Do you find yourself distancing yourself from EM?

Because the term "Electronic Music" covers such a broad spectrum of musical styles we cannot really say that a particular style or styles of music define what Electronic Music is. If we play Electronic Music compositions on "traditional" instruments the result is not Electronic Music so there is nothing "musical" that differentiates Electronic Music from other forms of music, it is merely that the instruments used created the sounds electronically. [Non-electronic covers of EM tracks are surprisingly rare, but I'd cite Siouxsie and the Banshees cover of Kraftwerk's "Hall Of Mirrors" here as an example].  

This ability to play arpeggio chords automatically is not a new thing nor is it feature that is found solely on electronic synthesisers, it was a available on electronic organs of the 1960s and can be heard on The Who's 'Baba O'Riley' -{I think most people are now aware that this track was not the first use of a synthesiser/sequencer but an automatically arpeggiated chord played on a Lowrey organ to a marimba preset rhythm}- what makes that track stand out is not what was being played or how it was being played but how it was used as part of the whole song.  It is possible that Townshend could have played the arpeggio sequence 'Baba O'Riley' manually for the entire duration of the song, but I suspect his fingers would have fallen off before he got to the end. So I do not regard the use of an arpeggiator as being dishonest or cheating, it is a tool at the EM musician's disposal just as an octave-shift or harmoniser pedal is tool that a guitarist has at their disposal; it is just an effect and he can use that to be creative or he can use it to be lazy, but it isn't going to write the music for him - he still has to choose and play the appropriate chords and chord progression and in the appropriate tempo and rhythm. No one criticises a guitarist who uses overdrive and a fuzz pedal even though that combination can quite effectively mask sloppy playing.

I can also program the synth to play a chord from a single key-press, again I do not see this as dishonest or cheating (or perhaps even lazy) - consider this: a violin or a flute cannot play a chord because they are essentially monophonic instruments, if a violinist or flautist wants [to play] a chord they have to get two or more of their mates to play the other notes of the chord in unison with them, or in the studio they can overdub three tracks of playing the notes individually, none of those techniques would be regarded as cheating. The same thing happens with recorded vocals where the singer is double-tracked or records their own harmony backing - they cannot replicate that live without employing additional singers so is it dishonest to use those multi-tracked techniques on a recording? On the synth an EM musician can use that single-key chord in the studio or on stage, it makes no difference to the sound coming out of the studio monitor or PA system whether he used one finger or three to play that sound - unless someone can see how many fingers he is using what difference does that make?

My Yamahahahaha keyboard has a preset marked "Oboe". If I press that and play a note it kind of sounds like an oboe in that the timbre is almost oboe-ish and the envelope is sort of oboe-like, but it is not an oboe; if I play a melody using that preset it does not sound like a oboist has performed the melody - it sounds exactly like a keyboardist using a keyboard to play an oboe-like sound. This is common fault/feature/failing/advantage of all emulating keyboards, including the Hammond and Wurlitzer organs, the Mellotron and Chamberlain keyboards and all sampling and pure-synthesis synths. Play the "Oboe" tab on an electronic or electro-mechanical organ and the resulting sound sounds more like an organ than it does an oboe. [Not withstanding that probably the first thing a Hammond-player is going to do is strike out gut-rumbling two-hand chord that is not only polyphonic but also covers a note-range that an oboe is incapable of producing]. 

Samplers (such as the Fairlight or Mellotron) that replay actual oboe note recordings get closer to the sound of an oboe but do not replicate the performance of an oboist because, again, they are being played by a keyboardist. [I was discussing this with a friend of mine who is a far more accomplished keyboard player than I am, I complained that my Yamamamamaha's "Guitar" preset didn't sound much like a guitar and he replied that it was because I was playing like a keyboard and not like a guitar, he then demonstrated that playing in a more guitar-like way resulted in a more guitar-like sound.] If the Electronic musician wants an oboe in their recording but doesn't know any oboists then they have the choice of either playing the "Oboe" preset (or sample) like a keyboardist or more like an oboist - but that choice is their's to make and the creative use of that "Oboe" preset is determined by their creativity not by the instrument they are emulating. Primary amongst these "creativity" things of course is the keyboardist can do keyboardy things with that oboe sound that the oboist cannot do. The fact that he can create something that does not sound like an oboist has played the piece is perhaps more important than not being able to sound exactly like an oboist.

The same thing happens with the ubiquitous strings sound. Orchestras are expensive, even when each musician in the orchestra is earning a pittance, the cost of employing 20 to 80 people to accompany a rock band in the studio or on stage is a lot of money. In the early days of Popular Music the studio orchestra was extensively employed to accompany the singer, as bands started to play their own instruments these orchestras were still being used as accompaniment and backing to their recordings. In the mid 1960s record producers and musicians chose to replace these expensive [studio] orchestras with electronic and electro-mechanical keyboards - to begin with these were not used as lead instruments but as musical Polyfilla™ to fill-out the sound recordings of beat-groups, playing sustained chords (pads) of string-like sounds and provide musical backing and accompaniment. With time musicians discovered they could do things with these emulated sounds that the "real" orchestra could not do and these instruments and their sounds became an integral part of the band and its creativity.

These replicant/replacement sounds didn't sound like an orchestra or the string-section of an orchestra, they sounded exactly like electronic organs, but they were being used to perform the same role. Once synthesisers progressed beyond the gimmicky SciFi sound-effect level they too were used to provide this string-like "orchestral" pads and as technology improved this synthesised "orchestra" emulation grew to be even more orchestra-like but it is still keyboard music. Messrs Wakeman, Emerson, Banks, Rudess et al use these orchestral sounds as keyboard instrumentalists to accompany their own dazzling lead-breaks and those of their band mates and the Electronic Musician is no different. In using a string-like pad he is not (necessarily) attempting to sound like an orchestra per se, he is using it to perform the same, or similar, accompaniment role. [I would love to be in the room when someone tells Rick Wakeman that he should stop playing violin sound and learn to play a real violin instead ].

We have come to accept (and respect) that use of keyboards to replace other instruments in this way. When we listen to Yes or ELP we don't decry that as fakery and wish they'd used a real orchestra instead, rather that we have accepted that "electronic emulation" as a musical form in its own right. That acceptance is undoubtedly made easier because the "electronic" musicians involved are playing along side other musicians who are using electrified-acoustic and acoustic instruments so when we see a "live" electronic band (such as Tangerine Dream, JM Jarre or Kraftwerk) no one bats an eyelid when no traditional instruments are used (okay - TD is perhaps a poor example). 

The distinction (it seems) comes when the EM musician is not part of a "live" band or when programmed (or pre-recorded) music is used as a backing to live performance, as seen by the proliferation of "Keep Music Live" stickers when midi started to be used in a live setting during the 1980s. As we know, midi didn't kill off live music and it could be argued that it managed to inject a bit of life into it; and the same can also be said of use of backing tracks to some extent, as long as they are used openly and honestly, and where all those who are on stage are actually playing something (I didn't pay to watch a dogdamn mime). [Watching OMD live in 1979 "Winston" was probably the most dynamic and charismatic of the performer on stage ]. Liking or disliking that kind of live/programmed performance is a matter of personal preference that has little bearing on whether or not you liked their music in the first place - enjoying a band on album is a different kind of pleasure to seeing them perform it live and we are more forgiving of an on stage cock-up than we are to one committed in the studio. Very few bands have live albums that are rated higher than their studio offerings after all, so perhaps the whole playing live thing is a bit of red-herring, or maybe it's not as important as it first appears. 

Where Electronic Music genres really differ from "conventional" music genres is that the majority of it is produced by solo artists (even when working under a band name) and they are often not live performers so the restrictions of what you can and cannot do on stage no longer hold any value. In producing music in this one-man-band way the solo EM musician isn't simply emulating the roles of the "missing" band members because that band or combo concept of drum, bass and rhythm/lead is no longer valid. Now the once strict demarcation of roles (of instruments and instrumentation) within a band can be broken down, shuffled, rearranged or discarded as required. Of course once that has been done the idea of then recruiting a bass player, a rhythm guitarist or an oboist to join the "band" becomes somewhat redundant.

In an earlier post I equated the use of studio software with Mozart using staff paper to notate a piece of music he was composing (and I have little doubt that Mozart would have loved ProTools and Cubase), and that analogy isn't wholly accurate because the studio software can record performance directly whereas Mozart would compose on the piano then copy down the notes he had played manually onto the paper. And unlike Mozart, who had to wait to hear his piano-composed sheet-music notation played by an orchestra, the EM musician can hear it in real time as he plays it. So whether the EM musician is placing notation on a piano-roll using a mouse or playing and recording it directly via midi is somewhat irrelevant. That he can modify each note manually is not unique to the EM musician, using software like ProTools all "conventional" musicians can do this too. Of course just because a tool exist that allows performed notes to be modified the assumption is that it is used all the time. As with Auto-tune - if you can hear that it has been used at all then it has been used incorrectly.

So there are lots of reasons for not liking EM and for distancing yourself from it but all those reasons exist for "conventional" music too...

 

 

I saw Caudel twice in the 80s - both times it was just him on stage with a guitar and a pre-programmed backing track, the result was mesmerising and thoroughly enjoyable, not what you'd expect from New Age, then perhaps it wasn't New Age at all.

If you put all the categorisation to one side: there are, essentially two kinds of music. "Good" music and "Bad" music. Claiming that all electronic music is "bad" is ridiculous and just self evidently wrong. Electronic music has been around since the late 50's (RCA synthesizer) and it can be argued that it goes back much further than that (Telharmonium, 1900's.) 

Even the early period covered a vast range of musical styles: the "modern period" of electronic music (1960's onwards) covers an even larger range of artists and music. 

Most detractors of electronic music assume it's easy to play. Believe you me, if I sat these people in front of my setup and said there y'go, they'd look at me, utterly lost before a maze of LFO's, VCA's, oscillators and mixers. *SOME* electronic music is easier to play. But you still (a) need to be a musician and (b) have to have some technical ability. Can't play a minor scale on a keyboard ? Forget it.

Yes, it is possible for those of a low to middling music standard to release music now. There's a lot of automation possible. But. You are still going to end up with a finished piece which displays little or no musical ability or imagination. The instrument is always just a tool, the person playing the instrument - no matter what it is - makes the difference. Most, alas, people out there are not incredible musicians. Even most musicians are just chord strummers or plinkers or just journeymen. That's the way it is. But to denigrate all electronic music as "easy" is to do it a disservice. 

Moog used to have a slogan - "A new dimension", and it certainly is possible to create a new dimension of music. It's possible to do things now which were utterly impossible or impractical 10 years ago. Most musicians don't. Some do, and the problem is finding the good from the bad. 

But to do down all electronic music is just..... wrong. 

I shall now retreat to my happy retirement from the forum. Thank you all. Exeunt omnes stage left, bearing analogue synthesizer.