Emu XL-7 & MP-7 User's Group

Exactly. My point is: we can all spend hours and hours creating some 
great stuff just by instinctively adding and deleting tracks on 
these wonderful XX-7 tools. They do make it real easy to put 
something together and especially easy to practice often and 
anywhere. As a live sound guy, I understand well the art of the mix 
and the art of mixing to feed the live audience. What I'm trying to 
understand (since I've unfortunately ignored DJ's during breaks over 
the last 30 years) are the "rules of thunb" or whatever that makes a 
difference in the feel of a song. To take my stuff to the next level 
(and try to make up for some time) I want to hear artists describe 
their process and try to verbalize what they think makes that 
elusive difference. Sure, playing tfor the crowd takes you many 
places and there are no real rules to follow. But when I sit down 
and count-out the parts of the songs that I like and see the 
multiples of 8 bars and how things come and go, I want to know why 
the artist or the producer decided on this structure. As a keyboard 
player, I can play along with the XX-7 and it's a lot easier if the 
songs are stored rather than having everthing just under live 
control. Sorry for rambling, it's just hard to verbalize this new 
stuff. Thanks for your patience and input.
Mark



--- In xl7@yahoogroups.com, "critten98" <travis.crittenden@c...> 
wrote:

> An excellent post. To futher speak to these points:
> 
> Think about an art class. Natural talent or not, just about every 
> artist can benefit from formal training. The purpose of the class 
is 
> to teach the ins and outs of art, start with specific excercises 
and 
> challenge the student to achieve, perhaps in areas that seem 
> unrelated or uninteresting at first. 
> 
> Over time the artist in the student begins to pool this experience 
> together and, with new knowledge, strike out in his or her 
> ownindividual direction.
> 
> Now the artist is in charge of the artist. To keep learning, to 
try 
> new things, to honestly judge his/her accomplishments... these are 
> the real goals. Commitment, bravery, experimentation and taking on 
> challenges keep the artist moving forward.