Re: [microsound] Death of electronic music

[Anthony Saunders <anthony@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Jan 23, 2005, at 2:17 PM, John McCaig wrote:
> but seriously, i think what has ending is technical difficulty of
> making electronic music.
> now, anyone with a computer can make some in an evening, its up to
> artists to now to make Art. we just cannot be awed by DSP magic
> anymores.  content will be king.

while I agree that the tools to make very impressive electronic music 
are now readily available at reasonable prices, understanding it and 
leveraging it to make "dsp magic" is still fairly inaccessible.

It might be easy to make "crazy" breakbeat drill'n'bass style these 
days. Actually, I know it is, cuz I make a lot of that stuff. But 
getting it to sound "right" is hard and knowing how best to leverage 
the tools you have at hand takes enormous effort. It's easier and 
easier every day for people to "punk rock" on their computers and bitch 
about software costing a few hundred dollars when it does the job of a 
$4,000 synth.

The "progressive rock" side of electronic music will continue just 
fine. Autechre will still impress the hell out of people.

In fact, I'd say that the easier it is to access the basic tools of 
computer music, the more people will actually understand why certain 
technical feats are impressive, possibly inflating the cult of "DSP 
Magic".

(before people read what too far into what I'm saying accusing me of 
being an elitist snob, I'll point out that I love gabber and 
trackers... and Autechre for that matter.)

Anthony


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: microsound-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
For additional commands, e-mail: microsound-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
website: http://www.microsound.org