MOTM

Well spoken Eric.

Another view:

Put Eddy Merckx/Bernard Hinault/Lance Armstrong  on a Schwinn Varsity  
and you are still dealing with Eddy Merckx/Bernard Hinault/Lance  
Armstrong.

or more to the point....

Tomita with a copy of Reason is still Tomita.

or finally

I'd rather hear The Beatles/Bo Diddley/Albert Ayler out of a cellphone  
speaker than Kenny G out of some $50k Mark Levinson aluminum fetish  
doorstop.

etc.

These conversations on MOTM are fantastic IMO. Keep on.


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On Sep 12, 2008, at 3:19 AM, eric f wrote:

>
> Your entire argument on behalf of Ken (and if that's what he was  
> actually trying to say, he certainly should work a little harder on  
> his emails) is based around the notion that the listener should  
> fetishize how a record or song was made.
>
> That can be interesting, especially for us musiciany types, just as  
> the technique used to produce a piece of visual art might be.  It  
> can inform the appreciation, but I fail to see how it is the  
> appreciation.  If you tell me that my coffee this morning was picked  
> by a legless, one armed man on a mountainside, strapped to a goat,  
> carried bean by bean to the roaster by a trained pigeon who ate it  
> and pooped it whole into the (roasting oven?), I would put a lot of  
> attention into my coffee drinking ritual.  But if it tastes like  
> Folgers, it tastes like Folgers.
>
> Most listening, though, is just like my morning coffee ritual:  
> casual, done while occupied with other tasks, other thoughts.  It is  
> an integrated part of the listener's worldlife and only a central  
> part at moments that the listener, not the musician chooses.
>
> You can poopoo this, lamenting as you have, the decline of the  
> quality listener, but you are incredibly late to the game.  Adorno  
> was doing it in 1938 ("On the Fetish Character of Music and the  
> Regression of the Listener") and even he was quick to point out that  
> by gosh no generation hasn't said this.
>
> "I have no reservations that Kenneth could make a CD that would make  
> SOB
> sound like it was played on a Casio. But who, besides a handful, would
> APPRECIATE it?"
>
> If the man can't write a song, and I have yet to hear an Elhardt  
> piece, why would I care if it sounded nice?  It's the artist's duty  
> to seduce the listener, not the listener's duty to honor the  
> artist's stature or importance.
>
> The presence of my synth isn't going to move anyone, repulse them,  
> excite them, make them dance or cry or remember a sunny day or a  
> rainy one or send them screaming from the room; its presence won't  
> draw you into contemplation.  That's my job.  So make me more new  
> kit, Mr. Schreiber, and inspire me to find new ways to do all of this.
>
> cheers,
> eric f
>
>
> --- On Thu, 9/11/08, Paul Schreiber <synth1@...> wrote:
> From: Paul Schreiber <synth1@...>
> Subject: [motm] Carlos/Tomita/Fast versus everything else
> To: "MOTM List" <motm@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 11:03 AM
>
> I think what Kenneth is talking about are the differences between the
> pioneering synth LPs of the past versus what is out there today.
>
> a) in 1968 (S.O.B), the Moog modular, to most people, was on the  
> level of
> 'Star Trek'. It cost the same as *4* new Corvettes. And people back  
> then
> still thought TV was 'magical'.
>
> b) there was also back then a greater "appreciation of effort" for  
> lack of a
> better term. Electronic music, up until S.O.B., was BugMusic on the  
> highest
> order (all that tape splicing, musique concrete stuff). Then SOB  
> rolls out,
> complete with NY Times articles about replacing musicians on  
> Broadway, etc.
> But as to the technical tour de force required, many folks back then  
> in the
> electronics hobbyist clan (like me) fully appreciated the work  
> involved.
> Especially if you wandered into a music store and played with say a  
> ARP
> Odyssey or MiniMoog for 5min. The first thought was "Holy Crap!,  
> they could
> create those LPs from THIS??!?"
>
> Remember, no ProTools, no super-whiz-bang plugins, no real fancy  
> external
> effects processing.
>
> Today, it is very difficult to find "sympathetic" people towards  
> technology.
> iPods, cell phones, GPS? Meh....$100 at Best Buy. Nowadays, people  
> just are
> not interested in the HOW, just the WHAT. The days when I used to read
> Popular Electronics like the Bible are over (I spent HOURS reading the
> 'Build a Nixie Tube Clock' issue. To me, having an explanation how  
> you use
> the 60Hz line frequency to then count with circuits was just the  
> coolest
> thing in 1971 I could hope for).
>
> The example I like to use is Toshi Doi of Sony and the CD player. (see
> http://www.eetimes. com/disruption/ profiles/ doi.jhtml) I  
> personally think he
> is the smartest EE on the planet. When he was working on the CD  
> player, his
> job was to figure out the physical format of the data on the disc  
> (Philips
> part was to design the player itself). So, how long do you think he  
> worked
> on it (the error correction, the indexing, the interleaving, etc).  
> 1yr?
> 3yrs? How about *10 years*, by *himself* all hand calculated on  
> legal pads.
> Most people don't realize that the audio data content on a CD is  
> about 40%,
> the other 60% is error correction and other stuff that allows horribly
> scratched CDs to play anyway. The audio you hear from a CD player was
> actually read off the disc about 400ms prior, you have to do the block
> Reed-Solomon ECC stuff before the DACs.
>
> But CD players?...Pffttt. ...$29 at Target. Mostly now in cars.  
> Toshi Doi?
> Who is THAT?
>
> Sadly, I too miss the "good old days" of synth LPs (I used to  
> collect them).
> Even the most cheesy Moog records, I bought EVERY ONE *just  
> because*, well,
> it's Moog record! But to 'draw' the line' between a pure modular synth
> record (again, SOB) and a 'synthesizer record' (say Fast's first  
> "Synergy")
> and then to a mostly synth CD (Robert Rich anything) is going to  
> fall on
> deaf ears (so to speak) in today's world. With a bazillion bad YouTube
> videos, every record is sample-based and crappy MP3s on iPods played  
> back by
> 11 cent earbuds (yes, the stock Apple earbuds cost 11 cents) what do  
> you
> expect?
>
> I have no reservations that Kenneth could make a CD that would make  
> SOB
> sound like it was played on a Casio. But who, besides a handful, would
> APPRECIATE it?
>
> Paul S.
>
>
>
>