the topic of topics: MIDI vs AUDIO ("what is music"?)

[pepezabala]

Audio gives only sound elements, waveforms, volume etc. not musical instructions.

Yeh, but that doesnt mean the music is not there. My screen only renders pixels. But if I open a file with a picture, I see the picture.

that's a very clever answer and should give 9V something to think about

(disclaimer: I have only read roughly 5 pages of this thread)

[H20nly]

well, that's because there's too many pages in this topic with no new information.

i made a new one just like it so there will be less pages for people who weren't lucky enough to catch this thread when it was only a page or 2.

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=169436

[Theo Void]

I totally get what your trying to say dude. I really do. So I'm not gonna argue semantics anymore but I still have a few questions for you :

Why? Honest question(not trying to be a dick here.) What prompted you to start this thread? I know many people enjoy a good debate, and I'm sure you knew this would stir emotions. Is that why?

2. What is your obsession w/ MIDI? It's just a means to an end. I mean, do you keep everything in mIDI even after you've finished a song? Do you render your finished arrangement down to .wav and put the audio file online or on your ipod, or do you attempt to keep everything in MIDI all the time?

My preferred method of production includes MIDI but pretty much everything I create in a synth using MIDI gets resampled to audio, either by slicing to drumracks, placing in a sampler(to be triggered by midi) or just manually chopped up in audio?
I also play guitar and sing which is recorded as audio then processed in a sequencer. Am i doing it wrong?

Last question: WHY limit yourself like that?

[stringtapper]

So, no: audio has no musical code.

But again, by "musical code" you mean "tonal music" (what modern composers call "lattice-based music). There is music that uses other musical parameters (timbre). And it doesn't matter if 99.9999999999999999% of music is what you call "tonal." If even 0.00000000000000000001% exists then it disproves your theory. In fact it is much more than 0.00000000000000000001% of music that uses timbre as a musical parameter.

And you have no real answer to this argument, as you have shown time and time again.

[9V]

So, no: audio has no musical code.

But again, by "musical code" you mean "tonal music" (what modern composers call "lattice-based music). There is music that uses other musical parameters (timbre). And it doesn't matter if 99.9999999999999999% of music is what you call "tonal." If even 0.00000000000000000001% exists then it disproves your theory. In fact it is much more than 0.00000000000000000001% of music that uses timbre as a musical parameter.

And you have no real answer to this argument, as you have shown time and time again.

different music is because of different genres. For instance: rock, jazz, trance, waltz, etc. You can recognize the genres because of rhythm, tempo and chords based on the scale. What the heck of a genre is this so called "timbre based music"? Never heard before. I usually hear musicians telling "give me a 4/4" or "please, turn it to minor", "give me an A major", "please, time!", "slower!", "faster!", "higher!", "louder!" etc. How the hell can you ask for "timbre"?! What the heck of a musical instruction is that?!

[stringtapper]

What the heck of a genre is this so called "timbre based music"? Never heard before. I usually hear musicians telling "give me a 4/4" or "please, turn it to minor", "give me an A major", "please, time!", "slower!", "faster!", "higher!", "louder!" etc. How the hell can you ask for "timbre"?! What the heck of a musical instruction is that?!

Well, then that's all you know. That doesn't mean the other don't exist. It does, I assure you. I've already given you examples of such works.

You really don't know what timbre is? You seem to know what a guitar is. They have these things called "tone knobs" on them. Composers give instructions in scores that relate to timbre all the time. Horns or strings with mutes? That's a direction to change the timbre of an instrument. Once electronic means were developed composers gained the ability to more precisely define timbral parameters.

You admit that you've "never heard before," well why don't you go listen and learn something for a change?

[H20nly]

[9V]

I totally get what your trying to say dude. I really do. So I'm not gonna argue semantics anymore but I still have a few questions for you :

Why? Honest question(not trying to be a dick here.) What prompted you to start this thread? I know many people enjoy a good debate, and I'm sure you knew this would stir emotions. Is that why?

2. What is your obsession w/ MIDI? It's just a means to an end. I mean, do you keep everything in mIDI even after you've finished a song? Do you render your finished arrangement down to .wav and put the audio file online or on your ipod, or do you attempt to keep everything in MIDI all the time?

My preferred method of production includes MIDI but pretty much everything I create in a synth using MIDI gets resampled to audio, either by slicing to drumracks, placing in a sampler(to be triggered by midi) or just manually chopped up in audio?
I also play guitar and sing which is recorded as audio then processed in a sequencer. Am i doing it wrong?

Last question: WHY limit yourself like that?

(1) the question was born in another forum, because i said rewire protocol is not musical, while vst is musical. They asked me why and I replied it is because rewire is for audio and vst for midi. Some people did not understand the difference between midi and audio and i just say midi is a musical protocol (the instructions are musically related) while audio (waveforms) is only sound. So, in a sequencer, i consider "music" only midi tracks. At this point many people (i guess the ones who compose music with prefab samples in audio tracks) were very angry and told me: "how dare you? You don't consider my music music because i use audio?!"... and, yes i don't consider that "music" but remixes, collage, etc. I only consider music the original creation based on intervals. The rest for me is sound.

(2) when you compose, "music" is the composition, not the recording. So, if you play a composition, music is the composition expressed in real time, with instruments. If you record that it becomes sound (for a musician, not for the listener, of course! For the listener it is not imoortant to know if music is played in real time, it remains music). So, no: your compositions recorded in a DAW audio tracks for me are not "music", but sound. Something for sound engineering. MIDI tracks remain music because of the code (you can always edit them with musical parameters).

(3) this is very important for the ones who play electronic music, because there is a latency (in live situations) and you have to justify it as a musician. The only "phisical" element to avoid this latency is MIDI. With acoustic instruments this latency is very small (just to be clear: for "latency" i don't mean "computer latency" issues! I mean the time between the musician mind thought, where music is, and the sound created by music). If you play audio tracks you break this relationship. Your music is only sound (but again: this is a musician problem, not important for the listener).

(4) when i record acoustic music i know the music WAS only when it was played. The result it is sound (like when you take a picture: a photograph is a model of reality, not reality in itself). So mixed down tracks are the sound of what once was music. Of course i call it "music" in a common sense perspective, but not as a musician. I would never "play" audio recorded tracks, dat, mp3 bases live! I don't consider that music! Only MIDI, or instruments in real time. It is a "dogma" for me, yes.

[Theo Void]

I totally get what your trying to say dude. I really do. So I'm not gonna argue semantics anymore but I still have a few questions for you :

Why? Honest question(not trying to be a dick here.) What prompted you to start this thread? I know many people enjoy a good debate, and I'm sure you knew this would stir emotions. Is that why?

2. What is your obsession w/ MIDI? It's just a means to an end. I mean, do you keep everything in mIDI even after you've finished a song? Do you render your finished arrangement down to .wav and put the audio file online or on your ipod, or do you attempt to keep everything in MIDI all the time?

My preferred method of production includes MIDI but pretty much everything I create in a synth using MIDI gets resampled to audio, either by slicing to drumracks, placing in a sampler(to be triggered by midi) or just manually chopped up in audio?
I also play guitar and sing which is recorded as audio then processed in a sequencer. Am i doing it wrong?

Last question: WHY limit yourself like that?

(1) the question was born in another forum, because i said rewire protocol is not musical, while vst is musical. They asked me why and I replied it is because rewire is for audio and vst for midi. Some people did not understand the difference between midi and audio and i just say midi is a musical protocol (the instructions are musically related) while audio (waveforms) is only sound. So, in a sequencer, i consider "music" only midi tracks. At this point many people (i guess the ones who compose music with prefab samples in audio tracks) were very angry and told me: "how dare you? You don't consider my music music because i use audio?!"... and, yes i don't consider that "music" but remixes, collage, etc. I only consider music the original creation based on intervals. The rest for me is sound.

(2) when you compose, "music" is the composition, not the recording. So, if you play a composition, music is the composition expressed in real time, with instruments. If you record that it becomes sound (for a musician, not for the listener, of course! For the listener it is not imoortant to know if music is played in real time, it remains music). So, no: your compositions recorded in a DAW audio tracks for me are not "music", but sound. Something for sound engineering. MIDI tracks remain music because of the code (you can always edit them with musical parameters).

(3) this is very important for the ones who play electronic music, because there is a latency (in live situations) and you have to justify it as a musician. The only "phisical" element to avoid this latency is MIDI. With acoustic instruments this latency is very small (just to be clear: for "latency" i don't mean "computer latency" issues! I mean the time between the musician mind thought, where music is, and the sound created by music). If you play audio tracks you break this relationship. Your music is only sound (but again: this is a musician problem, not important for the listener).

(4) when i record acoustic music i know the music WAS only when it was played. The result it is sound (like when you take a picture: a photograph is a model of reality, not reality in itself). So mixed down tracks are the sound of what once was music. Of course i call it "music" in a common sense perspective, but not as a musician. I would never "play" audio recorded tracks, dat, mp3 bases live! I don't consider that music! Only MIDI, or instruments in real time. It is a "dogma" for me, yes.

OK! I see what you mean. Totally get it. I understand it is the performance aspect that is the only thing that can be considered actual music and that once it's recorded or automated and not being performed live it becomes sound(to the musician.) But even MIDI is audio somewhere in the chain. Your soft synth is using an audio sample or a sine "wave" generated by an oscillator which is audio. All sound whether it's using musical instructions or not is just air moving. Vibrations that your eardrum picks up and converts into electrical signals to the brain. So this is not a technical debate, or a philosophical debate, it's mere semantics.

[regretfullySaid]

Yo, Teddy kick it like this

[9V]

OK! I see what you mean. Totally get it. I understand it is the performance aspect that is the only thing that can be considered actual music and that once it's recorded or automated and not being performed live it becomes sound(to the musician.) But even MIDI is audio somewhere in the chain. Your soft synth is using an audio sample or a sine "wave" generated by an oscillator which is audio. All sound whether it's using musical instructions or not is just air moving. Vibrations that your eardrum picks up and converts into electrical signals to the brain. So this is not a technical debate, or a philosophical debate, it's mere semantics.

No, it is different. If I play with sounds on stage (like with ableton, with maschine, looping feedback, scratches, using metal pans, objects etc.) i am making music, because of the human element (my action). Infact those kind of performances are music. And playing synths and electronic devices, too. But if i switch "on" and start an mp3 player, or a DAT, or a cd player, etc. i am not making music (otherwise, everyone switching on the radio, mp3, cd etc. would be a musician!). There is no human action, no human interaction, no minimal latency between human mind (the REAL place from where the music starts) and the sound made by music. It is only sound. That is why audio tracks are not music. MIDI, on the contrary, remains "music" even without human element: because of its musical code. So, for an electronic musician, it is "ethically" important to avoid automated audio tracks playing back on stage. It's a "dogma", for me: when automated tracks are necessary, they MUST BE only MIDI, otherwise i feel I am cheating the audience. But of course for the audience it is not important whether the sound is coming out from a midi device/track or from an audio player. For me it is, as a musician.

So: in electronic music MIDI is always music, either played in real time or reproduced in a sequencer. AUDIO is music ONLY when played in real time (because of the human element), otherwise it is sound (because of the lack of musical code: infact audio cannot be edited with musical parameters, it is editable ONLY with sound parameters). And that is why, for me, if an electronic musician plays live, he MUST use MIDI as a base, and NEVER use audio material for playback. MIDI remains music (even if not played by him, but by the sequencer), AUDIO is only sound.

[LoopStationZebra]

Fascinating as all this is, I'm struck by how utterly irrelevant it...

Oh. Nevermind.

[9V]

What the heck of a genre is this so called "timbre based music"? Never heard before. I usually hear musicians telling "give me a 4/4" or "please, turn it to minor", "give me an A major", "please, time!", "slower!", "faster!", "higher!", "louder!" etc. How the hell can you ask for "timbre"?! What the heck of a musical instruction is that?!

Well, then that's all you know. That doesn't mean the other don't exist. It does, I assure you. I've already given you examples of such works.

You really don't know what timbre is? You seem to know what a guitar is. They have these things called "tone knobs" on them. Composers give instructions in scores that relate to timbre all the time. Horns or strings with mutes? That's a direction to change the timbre of an instrument. Once electronic means were developed composers gained the ability to more precisely define timbral parameters.

You admit that you've "never heard before," well why don't you go listen and learn something for a change?

I thought you were talking about something complex, actually. Why are you telling me this simple thing is not possible to do with MIDI, then?! Just use program change...

[stringtapper]

What the heck of a genre is this so called "timbre based music"? Never heard before. I usually hear musicians telling "give me a 4/4" or "please, turn it to minor", "give me an A major", "please, time!", "slower!", "faster!", "higher!", "louder!" etc. How the hell can you ask for "timbre"?! What the heck of a musical instruction is that?!

Well, then that's all you know. That doesn't mean the other don't exist. It does, I assure you. I've already given you examples of such works.

You really don't know what timbre is? You seem to know what a guitar is. They have these things called "tone knobs" on them. Composers give instructions in scores that relate to timbre all the time. Horns or strings with mutes? That's a direction to change the timbre of an instrument. Once electronic means were developed composers gained the ability to more precisely define timbral parameters.

You admit that you've "never heard before," well why don't you go listen and learn something for a change?

I thought you were talking about something complex, actually. Why are you telling me this simple thing is not possible to do with MIDI, then?! Just use program change...

Um, yeah the instrumentation/orchestration way of manipulating timbre is what composers had to use before electronic methods came along. So yeah, you can use that program change method with MIDI, but it's still less control over timbre than sculpting the spectra.

You really don't already know this stuff?

[9V]

you told me there is some music out there that is unreproduceable with MIDI/notation. And I asked you: "you mean drones? Because I don't consider drones music, but sound". And you replied: "no, music". So I thought you were talking about something complex, because i have never heard about it. But if "timbre" is the only "element"... you can modify timbre with midi. So, my question was different. I asked for "audio=music" music. You told me there is music that can be made only with audio (?). For me it is a nonsense, but you are the teacher...