Autechre A question for those who make music...

Hello,

For all those who make music here - particularly if you have a knowledge of Max/MSP (because it's something I know nothing about, this idea of music and musical systems being programmed from the ground up) and particularly if you understand generative methods of composition - how has such experience and knowledge affected your appreciation of Autechre? Has it revealed them to be lazier than you thought, or more imaginative than you originally thought?

The fact that I'm an (electronic) musician probably makes me appreciate Autechre more. Because I feel the rythms that alot of other people don't for example, or because I hear sounds I've never been able to make myself. But it's not like I really appreciate them more because I also have the experience and knowledge of alot of the technical stuff. Of course Autechre has some mindblowing 'wow how the f did they do that' or 'that's just an amazing technique why didn't i come up with that' stuff but I've always loved them for the content if you know what I mean. The actual rythms, melodies, sounds, compositions - on an emotional level.

i think the thing about ae's music that sets it so far ahead of all other music is the quality control. Ultimately this all comes down to attention to detail. Most people can tell if a song is at all decent, and one thing about AE's music is that they often establish something very awkward and foreign at first but if you can get into the groove then it feels like awesome music like all their other stuff.

Also the beat programming stuff is awesome, I don't know much about algorithmic music generation but after reading up on it a bit and spending some time dicking around with FLstudio and Reason, I have noticed that the more you know about electronic music creation, the more you will appreceate their music.

Because I have played with a certain element with a song, I will in turn recognize a deeper element that AE is using in their music, and I will experiment with something along those lines and then in turn recognize even deeper elements in their music.

I don't think a knowledge of Max/MSP in particular has any bearing on appreciating Autechre. Their music, and any good music I'd say, is defined by choices the artists make. The democratising of a lot of tools for making electronic music over the past decade, and the ease with which you can quickly generate some noise, gave some people the idea that Max/MSP would be a magical shortcut to being Autechre. There's fallacy in that idea at pretty much every level, not least of which is that we don't really know how they make any one part or another of a track, except when they explicitly state it in an interview or something. IE To assume Max is a fundamental compositional tool defining Autechre's output is not safe.

What I've learned about electronic music through making it is that any particular destination can be reached by a hundred different paths, and no matter how sure you feel that you know how someone else made something by listening to it (unless it's ultra basic, discrete stuff), there's really no guarantee that you do know.

For instance, you can use Max/MSP to make a kid's techno song for the top 40 if you want. It is also possible to take any digital audio workstation, use no frills pattern mouse-dragging with nothing more than onboard midi sounds, and still create the kind of extremely complex sound some people readily (rightly or wrongly) associate with Max/MSP, in which nobody will detect the presence of standard midi patches. So overall, there's a wide range of tools available that can be used in as wide a range of fashions.

Things like Max also double as tool-tools. For instance it can simply help channel data in a way you could do with your eye or ear, the way a word processor makes editing type easy, but in such cases it isn't imparting any kind of sound or compositional angle to the music. But again, this stuff all remains entirely behind the scenes. The only person who will ever be able to tell you with certainty how a piece of music was produced is the one who made it.

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aeriae.com

it looks like max is in autechre past, anyway.

a good quote from an article I posted a few days ago pertaining to this thread

  Quote

"Detailed modern maps exist for all the spaces and machinery above and below ground at all the Disney parks. These are reserved only for the eyes of those who engineer the Disney magic... Above ground, the pathways within the 'Kingdom' have a centripetal, Moebius effect, always bringing the visitor back from the edge to the centre.. The entire park feels much larger than it 'really' is (no scale is provided on the map)"

  djimbe said:

I don't think a knowledge of Max/MSP in particular has any bearing on appreciating Autechre. Their music, and any good music I'd say, is defined by choices the artists make. The democratising of a lot of tools for making electronic music over the past decade, and the ease with which you can quickly generate some noise, gave some people the idea that Max/MSP would be a magical shortcut to being Autechre. There's fallacy in that idea at pretty much every level, not least of which is that we don't really know how they make any one part or another of a track, except when they explicitly state it in an interview or something. IE To assume Max is a fundamental compositional tool defining Autechre's output is not safe.

 

What I've learned about electronic music through making it is that any particular destination can be reached by a hundred different paths, and no matter how sure you feel that you know how someone else made something by listening to it (unless it's ultra basic, discrete stuff), there's really no guarantee that you do know.

 

For instance, you can use Max/MSP to make a kid's techno song for the top 40 if you want. It is also possible to take any digital audio workstation, use no frills pattern mouse-dragging with nothing more than onboard midi sounds, and still create the kind of extremely complex sound some people readily (rightly or wrongly) associate with Max/MSP, in which nobody will detect the presence of standard midi patches. So overall, there's a wide range of tools available that can be used in as wide a range of fashions.

 

Things like Max also double as tool-tools. For instance it can simply help channel data in a way you could do with your eye or ear, the way a word processor makes editing type easy, but in such cases it isn't imparting any kind of sound or compositional angle to the music. But again, this stuff all remains entirely behind the scenes. The only person who will ever be able to tell you with certainty how a piece of music was produced is the one who made it.

 

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aeriae.com

good first post I reckon.

Now read dem rules.

Listening to AE changed how I listen to music

  Capsaicin said:

Listening to AE changed how I listen to music

same

ae is probably the single biggest creative influence i have ever had. 3 years ago i hadn't heard of RDJ, Ae, squarepusher, basically any idm. Since I discovered RDJ it opened the genre to me and it felt like i rediscovered music. I had never heard anything as meticulously composed, mixed and mastered into something totally foreign sounding as ep7, draft or Druqks.

Also it formally introduced me to generative music. i'd been making stuff like that for awhile with my looper, but it was just for practice. I still get a hard on every time i hear all the parts of inhake 2 finally playing. There's just so much awesome going on it's hard to concentrate.

i also love the awkward, minimal composition of pir and dropp. those songs are in 4, but the groove is all over the place. i could go on and on and on about how everything about my perception of music was changed dramatically in the past 3 years, but i know you probably don't care so i'll stop now.

  djimbe said:

There's fallacy in that idea at pretty much every level, not least of which is that we don't really know how they make any one part or another of a track, except when they explicitly state it in an interview or something. IE To assume Max is a fundamental compositional tool defining Autechre's output is not safe.

well we do know that the song licfilli on EP7 was made almost entirely from Max/msp patch which can be freely downloaded lots of places on the internet right now, and to my knowledge AE has never stated this in an interview (clarification a patch that someone in AE made mostly from scratch only pulling some FM elements from other stuff). So it would not be a fallacy to make that claim, there is ample proof this is the case. Also they were once accused by a max/msp patch creator on the max/msp mailing list of slightly modding one of his patches for a song off confield. The latter is more anecdotal since i've never heard the original patch in question

i agree with your general point though that too often people will say 'thats max/msp' when they hear some crazy glitching or programming they can't make themselves. Obviously Autechre has an extremely diverse tool set hardware and software. It's also interesting to think about if Rob or Sean is the max/msp genius, obviously one of them is from seeing the patches they've produced. if both of them were equally proficient in max/msp i'd be very surprised

someone guide me like a little child through how to use that patch. Apparently I'm retarded. I downloaded Max 5 and the patch and just could not for the life of me figure that shit out. Much appreciated

I realized that almost every autechre song starting with the album Confield-to-present starts off almost unlistenable, then around the 1:30/2min mark develops into something wonderful. you think it's becoming formulaic?

Definitely made me appreciate Ae even more. Actually, it is hard to say since I made music, (though not exclusively electronic music) before I heard Ae. But regardless of whether anyone actually likes AE or not, the deserve the most respect out of any of our electronic brethren for the extreme attention to detail and originality present throughout pretty much all of their work. To listen to something like Gaekwad and hear how they manipulate reverb is unreal. When a human being puts that much of himself into his music, (meaning effort) it really comes out to the listener. Creation is a reflection of the self. The more that is put in the more that is got.

I really think Autechre are something special though. I mean, when you listen to their interviews (or read them) they seem like just ordinary guys. Hence, it seems likely that most of their "genius" is purely tacit. I mean, how in the world could regular guys who are primarily interested in hanging out in the pub with a pint create something like Eidetic Casein or Uviol? It boggles my mind. I mean, one could argue that Richard Devine puts just as much effort into some of his musics but he doesn't come within a thousand miles of the creative beauty of Autechre.

As far as Max/MSP goes, at least one (liccifli) track on EP7 is purely MAX. Only four tracks on Confield contain MAX sequencing and there is no MAX sequencing on Draft except for the end of Reniform Puls. Much if not all of the drum parts in their 2001 live set used MAX.

Ae probably never should have let it get out that they used MAX because for some reason people think it makes a difference. I really don't care if every single ae track ever was just Sean and Rob randomly stepping on a keyboard with MAX open and seeing what came out because the music is awesome and that is all that really matters. Besides, anyone who has actually USED MAX knows that it isn't just pressing a button and letting the computer do all the work..... You could make a 4/4 acid track with the kick on one and three and the snare on two and four with MAX if you wanted to...

yeah autechre are fucking shit, they don't even use the amen

  On 8/23/2009 at 6:36 PM, ezkerraldean said:

yeah autechre are fucking shit, they don't even use the amen

you opened my eyes