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From: maverick@fir.Berkeley.EDU (Vance Maverick)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: reality and computer sound
Keywords: question for discussion
Message-ID: <1991Jun17.184403.3192@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 17 Jun 91 18:44:03 GMT
References: <1871@culhua.prg.ox.ac.uk> <2100@anaxagoras.ils.nwu.edu> <1991Jun14.164758.23557@agate.berkeley.edu> <33674@usc.edu>
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In article <33674@usc.edu>, alves@calvin.usc.edu (William Alves) says a lot I agree with, but I take issue with a bunch of minor points....

|> It's obvious to my ears anyway that sounds that
|> are very complex and dynamic tend to sound more "warm" and interesting, 
|> while more static sounds tend to be "cold" and "electronic."

"Complex", "dynamic", and "static" are terms just as vague and emotionally
loaded as "warm", "interesting", "cold", and "electronic".  Fat round tones
from the latest imitation-violin algorithm can sound just as bogus as a
sawtooth from a Moog.

|> Now neither is aesthetically better or worse. If, like Herbert Eimert, you
|> have an aesthetic that prefers the purity of sine waves to "real" sounds,
|> then the good old days of tape splicing or the RCA synthesizer are the
|> just the technology for you.

Except that modern software technology allows for much nicer interfaces and
finer control.  I've made pure-sine-tone textures from my own software that
would have been impossible on the RCA.  They aren't deficient in
"complexity" or "dynamism" either.  (And sine waves only sound "pure" if
you've been told they do!)

|> Blaming the listener is very convenient, but ultimately useless. If a 
|> timbre sounds "electronic" when the composer doesn't intend it, then it
|> is certainly the composer's fault (or perhaps the limitations of the 
|> technology, though that, too, is a very convenient scapegoat).

But the extreme listenerist position is equally untenable -- there's no
music that pleases everybody, and if you're trying to please the average
listener, you're after a chimera.  Surely you would admit the *theoretical*
possibility that some music you liked would strike Joe Blow as "electronic"?

I think your response to my posting is primarily a statement of taste, and a reasonable one at that.  I was hoping, though, I could scare up some latter-day Eimert or some foe of all that is "electronic"....

	Vance