[sdiy] Control Interfaces (was Wakeman)

[Don Tillman]

   > Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 20:18:05 +0200 (CEST)
   > From: Rainer Buchty <buchty at cs.tum.edu>
   > 
   > My personal obsession with "exactness" is that e.g. I'm usually
   > pretty disappointed by live recordings since they sometimes sound
   > significantly different from what I know from the studio
   > album. And I'm not talking about the cheering crowd here :)

They're different environments; it would be weirdly unnatural to
ignore that.  What's more, how a musician interacts with different
environments is itself a form of expression.

The band Genesis had a policy of arranging their studio material as if
performed live -- they intentionally restricted their arrangements so
that nobody was playing anything that couldn't be performed on stage.
You can just close your eyes and picture them playing.  Not
surpisingly, live Genesis sounds exactly like studio Genesis except
for reverberation, crowd noises, and the occasional stage patter.

Gentle Giant took the opposite approach and completely rearranged
their material for the stage.  As an example, the song "Acquiring the
Taste" was originally recorded as all overdubbed Moog modular; live
it's an acoustic guitar duet.

King Crimson viewed live performance as an opportunity to catch the
creative energy for group improvs.  And Zappa often used his editing
skills to splice stage material together with studio material,
creating something entirely new.

   > Having had music lessons since my earliest ages and having had
   > music as a major during my first highschool years, my personal
   > impression is that there is usually nothing more boring than
   > e.g. a single violin.

Bach, Partita #2 for violin.  Then report back.

   > The nice thing with polyphonic instruments is that you can more
   > or less play an entire arrangement. With a monophonic instrument
   > you need either a bunch of people (aka orchestra, band), a
   > sequencer or multi-track recorder to achieve the somewhat same.

Sure.  And Bob Moog mentioned in that recent interview how he
considered the MiniMoog to be a social instrument for that very
reason.

But is a "one man band" really a good thing?  Do you really want the
electronic equivalent of playing an accordian, with a kazoo in your
mouth, cymbals on your knees, and a bass drum on your back?  I sure
don't.

  -- Don

-- 
Don Tillman
Palo Alto, California
don at till.com
http://www.till.com