Eno on options

Any transitions made in the form of new musical process should be made naturally. Anything you're forcing yourself to do isnt going to be enjoyable and you wont make something as enjoyable as music from it. I also find comfort from having boundaries, if I have intimate freedom a piece can change in the blink of an eye to something completely different and now Im back to square one in terms of a complete works. Only the few are privileged enough to thrive with complete freedom. If you have a set degrees of freedom, its an accomplish-able task to maximize the utilities of these degrees, but unlimited degrees cant be maximized.

TL;DR: Im not smart or experienced enough to work with unlimited freedom. In any aspect of life.

It was a good read, but something I already knew.

Revenge of the Intuitive

Turn off the options, turn up the £250 for a copper plate and splashy wishy-washy "unique" screen print plz kthnx

sorry. i'm still bitter.

  On 5/16/2011 at 11:59 AM, chassis said:

TL;DR: Im not smart or experienced enough to work with unlimited freedom. In any aspect of life.

unlimited freedom is a LIE

  On 5/16/2011 at 12:10 PM, mohamed said:

  On 5/16/2011 at 11:59 AM, chassis said:

TL;DR: Im not smart or experienced enough to work with unlimited freedom. In any aspect of life.

 

 

unlimited freedom is a LIE

it's not if the limits go beyond your own although you can only loose focus the more options you have

the soloution to this is interface i.e. the most control with as little effort which often relies on a level skill or knowing

Well, that was a bunch of shit.

That article is 12 years old... I'm sure Eno probably bums the shit out of MAX or something these days..

I'd love to know what console he's on about.

  On 5/16/2011 at 5:45 PM, Jonas said:

make that any digital mixer, where you have to press some modifier key first to access such a simple thing like panning et cetera.

Yeah, those are no good for making music.

  On 5/16/2011 at 1:32 PM, soundwave said:

  On 5/16/2011 at 12:10 PM, mohamed said:

  On 5/16/2011 at 11:59 AM, chassis said:

TL;DR: Im not smart or experienced enough to work with unlimited freedom. In any aspect of life.

 

 

unlimited freedom is a LIE

 

it's not if the limits go beyond your own although you can only loose focus the more options you have

it is when you hear that the knobs that actually move something can be counted on one hand

when you first unpack a k'ed sofware, before realising what a knob really is

BLINDFOLDED like houdini

  Quote

You can't have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits it keeps becoming something else.

i like that. very sharp observation

  On 5/16/2011 at 11:26 PM, hahathhat said:

  Quote

You can't have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits it keeps becoming something else.

i like that. very sharp observation

but then again you can't have something too limited or you'll never discover anything new which is important especially in this game

  On 5/17/2011 at 12:48 AM, soundwave said:

  On 5/16/2011 at 11:26 PM, hahathhat said:

  Quote

You can't have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits it keeps becoming something else.

i like that. very sharp observation

 

but then again you can't have something too limited or you'll never discover anything new which is important especially in this game

so i should buy devices with more features, and this will make me more creative?

when i read the eno quote, i thought of my reaktor patches. they spew crazy noise, but i never use them much. then i thought of my ms2000. it's quite limited and predictable, but i use it loads... i know it. i have a "relationship" with it. that is the key word. this is some jimi hendrix sleeping with his guitar shit. i'd say reaktor produces more interesting noises, but i have to sit down and deliberately coax them out. the ms2000 is more like an old card partner, it can always spot me bluffing.

  On 5/17/2011 at 2:19 AM, hahathhat said:

  On 5/17/2011 at 12:48 AM, soundwave said:

  On 5/16/2011 at 11:26 PM, hahathhat said:

  Quote

You can't have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits it keeps becoming something else.

i like that. very sharp observation

 

but then again you can't have something too limited or you'll never discover anything new which is important especially in this game

 

so i should buy devices with more features, and this will make me more creative?

 

when i read the eno quote, i thought of my reaktor patches. they spew crazy noise, but i never use them much. then i thought of my ms2000. it's quite limited and predictable, but i use it loads... i know it. i have a "relationship" with it. that is the key word. this is some jimi hendrix sleeping with his guitar shit. i'd say reaktor produces more interesting noises, but i have to sit down and deliberately coax them out. the ms2000 is more like an old card partner, it can always spot me bluffing.

get stuff with less features that do more

  On 5/17/2011 at 2:19 AM, hahathhat said:

  On 5/17/2011 at 12:48 AM, soundwave said:

  On 5/16/2011 at 11:26 PM, hahathhat said:

  Quote

You can't have a relationship with a device whose limits are unknown to you, because without limits it keeps becoming something else.

i like that. very sharp observation

 

but then again you can't have something too limited or you'll never discover anything new which is important especially in this game

 

so i should buy devices with more features, and this will make me more creative?

 

when i read the eno quote, i thought of my reaktor patches. they spew crazy noise, but i never use them much. then i thought of my ms2000. it's quite limited and predictable, but i use it loads... i know it. i have a "relationship" with it. that is the key word. this is some jimi hendrix sleeping with his guitar shit. i'd say reaktor produces more interesting noises, but i have to sit down and deliberately coax them out. the ms2000 is more like an old card partner, it can always spot me bluffing.

Very true I'm also quite close with my MS2000 though sadly it's more than 4000 kilometers away from me! And yeah, often when I try a new VST instrument I'm struck by how unintuitive it is, but I think the biggest problem is that the documentation is written more by programmers than by electricians, and people who work with musical electronics. Because I rarely see a signal path documented anywhere for loads of plugins, and with this info it'd become pretty easy to see how to work it compared to any hardware synth. I think what's more important is to be acquainted with hardware synths at all, because once you can use proper physical tools, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out how to run some plugin with a signal path you know.

In terms of having limitless possibilities, that is also not very true. It's pretty simple to limit yourself when using computers, just get shittier hardware. You can get some 4 year old desktop for $50 that can run trackers really well or do simple multitrack recording (where real instruments would come into play anyways) or you can get a netbook, and run Ableton. I did that one summer and recorded an EP in two coffeeshops, lol, you can listen to it here if you like, but yeah, all in all working with limitation I definitely learned a lot and helped me later on.

Sometimes I think when prolific musicians talk about how computers suck for making music, I think it's actually a joke to them and is just trying to mislead people from making music, because honestly, you think these veterans don't use computers every single time they go to record?

JACK WHITE RECORDS ON FOUR-INCH TAPE

i regularly set rules for myself, albeit not explicitly. They kind of arise out of what I'm doing. Also my laziness is a pretty big limitation. Honestly. I'm not going to fuck around with some tedious shit. For instance I have a cz-101 and it can make some pretty cool/interesting sounds, but it can't store patches (design flaw). So I'd have to midi it up, start up midiquest (which is worse than AIDS) and then send over some patches. So I dont. I just figure out how to use the presets in interesting ways. Like this >>

  On 5/16/2011 at 3:11 PM, ieafs said:

at least he didn't use "africa" as an adjective again

heh, what did he say?

as mixed as this piece of writing is, Eno is a far better writer than he is a musician.

haha

gonna africa it up a notch in this bitch y'all *spoken with thick dutch accent

much eno love here though, On Land ftw.

  On 5/17/2011 at 11:00 PM, Awepittance said:

as mixed as this piece of writing is, Eno is a far better writer than he is a musician.

a redundant comment to say the least considering that eno has long since referred to himself as a "non-musician."

I think saying more options = less intimate creative expression is a really broad generalization. It all depends on ones mindset, ambition, approach and what they are trying to accomplish. There is a lot of great music out there from a brave dude who jumped into a completely unfamiliar location, set of tools and an overwhelming wingspan of options but, instead of letting that distract them into mindless drivel, they turned that new scene into top shelf direct connect inspiration.

The simple fact is we are all humans with very limited perceptions and we can let our mindsets manifest many consequences. If you truly believe you can handle your shit and make the best of it, you will. If you believe you are not able to comfortably express yourself with unfamiliar devices you will most likely not comfortably express yourself.

How are we supposed to make progressive interesting fresh music if we are not challenging ourselves to ambitiously push the envelope past what we have done and heard before, using whatever new color on the palette we can relevantly manifest to make things more & more unique and personalized.

"like"

I like this interview with Namlook that completely (and literally)contradicts Eno in a lot of ways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv3iD86hSpc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jd3OVdqzT8M