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Knowing your gear vs learning new gear
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georgeinar
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PostPosted: Wed May 21, 2008 11:32 pm    Post subject: Knowing your gear vs learning new gear Reply with quote

I know this is not an OSAM topic specifically, but I've been thinking a lot about how much easier it is for me to produce music now that I have some of my techniques and equipment perfected. I've been wishing I had an M3, but then I think of how much fun it is to compose and produce music with only a small learning curve each time. My challenge right now is how to compose beyond what I've already accomplished and try new tricks with what I have. If I upgrade to an M3, there goes the learning curve again. Although I may get one eventually anyway, but I remind myself that I am still the same musician singer/songwriter no matter what gear I have and that there are no easy 'outs' when it comes to developing well-written creative music.

I guess I just realized recently that I was editing tracks, correcting mistakes, inserting last minute loops, remastering in soundforge and it's all second nature now, where I used to be so nervous about what I should do, and I would spend literally hours attempting to do something, and then have it not work, or I would lose it because I forgot an easy step. So I may live out this OSAM at least before I look into the M3. Fact is, I do have the money if I really want it, but I'm not sure if it will really make my music that much better than what I'm doing on my TS.
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JonSolo
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 1:32 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

There are very few creative blocks as strong as having to learn a new piece of software or hardware (not necessarily an instrument). The frustration of KNOWing what it is capable of in capable hands verses it being new in your hands can stop the most well thought out song dead in it's tracks.

On the other hand the ability to expand even in a small way your arsenal of options and ultimately having new tools which can increase the chance of what you hear in your head making it to "tape" is invaluable. If I had taken back every instrument, hardware, or piece of software at the moment of having buyers remorse, I would likely only own the Korg Trinity and that by virtue of the fact that I had owned many Korgs previously...so I might really have nothing.

Quote:
but I'm not sure if it will really make my music that much better than what I'm doing on my TS


I understand completely. But if I know you the way I think I do, it hasn't ever been likely that you made a purchase because it could make your music better...rather you made the purchase because it helped get your ideas from your head to something someone else could hear. If any tool makes that job easier or if it makes it possible (wherein before it was not) to complete your song or project then it was worth it's weight and more to have it. Additionally you now have an education about a product and it's methodology that you did not before. What that means is gradually faster productions...eventually, as you mentioned, thoughtless productions where you can focus on what is most important: your music.

However, the fine line again goes back to my initial statement...if you are robbed of that focus, then that tool becomes a hindrance.

Now for the monkey wrench: sometimes it is necessary to allow a tool to rob you of that focus. This would be important if in fact the tool DID make your music better. This is partially why I LOVE reading everyone's methods on this forum as it eases/shortens my learning experience so that once I understand a product I can get back to making music....which is what I really need to do right now after typing the Gettysburg address here. Laughing

Jon
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Diego
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 8:26 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Well, first of all, that's a very interesting debate, and intrigues me a lot as I'm involved into a deep change in my gear.
I red a lot of good points from George and Jon, I just want to focus on the point that most of the time, for me, the problem that stops the creativity is not the usage of my gear, but the time I spend to find or create WHAT I have in my mind.

Quote:
I am still the same musician singer/songwriter no matter what gear I have and that there are no easy 'outs' when it comes to developing well-written creative music.


I don't agree completly with you on that...
I agree that there are no easy outs, but you're not the same singer if you have at your disposal a great mic instead of a crappy dynamic mic (of course, your voice is your voice, but you would not sound the same...), and you're not the same songwriter if you have a poor sond canvas instead of a rolling MOSS (of course, written notes are the same, it's "just" a matter of how they sound).


Having that saied, I'm so convinced that if everyone could be able to use his own gear in deep details, I'm sure we could hear much better music, more creative, more innovative...Take the Trinity: IMHO it's still an undiscovered land, it has still a lot to give.
I'm not proud of that, but I'm one of those millions preset-guys, one the million guy who never read the manual and try, and if I fail, I ask before try and retry Embarassed
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JonSolo
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 1:00 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Diego,

At first I was ready to sluff off part of your comment and tell you that all you were talking about was the quality of the production verses the quality of the music. And they are TWO DIFFERENT entities.

But then you made a comment about the Trinity which really solidified your point...correct me if I am wrong...but are you trying to say "maybe our knowledge of the hardware limits our creativity".

What I read from you and I think is intriguing: we create around what we know. Learning new gear or understanding our current gear better expands our creativity.

If that is your point, and it seems to be, then that is indeed a caveat to the theory I presented regarding the quality of our music.

Of course to throw one back...Pet Sounds. Brian has been unable to touch it since he released it. Nothing compares and technology has not made him better.

More later,

Jon
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Diego
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 1:36 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Hi Jon!

Your're right, sorry I was walking "on the red line" of misunderstanding Embarassed
Quality of our productions affects the judgment people give about quality of our music, but I agree they are absolutely two different things.

You totally got me: I think we are limited by the knowledge of our hardware and our instruments.
I give you an example: talking about me, I love forniture design; my girlfriend is a designer, and I would love to have her abilities in painting...because I've got tons of great ideas in my mind, which can't become true because of my poor ability with a pencil between my hands...so I just explain her what I mean and she paint it down for me, and I discover the idea was really good.
So, taking this example into music, I'm sure that lot of us have got a huge creativity and lot of ideas, but can't make them true because they can't create that particular sound, because don't know their instruments in details, or because their instruments can't do that.



regards
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Daz
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 7:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I totally agree ... knowing your gear and tools, and being fluent with them is key to getting music made and recorded. Getting tangled in a tech problem during a creative session, just kills the vibe.

Although, I will say that if you bought an M3 after using the Triton for so long, you are going to have a very shallow learning curve indeed. The M3 works a lot like the Triton and you'd be at home immediately. When I bought the Oasys, after years of Triton Classic usage, I just turned her on and I found it was the Triton in colour. It was good to know that all the time I had invested in learning it over the years was not wasted, and I had a real head start. I've walked into stores and been able to do anything I wanted on the M3. The only major difference was the addition of KARMA over the Tritons. Conversely I've been up to a G6 and had to really think about it.

This being said I don't think that working with a limited set of gear is the only answer to getting fluent with this stuff. I spoil myself with toys (why not, I've worked hard to be able to do so) and what I have found is that the more things you play with the more you understand what is common between them all and you learn to very quickly how to just operate anything that you put your hands on. It's like if you learned French and German at school, learning another language having seen how 3 of them work is much easier. When I bought my V-Synth GT, I hadn't used anything Roland since I'd used the Alpha Juno, but it just made immediate sense to me, because it is just a synth and they really all do just work in the same way pretty much.

I am just that way I guess, that's how my brain is wired. My challenges are different. Writing the second verse for this song I am working on, now that was a challenge. I sat there playing the verse chords and all that kept coming to mind were the words I had already written for the first verse ! Ack ! Finally I broke through it, but only by changing the chords/timing slightly and leading myself somewhere different. As I have said before the more I do this lyrical malarkey the more respect I have for you folks that pull it off so well. It's much harder than it looks, and it's definitely tougher than operating synths Wink

Daz.
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JonSolo
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 8:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

One other small thought. Even if we have not exhausted the abilities of our tools maybe we have as far as WE are concerned. In other words, there is nothing more we PERSONALLY could get from them. Taking on a new tool would expand that, and maybe open a door on our older tool enabling a newer level of creativity.

But I do believe this is not always the case. Like my Brian Wilson example...he broke new ground with his sound combinations. But with modern technology, his albums (although still better than many) are run of the mill reruns of past rejected songs. And that may be a bi-product of WHO he is and what sort of person he is. However, I do think that technology can stifle us especially if it does not aid the direction our creativity was already going in.

This would support Daz's comment on writing lyrics. There IS a point where all the tools in the world will not help our song writing. OH, and that comment is NOT directed at you DAZ!!! Wink

Jon
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Daz
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PostPosted: Thu May 22, 2008 8:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

JonSolo wrote:

This would support Daz's comment on writing lyrics. There IS a point where all the tools in the world will not help our song writing. OH, and that comment is NOT directed at you DAZ!!! Wink


Smile

So true though ... the really tricksy part has nothing to do with the tools and everything to do with us. Working with my friend John last year brought me far more musical enlightenment than anything I've bought that makes a noise.

Daz.
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JonSolo
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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 3:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Meanwhile, George sits in silence reading all of this while contemplating new gear! Laughing Laughing Laughing

Jon
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Dee
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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 4:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

JonSolo wrote:
Meanwhile, George sits in silence reading all of this while contemplating new gear! Laughing Laughing Laughing

Jon


AND HOW DO YOU THINK I FEEL Question

Laughing Laughing

Crying or Very sad Crying or Very sad

Dee
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georgeinar
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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 10:40 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Jonsolo you must be psychic: (Reads in silence while contemplating). Trouble for me is I have this mental block when it comes to connecting midi between instruments and computers and I get short-circuited in the brain membrane. So, while it would behoove me best at this point to go all out and learn to use that Tracktion that I downloaded (trial version), it is so tempting to just picture, what if my Triton just had more sounds on it and a few more bells and whistles. But I could probably do better with much less money to figure out how to send midi data from my TS to my computer and use some virtual synths in there for some new sounds and just add them to my fairly decent pallette of TS sounds. But I don't even know how to send midi to my computer. I just have a decent recent Vista pc with the standard stuff, nothing musical has been added, ie, i have just whatever sound card came with it and the usual inputs and outputs, like usb plugs, though i guess there's a line in somewhere. So maybe I just need to learn what I already own. I just wish I knew someone who lived nearby that was a studio expert that could 'hands-on' get me over the initial hurdles. That's why Dee's situation gives me the cold sweats. But I know she's on the right traack and will come up with some amazing pieces once she's got things going.
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Lorenzo
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PostPosted: Fri May 23, 2008 3:21 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think that this matter is subjective but I'm for the "know your instruments" statement. Anyway I started with triton and mastered it (only for my needs: ie I never used the rppr function so maybe I should spend a little on it to create an rppr and use it). Then every time I bought some new equipement I used to dig in it a lot to learn as much as possible and I notice that with the latest hardware synth I bought I didn't have to study a lot before to learn all the functions cos many of them are shared between all the synths... so I think that learning the first and the second instruments is a really difficult task, then every time becomes more easy to learn and dig into the OS and features.... this didn't help me with my terrible GAS though Rolling Eyes
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georgeinar
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PostPosted: Sat May 24, 2008 3:09 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I guess to reply to Daz's challenge with his second verse of lyrics, that is precisely what I meant by 'being the same singer/songwriter.' After all I could get the m3 and still hit a brick wall of uninspired lyrics or musical direction. As amazing as it is to watch the demo videos and hear the wide range of abilities these synths have, in the end, how would I as a performer and composer use these sounds? Much of the capabilities are not even the sort of thing I could or would want to produce, ie I don't do acoustic stuff ordinarily, and I never perform live, so the quick access stuff that you need on stage to hit a switch and up come all the settings, really doesn't help me when I'm sequencing phrase by phrase some difficult track. At times I wish there were a class here in Chi town where I could sit with a teacher and learn and ask questions and practice hands-on with a pro. I have never even spent more than a few minutes in anyone's midi studio or had anything shown to me up close as to how they create music using multiple gears. The most I did in the past was to record analogue synth and guitar and vocal into a fostex 4 track cassette. That was my thing for quite some time. Then after years of not playing at all I decided on a TS and took the plunge. I was really lost, but feel I've mastered at least the sequencing and some of the editing functions as well as learned what insert effects do and when to use them. Add to all this that I've basically never even studied music period other than a couple years of piano as a child, the rest I just filled in the blanks by ear and made it up as I went. To do it that way has distinct limitations, but does produce a certain unique focus in style and taste I suppose.

ps. not to change the subject, but I'm listening to a lot of David Bowie right now where he was hanging out with Brian Eno and I'm waxing experimental as a result.
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DrWho
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PostPosted: Tue May 27, 2008 2:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Very interesting thread ..... I can C both sides ..

On one side - know your tools - produce from within - this is the bass for me. I can play any bass with any amp combo anywhere and it still sounds like me - and it is good.

On the other side - I always feel severely limited with the synths. They are so complicated (especially compared to the bass) that I can never produce what I hear in my head. My familiarity with the synths vocabulary and editing capabilities slow me down so much that it kills the vibe as Daz said.

So how is it that I bought an M3? It is because of Karma. I added it to the TS, and it opened up inspiration, and the ability to record on the fly. Yes - it has its limitations, but it does throw in the ability to spur creativity.

So George - I don't know if you'll really like Karma. I think you will from the spectrum of sounds it produces - but I am not sure from the organizational standpoint. Your tunes are very deliberate - while mine seem to lack that. I think this is largely because I use Karma and you don't. It's not that I don't want to be more formulated, I just don't have the time / patience - so I use Karma.

Anyways - you can use an M3 like you do now w/your TS - same process. The learning curve will be for tweaking Karma. In either case- you don't need to send midi to your PC (which btw - is a no brainer). But if you are really good w/the TS sequencer, then learning a PC based solution is probably more an exercise than a need based on the quality of your tunes to date. But hey - maybe it will add another facet (or more) for you - I dunno.

In either case - if your stuck w/lyrics - Karma probably will not help!

Cheers,

={> Art
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georgeinar
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PostPosted: Thu May 29, 2008 11:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Ok, a dumb question. Since as I think I've read, the M3 doesn't record audio per se, only sampling. So since I would still have my TS how would I best sync the TS and the M3 so i could use the 2 audio tracks on the ts and still sequence on the M3? I know there are many ways to do this, but what would make the most sense. I have a cheap mixer but they wouldn't really be in sync that way. I know I can record directly to my pc (though I've never tried this) once I get the tracks loaded there I could record to the pc, but I think I'd rather use the TS- also, the TS does have some awesome sounds and effects that I would continue to use. Can the two trigger eachother to begin? I know on the TS when you use the audio tracks there's quite a hesitation before the sequencer actually kicks in and the recording begins. That was a problem for me a while back when trying to sync tracks in audacity.
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