my point pretty clear at least.

The general point is: Generated music != generic music - and another point is that generated music wont sound good. If it did, I'm pretty sure there was already a highly popular music generator.
added on the 2009-09-14 15:34:24 by Puryx Puryx
Guess I'm wasting my time generally here.
added on the 2009-09-14 15:38:53 by _-_-__ _-_-__
Funny - that was exactly what I thought too!
added on the 2009-09-14 15:39:20 by Puryx Puryx
Quote:
Whereas Gloom late tells us a recipe (an algorithm) is what's necessary to generate music in a given genre.

No, I did not. If you got that from what you read, then you need to read it again.

In the context of both the quotes you dug up, there really isn't a whole lot of other ways to read them than those I have already explained to you (which ought to be blatantly obvious to anyone), however, allow me to spell it out:

1) Giving pre-defined bits of sounds to an algorithm and say "GO WILD!"
2) Learning the specifics of a particular genre of music and applying those to the music making skills you already have as a musician

Not the same! The one points in one direction, the other in reverse. Hog wild VS analytical, if you will.

Jesus christ, is it "international being a prick"-week at Pouet or what?
added on the 2009-09-14 15:43:47 by gloom gloom
Ah sorry - I stand corrected! :/
added on the 2009-09-14 15:45:00 by Puryx Puryx
No, you're right - what I said was that generated (as in the definition we've already laid out) does indeed sound like shit.
added on the 2009-09-14 15:46:22 by gloom gloom
argh. doh.... I read too fast to even see, that the quote wasn't from me... blergh!
added on the 2009-09-14 15:50:23 by Puryx Puryx
and i still don't have a crack for max/msp 5

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