Technology and the creative process

[Kayemef]

Hi all

There's potentially a very interesting thread that has spurred from a french topic - I think its worth starting off fresh...

Share your opinions !!

The first is from Kevin Nolan, the other is from me.

While I visit Paris at least twice a year (I'm a member of Forum IRCAM) ans absolutely adore Paris, I do not speak a word of French - hence I'm not sure I can fully interpret the original message here.

Also - I'm responding to this post while drunk. I find that on the (rare) occasions that I'm drunk that music takes on a peculiar 'clarity' or inhibition that's not quite present when sober. Nevertheless, even though I have walked through the door 10 minutes ago and walked straight into the room where my OASYS is and looked at it as if it's a cute kitten, declaring my drunken undying adoration for it and vowing to use it to the best of my ability in some upcoming musical projects; I still think I have to disagree with the original post! (it takes a long time to say something simple when your Irish and drunk!!)

I came into music through Jean Michel Jarre and Vangelis and absolutely adore both; but more recently I have expanded into orchestral composition. In this, I have been, and continue to be, absolutely stunned into utter humility at the totally human, non electronic yet shockingly sophisticated compositions and performances on piano and orchestra that challenge he very best of electronic compositions rendered with computer precision timing. What come to mind here are the following:

- 3rd suite from Daphnis and Chloe by Ravel
- The Snow is Dancing by Debussy
- In fact any Debussy piano piece
- 2nd movement form La Mer by Debussy (triplet string section late in the movement)
- Allegro Marcato from Prokofiev's 5th Symphony
- Prokofiev'e late Piano Sonata's

All of these were conceive of course before the age of electronics, but I argue that there is not an electronic piece or device that could come close to competing with them in terms of dynamic and timing precision alone - or indeed in terms of any means of 'measuring/evaluating' music.

I wish I could say that OASYS, especially though Karma, adds significantly to the world 'body' of innovstion in music; but I also argue here that a defining work that uses Karma in a way that challenges the great masterpieces in classical (ort jazz) of that even produces a 'sound' of rare significance is yet to be created - even though I believe that within the bowls of OSYS/Karma that possibility truly exists.

I don't know Jordan Rudes's music at all - I can only infer from the accolades on this forum and from YouTube that he's a special talent; but he has done nothing yet on OASYS that challenges those masterpieces mentioned above - all he has done to date from what I can see is emulate an entire progressive rock group on his own. He in particular has the talent to use OASYS in a revolutionary way that strives towards the great classical and jazz masterpieces, but it has not happened to date.

So - while I adore OASYS and think it is genuinely a formidable and historic instrument, I do not believe that any music composed on it to date has either challenged or extended the capabilities of the Piano under the hands of Debussy and Prokofiev or anything like tapped into the monstrous capabilities under it's hood; but I do believe that someone out there as the ability to do so, eventually. Perhaps that young chap that Stephen Kay met at NAMM?

I know I'll regret this post tomorrow when sober, but I trust my by now 'nearly' old friends and colleagues here not to kick me off the forum for rambling on. But to make my point succinctly - I believe OASYS has capabilities beyond comprehension, but the best works on the old piano put the OASYS currently t shame - for the moment.

Cheers,
Kevin.

And my reply

I find your lack of faith disturbing admiral... (lol to the Star Wars geeks)

No seriously, I totally agree.

Synths and computer assisted workstations are still in their infancy. We had to wait many many years to have a decent treatise on orchestration (by french composer Hector Berlioz - yeah homeboy, represent). I think its going to take a lot of time for some genius out there to come up with an amazing way to do music using all the available tools and equipment that we have. Cause let us not forget that all those fancy gadgets are noting more than tools, all those combis and preset Karma modules aren't there to be used "as is" (IMHO) - their main goal is to show us what can be attained with Karma. I'd be totally pissed if I ever buy a CD and end up saying : " Hey I know this Combi!".

Anyway, the new Karma-PC platform might open up a lot of possibilities, I'm seriously thinking of buying one.

If there is music to be made with our new gadgets, it wont be like the music of Debussy, Wagner, Beethoven, Bach or Rameau... I think that with our new synths its important to have a contemporary view on music and instead of trying to imitate what has already been done by our grandfathers, we should concentrate on what is possible with our new technology and take advantage of it. I'm not a "modernist", I think all of this can be done without breaking away from our musical heritage and tradition...

Take simple modifications on the sound spectrum using low pass filter and cut off frequency... That's never-ever-ever been possible before in the history of music. The only thing that comes close to it is the jew's harp (using mouth cavity as a wah-wah). Guitars players have been using the wah-wah pedal for quite a while now, now what are we (keyboardists) waiting for ??

Anyway, what i'm trying to say is : instead of trying to make something as good as Prokofiev's last sonatas, we should just try to do the best that is humanly possible with the tools at hand. That way the music we make will be truly contemporary, and in a certain way will "make sense" in the big and shadowy history of music and culture...

It's an interesting debate, I had a teacher last year who wrote a very nice article on virtuosity and using new technology. Check it out - the professor is french, but he wrote it in english. It's called "Computers, Slavery and making art" here's the URL

http://jeanpiche.com/text.htm

PS : I think Beethoven would've liked to have a Polysix when he started off composing : listen to the last movement of the first piano sonata (left hand)

[Mike Conway]

I'd be totally pissed if I ever buy a CD and end up saying : " Hey I know this Combi!".

LOL!!

[master logic]

I'd be totally pissed if I ever buy a CD and end up saying : " Hey I know this Combi!".

LOL!!

Happened to me when i bought that new 3CD Blade Runner Soundtrack. It really puts me off musicians when i hear them lazily using presets on commercially released music.

[Kevin Nolan]

Sober now!

- Oh God - did I write that?




But to respond to your point - I agree with you. While I do think that there is real merit in exploring 'conventional' big works combining synthesizers/computers and acoustics a la Vangelis's 'Mask' but applying more traditional classical structural approaches (and I don't include orchestral mockups and film scores in this) - and it's something I'm particularly interested in - I wasn't actually quite proposing that. I was replying to the original post suggesting that OASYS went beyond the piano in some ways (I think). I think, however, apart from my bias of several big works by Vangelis in particular, the works of the great classical, avant-garde and jazz masters probably represent the very top of 'art music' and most revolutionary musical ideas; and virtually all of those involve a very acoustic basis. I know this is a broad, sweeping statement and a point of subjectivity. But OASYS represents some sort of pinnacle in electronic musical instrumentation, and with the 'domain' that is Karma, surely can potentially offer huge new possibilities. I also agree that KO software offers real possibilities here - especially if time is spent in 'rolling your own GEs' particular to particular pieces.

I personally think that a lot of musician have incredible ideas; but most find it difficult to articulate them/get them down and out so to speak. I'm particularly interested in technologies that shorten the distance between the idea and its implementation - too many electronic instruments are not good in this capacity. Hopefully when the sort of interactive screens seen on the iPhone are available as an interface for current music DAWs and compositional tools that we'll see a revelation and revolution in music. Imagine a composer literally able to touch a screen and enter notes into the likes of Sibelius at lightning speed and then hear it on stunning samples playback - that would enable anyone to try out currently regarded as 'high brow' musical ideas suited for an orchestra with minimal knowledge, at lightning speed and - if a seasoned composer - to try out a huge number of ideas very fast. But of course you can extend the same across the spectrum - imagine manipulating Ableton Live data similarly in realtime. I think then that new ideas, new musical structures and forms and new works of stunning variety and scope will arise because such technology could removes the current often fatal barriers to composing/writing. I include the OASYS in this. I think it is stunning, but I would love to see Korg spend a lot of time on figuring out new and even more intuitive ways of programming Karma, and the likes of MOD-7. I'm not griping here - but too often staggering power is offered under the hood but with difficulty in exploiting it.

Yep - I rabbit on just as much when sober - sorry!

Kevin.

[Daz]

even more intuitive ways of programming Karma, and the likes of MOD-7

I quite the like Karma side of things programming wise, but bringing it into play is a bit of a faff. MOD-7 could do with a hint of the interface used in FM7/8 or the Elektron Monomachine, as it's "easy" interface. The current Tone Adjust implementation doesn't apply well in my opinion. The programming interface in Program mode is great I like that a lot, but it's not accessible.

Comments about "lazily using presets" tickle me, 'cos whilst I don't hold a strong view on that one, I can say that a lot of gear, including the Oasys, is going in that direction, so you better get used to it. Why ? People love presets and presets are becoming less like building blocks and more like complete prefab musical pieces. That's true of a lot of modern gear and the companies are doing it because people want it. I don't personally like it because providing those things seems to be taking precedence over providing the kind of things that Kevin just mentioned; the things that encourage creativity rather than just bypassing it. For example the Motif XS has 4000 arp patterns and no way to program your own drum patterns easily ... the Oasys has hundreds of combis that are not just the basis for pieces, but ARE complete arrangements, whereas the ability to arrange your own work more easily is actually rather worse than the Triton before it and not as friendly as the Motif or other similar pieces. To me the Oasys elements that relate to "doing it yourself" have had less attention than those that do it for you

For me the leading light in this area is Ableton Live. Abelton seem to be really focused on making Live really musical, pleasurable and intuitive to capture your creativity and to be as transparent in the creation process as possible. They are currently advertising using a strap line that focuses on Live's workflow, and that is wholly apt IMO. We need more things like this, not more prefabs. We need a new idea that I would like to call "Art Flow" or similar, rather than "Work Flow" ... there are too many things that make music making "work". In fact some of the applications I use at work are now more user friendly and less right brain than some of the creative applications I've used.

I hope that the popularity of Live and other similar things will send a message to other musictech companies, that people want more creative, musical and expressive tools. I hope that no one will ever again think that music as a list of numbers is evenly remotely acceptable

It might be jumping the gun, but I am impressed by what I am seeing in the Fantom G. From what I can tell, the arp has received zero development attention but the sequencer has received heaps of attention. That's quite a different approach to both Yamaha and Korg.

So, in conclusion, I love tools like Karma, arps, drums loops, program wizards, apple loops, well programmed patch presets ... but please don't give me those in place of improvements to work flow and musicality. Otherwise people will just make music with presets and prefabs, because it's so much more pleasant than doing it yourself.

Not drunk (yet)

Daz.

[Daz]

Another example of the increasing move towards "prefabs" is the soundset for the Radias. For those that don't know it has a Program structure which is more akin to a 4 part Combi. The factory sounds on the Radias (from what I remember, since like many other I wiped them fairly quickly) are almost all little prefab musical scenes. They are highly impressive for sure and demonstrate the capabilities of the instruments well (it's a very powerful little box), but how useful are those when you're making music, your own music ? When the R3 was released and I converted its sounds to the Radias those were quite popular and some people preferred the sounds that were more ready to be used in your own work, and more like the kind of sounds you'd find in a synth, rather than a workstation combi set. Contrast this with the Virus TI, which has no factory multi's whatsoever, but hundreds (thousands?) of programs that you can easily pull up to create your multi/ensemble for the piece you are working on. To me that's the way to go, combined with the ability to edit any of those programs in your multi with ease, or equally easily create a program from scratch or randomize an existing one or use the 3 macro controls to make simple changes to an existing program. It's all stuff you can build from, rather than ready made stuff you have to take apart and try make it fit into what you are doing, which is the current approach that other folks seem to be taking.

Going back to what Kevin said, the Karma Oasys software is well worth checking out if you want Karma to follow your bidding, rather than you following it With the software it's far more of creative tool, far more cooperative with you as a creative partner. Its great to take a phrase or drum pattern from your piece, and then have KO help to create more ideas that are sympathetic to your original idea, just like playing with another musician. Even if you only used the software for just importing your ideas and zinging the GE's it creates straight over to the Oasys to fit into your current piece, you'd get a lot from it. Often creating a GE this way is actually more efficient than combing through all the presets trying to find one that will work with your piece. On a lighter note, the KO software looks so cool it's just inspiring and puts you in that creative zone

Kevin is so right ... it would be great if the focus shifted to creating better ways to say what you want to say, rather than just giving you ready made materials.

Daz.

[danatkorg]

the ability to arrange your own work more easily is actually rather worse than the Triton before it

In what way, specifically? I'm honestly quite interested to hear.

[kenackr]

Even though I'm a relative newcomer to the Oasys and just starting to try to learn Karma, I'd like to second the motion that Daz & Kevin are stating.

I can certainly see incredible things can be done with Karma that one wouldn't ordinarily come up with. Having written a few tunes using it and modifying or adding program sounds to my taste in a way makes it my own. I do have a blast doing it, of course. However .......

Daz/Kevin are right IMO in that I'm following Karma rather than vice versa. I also now believe that the KO software may be very liberating, if it can be easily learned.

The point there for me, is that while I have a very deep technical background, (including both electronics & computer science), I want to be able quickly to make a musical concept come alive rather than fighting with the technology.

More simply put - High learning curve bogged down in hi tech issues = less musical output & high user frustration.

That's my story & I'm stickin' to it.

Ken

[Daz]

the ability to arrange your own work more easily is actually rather worse than the Triton before it

In what way, specifically? I'm honestly quite interested to hear.

I am referring to the Cue List, which is no longer available. Although somewhat maligned because it was not able (quite understandably) to jump through hoops, changing Programs and IFX, it was a useful tool when used within sensible constraints.

From the M3 info on the Korg site :

"The Cue List function that has been a popular feature ever since the now-classic TRITON series lets you create songs in sections, or play back completed songs as a medley."

... and from the Triton Extreme info :

"If you’d like to work on your masterpiece in smaller chunks, you can compose individual songs for the verse, chorus and bridge etc.; the Cue List function allows you to string these individual parts together. Once you have decided on the right order – and you can try a number of versions – simply convert the Cue List into a single song."

As has been discussed, there are other ways to do this that involve using the Copy function and doing some bar math or maybe getting busy using a pen/paper, but the point is a more general philosophical one (not relating only to the Oasys or Korg by any means). I am really curious why Korg didn't provide an "offline" equivalent of the Cue List at least; a dialog that let you specify a bunch of songs with an optional repeat parameter and then copy the whole shebang to a new song (effectively a multi copy). It's a very different thought process to that in my sector, I guess, so maybe my expectations of what developers could/should do is different (or even wrong).

I do understand that the Cue List might have been a pig to implement on the Oasys, and therefore the inclusion of a broken Cue List was not felt desirable. That was a good call. I am not interested in the Cue List per se, but just why this stuff doesn't seem to move forwards in some music technology products and sometimes seems to slip back a little. Maybe the timeframes in this section are so different to what I am accustomed to and that is skewing my expectations.

Of course ... there has been a lot of focus on making things sound great in the synth world, I acknowledge that wholeheartedly.

Daz.

[Daz]

The point there for me, is that while I have a very deep technical background, (including both electronics & computer science), I want to be able quickly to make a musical concept come alive rather than fighting with the technology.

Exactly the same sentiment here. I remember watching a promotional video for one of the Korg recorders that stressed the idea that you were using a dedicated recording device rather than a computer for recording and therefore the technology was more transparent. I think that's what we want from "musical appliances" like workstations or self contained "music production centres". I don't want to be overly techy when I am being artistic, and definitely not digging into some funky maths. With Ableton Live I feel that I am using something which is less "computer" than some of the dedicated music hardware. It's just good abstraction and using paradigms that work with how musicians themselves work. A lot of software design in this sector is still stuck with paradigm of "working like tape", which was good in the day when people were actually moving from tape to the new technology but less so now.

Daz.

[Kevin Nolan]

It is important to emhpasise that usually anything worth doing well requires a lot of work. So the sentiment of wanting to shorten the distance between creative idea and its implimentation is a desirable aspiration by all - no doubt especially by those who designed OASYS and Karma - but does not invalidate the already spectacular instrumenent at our disposal. It may take a long time to learn to t likes of MOD-7 or Karma, but there can be no doubt that even as they stand, these features are incredible.

We have all only seen, for example, the tip of the iceberg of Stephen Kay's efforts in not only providing Karma, but also Karma 2, Karma 2.1 and KO. Into the bargain his video tutorials and text tutorials were specifically defined to address such issues of complexity; and all are absolutely fantastic.

As a personal project to make MOD-7 more accessable and hugely more useful, I'm currently in the process of converting the thousands of available .syx DX7 sound files, each containing 32 DX programs, to .PCG files. This will allow for the hunderds of thosands of programs to be auditioned from their PCH storage archive on disk without needing to load onto the OASYS. Many of these sounds are excellent in themselves, but all act as extremely good 'starting points' to then delve deeper into MOD-7 to bring them up to date or transform them into something else. So I personally see the current massive archive of DX sounds as an excellent means of harnessing MOD7 even without knowing all of its advanced programming features. Doing the .syx to PCG conversion is an absolutely huge job - you have to load each bank onto the OASYS and then save it as a PCG file to disk. It'll take me a year at least (the archive of available DX sounds is truly vast); and, while a .syx file is just 4kb in size, a .PCG saving jst one program bank and nothing else is 776kb in size. So I envisage the entire DX sound archive saved in .PCG format to reach at least 6 GB in total. I believe it is worth it however, as the ability to audition sounds without having to load them is a significant time saver as well as a radical and valuable apporach to oganising and unsing programs in general. I will of course be deligthed to share this .PCG archive when complete - but as said it will be the end of this year at least before its ready.

Kevin.

[Daz]

Oooh ... I had pondered the idea of writing a piece of software to do that very task, but didn't finish the necessary sleuthing to determine how exactly the the DX-7 params mapped across to the MOD-7. Maybe I should revisit that ...

[Kevin Nolan]

Hi Daz -

If you could do that, it would be fantastic. Manually doing it is literally painful - your hand becomes very tired after 40-50 file conversions at a time and you simply have to stop it for the day.

The archive is vast - there are thousands of files each with 32 programs. To have them in PCG format would be one of the most incredible resources ever for the OASYS. Think about it - available for audition would be the countless thousands fo programming hours by thousands of DX7 programmers over a 10 year period or longer. And if availabe in PCG format, all of those sounds would be available for audition in a way never available to the DX synths themselves; and then potentially tweakable by MOD-7 to a new level of sophistication.

If a conversion program were possible, it would be a very welcome utility in my book.

I'll keep converting manually in any case.

Kevin.

[Daz]

I should imagine that is a major undertaking

A while back I did spend some time comparing DX7 programs in SoundDiver against the MOD-7 conversions to see how things were mapped across. A lot of what happens is obvious, but there are some really interesting things that happen. As you can imagine the mapping of the DX7 EG and LFO params is non-trivial. For example the fade parameter of the DX7 LFO is implemented using one of the MOD-7 EG's to modulate the intensity of LFO to pitch or amp. It's very interesting to see how things were mapped across and the conclusion I came to was that it wouldn't be easy to emulate Korg's conversion process myself. Someone put a lot of thought into that conversion process indeed

As a kind of sidebar ... the DX7 parameter set is really simple, just 150 or so parameters are used to represent a single program, most of which are repeated sets per operator. A MOD-7 program, on the other hand, uses more like a 1000 or so parameters to represent a single program ! Thats just the EXi parameters for a single EXi in a Program and not the second EXi, KARMA, IFX/MFX etc. Things have certainly developed a little there The way those parameters are presented has changed considerably and the MOD-7 is fun and pleasant to program, which certainly couldn't be said of the DX7.

Daz.

[ellll]

As the present thread is not a strict adherant to the Oasys, I will add a comment, as a two edged sword in a sense..it cuts either way...

I have had some recently that are appalled at the enormity of Gaspard de la Nuit, for piano, (Maurice Ravel), and the fact it seems to discribe completely, surpassing all music in difficulty, while performed only on piano. On the other hand, you may find more to amaze in some ways in a Two Part Invention of J.S.Bach...

The complexity means little in the worlds greatest themes..in Classical or Popular idioms, the ones that stay with us may be difficult or simple. The instrument will ALWAYS be just the means, never the cause...

John ellll