Re: [microsound] tools-mediums-questions++ - was: Re: [microsound] Csound/DirectCSound/PD

[Derek Holzer <republikasleazka@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michal and the Micronauts,

....now this is the kind of thread I've been waiting for....here's my 
monolithic rant. dissect at will...

***

Choose Your Weapon: The Network as Sound App

(or, Why 100 Monkeys Pounding on 100 MAX/MSP Workstations Still Won't Make a 
Good Song)

In the last issue of The Wire, there's an interview with 'enfant terrible' 
Kid 606, wherein he pisses and moans about how many people are making "IDM" 
("Intelligent Dance Music"), and that every CD he sells is another email in 
his Inbox asking what he uses to make it, and another demo on the desk of 
his prestigeous label. His opinion is that sharing information about the 
technology behind the music will produce more crap out there, which somehow 
threatens him and his record label with the possibility of being buried 
alive in an IDM avalanche.

I can't think of a worse attitude to hold. And I suspect that just about 
anyone on this list who has had a positive interaction sharing "tech 
secrets" would agree with me. Anybody (with US$400 to spare + a Mac) can run 
out and buy MAX/MSP. Anybody (with an internet connection and a box with a 
soundcard) can download PD. It still takes talent and creativity, or if 
those words seem 19th Century in the era of technologically assisted 
generative music, at least it takes a fluency in the language of the 
machine, to make compelling sounds. (Perhaps, if you're Kid 606, all it 
takes is an endlessly repeated gimmick, and maybe that is why he is so 
scared...)

Besides this "machine fluency", of course, it still does take tools to make 
compelling sounds. I have heard underground Polish sound artists who make 
things in a freeware, single track cut n'paste sound editor that beat the 
pants off most any of the MAX patchers currently basking in the sun. As has 
been said of the word processor, DSP tools haven't enabled "better" art, 
just more of it. I don't think it is really possible to quantify which DSP 
app is "better" than any other in any meaningful way. When you choose a 
sound tool, you choose a metaphor in the form of the graphical user 
interface, and you choose a system which plugs all the little bits, often 
the same bits from program to program, just with different names, knobs and 
sliders, together. Some things, like PD or MAX, allow more combinations than 
others, some less. As time goes on, these differences become less relevant 
except to the point where the ways the bits are patched together start to 
become the "art" and the concept, with the "end product" (enough bass to 
peel the paint off the walls, for example) sometimes falling by the wayside.

Besides the metaphor of the interface, and the metaphor of how the bits get 
patched together (both shallow substitutes for actually just doing what you 
came to do, which is make some fuckin' noise), the last thing you choose 
when you choose a DSP app is a community. I'm not talking about the PC geeks 
lining up on one side of the basketball court and the Mac geeks on the 
other. Nor am I talking about the IDM genre vs the hard noise genre vs the 
algorhythmic genre. I'm talking about the kind of community that underground 
hackers and open-source architects create, and which in more commercial 
programs gets taken up by a paid staff of tech support. When I choose to use 
Audio Mulch, for example, I know that there is a strong network of 
beta-testers and users on a list somewhere who can be much more helpful than 
the overworked staff at the Steinberg helpdesk might be for one of their 
apps. Likewise if I want an obscure, Atari-emulator sequencer, or one of the 
open-source object collections being made for PD.

You could argue that similar communities exist for Pro-Tools, or Sonic 
Foundry programs, or Deck, or Reaktor, or MetaSynth or any other commercial 
DSP app (* see below). In these cases, however, the open user-communities 
remain an auxiliery to the closed programmer-community. The 
programmer-community may give answers and take requests, but the 
user-community may never be able to take matters into its own hands. In 
these cases, you really do "get what you pay for", with no chance to 
customize the metaphors further for yourself. (** see below)

For me, the real roots of innovative electronic music start just as much 
with the punks, the hip-hoppers and the hackers as with Stockhausen, Reich 
or Buchla. Each started with something simple--a barre chord on a Gibson SG, 
a breakbeat and a microphone, or a 386 and a dialup BBS--and through a 
combination of networking the hell out of it and good-old-fashioned 
showmanship and friendly one-upmanship carved out their own special place in 
this swamp we call culture. To hell with your tools, and to hell with 
keeping your secrets. Drive slow, roll down the windows, turn up the bass 
and show us what you got.

Best,
Derek
Acoustic.Space.Lab
http://acoustic.space.re-lab.net/lab


***Notes***
*The "battle lines" aren't as stark as this paragraph might indicate. Audio 
Mulch, while being very underground and involving a large number of users in 
its development, is not open source. But then again, neither is MAX, and one 
can't even count the number of programmers making objects for it. While I 
have my doubts about the "community feeling" of the Sonic Foundery company 
or the makers of Pro-Tools or Cool-Edit, Steinberg is a much more grassroots 
company that I beleive are very involved in both the programs they make and 
in the music those programs help create.

** Those interested in further research in this vein are directed towards 
the development of the PNG graphics format, the Ogg-Vorbis audio compression 
scheme, the Apache server software, and --of course-- the Linux platform....

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