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Leafs
by Gary E. Andrews - 03/04/24 12:47 PM
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Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 5,711 Likes: 18
Top 50 Poster
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OP
Top 50 Poster
Joined: Jul 2006
Posts: 5,711 Likes: 18 |
Hello all,
Because of recent conversations on certain threads here at JPF, I've been doing a lot of thinking about the nature of creativity. After all, nobody wants to feel like they are "creatively lazy." I personally do not use store-bought musical phrases--loops, but DO use BIAB and Virtual Instruments, and I lump loops in with BIAB since they pretty much are the same thing.
First, I offer some background into "loops." Store-bought musical phrases, oft times referred to as "loops" are not to be confused with virtual instruments, which, when played on a keyboard, will play "as if" they were a particular instrument or ensemble of instruments. Whereas store bought (and Internet bought) loops and phrases are musical phrases of an instrument or ensemble, usually of a length of 2, 4, and 8 bars. They are easily tweaked pitch-wise and time-wise so as to fit into any piece. Sony itself spearheaded this "musical phrase mania" that peaked about ten years ago with the introduction of a piece of musical software called "Acid." Nowadays, loops and musical phrases are a common way for many folks to work at creating a piece of music. Some are so ensconced in this method that they hear these loops in their creative imaginations, so they cannot be a crutch for "the real thing" when they are exactly what a creator's vision is imagining!
And BIAB (Band-In_A-Box)..think of BIAB as a smart, musical phrase assembling machine. You tell it the chords and it renders a performance in any one of thousands of styles. These can be tweaked to one's heart's content.
But onto my main argument. Does using real instruments and having live band mates playing in the same room insure against creative laziness? I am not so sure it does. Players fall into routines, creative individuals get into ruts. Perhaps, sometimes these ruts are the results of never changing up ones routine? A prudent suggestion might be to expand ones tools, and use unfamiliar ones, forcing one to think "out-of-the-box" about the musical vision, the piece at hand. Colin recently had a beautiful piece where he heard a fiddle part in his head, and he hired Ian Cameron, a fine Canadian gentleman whom I hired myself, a few years back.
But if using looped musical phrases and BIAB are creatively lazy, how is that any different than hiring a musician to flesh out a chord chart? You send an Internet Musician chords with the request that he/she send, say, a file of the guitar part and the keyboard part, and the musician fulfills the request, you pay him, everyone is happy. Now you have your files--your guitar part and your keyboard part, and you probably payed more than you would if you had bought a disk or two of musical phrases, and certainly payed more than the cost of using BIAB. After all, looped phrases and BIAB use real musicians, too. Musicians got payed, in the making of the store bought musical phrases and The BIAB software. You are still supporting musical commerce when you use them. The only difference is you probably get a performance that will never appear on anyone else's recordings, with the musician you hired.
Yes, there's more of a potential to create and foster new relationships when playing with live band mates and going through a well connected recording studio--and even when sending a chord chart off to a single musician who will render an instrumental part..but is this more "creative" than deciding what musical phrase to use off of a disk, or BIAB? BTW, I have actually formed relationships with a few "mom and pop" companies who make virtual instruments and samples, like "Orange Tree Samples" and "Acousticsamples" and they are very responsive to tweak their software and samples to makes their customers happy--so the idea of "forming relationships" is not something that only happens in a recording studio and with band mates. Not by a long shot.
My main caveat with BIAB is that the more people that use it, the more likelihood our mutual pieces will have similar stems of instruments duplicating the same lines. But this does not make a user creatively lazy, and it doesn't even mean that the piece won't end up sounding unique, after other things are added. The BIAB user can be anyone from 9 to 90, and the demos made with it can range from not-so-great to pretty-damn-good, and works best, I believe, when worked in with other things, like real and virtual instruments.
I think being creative and NOT creatively lazy comes down to being "true" to the vision we have for the particular piece we are working on. I think the lazy/not lazy criterion should fall to the composer/creator himself. Only the creator knows for sure, if he/she has been "true" to his/her music vision, and is or is not being creatively lazy.
So to suggest that only "real performances by real musicians" are the only way that can be NOT creatively lazy seems pretty shortsighted to me. Once I incorporate another musician's work into my piece, I have done pretty much the same thing as incorporating a series of store bought musical phrases or used BIAB, except for the one difference that these may possibly occur on another's recording. That IS, the only difference, after all, and it says more about utility than creativity, and ultimately it makes the argument that "everyone who use BIAB is creatively lazy" sound rather elitist, to me, since oft times it's not a matter of choice for poor musicians who cannot afford to pay a live musician, nor have the ability to play the instruments himself. If you have a shirt that Calvin Klein made personally for you, that certainly will get more attention than buying one of his lines of shirts, but it says absolutely nothing about creativity, unless the ultimate argument is that "true creativity is the luxury of the rich."
It is interesting from a psychological standpoint, to me, also, that those who suggest that anything other than doing it all yourself and/or using live band mates, or going through a well connected recording studio is "creative laziness" are those that tend to have always done it themselves and otherwise employed the help of their band mates or gone through well-connected recording studios! What we invest time and energy in tends to make us wary of other methods and other ways of doing things. It seems to be human nature. But if we step back, it's not hard to see that all these things--real band mates, our own chops, virtual instruments, store bought music phrases and BIAB--these are ALL just tools. Tools to help us achieve our particular musical vision for a particular piece, and I always thought and still DO think that the more tools you have in your arsenal, the better!
This elitist argument seems to fall apart, the more unique and perhaps "exotic" these musical phrases are. If our musical vision hears a Bulgarian bagpipe made of sheepskin, it would seem the elitist argument would suggest one hires such a musician, or learning to play the Bulgarian bagpipe, or nixing the idea cuz one can't do it without samples. But to me, as I have shown, hiring a Bulgarian bagpipe musician is no more and no less creative. It just costs more. Learning to play the Bulgarian bagpipe means being able to buy one first, and then all the time and energy--and maybe we just hear this on one piece, haha. Nixing the idea of using the bagpipe altogether is interesting. To me, that would be a betrayal of one's creative vision, and as a result would be creative laziness in its purest form.
Anyway, thanks for listening, and I welcome others' opinions and ideas on this.
Mike
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Last edited by Michael Zaneski; 11/01/15 03:41 PM.
Fate doesn't hang on a wrong or right choice Fortune depends on the tone of your voice
-The Divine Comedy (Neil Hannon) from the song "Songs of Love" from the album "Casanova" (1996)
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