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From: mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.synth
Subject: Re: Drum Machines - A Flame
Message-ID: <327@mhuxr.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 22-May-85 22:23:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: mhuxr.327
Posted: Wed May 22 22:23:24 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 24-May-85 01:43:37 EDT
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> On "Sheltering Sky", Bruford basically tapped out on a log drum.  ...
> drum machines can be and are valid tools of expression and utility.
> 
The source of rhythm is unimportant. The point is that his tapping
(incidently, it was a conga with the skin slightly loosened) waxed and waned
with the dynamics of the tune, and with Bruford's own contribution
to the composition, something a drum machine could not have done.
Maybe those things are useful to composers alone in studios, but
they are worthless in music meant to sound and be alive.

> [You] sound like the grumpy old fogey who condemned synthesizers twenty years ago,
> or the organ years before that (How dare they imitate the sounds of instruments
> with pipes?  Unconscionable!).  Of course there will always be bozos who use
> them like toys, but they serve a useful expressive purpose.

Using a pipe organ as a toy sounds remarkably moronic.... I don't have
anything against synthesizers or any electric keyboards, especially
the touch sensitive ones. After all, they don't play themselves...
A musical intrument is a vehicle for the creativity of its player.
The creativity of the percussionist is not expressend in the time
signature, however complex or unusually stated, but in how
Time is advanced. The percussionist is the one who makes the
piece get from here to there. A drum machine that regurgitates
the result of prior programming cannot respond to the dynamics of
a given performance.

Marcel Simon