I hear it in my head, complete and finished, as if I'm laying a 
stylus down on the LP, sitting back and listening to the speakers 
in my mind's ear and I ask myself 'what do I hear'.

If it's a film score, I watch the film while the tape recorder in 
my head is rolling.

After those scenarios, I go of to my favorite local coffee house
with blank sheets of score paper and scribble away for the next 
couple writing out what's playing in my head (without an instrument
in front of me, and it freaks out my music partner when I do that).

Then, after that, when I'm satisfied it's what I want, then I go 
to the computer and enter the notes and fill in the audio. 

I used to have similar debtes with my late uncle, a violinist.
"Aren't you putting musicians out of business with your technology"
I tell him, "No. There are two more now in the business, me and my
music partner. When I get a film project a budget for a full
orchestra, I'll use it".

"But aren't you de-humanizing music with your technology", he would 
ask. "No more than you are. The only difference between yours and
mine is that yours is based on a twelve-hundred year old design,
mine is about seventy years old. If you use something other than 
the human body (ie- knee slap, vocalize and such) you're 
de-humanizing music", I would tell him. Being a violinist, he 
didn't like that.

"But your computer makes the music", he would say. "No", I reply,
"I make the music. The computer doesn't go off on it's own and 
compose (unless I program it to do so). I compose the music. The 
computer doesn't think for itself. It's a tool and requires 
someone to tell it what to do. And I can be just as amateur or 
just as much a virtuoso as I want to make it, depending how much 
time and detail I decide to put into it".


"A hammer can be used to build a house or kill someone. You can't 
blame the hammer, it's the fault of the user who weilds it",
by yours truly circa 1974, was debating with some people regarding 
whether guns kill people or people kill people. Can't blame the gun, 
you can blame the shooter. Can't blame technology if it goes wrong,
it's the user that weilds it.

I too like Cage and Penderecki and others. I have a broad view about 
a wide variety of music, techiques and ways of dealing with it. I use
differing things in differing ways dependent on what I'm working on
what I'm trying to do with it, and the end result I'm trying to attain.
I like prog rock just as much as John Dowland, Eno, Leo Brouwer, Irv Berlin,
Bartok, John Cage, Aaron Copland, Stewart Copeland, etc. From medieval to 
avante garde and everthing in between. It's all music and it's cool with me. 

The Haswell thing sounds vaguely familiar. Was that by chance reported 
on TV or on Globe Trekkers? Love these debates, keep at it, thanks Joe.


-Partev


====================================================================


--- joeofarrell64@eircom.net wrote:

From: "Joe O'Farrell" 
To: csound@lists.bath.ac.uk
Subject: [Csnd] Re: Re: ease
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:34:26 +0000

On 13 Dec 2009, at 23:54, Michael Gogins wrote:

> When I use a score generator, I personally determine the outcome of
> every note because I design the software. If I don't like where the
> notes end up, I change the software until I do like it. This does not
> appear to be the situation that you are objecting to.


Absolutely - my issue is with people who have no idea what the  
outcome will be until they hear it (even in general terms) then claim  
to be "composers". I do the same as you except that I hand-code the  
score file - there was no other option when I learned Csound! (Or,  
for that matter, when I studied composition). Old habits die hard, I  
suppose

My objection is not to score generation per se. I'll happily let  
software determine the fine detail of a mass texture, for example,  
just as I'd let individual members of a string orchestra play given  
patterns within a given time frame (à la Penderecki, perhaps) but  
would consider the resultant texture to be a single unified mass  
within a piece - not a composition in its own right. I realise I'm  
making a pretty fine distinction here, but it's a distinction that's  
important to ME. Setting up parameters is after all what all  
composers do (albeit often subconsciously) - but the results must  
(for me at least) ultimately be accepted or rejected according to my  
personal aesthetic judgement, not simply a random output. I have the  
same problem with Cageian "non-intention" - I admire him as a  
philosopher (and love his more deterministic pieces) but simply could  
not follow such a route myself. Whether someone likes - or hates -  
what I do,  the responsibility is mine - and I certainly won't  
inflict it on anyone else if I don't like it myself! (And certainly  
wouldn't whack all the faders up full and walk out before the end of  
a performance, as Haswell did in Belfast)

Then again, I'm a product of deterministic European classicism…

Joe

Ballynolan
Leighlinbridge
Co. Carlow
Ireland

email:	info@joeofarrell.com
web:	www.joeofarrell.com

phone:	+353 85 788 8854

skype:	joeofarrell







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