Is Ableton really for Electronic Musicians?

[kitekrazy]

I would say that people who produce music are musicians. Most of the time, they are not 'good' musicians and are better at production, but that's sort of an arbitrary boundary anyways.

Just cause you give someone a guitar and they pluck a string, that doesn't make them a musician. And if someone doesn't know music theory, but can play some really heartwrenching simple stuff, that doesn't make them NOT a musician.

We're lucky these days to have the choice to focus on whatever we want. It's a balance between live playing and production/mixing/mastering. I think where people get mad is when the slant is 99% toward the production side, and not enough live playing.

Interesting comment. I can appreciate an amateur performance because it is live. There are many genres that do not cater to live playing either.

[login]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCp7bL-AWvw

Tell me HE is not a musician

[beats me]

And another analogy comes sliding down the pipe. A music producer who doesn't really know how to play any instruments proficiently calling themselves a musician is like a movie director calling themselves an actor. Does a director know about acting? Absolutely or they wouldn't know how to direct people, but that doesn't make them an actor and nobody is going to argue that.

My whole point to this is if you are mostly a music producer or composer than just be proud of that. It's totally respectable and you shouldn't feel like some second class citizen because you can't promote yourself as a musician. But if you demand you be called a musician and you can't jam it out with traditional musicians without your computer leading the way then you're just going to look stupid....and, well, not like a musician.

[beatmunga]

And another analogy comes sliding down the pipe. A music producer who doesn't really know how to play any instruments proficiently calling themselves a musician is like a movie director calling themselves an actor. Does a director know about acting? Absolutely or they wouldn't know how to direct people, but that doesn't make them an actor and nobody is going to argue that.

My whole point to this is if you are mostly a music producer or composer than just be proud of that. It's totally respectable and you shouldn't feel like some second class citizen because you can't promote yourself as a musician. But if you demand you be called a musician and you can't jam it out with traditional musicians without your computer leading the way then you're just going to look stupid....and, well, not like a musician.

beats, this is simple. You're confusing ' musician' with 'instrumentalist'.

Lots of 'instrumentalists' out there who are score/tab reading automatons. A fantastic skill, but some of us value creativity over manual dexterity in our 'musicians'.

You didn't address whether a quadriplegic can be a musician. Yes or no?

[infernal.machine]

You didn't address whether a quadriplegic can be a musician. Yes or no?

Did someone say 'Jason Becker'??

[pencilrocket]

musician uses tools what they need. tool doesn't make users musician.

[falgorian]

I'd say someone who can read music and understand the language is a musician. One who uses musical instruments to convey what they feel is an artist. And if four guys pick up instruments and suck at them and can't write good songs, then they're not artists nor musicians, just dudes that named themselves Creed or Nickelback!!!

[Gregory Wells-King]

I always thought of a musician as someone who makes music regardless of how they do it.

+ 1

If I had listend to all the 'Carn't do's' in my life, I would be sitting on my A** getting fat, feeling jelous of all the guy's on stage with their synths and guitars, bashing out class songs, still wishing 'I could do that' decided I could maybe produce songs if I just tried hard and had a go with some sequence technology and maybe worked harded than I thought on song composition. I have a good relationship with my music now, it still needs lot's of improvement, but who gives a S*** .

And I'm still jelous as hell of the pure musician, I just don't worry about it as much.

[Gregory Wells-King]

I should also add, that reading this stuff is fun, the topic of 'When is a producer a musician' and 'Are people who use computers to produce music, musicians' should find it's own website because the argument is as big as it wide, and we all like talking about it, frankly I think we all should have a beer, turn the dial up and....

[beatmunga]

I should also add, that reading this stuff is fun, the topic of 'When is a producer a musician' and 'Are people who use computers to produce music, musicians' should find it's own website because the argument is as big as it wide, and we all like talking about it, frankly I think we all should have a beer, turn the dial up and....

I'm in...

[XSIMan]

I do EDM and metal rock with Live I've tried other daws but they are not as good for doing a one man band playing all instruments at the same time with one midi keyboard.
its maninly down to the Midi tools they are better than third party midi tools and some DAWs have no midi tools at all which makes playing a sampled electric guitar with one hand impossible.

[kent_sandvik]

This actually reminds me of when long time ago my seven year old son did a techno album using Ableton Live with no whatsoever skills playing a keyboard... Opened up my eyes. It was all based on music pattern recognition. I would not call that being a musician, but that's just me.

why not? did he or did he not make the music? I think people over think the definition of the term musician. just like when people say that someone who plays a synth isn't a real musician because a synth is not a real instrument yet when you look at a synth it looks just like a piano and plays like one outside of the feeling of the keys and the obvious differences like the synth parameters that a piano obviously would not have.

As I said, just my opinion but a musician knows how to play at least one instrument instead of copy/pasting pattern material into a window. I would think a film director also knows how to use a video camera, or a photographer knows how to use a camera, a painter how to use a paint brush and so on and so on...

Besides, it's pretty easy to learn to play a keyboard. If someone can't do that, I doubt they could even make interesting music with copy/paste.

[Jahk]

Not really, but many electronic musicians find it's workflow really simplistic and quick to get ideas down.
Can work just aswell for any genre.

If you can help, check out my post.
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=186900

Thanks,
Jahk

[SpeedKing]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCp7bL-AWvw

Tell me HE is not a musician

I'm assuming you're joking, and you wouldn't consider that musicianship either? I'd consider it 'interesting', and that's as far as it would go.

[infernal.machine]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCp7bL-AWvw

Tell me HE is not a musician

I'm assuming you're joking, and you wouldn't consider that musicianship either? I'd consider it 'interesting', and that's as far as it would go.

I would call it a headache.