[LAU] Chris McCormick

[Ken Restivo]

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On Thu, Aug 23, 2007 at 12:05:33AM -1000, david wrote:
> Ken Restivo wrote:
> 
> >I continue to be amazed by the lengths that we-all electronic
> >musicians go thorugh, in terms of painstaking sequencing and editing,
> >or long hours of programming and algorithm tweaking, in order to
> >approximate the things that a well-rehearsed band does when
> >performing in real time.
> 
> That's because digital control interfaces aren't as rich as analog 
> control interfaces. Compare the expressiveness of a good violinist 
> playing a real violin vs a synthesized violin played through a MIDI 
> keyboard.
> 

I was thinking in regard to the number of variations over time, not the degree of expressiveness of each variation.

For example, even a band consisting wholly of keyboard players, a MIDI EWI player, and a drummer playing trigger pads (yes, I have been in one), will nonetheless introduce the kind of random variation and dynamics that would otherwise require many hours of painstaking editing and/or codiing to emulate in a sequencer.

Human players, regardless of how expressive or inexpressive their instrument, periodically get bored and/or make mistakes, thus introducing enough intentional or unintentioal variation to keep the music from getting too monotonous.

A sequencer or looper will just play the same thing over and over again, exactly the same, if you let it. It takes a lot of work to prevent it from doing that. 

I'm always impressed by electronic music like Chris's (and Thorsten's-- I love "The Sample") which offers as much "information content" (using Shannon's definition) as that produced by a group of live musicians interacting with each other in real-time. That's why I was so eager to find out how he did it. 


- -ken
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