Herbert Manifesto

Discuss music production with Ableton Live.
Pako

Herbert Manifesto

Post by Pako » Tue Jul 08, 2003 11:38 pm

Just thought this was entertaining:
8) 8) 8)
____________________________

PERSONAL CONTRACT FOR THE COMPOSITION OF MUSIC
[INCORPORATING THE MANIFESTO OF MISTAKES]

THIS IS A GUIDE FOR MY OWN WORK AND NOT INTENDED AS THE CORRECT OR ONLY WAY TO WRITE MUSIC EITHER FOR MYSELF OR OTHERS.

1. The use of sounds that exist already is not allowed. Subject to article 2. In particular:

No drum machines.
All keyboard sounds must be edited in some way: no factory presets or pre-programmed patches are allowed.

2. Only sounds that are generated at the start of the compositional process or taken from the artist's own previously unused archive are available for sampling.

3. The sampling of other people's music is strictly forbidden.

4. No replication of traditional acoustic instruments is allowed where the financial and physical possibility of using the real ones exists.

5. The inclusion, development, propagation, existence, replication, acknowledgement, rights, patterns and beauty of what are commonly known as accidents, is encouraged. Furthermore, they have equal rights within the composition as deliberate, conscious, or premeditated compositional actions or decisions.

6. The mixing desk is not to be reset before the start of a new track in order to apply a random eq and fx setting across the new sounds. Once the ordering and recording of the music has begun, the desk may be used as normal.

7. All fx settings must be edited: no factory preset or pre-programmed patches are allowed.

8. Samples themselves are not to be truncated from the rear. Revealing parts of the recording are invariably stored there.

9. A notation of sounds used to be taken and made public.

10. A list of technical equipment used to be made public.

11. optional: Remixes should be completed using only the sounds provided by the original artist including any packaging the media was provided in.

MATTHEW HERBERT 27-11-00
updated 05-06-03

http://www.magicandaccident.com/mh/index.htm?2

The Hulk
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Post by The Hulk » Wed Jul 09, 2003 1:15 am

I can definitely relate to your standards. But I bet you'll sacrifice some of that dogma if in one of those accidents something's really working even if it's breaking the rules a bit.

I find that even though I wish I could customize every single element of my set, I'd rather be making music, so I'll compromise just to get into it quicker.

Alex Reynolds
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Post by Alex Reynolds » Wed Jul 09, 2003 4:04 am

Sounds an awful lot like Lars von Trier's cheerless Dogma manifesto as applied to electronic music. Contrived pretensions rarely lead to creative, enjoyable work. But if it works for him, good luck...

As a ground rule, I try to make sounds I would want to share with my friends. Beyond that I'm not sure how Herbert's rules would help me very much...

-Alex

Pitch Black
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Post by Pitch Black » Wed Jul 09, 2003 8:42 am

Pretentious - maybe. Each to their own. All I can say is I saw Matthew Herbert aka Radioboy perform live a few years ago and it was inspiring. He built up a beautiful glitch house track with nothing but a mic and what he sampled, live, then and there on stage... a paper bag scrunch, mic stand taps, vocal grunts etc. The result: a wickedly groovy track with a completely unique sound set. And he definately wasn't faking it - we the audience were 3 feet away on the same level - the dance floor - with this reporter in the front row.

cheers
paddy

Guest

Post by Guest » Wed Jul 09, 2003 10:54 am

Pitch Black,

you're right - Herbert is the Hendrix of electronic music.



format

u2canB-GURU

Post by u2canB-GURU » Fri Jul 11, 2003 2:04 pm

Anonymous wrote:Pitch Black,

you're right - Herbert is the Hendrix of electronic music.



format
Maybe he is the Miles, Coltrane , Bird and Picasso of electronic music??:):)
Jesus, Budda, Lenin ......... music is not about the means of production
You might study to play or listeng to music, learn to play instruments, you might start scratching your head in front of people with couple of delayed recording/sampling mics attached to it and if crowd will enjoy and groove to that - you too can be A GURU.
But you could just make them moove by playing percussion- oh, sorry it's not electronic i forgot :)

monolake.

the monolake manifesto

Post by monolake. » Mon Jul 14, 2003 1:03 am

1. make music if you like
2. use what ever you like
3. sample what ever you like
4. respect the work of others
5. do not write maifestos with more then five lines.

robert[/b]

lil_chet

Post by lil_chet » Mon Jul 14, 2003 7:19 pm

its the age of cut and paste...

...

Post by ... » Mon Jul 14, 2003 7:20 pm

:!: :!: :!:

:evil:

cderum
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Post by cderum » Mon Jul 14, 2003 8:07 pm

... wrote::!: :!: :!:

:evil:
i have no idea what you're trying to say here . . . but I do respect your right to say it.

jamief
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Re: the monolake manifesto

Post by jamief » Mon Jul 14, 2003 9:17 pm

monolake. wrote:1. make music if you like
2. use what ever you like
3. sample what ever you like
4. respect the work of others
5. do not write maifestos with more then five lines.

robert[/b]
hear hear.

Think of the KLF and the ORB - samplestic ! original and cutting edge in their day :)

monolake
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cut copy waste

Post by monolake » Mon Jul 14, 2003 10:27 pm

The monolake manifesto was a bit short so here comes some more ASCII art:

Lots of good and lots of bad music out has been made with preset sounds and/or does include samples taken from libraries or others peoples records.

Dogmatic rules may work for an artist as a guideline for the own work and can do a good job when it comes to focusing on a specific idea but not as a general strategy. Herbert definitly makes great music but his manifesto does not hit the point. Where do you want to stop once you go this way: why not asking for building own machines or write own software ? The later is something quite common among the academic computer music people and also for a lot of guys writing theier own patches in MAX/MSP Supercollider or Reaktor. If i write my own reverb algorithm i may find the rule of not using presets from some hardware fx unit pretty ridicules.

( Especially if i want to feed the output of my lovely strange selfmade reverb into a smooth factory preset from a high price Lexicon reverb unit. Why should it be better to change the reverb time from 4.3 sec ( bad preset !) to 4.32 sec ( not a preset anymore --> good ) ?

Do i really need to re-invent the piano every time i want to play a love song ? Sure there is bad sampling but there are so many ways music can fail that sampling is just a smal part of the whole picture. I once heard a techno track which did incorporate a Depeche Mode sample. My only reaction to it was the strong urge to listen to the original DM track.

The only aspect i can fully understand has to do with what i called "respect for others peoples work". If i take a fantastic bassline from another artist and add cheesy vocals and this thing finally ends up at the top of the charts then i do something which is obviously pretty wrong and quite unfair.
But if The Orb are cutting a two bar loop out of a recording of Steve Reichs "Electric Counterpoint" piece to create a hoockline for their "Little Fluffy Clouds" track i cannot entierly find this wrong. This is due to the fact that their whole work is dedicated to sampling more or less known stuff and that they are not abusing another artist because they are to stupid to do it themselfes. I assume this is what Herbert does not like: going the easy way of stealing instead of working hard to find own solutions. If this is his intention i can agree. But for me the mainfesto is mostly a ( i have to admit : good working ) marketing trick.

Cheers, Robert

( I have to confess: in 1994 Mister G. Behles of ableton fame and me did use a Brian Eno sample in our first monolake record. It was only a one short sample of a thunder storm, not even music, and it only shows up once but we felt very very guilty afterwards. It is somehere on "Cyan I". Sorry Brian... )

Credo
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Post by Credo » Tue Jul 15, 2003 8:06 am

If we are lucky Brian is on the forum and we will have a copyright process on this thread. The first one on a forum I guess? :D

About rules. Yes I think these kind of rules are sometimes good for your creative shape. Like "when I wake up I need to do 23 pushups" just for the sake of discipline. But, as when it comes to pushups, for me the rules fades away very very fast.

This becomes the pattern:

[lack of rules: rules: oblivion: lack of rules: rules: oblivion]

I think I will sample this loop for my next project... :wink:

C

screwy

Re: cut copy waste

Post by screwy » Tue Jul 15, 2003 3:11 pm

monolake. wrote:Do i really need to re-invent the piano every time i want to play a love song ?
yes! good pt. (I think yes, maybe you should consider that, ie think of why this method, artistically, but not necessarly to do it.) but 1 concern reflected in herb manifesto is that e-dance music suffers from a lack of sonic richness. the records give relatively little sound to the body of sound, and the herbt methodology is one personl way (not by itself enough) to re-enrich that sonic pallet. yes, this is an evil generalization, but there is truth to it. for example think of the value of a box of records for sampling. if you're a colony of samplers stuck on a desert island, would you rather have a box of recent e-dance records or a box of instrumental recordings (even so specific as 'jazz qtet' recordings!)..? i would rather have the latter. through imperfection accident and physik available sound pallet is way richer. ok really 1 would rather have a microphone. think of a drum vs drum machine x. the former is way richer source. this is objective and not style dependent statement. hey if it were just z using x who would care. but 30% music all using x +vsti nos 22-99 is not just unbeautiful it is decay (whether o r not u find it boring). resampling and sonic repetition (synth or syntheticity) is death. a certain amount of death is healthy and beautiful! but music music wants also to live. or maybe to die. not sure..

trietnam not logged in

Post by trietnam not logged in » Tue Jul 15, 2003 3:28 pm

when i read the topic name, i thought herbert and meat beat manifesto were collaborating, and got prematurely excited.

but then i read the thread, and it's another boring art wanky dissertation. :lol:

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