nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP (Doug Alan) (06/06/85)
["This is the time. And this is the record of the time."] Since I've been away for a while, I missed out on participating in the drum machine debate until now. It might be a little late to join the fray, but Marcel Simon's ridiculous, prejudiced, and close-minded statements force me to comment. > [Marcel Simon] Maybe those things are useful to composers alone in > studios, but they are worthless in music meant to sound and be alive. Give us a break, please! Gross, sweeping, over-generalizations are worthless in arguments meant to persuade intelligent human beings. > [Marcel Simon] A musical instrument is a vehicle for the creativity of > its player. And a drum machine is a vehicle for the creativity of its programmers and users. > [Marcel Simon] The creativity of the percussionist is not expressed > in the time signature, however complex or unusually stated, but in > how Time is advanced. Drums machines allow much more than just one to set up a time signature. The creativity of a percussionist (and a user of a drum machine) is not expressed in the time signature, however complex or unusually stated, nor in how Time is advanced, but in the wholistic effect of the sounds he creates and how those sounds interact with the rest of the music. > [Marcel Simon] The percussionist is the one who makes the piece get > from here to there. Another worthless, gross over-generalization! > [Marcel Simon] A drum machine that regurgitates the result of prior > programming cannot respond to the dynamics of a given performance. Well, neither can a record or a tape, so lets all go throw out our stereos. By your line of argument, it is invalid to use any sort of sounds or rhythms in music that are not created by humans playing instruments in real-time. Rhythms such as heartbeats or machinery or perhaps that of a creaky fence oscilating in the wind or the sound of an animal making a rhythmic noise are all disallowed. In fact we can't use any recorded sounds in music at all. No wind or thunder or bird calls or waves or automobiles or pile drivers or footsteps or doors opening and closing, etc. What a brain-damaged attitude to have! But what can one expect from someone who thinks that using "they" as a third-person singular pronoun to avoid gender bias is a perversion of the English language? (No, please don't bite this one....) > [Marcel Simon] It is a measure of Max's creativity that he completely > altered the rhythmic feel of the piece, without changing the beat. > THAT is what a drummer can do. Perhaps some composers don't want the drummer to completely alter the rhythmic feel of their music. > [Marcel Simon] Martin Williams has argued convincingly in "The Jazz > Story" that jazz, and by extension music *is* rhythm. Well, he must be pretty silly then. There's a hell of a lot more to most music than just rhythm. Music is a non-linear sum of all it's components -- nothing less. > [Marcel Simon] Static rhythm is almost a contradiction. Study Zen. > [Marcel Simon] Music is never so alive as when it is created on the > high wire of flexible time. There are lots and lots of ways of creating interesting music, and you shouldn't maintain that one particular way is the only way. You are just signaling your close-mindedness. > [Marcel Simon] The greatest drummers, folks like Max Roach, Elvin > Jones, Tony Williams, Roy Haynes, are constantly varying their > patterns, shading ahead of the beat to push the melody, or laying > back a fraction in a relaxed swing. The role of the drummer is to > shape, mold, re-arrange Time and thereby determine the whole feel of > the music. The role of every musician is to add a part to the whole that helps to determine the whole feel of the music. There are several interesting techniques using drum machines that do strange and interesting things with time. With a drum machine, one can create and play rhythms that no human drummer would think of or could play. This, of course, adds an unusual feel to a piece of music that may be desired and appropriate for that piece. One can use a rigid drum machine beat along with music whose implicit rhythm is not so rigid or that does not coincide precisely with the rigid beat, that perhaps flows in and out of the rigid beat. This can create an interesting tension to the music. Also, drum machines can be mixed with human drummers to provide a contrast between the rigid and the flowing -- the mechanical and the human. Both Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel have used these techniques. Says Kate Bush about this: It took me quite a while to get used to them [rhythm machines] because they seemed very limiting. I like rhythms to 'move', especially in the ballad songs where the tempo would ebb and flow with the words, stopping and slowing down as necessary. Suddenly, having to work with a very strict rhythm, I found it almost impossible at first to tie myself down to the rigid beat. Once I got used to this, I found that I could work in between the beats. Another technique that can be used is to have two drum machines playing conflicting rhythms at the same time. This creates an interesting effect that has been used by Peter Gabriel. > [Marcel Simon] Every piece of recorded music I have heard that uses > them sounds DULL, flat, uninspiring... like something recorded by a > machine, which in a very key sense, it is. Well, either you have narrow and prejudiced tastes in music (you just stubbornly refuse to like any music that has a drum machine in it, just because it does, no matter how good the music is), or the music with drum machines you have heard is the likes of Go West and Menudo. Check out Laurie Anderson, Peter Gabriel, Kate Bush, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, Einsturzende Neubauten, Talking Heads and probably many others. None of these people are dull, flat, or uninspiring. In fact, quite to the contrary. In my opinion, the music and rhythms of both Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush have become much more interesting since they discovered drum machines. Another Kate Bush quote from an interview: THE SONG STYLE ON "THE DREAMING" APPEARS TO BE MORE RHYTHMIC IN NATURE THAN EARLIER MORE MELODIC MATERIAL -- IS THIS A DELIBERATE CHANGE IN MUSICAL DIRECTION? Since drum machines entered my life on the 3rd album ["Never for Ever"] it's never been the same. Back to Marcel... > [Marcel Simon] The sound of a drum machine, being the result of prior > programming, can't participate in the subtle (and not so subtle) > interplay of rhythmic variations that give a performance its tension > and crackle. Conclusion: drum machines have no place in the > performing process. You definitely seem to be implying that improvisation is essential to performance, which you have said elsewhere you aren't saying! Rhythmic variation can be programmed into a drum machine, and if improvisation is not being done, then the ability to react to specific performance is not needed. Also, I hope you realize that in recorded music, the term "performance" often doesn't really apply. Many records are created over a long period of time in the studio. The individual musicians who play the instruments may never see one another. Someone like Peter Gabriel or Kate Bush goes into the studio for a year. Each week (or whatever) they may work with a different musician, to get what they want from them, then the next week, they may work with someone else. Eventually, all the parts are mixed together to form the album. When a record is created this way, it doesn't matter whether the drum sounds where created by a drummer or a drum machine, because all the material goes through extensive editing, and the beats from both drum machine drumming and human drumming can be controlled down to the millisecond. Of course, I'm sure Marcel will say that this is a travesty of all that is good and right in the world. That the spontaneity and spark of life is destroyed by all this high technology. This is a completely asinine opinion to hold. There is room in the world for many approaches to creating music and they should all be explored. Saying that a record should not be a studio creation, but should be a recreation of a live performance, is like saying that all painters should paint by spontaneously splashing paint onto a canvas rather than by doing careful study sketches first and then meticulously crafting the painting and repainting sections over and over, until it is just right. Both approaches are important and both lead to interesting results. > [Marcel Simon] Try one last experiment: listen to some piece of music > that you DON'T like. Any piece, it does not matter. Concentrate on > the rhythm. Is it interesting, lively? Does it grab you irresistibly, > and pull you along? Does the piece get from here to there? I am > willing to bet that the answer to all these questions is no. What a silly question! If a piece of music has an interesting rhythm that grabs me irresistibly and pulls me along, sure I'll probably like it. But there is also lots of music I like, that doesn't have a compelling rhythm. Perhaps it's the melody that grabs me irresistibly or maybe it's the harmony or perhaps the dissonancies or the lyrics or the timbres or the sounds or the voices. In the best music, I find all these components compelling. "I kept it in a cage Watched it weeping, but made it stay (But now I've started learning how) I leave it open I leave it open" Doug Alan nessus@mit-eddie.UUCP nessus@MIT-Eddie.ARPA