Re: LOOPING PHILOSOPHY (condensed)

[pycraft@elec.gla.ac.uk (Michael Pycraft Hughes, PhD)]

>Kim Flint wrote:

> Yet more proof that guitarists are the most arrogant people on earth....

Well, it's only 'cos we're BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE!!!    :)

> Could we please broaden our minds a little bit and stop trying to prove 
>that
> one approach to music is oh so much more special than another? There's no
> need to be threatened by someone who's a bit different from you. Learn 
>from
> the differences, you might grow a little bit.

Hey Kim, would you rather we went back to discussing hardware?  :)

Misha wrote:
>Though I do not wish to attack anyone on their views of music and its
>wide range of expressivity, I do not think a DJ is a musician. He may be
>a craftsman and an artist, just as say, a non-musician sound engineer
>can be, but I *do* believe you must play a musical instrument to be
>considered a musician. (And, yes, a voice *is* a musical instrument).:)

Now this is interesting.  As a flautist, you may have a classical
background.  Now, would you say that an orchestral conductor is a musician?
 (S)He plays on instrument, but is largely seen as a musician. 

Dastardly- I mean Motley - wrote:
>  Creativity can be brought to almost any human endeaver, but that
> doesn't make two activities equal in a more important sense. A jock can
> pick the sample, playback rate, & what context he drops the sample into.
> But a guitarist can do equivalent things AND choose tone, phrasing, &
> attack; he can bend notes, add vibrato, & play harmonics. The number of
> options available for expression affects the power and expressiveness of
> the instrument or method.

Yes, but a guitarst on his own is pretty imited.  There aren't many solo
electric guitar peices worth listening to.  A DJ can tale the sounds of an
orchestra, a funk band and NY art-scronk and come up with something
huge-sounding.  People playing musical instruments will always need to use
other players to fill out the sound - drummers, bassists, thumb-pianists...
which is almost what the DJ is doing.

> A 7 note thumb piano is not as capable of
> expressing human emotion as a tenor saxophone.

A saxophone cannot sound as delicate and childlike as a thumb piano.

> On another, somewhat related, note I have always thought that some
> instruments are more expressive than others, and wondered why. Why are
> there more sax, guitar, trumpet or violin solos than other instruments?
> The best answer I've come up with so far seems to be the point I was
> making above about the options. The number of ways an instruments can
> shape a note is directly related to it's expressive power. There is a
> reason sax is more popular than French horn; or guitar more popular than
> banjo. I believe great players can touch us more deeply with these
> instruments.

No, I think a lot of it is to do with volume.  The banjo was far morepopula
than guitar well into the 40s.  Cellos are loud but too deep-voiced to solo
well over two violin sections.  There are many solos for obscure
instruments in classical music.  Besides, as expressive instruments go the
church organ is dire - note on, note off, nothing else.  Now, tell me that
Bach's Toccata & Fugue in Dmin is not expressive....

Michael

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