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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Arthur Pewtey)
Newsgroups: net.music,net.music.synth
Subject: Re: Drum Machines - A Flame
Message-ID: <992@pyuxd.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-May-85 09:47:07 EDT
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Posted: Thu May 23 09:47:07 1985
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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.

Quibbling, but it appeared to be a log drum he used in the live shows (I was
far away, but not that far away).  The use of a drum machine (or sequencer,
it would seem that your argument is against things of their nature as well)
to play some IMPORTANT repetitive part of a piece so as to free the players
to make some "real" contributions on top of that is a useful one.

> Maybe those things are useful to composers alone in studios, but
> they are worthless in music meant to sound and be alive.

That's an arbitrary value judgment (which is a whole 'nother discussion worth
staying out of).  An equally valid arbitrary value judgment was of the type
that "these ee-lectronic gizmos aren't making real music that sounds alive,
because ..."  The value is in the end result, not in some pre-determination
of the form "this uses an XXX, therefore it doesn't qualify as 'alive'".
As evidenced by the Eno work I've already mentioned.

>> [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.

1) Depends on who did the original performing. 2) Pipe organs WERE once looked
upon as other supposedly emulative instruments were later looked upon,
including the way you would look upon "drum machines".  My point is NOT to look
at (and listen to) WHAT *instrument* is being played and having a reaction
(negative or positive---equally flaccid is "Wow, he's using a Frezzinbotzer!")
but to look at and listen to THE END RESULT.  To say "such machines CANNOT
produce valid, 'alive' end results goes against the evidence, and strikes me
as highly prejudicial.
-- 
"There!  I've run rings 'round you logically!"
"Oh, intercourse the penguin!"			Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr