 The Clarinet BBoard
|
Author: davetrow
Date: 2011-03-05 21:02
...and then they came for the clarinet.
Dave Trowbridge
Boulder Creek, CA
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: PrincessJ
Date: 2011-03-05 21:45
I wouldn't worry about it. It's nothing but another one of those "gee whiz" doodads... everyone plays with them like shiny new toys for a couple years and then they get bored and go buy a real sax.
-Jenn
Circa 1940s Zebra Pan Am
1972 Noblet Paris 27
Leblanc Bliss 210
1928 Selmer Full Boehm in A
Amateur tech, amateur clarinetist, looking to learn!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Clarimeister
Date: 2011-03-05 22:13
I agree with Jenn. Just another toy. To my ears, I didn't like the way the notes transitioned from one to another. It sounded too mechanical. A great human player can make it sound so much more smoother. It sounded too computerized, and that's exactly what it was.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2011-03-06 00:10
Clarimeister wrote:
> A great human player can make it sound so much more smoother.
And a not so grea one? There'll be a time when such renditions are considered "good enough"....
--
Ben
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Clarimeister
Date: 2011-03-06 00:21
^Well, I agree with you. Just goes to add to the fact that a human player is much better sounding than computerized (though impressive) playing. You can never replace the human characteristics of music. Never.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: rgames
Date: 2011-03-06 02:46
"Well, I agree with you. Just goes to add to the fact that a human player is much better sounding than computerized (though impressive) playing. You can never replace the human characteristics of music. Never."
Which is not to say that computers can't be used to make great music. It's impossible to deny that virtual instruments allow for new types of expression, so all they do is add more tools in the toolset. They're not inherently good nor bad, just an option.
Remember: Brahms bemoaned the fancy new valve horn. Valves on a horn? How dare technology encroach on my music! And, of course, the clarinet also has evolved over the years as technologies have improved.
By the way, the Samplemodeling technology is not exactly state-of-the-art. Go check out the Vienna Symphonic Library and listen to some of the demos of their virtual clarinets and other WW - many sound much more realistic than the Samplemodeling demo. They've been around for 10+ years.
And we've been replaced already - almost every orchestral score for movies that are not major Hollywood films (which is a lot) uses virtual musicians. It's almost 100% on TV.
rgames
____________________________
Richard G. Ames
Composer - Arranger - Producer
www.rgamesmusic.com
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: skygardener
Date: 2011-03-06 03:06
Someone posted a link to a Bass Clarinet sample a few years ago that was very realistic.
This is not a very good sampling, especialy on the higher notes which sound "munchkin-ized".
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Clarimeister
Date: 2011-03-06 03:13
"Which is not to say that computers can't be used to make great music. It's impossible to deny that virtual instruments allow for new types of expression, so all they do is add more tools in the toolset. They're not inherently good nor bad, just an option.
Remember: Brahms bemoaned the fancy new valve horn. Valves on a horn? How dare technology encroach on my music! And, of course, the clarinet also has evolved over the years as technologies have improved.
By the way, the Samplemodeling technology is not exactly state-of-the-art. Go check out the Vienna Symphonic Library and listen to some of the demos of their virtual clarinets and other WW - many sound much more realistic than the Samplemodeling demo. They've been around for 10+ years.
And we've been replaced already - almost every orchestral score for movies that are not major Hollywood films (which is a lot) uses virtual musicians. It's almost 100% on TV."
I agree and disagree with you. While some computers can make great music, it still will never sound the same as if you had real live musicians playing. At least, not to my ears. There is a certain quality of sound and expression you absolutely cannot get from computers. You just can't. Also, modifications to an instrument is one thing, but a computer is another. A computer is not a wind instrument, I don't care what anyone says. Even with the best technology. An instrument will always be an instrument even with mods that some people, even great composers will dislike, but computers are computers and will never be a wind instrument.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tony M
Date: 2011-03-06 03:33
This might be another perspective to look at it from. In the 1950s rock and roll came along and offered the world a type of music that almost anyone could get into because no one in the band had to play a melody instrument. This is, from one perspective, just an extension of that. Now you don't even have to play different instruments. So from a keyboard you can drive a rhythm section and a horn section and that is a dance band. A keyboard will do it. You don't even have to tell the guitar player or the drummer to turn it down or listen to the bass player's dumb jokes.
On a serious note (no pun intended) I fooled around with keyboard driven horn sounds (but not as good as these) and found that, for me, a pad controller (which triggers the sounds by striking a pad rather than playing a key) allowed for more lifelike attack on the horn notes. I assume this software would work with any midi controller you could connect.
Don't be worried. I'm guessing now but the development of electronic instruments probably started around the same time that people decided that they wanted to play on original instruments. We haven't really suffered from either movement, have we?
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: davetrow
Date: 2011-03-06 03:49
In his recent book "You Are Not a Gadget," Jaron Lanier has interesting (and rather critical) things to say about the musical disaster that is MIDI, which conceives of music from a keyboard player's POV ("key up" and "key down" being an example of this), so that it cannot describe what he calls "the curvy, transient expressions a singer or a saxophone player can produce." He goes on to say that "It could only describe the tile mosaic world of the keyboardist, not the watercolor world of the violin"
The result?
"Before MIDI, a musical note was a bottomless idea that transcended absolute definition...After MIDI, a musical note was no longer just an idea, but a rigid, mandatory structure that you couldn't avoid in the aspects of life that had gone digital..."
In other words, digitally, we're locked into a standard that cannot represent the full range of musical expression. Maybe Tony's idea about a pad controller represents a hint of the way out of this dilemma, but for now, the software we're talking about illustrates perfectly what Lanier was talking about.
Dave Trowbridge
Boulder Creek, CA
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tom Puwalski
Date: 2011-03-06 12:52
I use sample modeling instruments on my wx5 and 4000s and I tell you with wind controller it's an amazing and expressive combination I use these every day on my commercial gigs. Whomever says midi isn't expressive doesn't know how to use it. Listen to this demo and tell this isn't viable.
http://www.wallanderinstruments.com/music/WA%20Mozart%20-%20WIVI%20-%20Gran%20Partita.mp3
Tom Puwalski, Backun CLARINET artist and windsyth performer.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: clarnibass
Date: 2011-03-06 13:08
>> While some computers can make great music, it still will never sound the same as if you had real live musicians playing. <<
A lot of times it doesn't need to be compared with it.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2011-03-06 13:23
>>By the way, the Samplemodeling technology is not exactly state-of-the-art. Go check out the Vienna Symphonic Library and listen to some of the demos of their virtual clarinets and other WW - many sound much more realistic than the Samplemodeling demo. They've been around for 10+ years.
>>
True. That gizmo linked to the first post here still may dwell on electronic dreams of world domination, but it was developed for a Windows XP computer, and I notice the registration date at the bottom of that description page is 2007-2008. In cyber-reality, it's already senile.
I don't mind adding the electronic stuff to my tool kits. I've been composing with Sibelius software to make my computer pretend it's various instruments for years. If anything, I'm practicing the real instruments more than I used to.
>>And we've been replaced already - almost every orchestral score for movies that are not major Hollywood films (which is a lot) uses virtual musicians. >>
There's some truth to that, but I don't think we need to panic just yet. I write criticism of horror, mystery, film noir and science fiction movies for the small press print magazine "Scarlet" and am now starting to review for another small press print mag, "Van Helsing's Journal." We get a lot of screeners from indie filmmakers. (Screeners are review copies. The editor says most of the micro-budget indies are so bad that reviewing them would waste space; he doesn't even pass them along to the reviewers.) The majority of the indies I've reviewed have had synthetic music tracks. Some of them sound as if good composers wrote them, but the playback is instantly recognizable as simulated and the quality doesn't compare to that of professional musicians of the flesh-dwelling ilk.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: rgames
Date: 2011-03-06 13:44
"There is a certain quality of sound and expression you absolutely cannot get from computers."
And many others that you cannot get from human players. Again, computers are not a replacement; they are an addition.
"digitally, we're locked into a standard that cannot represent the full range of musical expression."
Like what? In fact, MIDI offers expressive capabilities far beyond what is capable on standard instruments. Most often it is those extended techniques that make the line recognizable as MIDI-based.
Of course a MIDI version of a live instrument will never sound like a world-class player on the same live instrument. That's the point: MIDI is put to best use in *expanding* the capabilities of current instruments, not *replacing* them.
The worst thing an artist can do is to close his mind to technologies that expand his expressive ability.
rgames
____________________________
Richard G. Ames
Composer - Arranger - Producer
www.rgamesmusic.com
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2011-03-07 15:48
>>The worst thing an artist can do is to close his mind to technologies that expand his expressive ability.
>>
I agree. Another thing about those soundtracks: the better ones do use live musicians for the solos and first chairs, then fill in with simulacrae for the rest of the band or orchestra. You can tell there's fill back there, but the results generally sound a lot better and more professional than some of those older, amateur-hour soundtracks. Some of those live tracks were cheap, oops, I mean economical to produce because the producer got his crackhead best friend to perform for scale, wishing he were Jimi Hendrix as he whanged away on an out-of-tune Stratocaster. Live or not, that type of stuff didn't uphold the glory of modern music any better than computer-generated sound.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Bassie
Date: 2011-03-09 09:50
I don't get why computer people are so obsessed with simulation when their machines can do so much in their own right. This applies to visuals as well as sound: why aim for photorealism when there's so much other stuff you could do?
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Reedirect
Date: 2011-03-09 13:38
but it IS an impressive emulation. The next step would be to individualize it. And eventually a smart computer program can produce entire solos with distinctive differences in the style of... without any human being involved.
Not so long ago it was considered impossible that a computer could win one single chess game against a grandmaster. And until recently it was deemed highly improbable that a computer could win "Jeopardy".
I like to do handmade music, but the time will come when computer-generated music will surpass our abilities and I dare to say perhaps even our creative ones.
I sincerely hope that it does not happen that soon, but I'm not so sure about it...
"Spirits, that I've cited/My commands ignore...[J. W. von Goethe]
Best
Jo
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Bassie
Date: 2011-03-10 14:03
> The next step would be to individualize it. And eventually a smart computer program can produce entire solos with distinctive differences in the style of... without any human being involved.
Yeah, but, why bother?
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: PrincessJ
Date: 2011-03-10 17:34
I use MIDI to add synths and "fun things" to my recordings when I want them there.
An electronic device sure does come in handy when I can't hire a whole orchestra to play what I want them to when I want them to.
-Jenn
Circa 1940s Zebra Pan Am
1972 Noblet Paris 27
Leblanc Bliss 210
1928 Selmer Full Boehm in A
Amateur tech, amateur clarinetist, looking to learn!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: Tony M
Date: 2011-03-10 20:22
Well, some audiences, who are tired of humans pull off really bad solos, might like it if it gets closer to the goal.
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
Author: PrincessJ
Date: 2011-03-10 21:10
I don't think it could possibly get tiring, listening to unimpressive "human solos" - I find them to be a valuable "what not to do" lesson. But that's just me perhaps.
Problems will only appear when entire symphonies are overtaken by one guy with a keyboard. That part scares me.
It won't happen though, we won't let it... not like some MIDIgeddon or anything.
-Jenn
Circa 1940s Zebra Pan Am
1972 Noblet Paris 27
Leblanc Bliss 210
1928 Selmer Full Boehm in A
Amateur tech, amateur clarinetist, looking to learn!
|
|
Reply To Message
|
|
The Clarinet Pages
|
 |
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
.jpg){kind=small}
