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RE: [microsound] Lemur!



Amazing and awe inspiring, as are many human feats, and worthy of
respect. But virtuosity is a means to an end, enjoyable in itself, but
not to be mistaken for art.

 Noel Peters


-----Original Message-----
From: Kevin Ponto [mailto:kevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: Friday, 11 February 2005 11:53 AM
To: microsound
Subject: Re: [microsound] Lemur!

I'd say that these limitations and deficiencies in traditional 
instrument design only add to the amazement that one could learn to 
utilize them as gracefully as some people do. I think the easier you 
make a process, the more you take away from the meaning. If someone has 
to spend their whole life in order to to master an instrument and does, 
that deserves much more respect than if you could do it in a week.

I'm really enjoying this discussion.

kp


On Feb 10, 2005, at 4:30 PM, Noel Peters wrote:

> This view always seems to me to be a view that subscribes to two
camps:
> the "standing on the shoulders of giants" camp and the craft adds
value
> to the art camp.
>
> Instruments comprise of an oscillator and a resonator. Acoustic
> instruments are limited by the physical bounds of what can be
> constructed, suffer from appalling ergonomics and demand the onerous
> learning of manual technique. Some people with particularly shaped 
> hands
> and bodies are either fortunate or disadvantaged. These limitations 
> seem
> to me to be boundaries that instrument designers would rather
overcome.
>
> They also seem to be boundaries that some people embrace as noble
> aesthetic parameters prescribed by some higher order. I can't help
> seeing this perspective as arch-conservative and fundamentality 
> limiting
> to progression. Perhaps some people prefer to look backwards.
>
>
>
>  Noel Peters
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Carver [mailto:fscthaw@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Friday, 11 February 2005 8:11 AM
> To: microsound
> Subject: Re: [microsound] Lemur!
>
> Aside from the lesser level of physical minutiae involved in the act
of
> pushing buttons/twiddling knobs, it seems important that virtuosity on
> a violin is also the result of hundreds of years of technique,
> training, and experimentation... when you listen to the playing of a
> violin, you're engaging with that history as much as you're engaging
> with the physical process of playing. This is something that simply
> doesn't exist for Lemur-type instruments, synthesizers, etc., at this
> point in time.
>
> - Scott Carver
>
> On Feb 10, 2005, at 11:37 AM, Frank D'Urso wrote:
>
>> Oh dear God I hope you're kidding, but if you're not, that's a jaw
>> dropping statement. I don't see how anyone can consider themselves a
>> musician or even a lover of music without being awed at a display of
>> mastery over a physical instrument. The amount of minute motor
control
>
>> honed over decades, synapses working in perfect harmony with
>> appendages, the mind performing astronomical calculations on the fly
>> in order to make horse hair dragging over cat gut sound beautiful?
>> It's one of the greatest heights to which a human can aspire. I'm
>> sorry, but it doesn't take a tenth the skill to twiddle knobs (even
if
>
>> you built the box and wrote the software) that it does to master a
>> "dead-ended physical instrument". kp
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> ha, in my first real band I often would get into this argument with
>> our ham fisted guitar player, he likened my magnus air organ to
>> "pushing buttons"
>>
>> This is my first post here, I'm Frank D'Urso of Roman the Edge from
>> Boston.  Interesting discussions, I like it here.
>>
>> Frank "RtE" D'Urso
>>
>>
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>
>
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