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Re: [microsound] Re: microsound Digest 8 Nov 2002 04:35:09 -0000 Issue 694



* Kim Cascone wrote (Fri, Nov 08, 2002 at 06:29:17AM -0800):
> on 11/7/02 8:35 PM, soren wrote:
> 
> > We can't have music without instruments.   Likewise we can't have "good"
> > instruments without "good" music.
> you might want to reconsider the logic behind this conjecture...from where I
> sit it looks broken...
>

I'm saying what makes something good is the way it's used.  If we have
an easy to use tool, but nobody ever uses it to make something good,
doesn't that mean it's really a bad tool?  Stradivarius designed his
violins for music that had already been written and was already accepted
at the time as good.  Because there was already a definition of what is
good, he knew how to design the instrument.  

A stradivarius violin would never have been considered history if they were
designed to make it easy to play avante garde squeeks but were used to
play bach.  It wouldn't work.

Notice the direction I'm moving in; good instruments come from good
music, not necessarily the other way around.  If we don't ever have good
music there is no way to define an instrument as good...I would venture
to say that if no good music is ever made on an instrument than we can
define that instrument as bad.  

This doesn't mean that if good music is made on a good instrument that
makes the instrument good...

It's all subjective, really.  A feedback mixer isn't a good instrument
until it's used.

soren

 

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