[LAU] Bitwig: what we can learn from it

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 11:33:02AM +0100, Gordon JC Pearce wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 12:23:15PM +0200, Robin Gareus wrote:
>
> > only for some kind of music.
> > 
> > Bitwig is just a toy compared to for example Csound and Supercollider.
> > 
> 
> But Csound and Supercollider are not suitable for
> making music. They're fine if you're some kind of
> autistic savant computer genius, but utterly fucking
> useless if you're a musician.

Define musician. 

The people who are able to use Csound and Supercollider
can do it because they have invested time and effort in
learning to do it. As has anyone who can play whatever
instrument in a passable way (doesn't matter if it is
a violin or a bass guitar). As has a composer who can
arrange a song and write a score for it without needing
a battery of synths to know how it will sound, or to
check if his harmony is right.

And no matter how you turn it, learning to do something 
difficult has beneficial side effects, apart from the
primary result.

Your 'musician' seems to be one for whom everything 
has to be prepared before and easy, so the only thing
that remains to be done is some clicking on a screen.
And then think him/herself a musician just as the
kids wasting their time with shoot-and-kill games 
imagine they are soldiers.

Your 'musician' is in fact just cannon fodder for
an industry that is about making fast money and little
else. And he wouldn't even be able to exist without
the efforts of those who can rightly call themselves
musicians and be proud of it.


Ciao,

-- 
FA

A world of exhaustive, reliable metadata would be an utopia.
It's also a pipe-dream, founded on self-delusion, nerd hubris
and hysterically inflated market opportunities. (Cory Doctorow)