[microsound] an interesting monolake answer

[Graham Miller <grahammiller@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

any thoughts on this? agree? disagree?

when i used to work in cubase VST one of the great things about it  
was the fact you could turn off the display within cubase and just  
listen to the music with a black screen.  i am always surprised why  
this feature doesn't appear in more audio software. i was hoping they  
would add this ability to ableton live 6. now after reading this  
comment by henke i'm really surprised they didn't!



g.



from: http://www.vagueterrain.net/content/archives/journal05/ 
monolake02.html

VT:  I’m interested in the interaction between the visual interface  
(say Atlantic Waves or Ableton Live) and musical creation. How do you  
think the evolution of sound creation tools from aural to visual has  
changed our relationship to sound? For example, sound editing has  
shifted from a primary reliance on our ears (i.e. tape splicing)  
towards visual representations of sound (i.e. waveform editors). How  
do you think this changes our perception of sound?

RH:  Visual representation of sound is evil. A waveform editor is an  
enormous help when editing sound but at the same time it has the  
potential to keep the composer effectively from listening. The  
visualization by nature stresses the abstract formal quality of a  
work but makes no statement about its content. The result is obvious,  
a lot of music these days works correctly according to a formal  
scheme but lacks beauty within. It takes quite some courage to work  
against the visual scheme, because oddly structured parts look so  
wrong. The timeline always tells us how long a piece is in bars or  
seconds but it knows nothing about our perception of time. We might  
think a part is too long because it looks long on screen but in fact  
it is interesting enough to be much longer and we would not shorten  
it if we could not see it but just listened. I often turn off the  
screen or close my eyes when listening to my edits because the visual  
representation is a false friend.