Decolonizing Electronic Music Starts With Its Software (Pitchfork article + browser apps)

  On 5/12/2021 at 6:37 PM, xox said:

and also, repeatedly saying ''dead white men'' didn't help either

lol word

i mean i ain't offended cause i ain't dead yet, but.. 

but srsly wtf. 

Classical music: *exists*

Her: *let's make this thing problematic because why the fuck not*

?

  On 5/12/2021 at 7:51 PM, ignatius said:

for me it was a little look into the rigidity of her world.. when she talks about musicians being afraid to express themselves in parts of scores that say "open to interpretation" etc. i know little about that world so i found it interesting though i guess it's not like that everywhere? sort of seems like that same old argument about knowing the rules so that they can be broken properly or whatever. 

as for 'dead white men' she doesn't blame them.. just sounds like she's got a bone to pick w/the system and how people are taught.  maybe she's an idiot and is missing something obvious.. but i wouldn't know what that obvious thing is because i know a C major chord and anything else i have to look up in software or cheat in some other way. 

for the longest time i didn't even use notes of any kind. basically using drums into fx to create melodic content with a backbone of granulated material from lush samples i made with lot's of automation. so wtf was even a note. frequencies was where it was at.. that didn't change much w/modular stuff though notes were forced by using quantizers and lot's of voltage sources and blah blah.. 

these days there's a million ways to skin a cat musically speaking.. all the tools are there and can be had on a laptop for however anyone wants to do anything. but it's not going to come out of the sky in a fully formed way.. i mean.. everyone has to sort of build their own system even in ableton.. for how they want to make music. 

Expand  

sorry, i broke the page with my allergic response lol - so i'll just quote ignatius here to make up for it 

  On 5/12/2021 at 7:51 PM, ignatius said:

these days there's a million ways to skin a cat musically speaking.. all the tools are there and can be had on a laptop for however anyone wants to do anything. but it's not going to come out of the sky in a fully formed way.. i mean.. everyone has to sort of build their own system even in ableton.. for how they want to make music. 

Right, but none of those million ways seems to be “use a scale other than the western one”. For that, the best you can do is samples.

Yeah I would love to hear something other than the tempered C major scale as the default for everything tbh 

  On 5/12/2021 at 9:57 PM, toaoaoad said:

Yeah I would love to hear something other than the tempered C major scale as the default for everything tbh 

there's some free scale/quantize M4L things i use. i'll make a melody or whatever then after i'll throw the scale device and pick a scale that sounds good. other than that process i'm fumbling around in the dark. the J74 stuff gets pretty deep w/auto fixing generating things to all be happy together but i'm shortchanging them because i don't know the rules and just listen until it seems to make sense to my brain

This is a partial list of instruments with microtuning from the Scala web site (including the microtuning standard built into the MIDI spec):

• Alphakanal Automat
• Ashun Sound Machines Hydrasynth
• BeepStreet Sunrizer
• Big Tick Angelina, Rainbow and Rhino softsynths
• Bitheadz Unity softsynth
• Cakewalk Dimension Pro
• Cakewalk Rapture
• Cakewalk Z3ta+ softsynth
• Camel Audio Alchemy and Cameleon5000 softsynths
• Casio AT-3, AT-5, CTK-6000, CTK-6200, CTK-6250, CTK-6300, CTK-7000, CTK-7200, CTK-7300, WK-6500, WK-6600, WK-7500, WK-7600
• Celemony Melodyne 2
• ChucK
• crusherX-Mac!
• DashSignature EVE one (not two)
• DaTuner
• Dave Smith Instruments OB-6, Prophet 6, Prophet 12 and Pro 2
• Devine Machine OTR88
• E-mu Morpheus
• E-mu Proteus series
• Ensoniq EPS/EPS16/ASR10
• Ensoniq TS-10/TS-12
• Fluidsynth and Qsynth softsynths
• FXpansion Strobe2
• Hauptwerk virtual organ
• HERCs series, Abakos Pro softsynths
• H-Pi Instruments microsynth and Xentone
• Humdrum hum2mid program
• Image-Line Harmor
• Kemper Digital Virus
• Korg M1, M1R octave tuning dump
• Korg X5DR octave tuning dump
• Korg OASYS PCI soundcard (and softsynths supporting its .tun tuning textfile)
• LinPlug Albino 2, Alpha 2, CronoX, MorphoX, Octopus, Organ 3, SaxLab and Spectral softsynths
• Manytone ManyStation, ManyGuitar, ManyOne softsynths
• Marion Systems MSR-2
• Mark Henning AnaMark softsynth
• Max/MSP
• Max Magic Microtuner for Max/MSP and Pluggo softsynths
• MIDI Tuning Standard (both bulk tuning dump and single-note tuning change, 3 byte), supported in Timidity and Audio Compositor, E-mu: Proteus 3, UltraProteus, Audity/Proteus 1000 and 2000 series, Virtuoso 2000, Proteus FX, Orbit, Planet Phatt, B3, Carnaval, Ensoniq: ASR-X, MR Rack, MR-61, MR-76, ZR-76, Turtle Beach: Multisound, Monterey, Maui, Tropez, Rio
• MIDI Tuning Standard 2-byte octave tuning dump
• MIDI Tuning Standard 1-byte octave tuning dump
• MIDI to CSound
• Modartt Pianoteq 4
• Modor NF-1, NF-1m
• MOTU Ethno 2 and Digital Performer
• Mutagene Mukoco, Macomate 88
• Omringen Oblivion
• OpenMPT ModPlug Tracker
• Native Instruments Absynth 2 (via .gly file)
• Native Instruments FM7 and Pro-52, Pro-53
• Native Instruments Kontakt 2 (via script file)
• Native Instruments Reaktor (via semitones file, frequency file or NTF file)
• Oberheim OB-Mx
• Plaka Physical Modeling softsynth
• Pure Data
• Robin Schmidt's Straightliner softsynth
• Roland GS & JV/XP families
• Roland Fantom-X6/X7/X8
• Roland V-Synth Version 2.0
• Roland Virtual Sound Canvas, SC-8850
• Smart Electronix Foorius
• Spectrasonics Omnisphere softsynth
• Synapse Audio Orion Pro softsynth
• Synthesis Technology MOTM-650
• Synthogy Ivory
• ThumbJam
• Timidity MIDI to audio renderer
• Tobybear Helios softsynth and MicroTuner VST plugin
• Togu Audio Line TAL-Sampler, TAL-BassLine-101, TAL-U-NO-LX
• TransFormSynth
• Tubbutec 1oh1 µTune
• TuneLab
• U-He Zebra2, ACE, DIVA and Bazille
• UVI Falcon
• VAZ Plus, 2001 and Modular softsynths
• VirSyn Cube, Poseidon and TERA 2 softsynths
• Waldorf Wave, Microwave and Quantum
• Wallander Instruments WIVI Standard and Professional
• WayOutWare TimewARP 2600
• Wusik Station, Wusik 8000 and Ravernator
• Xen-Arts IVOR2, XenFont2 and Xenharmonic FMTS
• Xenharmonic FMTS VSTi
• Xfer Records Serum
• Xponaut Voice Tweaker
• Yamaha DX7II/TX802
• Yamaha SY77/TG77/SY99/VL-1/VL-7
• Yamaha TX81Z/DX11/V50 (both octave and full keyboard bulk data)
• Yamaha XG family
• Yamaha VL70m
• Zebra 2.0 softsynth
• Zefer Serum

I'd say about 30-40% of the hardware I own supports at least partial microtuning, and more than half of that isn't on this list. 

It would be nice if DAWs made it easier to use mnemonics other than the piano keyboard, though.

Colonialism is a real issue, but that pitchfork article doesn't have much to do with it. Also it's premise of microtuning and nonwestern scales being difficult or impossible to use in modern DAWs isn't exactly true.

Here's an even bigger, but still very incomplete, list (also they kind of cheat by including theremins):

http://www.microtonal-synthesis.com/index.html

Logic has supported microtuning since v7.

Here's a list of major DAWs with their microtonal capabilities.  Turns out other than Ableton and Pro Tools, they mostly have good support for it:

https://en.xen.wiki/w/DAWs

To be fair, if I was going to unironically accuse a DAW of being colonial, Pro Tools and Ableton would be the top contenders anyhow.

  On 5/12/2021 at 7:51 PM, ignatius said:

for me it was a little look into the rigidity of her world.. when she talks about musicians being afraid to express themselves in parts of scores that say "open to interpretation" etc. i know little about that world so i found it interesting though i guess it's not like that everywhere? sort of seems like that same old argument about knowing the rules so that they can be broken properly or whatever. 

as for 'dead white men' she doesn't blame them.. just sounds like she's got a bone to pick w/the system and how people are taught.  maybe she's an idiot and is missing something obvious.. but i wouldn't know what that obvious thing is because i know a C major chord and anything else i have to look up in software or cheat in some other way. 

Expand  

i generally don't agree that music is being imprisoned with the theory or a tuning system so i have nothing more to say regarding that. i could but it's pointless imo

but i hate ppl like her, coming to yt, preaching stuff she obviously doesn't understand but having a degree and being in a position of power, having students, ppl whose minds she poisons with her psychopathology! that shit bothers me, sorry and that's why i responded the way i did.  

#artandfreedom

  On 5/12/2021 at 3:43 PM, Cryptowen said:

thank god, i heard someone play a forrth a fifth a minor fall & a major lift the other day and it felt like uncle sam himself was expelling creamy white vitriol directly upon me

  Reveal hidden contents

real talk tho is microtonality going to be the next overused trope in electronic music? between this & aphex's thing

 

Expand  

I mean Aleksi has been pumping out Colundi records with some insane tuning in them non-stop for how many years now?

  On 5/12/2021 at 7:51 PM, ignatius said:

these days there's a million ways to skin a cat musically speaking.. all the tools are there and can be had on a laptop for however anyone wants to do anything. but it's not going to come out of the sky in a fully formed way.. i mean.. everyone has to sort of build their own system even in ableton.. for how they want to make music. 

Even in the Korg M1, microtuning was available. Modular synthesis has always had microtuning available to it (not the easiest to implement).

This list shows how much gear there is that has microtuning.

Scala was released what, 7-8 years ago and is a fantastic piece of software that really allows you to fuck around with tunings.

It's just, a lot of people never bother to dig into their kit. Many of the people who do either never release music, or never should release music.

(This isn't directed at you ignatius, your post just provided an easy jumping off point).

  Quote

Ableton pushes me towards following the beat grid,” he says. “Everything sounds somehow Western—very mechanical, not organic like the rough tones and raw drums I heard growing up in Nairobi. Even as I try to break away from the loops and the 1-2-3-4 drive of these music tools, I always end up back there somehow.”

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that music production software that was created primarily as a means to produce techno, is intuitively designed to facilitate the four-on-the-floor patterns that have been common in techno since, well, forever.

  Quote

If a musician opens a new composition and they are given a 4/4 beat and equal tempered tuning by default, it is implied that other musical systems do not exist, or at least that they are of less value.

Just fuck right off.

:old man yells at clouds gif:

I’m not gonna chime in on any of the colonialist stuff but I think one thing many of us on this forum can identify with is how much incredible music is made by people using gear in completely weird and original ways that were never even remotely intended by the manufacturer and with very little regard for what was happening in mainstream culture. 

it’s great that there are all kinds of new tools and stuff but at the end of the day artistic innovation does not require tools that were designed for it. 

maybe this is oblique or tangential to the topic but just something that came to mind. 

I once sampled this Asian record for dining. Like some old vinyl they would have played at an Asian buffet in the 70s. At the time I was using mostly dco keyboards. I couldn’t get them to be in key no matter how I tuned them because- in my mind at the time I was looking at this as calibration being off. Like there was a thirteenth note or something. So, in cubase I just went into the key editor and adjusted the notes in the pitch bend editor. I couldn’t write music without a piano roll like the og cubase key editor. In the 90s I pretty much thought that with computers it was either piano roll style or tracker (which seems stupid and outdated to me at the time). Anyways, I got the desired key I was looking for and the whole thing seems like it’s in some type of tuning close to a440 or whatever you wanna call western. I don’t know what it is because it was a pitch shifted sample, and pitch shifted midi. I wrote it with @Braintree about 15 years ago. So, I guess I don’t really understand who is having problems with this shit these days. I feel kinda like music is such a strong thing that transcends “colonization” and getting stuff to work together has always kinda been a tricky part of electronic music, right? Also, fuck pitchfork.

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/3SVZ8MUqDVBxu5v79

  On 5/12/2021 at 11:27 PM, chenGOD said:

I am shocked, shocked I tell you, that music production software that was created primarily as a means to produce techno, is intuitively designed to facilitate the four-on-the-floor patterns that have been common in techno since, well, forever.

yeah, aside from the cringe notion of being oppressed by music notes (flol really), this is probably the dumbest thing from this article. no one forces you to write 1-2-3-4 music dude, moving away from it is like, 2 clicks away from you lol, you just have to use different time signatures and shit lol. the same goes for loops, no one's putting a gun to your head while yelling "loop this thing, fucker, do it now" lol

  On 5/12/2021 at 11:37 PM, Himelstein said:

I once sampled this Asian record for dining. Like some old vinyl they would have played at an Asian buffet in the 70s. At the time I was using mostly dco keyboards. I couldn’t get them to be in key no matter how I tuned them because- in my mind at the time I was looking at this as calibration being off. Like there was a thirteenth note or something. So, in cubase I just went into the key editor and adjusted the notes in the pitch bend editor. I couldn’t write music without a piano roll like the og cubase key editor. In the 90s I pretty much thought that with computers it was either piano roll style or tracker (which seems stupid and outdated to me at the time). Anyways, I got the desired key I was looking for and the whole thing seems like it’s in some type of tuning close to a440 or whatever you wanna call western. I don’t know what it is because it was a pitch shifted sample, and pitch shifted midi. I wrote it with @Braintree about 15 years ago. So, I guess I don’t really understand who is having problems with this shit these days. I feel kinda like music is such a strong thing that transcends “colonization” and getting stuff to work together has always kinda been a tricky part of electronic music, right? Also, fuck pitchfork.

https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/3SVZ8MUqDVBxu5v79

Expand  

What I meant by “I couldn’t write music without the piano roll” was mainly to say I couldn’t live without it. I hand play almost everything and quantize (grid) it later or whatever, and in this case I edited the pitch like that too. When I got into modular and learned about what they meant by quantizing with scales and modes, it all clicked and made sense for me. But honestly I still wouldn’t have been able to make the last half of that song work without “micro editing” the pitch in cubase. I was at the mercy of whatever foreign tuning that was. How dare they make me jump through hoops like that.

  On 5/12/2021 at 10:56 PM, xox said:

i generally don't agree that music is being imprisoned with the theory or a tuning system so i have nothing more to say regarding that. i could but it's pointless imo

but i hate ppl like her, coming to yt, preaching stuff she obviously doesn't understand but having a degree and being in a position of power, having students, ppl whose minds she poisons with her psychopathology! that shit bothers me, sorry and that's why i responded the way i did.  

  Reveal hidden contents

 

1. for other things mentioned, let the music talk:

 

2. i know that you're a beautiful person @ignatius , too kind to even notice shitty ppl, someone id love to know irl, but repeating ''dead white men'' in 2021 means one specific thing so, pls let's be real here, as oppose to naïve  m'key? love! xox

let me call some of those ''dead white men'', if i may... beethoven said: ''i compose my music from heart to heart''! imagine hearing that from your fav producer, ... which is sick, poor and hungry, bullied, alone and deaf! and still thinks of other ppl's hearts! how would you feel about such person? and she calls such person ''dead white man''? that probably gave us the most of all? just fak off bitch, you and you personal problems should be allocated more appropriately! he said ''from heart to heart'', not ''from white man's heart to white man's heart''! it's music! no color, no gender! what does it matter who wrote it? color of the skin or gender?! she's making it relevant and poisoning internet with that shit! godknows what she's been telling to her students! sorry, but shit like these bother me! 

3. ''musicians being afraid to express themselves'' has nothing to do with music (the source of music, metaphysically speaking) and the world but with their personalities. some of those ''dead white men'' were schooled is such ways: ...beethoven was specifically and rigorously thought to play and later to write music like mozart did (motivated with regular daily beatings by his alcoholic father) and yet, as a young adult, he managed to make the biggest jump in the musical history, bigger than any other single composer that came after him. i doubt she even understands this! (someone possibly said that at one point to her... at some lecture... who knows! but she uses the word 'genius' cynically) and betthoven loved mozart's music; as a kid he was even doing remixes/rearrangements of mozart's work. he never said, ''ah this tuning is impossible to work with, it just sounds wrong and i just fakn can't make music at all until i change that!?'' did mahler? no. did ligeti? no. did feldman? no. did boulez? no. afx? no. did ae? no. did abba? no. did mc hammer? no. rachmaninov? no. finding excuses was not their fav sport! trying new things? yes. improving thing? yes. learning from others? yes. pushing themselves? yes. pushing art further? yes.

5. musicians are paid to play music! to play how those who are paying them to play want them to play. if they want to play differently (creatively), then better charm your audience by playing even better! composers want musicians to play their music as they wrote the f. music (ok, mostly). and that's the whole story about musicians! and classical musicians can play cadenzas today! they can even drastically change tempos of compositions but they first need to show that they are virtuosos of the highest order and not some opinionated and frustrated mediocrities. modern example: ivo pogorelich. as andras sciff says to his pianist students: ''don't try to be smarter than the composer''. and i agree! write your own piece! or your own variation and name it ''my variation'' and then play it separately from the main piece

6. composers compose for those who want to listen to their music, and some of them compose as they feel the music should be composed, no matter what (thank god for those ppl), even if it's not understandable, accepted and fashionable, yet. i say yet, and i call beethoven again... an anecdote, when one famous violinist of that time, told beethoven that he doesn't know how to play some parts of his late string quartet, bc he doesn't understand the music, and beethoven just told him to play the part as it was written technically and even explained him everything about it technically but he also told him not to worry bc that music is ''for future people, for those who are not even born yet'' and he was right; 100 yrs later, in the 19 century, violinists could spontaneously understand it and they enjoyed it, and still do. i can still see some parts in beethoven's music that are still ahead of the time; we're not there yet

7. who can stop anyone to compose anything? who can stop that ''alive non-white lady'' to compose what ever she wants? to even use computers, even samples of real instruments? the video at the beginning of this post is an example of her using modern technology in combination with traditional ways of ''dead white men'', in quite radical way, with magnificent results!

 

#artandfreedom

Expand  

i generally agree. i don't hate ppl like her as i reserve hate for very special circumstances    i confess ignorance to all things music theory. to me her teaching angle was interesting though foreign to me because i know fuck all about that world. But i can understand how generations of doing things a certain way have progressed to some form of rigid 'coloring in the lines' in the music academic world. .. which is what i took from her 'rant'.  

there's an organ pavilion at balboa park in san diego that is the largest or one of the largest outdoor organs around.. they had free performances there. i got to check a few out. they always had the scores outlined w/movements and in places there would be parts that said "open to organist's interpretation" and that's what i thought of when watching her video. those were typically parts of the performances when the organists would do some crazy shit and their hands would be on one side and feet would be on the other.  i wondered if in scores for other settings if there's some parts open to interpretation and that's what she says is suffering from her experience w/students. because.. they are confused about it. 

edit: epic hidden comments!  cheers mate. enjoyed reading that. 

  On 5/12/2021 at 11:54 PM, ignatius said:

i generally agree. i don't hate ppl like her as i reserve hate for very special circumstances    i confess ignorance to all things music theory. to me her teaching angle was interesting though foreign to me because i know fuck all about that world. But i can understand how generations of doing things a certain way have progressed to some form of rigid 'coloring in the lines' in the music academic world. .. which is what i took from her 'rant'.  

there's an organ pavilion at balboa park in san diego that is the largest or one of the largest outdoor organs around.. they had free performances there. i got to check a few out. they always had the scores outlined w/movements and in places there would be parts that said "open to organist's interpretation" and that's what i thought of when watching her video. those were typically parts of the performances when the organists would do some crazy shit and their hands would be on one side and feet would be on the other.  i wondered if in scores for other settings if there's some parts open to interpretation and that's what she says is suffering from her experience w/students. because.. they are confused about it. 

 

Expand  

That organ seems like it would be a cool thing to watch people play.

While looking at the whole theory vs playing by ear topic, I can’t help but think that it’s almost like she wants to break certain rules, by creating new ones. I think that’s a dangerous concept. There are no rules and shouldn’t be. Like so many people have said before on here- theory is a way of communicating. Danny Elfman doesn’t know theory, but his fluegelhorn player probably does. Somehow I feel like she is trying to create a new type of conflict in that paradigm or something. It’s hard to articulate. There are no rules, and nobody’s right or wrong...... but she’s wrong.

  On 5/13/2021 at 12:01 AM, Himelstein said:

That organ seems like it would be a cool thing to watch people play.

While looking at the whole theory vs playing by ear topic, I can’t help but think that it’s almost like she wants to break certain rules, by creating new ones. I think that’s a dangerous concept. There are no rules and shouldn’t be. Like so many people have said before on here- theory is a way of communicating. Danny Elfman doesn’t know theory, but his fluegelhorn player probably does. Somehow I feel like she is trying to create a new type of conflict in that paradigm or something. It’s hard to articulate. There are no rules, and nobody’s right or wrong...... but she’s wrong.

good points! it's hard to not look at things like this as someone carving out a piece of woke pie for whatever reason. 

i think mike patton is a good example too.. no idea if he knows any theory.. perhaps something.. but his compositions using other musicians for stuff like Fantomas are pretty amazing. 

the 433hz video i added to that 1st post i found interesting for highlighting why things are the way they are and why the relationships between notes/frequencies are important and what scales are for. 

edit, yeah.. massive outdoor pipe organ is an automatic yes if you can go check out a performance. the low notes in particular are spectacular. 

It's also worth pointing out that the most popular electronic music in the world is probably AR Rahman soundtracks or something.

You could choose any random AR Rahman OST from the 90s and chances are it outsold the total sales for the entire Beatles catalog in the first year of its release (and that's not counting cassette bootlegs).

  On 5/13/2021 at 12:11 AM, TubularCorporation said:

It's also worth pointing out that the most popular electronic music in the world is probably AR Rahman soundtracks or something.

 

You could choose any random AR Rahman OST from the 90s and chances are it outsold the total sales for the entire Beatles catalog in the first year of its release (and that's not counting cassette bootlegs).

and wtf does a saxophone even do? most people are still trying to figure that out... in any scale. 

also, some things that exist. 

^^^^ scale, piano, western, asian etc all seems irrelevant in that performance and i only know i wish i was there to experience the goosebumps on my forearms. 

  On 5/12/2021 at 11:54 PM, ignatius said:

that's what she says is suffering from her experience w/students. because.. they are confused about it. 

Suffering, confused! Dunno man, must be tough  …

”Art is hard” - Warhol 

  On 5/13/2021 at 12:01 AM, Himelstein said:

There are no rules and shouldn’t be. Like so many people have said before on here- theory is a way of communicating.

Ok, ok … but, saying there are no rules in music is the same thing as saying there are no rules in mathematics! Yes, you can find your own mathematical principles, theorems and ways of providing those theorems but at the end of the day you need math that works in real life same as you need music that works in real like = provoking emotional responses, so you use what ever ways or rules you want, just give me the results! 

  On 5/13/2021 at 12:22 AM, xox said:

Suffering, confused! Dunno man, must be tough  …

”Art is hard” - Warhol 

Ok, ok … but, saying there are no rules in music is the same thing as saying there are no rules in mathematics! Yes, you can find your own mathematical principles, theorems and ways of providing those theorems but at the end of the day you need math that works in real life same as you need music that works in real like = provoking emotional responses, so you use what ever ways or rules you want, just give me the results! 

Expand  

I was mainly joking about the rules in a meta sorta way. 

  On 5/13/2021 at 12:11 AM, ignatius said:

good points! it's hard to not look at things like this as someone carving out a piece of woke pie for whatever reason. 

i think mike patton is a good example too.. no idea if he knows any theory.. perhaps something.. but his compositions using other musicians for stuff like Fantomas are pretty amazing. 

the 433hz video i added to that 1st post i found interesting for highlighting why things are the way they are and why the relationships between notes/frequencies are important and what scales are for. 

edit, yeah.. massive outdoor pipe organ is an automatic yes if you can go check out a performance. the low notes in particular are spectacular. 

Expand  

Patton doesn’t, or at least didn’t know theory for a long time. I read an interview with Trevor Dunn where he mentioned being jealous of the fact. That was around 2013 or so. So he definitely didn’t know theory when he wrote his best stuff!

  On 5/12/2021 at 11:37 PM, Alcofribas said:

how much incredible music is made by people using gear in completely weird and original ways that were never even remotely intended by the manufacturer

Like: