On 11/02/10 21:05, Q wrote: Ed was playing in York city centre a couple of days ago, and can often be heard here. He's good. ~G.

Emiliano Grilli wrote: I'm listening to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs now, their guitarist uses two Digitech Jammans on tour. And KT Tunstall is also very experienced with using a looper, I think she uses an Akai Headrush E2. Concerning the Dub Fx video, it is really a nice piece of dubbing. Overdubbing. In a studio ;) Where are the streetsounds? Was it recorded directly maybe? It sounds a bit too flawless to me for a street performance. All in all it's a nice showcase of what can be done with some effects and a looper. Personally I prefer what Agata does (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ichirou_Agata), but that's also because I'm a guitarist myself. I'm not going to bother you with Melt Banana vids though :D Best, Jeremy

On 02/12/2010 09:21 AM, sv-e(a)sv-e.dk wrote: I've listened to it a bit more closely (well, for about 30 secs, I think this is horrible) and I think this is a studio recording and they added some background noise afterwards. Also because the background noise doesn't loop, no effects affect the background noise, it makes me wonder how this is recorded. Or they recorded the video and he did some overdubs afterwards. But hopefully for the guy I'm wrong. And even though a lot of comments mention that this guy has talent I oppose to that. This is a good example of craftsmanship, not talent. Jeremy

Il giorno Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:42:04 +0100 sv-e(a)sv-e.dk ha scritto: +1 -- Luigi ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~* Io sono lo sbaglio, il momento di confusione, l'inopportuno Non sono niente. Non sarò mai niente. Non posso volere d'essere niente. A parte questo, ho in me tutti i sogni del mondo. (F. Pessoa)

Jeremy <jeremy(a)autostatic.com> writes: Or, audio might have been recorded directly through the line out of the loopstation. Other videos from that guy show that he's indeed capable of that kind of performance (with background noise ;) Regards -- Emiliano Grilli Linux user #209089 http://www.emillo.net

Esben Stien wrote: Hello Esben, Maybe you could argument that a bit more? Why is my opinion "a load of crap"? Best, Jeremy

Erik de Castro Lopo wrote: Hello Erik, Thanks for your reply, that's a question to which I can reply sensibly. I'm have to take care thought that I'm not mixing things up. Art, talent, craftsmanship, skills... I just don't like what he's doing, that's right. And that's what I used as my standing ground. Not good. But it provoked a good discussion, so it wasn't in vain. Personally for me art is something that spawned from a creative process, that is a display of someone's talent and that has an original approach. That's right, couldn't agree more. Those are all skills, except for the composing and lyrics parts. So it's commercially interesting enough for a big company to endorse him. For me that has got nothing to do with art and talent and to me your conclusion seems wrong. I'd like to point out that even though I don't like what the guy is doing I'm the last one to admit he isn't good at what he's doing. The way he masters his equipment is certainly admirable and yes, he's a good vocalist. But for me this is not so much art as eeeehhhmmm, what's a good example, Barnett Newman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_Newman) maybe. That's the first example that comes up in my mind. Which brings up another aspect of art, at least for me, it provokes certain emotions. Either because it was the intention of the artist or because the artist chose an unconventional way of displaying his talent. And that is something the guy in the video doesn't do. His choice of music and the way he expresses it are very conventional, even so conventional that a big company wants to endorse him. It also makes me doubt the motives of this guy, does he consider he's own work as art or does he want to make a living out of it? Making a living out of it means compromises. Compromises and art don't go together I think. Art should originate from the artist, unhindered by any compromises (when thinking about this Lady GaGa pops up in my mind, she is the contrary to what I just said and a good subject on discussing the statement I just made about compromises). Best, Jeremy

On Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:59:40 +0100 luigi curzi <luigi_curzi(a)yahoo.it> wrote: I would regard his work as both highly skilled and artistic. I enjoyed watching and listening to several of the youtube excerpts. As for art not being commercial. I think Straus, Beethoven, Da Vinci, Michelangelo etc. had a rather different opinion. -- Will J Godfrey http://www.musically.me.uk Say you have a poem and I have a tune. Exchange them and we can both have a poem, a tune, and a song.

I don't think that flavor and art talent are comparable, at least not in a unbiased way. This whole debate is a fine example why it's so hard for musicians to take criticism serious. /Sv-e

On 02/12/2010 12:42 PM, sv-e(a)sv-e.dk wrote: Well, you can't really seriously judge a recording after having listened to it for 30 secs, I know. It is just my impression. And I guess my impression is pretty biased too because I don't like this kind of music. I should've better watched the whole video. That video camera must have a damn' good microphone on it then I reckon :) Being able to multitask doesn't equal talent. There are a lot of musicians who master just one or two instruments who have a lot more talent than this guy. As an anology, it reminds me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xtp2TWI1764 The guy is very good at doing his thing but it's no art and you don't need to be talented to do such a thing. Best, Jeremy

On 02/12/2010 01:28 PM, sv-e(a)sv-e.dk wrote: I never said I don't like his lyrics. I also admitted that it's not good to judge something like this video from a biased point of view and having only watched 30 secs of it. And I'd like to leave it there, ok? Best, Jeremy

It's okay :) /sv-e

On 02/12/2010 01:14 PM, Lorenzo wrote: Hello Lorenzo, I'm with you on that. I didn't say talent and craftmanship oppose each other. I wanted to make clear that craftsmanship is something different than talent because it's also a commonplace idea to confuse craftsmanship with talent. Best, Jeremy

Nice topic:-) to me, a talent is a gift, something (an ability?) )that a person has in one's genes. you can develop the talent through work and become a craftsman. You can become a craftsman without a talent Thus, craftsmanship is not a talent, a gift - it's something that we achieve with our will and through effort. you can't develop a talent if you don't possess it. They say: 5% talent, 95% work. Keep on posting:-) Viktor

On 12/02/2010, Paul Davis <paul(a)linuxaudiosystems.com> wrote: What if there really is nothing more to talent than the simple ability *to* do something for 10,000 hours without getting fed up and throwing it into a canal? ...But of course there must be. You have to be able to tell if you are improving. The barge simulation comes in when you get sick of not improving any further. So perhaps "talent" in something is merely a more refined ability to objectively judge the relative quality of one's own efforts towards that something? But not TOO refined - otherwise you get disheartened before you even start. And then you end up becoming a critic, and nobody wants that. ;-)

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 1:47 PM, <fons(a)kokkinizita.net> wrote: I believe that he is wrong, and I'll just play the Eno card: "a good instrument has qualities that the body can learn and the mind cannot" electronic/computer/electro-acoustic/software instruments/controllers: a total failure by this metric, except for one: http://createdigitalmusic.com/index.php?s=intimate+control+randall+jones --p

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 3:55 PM, <fons(a)kokkinizita.net> wrote: almost certainly the same one i just posted :) its not just that randomness is OK. its that (a) a highly quantized (b) low parameter experience is OK. i can't remember who said this, it may have been hans tutschku (who was at the TU Berlin a couple of years before me): the mouthpiece of a trumpet or trombone has more inherent "playability" than almost any electronic interface so far invented. the problem with eno's quote is that he also noted that contemporary music technology "raises the question of defining the artist as someone who exercises judgement rather than skill". i think that it was very refreshing 50-30 years to have the process of musical creation transformed into an editing process (in the most general sense) rather than a matter of virtuosic performance. but these days, the notion of an endless stream of 16-30 somethings picking presets plus FX settings from one of a huge array of sound generators has become rather tiresome. DubFX does seem awfully good though, and he's not a bad singer either :) --p

--- I agree totally with this. I believe that the seed of a talent lies in in the attraction of some skill/art/technique by someone. As a music teacher, I see that for some children singing is just as natural as talking, they easily remember a song after they heard it only once, other seem to enjoy the 'performances', and other group of children are not interested at all in music. Then out in the playground, or in their classrooms, I see that some of them are 'born' to be builders, to make constructions, other children are inclined to reading, other just love to help their teachers, other love sports etc. So, one is naturally attracted to what lies within. The more exposure one has to various things in life, the more likely to discover one's real talent. A parent once asked me: It's time for my child to learn an instrument(?!) What instrument shall I choose for him? My gut reaction was: take him to concerts (not videos), expose him to as many live, real instruments as you can, musical styles, situations with music (workshop, party with real instruments, etc). And then, see if a child expresses a wish to learn any instrument at all. On the wider scale, one of the biggest problems in today's world is the 'safety' issue. In most schools today, if you want to take children say, to the zoo, you need to fill endless form of 'safety assessments'. Many things and objects are removed from playgrounds, deemed to un-safe; children can't have their private corners, they need to be seen from us teachers all the time. This kills most forms of spontaneity, which is important in discovering what truly lies in a person. But the biggest danger of all (in discovering what are our natural talents) is the drive of today's global society to measure success, achievement and fulfilment with money and fame. Children take on instruments because they want to be famous. They grow in a world where 'talent for making money' becomes the highest and most valuable asset. (And I will stop right here. Sorry for taking this space and talking of something that might not be the most appropriate on a LAU list. Paul's thought provoked me deeply. ) Viktor Mastoridis

Could be entirely true. There's insights from cognitive neuroscience that suggests expertise involves a change in representation in the expert's field. It could be that you can only learn at a certain rate. It may mean thousands or so hours or it may mean just to live or work in the right environment. I grew up around a machine shop, the family business. My grandfather was supposedly quite the mechanical genius, and Pop's a doctor of aerospace. Naturally, I got used to using the tools and machines, and I worked in the machine shop as a teenager. It sucked... oh, man... it sucked.... but out of college, with no engineering job, I went back to it and worked for two years. I even managed to make an artificial mechanical flower that opens up under thermal stresses. Now, you can see that I got the talent, but you couldn't have expected me to learn a thing about it if I grew up in a different environment. So, there's got to be an element of opportunity that's involved.

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 9:21 PM, Charles Henry <czhenry(a)gmail.com> wrote: as i noted, i think its quite difficult for most people to *discover* where their talents lie. in the industrialized nations, have a society worldwide that puts enormous value on certain types of skills, and makes it much harder to persevere at something that falls outside of this judgement. as was noted by someone else in the thread, i think its possible that a lot of "talent" involves just the right level of self-criticism. i am not aware of many things that i am not very good at, mostly because i had the talent/curse of observing quite early on that i just didn't think i would ever be good at certain things (e.g. playing tabla) and just dropped them. its quite easy to construct a personal history of immense success if you are good at rapidly navigating away from things that you don't have much (obvious) chance of excelling in.

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 09:42:04AM -0500, Paul Davis wrote: That number matches my experience exactly. I've changed careers several times now (by age 43), and indeed it generally takes me about 5 years to obtain competence at anything. -ken

On Friday, February 12, 2010, Viktor Mastoridis wrote: I would like to know what is the ideal composition, for the people in this list, in percentages of talent and craftsmanship. And here is another interesting formula: how much of sound engineer and musician should be in your blood stream? Do you agree that most popular programs here on LAU are better suited for sound engineers than for musicians? Regards, Pedro

On Fri, 12 Feb 2010 22:45:48 +0100 fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote: wow Fons, this was a beautiful etimological dissertation. Didn't think I could thind such literate discussions on a linux audio list :) Renato

Lorenzo wrote: Sorry, J. S. Bach was both. His sons were only good craftsmen angry because they couldn't make music as great as their dad's. ;-) -- David gnome(a)hawaii.rr.com authenticity, honesty, community

On 02/12/2010 10:39 AM, Arve Barsnes wrote: Yeah, amazing live band. A singer that barks like a dog, a bass player with a bass that is almost bigger than herself but who produces a massive sound and then Agata, maniacally operating his stompboxes as if he's tap dancing. Just amazing.

Am Freitag, den 12.02.2010, 18:08 +0100 schrieb Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas: Cool. I like it. hermann

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:08 AM, Pedro Lopez-Cabanillas <pedro.lopez.cabanillas(a)gmail.com> wrote: he's talented, no doubt. I dig what he's doing. that said, I'm coming away from these videos with the feeling of being really impressed with his use of effects as an instrument. very cool, especially the voice/synth stuff. -- Josh Lawrence http://www.hardbop200.com

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 01:26:11AM +0100, luigi curzi wrote: Very nice! My only complaint is that the lyrics appear to be about "making it". In general, songs by struggling musicians about being struggling musicians, leave me flat. Ambition is great, but I don't find it an appealing or engaging topic for lyrics. -ken

On Sunday 14 Feb 2010 00:32:14 Jon H wrote: Thanks Jon, I really liked this performance too. For my taste at least he really is very good. The discussion regarding talent/skill is interesting. I would not classify this guy as a musician but a performer. His talent is in pulling different sounds together to sound so full and rich. His skill is in manipulating his technology to provide this texture. He is most definitely an artist. Street performance, taking music back to its roots. Immediate, honest, direct. :) nepal.