Nestor wrote:
I am referring to the lack of musicians that can actually play real instruments in a comfortable and professional way, which is something so beautiful.
Yes, it is.
But there´s a definition of "professional way" too.
Even someone can play a real instrument, has technique, knows the scales and chord progressions etc., that might be to no avail.
Everyone playing an instrument has to learn a lot 1st, boring stuff too, theory, read music and have to practise a lot just only not to lose what he already learned weeks or month ago.
On a violin, they need 2 hrs practise a day to keep just only the level they already have.
Then when the musician all that really did and thinks he´s good,- others find out he has no timing.
End of story.
Steve Morse once said, timing is the most important factor and I agree w/ that,- and phrasing is the next step.
I´ve seen musicians in studios trying to play to tape rolling and they losed even they were good musicians w/ great knowledge.
They were simply in front of the beat always and even playing layed back was the demand.
They couldn´t.
I´d say there´s something you cannot learn because it relates to your inner clock.
You have it or you don´t.
Singers ...
There are many out there who sing perfect,- you might use ´em in the backing vocals
when their voice fits the sound of the others,- but obviously and unfortunately they were not born w/ that voice a tune wants for lead vocals.
You, as a singer, cannot practise much to change that, it will never sound like yourself and you will never be a gread leadvocalist.
To me, some charisma and magic is kind of god´s gift too and there are musicians out there who have it and others don´t.
Nestor wrote:
Many, I mean, many if not most so called "musicians" of today’s PC music, would not be able to entertain nobody, not even for 20 minutes,
True!
It really requires some special taste being entertained by performers standing behind laptops w/ tiny controller toys and pushing "play", "pause", "ffwd/rwd" and "stop".
Not to forget to mention, that task doesn´t require timing and phrasing at all (see above).
Well, I know Kraftwerk does, but I hate such performances.
But I always understood their message was never related to being real musicians,- there were different targets.
So, I accept their success and what they do, but it´s not for me (which doesn´t matter).
Nestor wrote:
... if they were required to play an instrument live, without electricity, like in a black out day for instance.
Playing electromagnetic instruments or any other electronic instrument, the way real musicians do,- using the frets, strings, keys, is playing a real instrument to me,- it doesn´t have to be acoustic.
IMO
what they really play matters.
When there are loops or slices, pre-programmed licks, riffs, lines and chords they trigger let´s say from pads, buttons or whatever physical switch type controller, or start/stop arpeggiators and/or step sequencers,- that´s playback of prerecorded material to me and not playing the stuff in realtime note by note at different tempos non quantized.
OTOH, lots of these textures were unplayable on real instruments and would possibly never been heard when people won´t program stuff.
Nestor wrote:
I’d like to see musicians using computers, and not the other way around.
Yep !
I salute composers of electronic music w/ background of the traditional music styles and kind of knowledge all serious composers have.
You hear it.
Like every other music, it can sound stupid or intelligent,- I don´t have better words, sorry.
Maybe it´s the difference of striking and complex or such.
Typical radio/TV format music, even composed and produced the traditional way, to me and in most cases is striking as well as is most techno-dance, most rap I ever heard and some club/disco style stuff too.
In opposite, I listened to some goa-trance, ambient, tribal and such which I liked as much as other traditional way music because it was quite colorful and complex, thus intelligent enough to be interesting for me.
I think it´s very hard complaining music because it depends so much on taste and individual preference.
So, I think it´s good it all exists and finds it´s audience.
It´s all part of musical or probably cultural progress, so what ...
Mixing styles was most interesting for me always, the crossover stuff ...
Technology gives us the unbelievable amount of colors to make it shine when composed and produced right.
Bud
I think it's from the 70's, you can still buy new tapes for it. It also uses a 3 head system so you can use it as a tape echo. I have recorded a lot of (about 200) cassette tapes from the Dutch radio in the 90's. There was this radio show which played electronic music like the Warp stuff. I digitized most of them I which was a lot of work. In the mid 90's I recorded my early projects to the Kenwood cassette deck because my computer could not play back MIDI and record audio at the same time.
