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  • Composers who use samples for art

    W
    W

    I am wondering what composers are trying to do serious music recordings with samples as a form of artistic expression, as opposed to paying film music gigs (though I know that can be serious and artistic also).  Please write in and talk about what you are doing.  I know that RK has done a beautiful string quartet, and Jay Bacal has stated on several occasions that playing music on samples is a form of self expression for him.

    I notice over and over how people in general think of samples entirely from the point of view of performers, and NOT composers.  They complain about artificial machinery replacing living human beings, etc. etc.  - we have all heard it many times.  These people do not realize that samples are not just a cheap (relatively)  substitute for live, but are also a new medium of artistic expression because they allow a composer to work on his own like an oil painter, a poet or a sculptor. What composers are actually doing this?   I am trying but often feel very isolated.  Also, this needs to be discussed and promoted because it is an extremely significant development in the history of music.
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    This is an interesting topic William. I guess everybody has their own story about this, as for me, I always felt it (VSL) gave me more power to express myself as a composer, even through jobs, but some jobs you cannot express yourself at all, such as writing music for commercials, you are literally a slave to a specific style of music the client wants, and many people who work in that business are not what you'd call serious composers but rather "clever composers", so is this an art form? In some ways, yes, but.... In films, there will always be the virtuoso composers who are skillful enough to write in anybody's style that is popular on the big screen and those who will integrate their own style, the latter is where a composer can make a living while being a serious composer, something not easy to achieve in the movie industry. Since you ask about our own experience, I personally write a lot of music, sometimes for jobs and other times not but some of those pieces eventually find an outlet. You bring the point about people judging only on the basis of it sounds real rather than the composition itself with its own sound, right? I guess we are all brainwashed to a certain degree about this, but it's true that a piece could sound great without having the same sound as a traditional orchestra and that is just as good, it's the uphill battle of the virtual music composer. We are also paving the way for future generations who will have it much easier than us, just imagine VSL in 20 years!
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    @William said:

    samples are not just a cheap (relatively)  substitute for live, but are also a new medium of artistic expression because they allow a composer to work on his own like an oil painter, a poet or a sculptor
     

    I don't understand this.  Having samples of orchestral instruments doesn't give me anything I didn't have before... I was composing on paper, on my own, like an oil painter or sculptor.  I do mock-ups for directors who can't "hear" the music on just piano. Which is most of them, these days, I notice. Learning the true skill of orchestration means you can hear the timbres in your head without needing the crutch of actually hearing it. Nobody has an orchestra just laying around.  Mock-ups are an okay tool for learning that, I guess, but there are some dangerous ways in which it deviates from live performance that could lead to bad habits.  The ultimate skill, I think, is being able to go directly to paper without needing the piano at all - just truly internalizing the music.  

    However, were you talking about sounds that only electronics can make, I would agree with you.  I've often thought the true context for electronic music was in ways that no other instrument could reproduce; leave the real instrument sounds to the real instruments.  I will likely remain steadfastly in the camp that believes no matter how many keyswitches, controllers and adaptive algorithms you create, you simply cannot quanitify what makes a human being expressing through an instrument - drawing upon a lifetime of training - so special.  Never say never, but I'd say that right now, we're about a thousand light-years from that.  

    _Mike

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    @mverta said:

     

    The ultimate skill, I think, is being able to go directly to paper without needing the piano at all - just truly internalizing the music.  

     

     

     

     

    _Mike

    Nope! What does that say about all the great jazz artists or a group like the Beatles? I place many of them on a higher level than, for example, John Williams who I love and admire very much, but honestly, a jazz genius as Bill Evans will reach me much more, and despite his serious training at Julliard he never wrote down his music other than some sketches, because his time was better invested in other ways then putting it all on paper. Shouldn't that be the ultimate art form Mike? What reaches people. You must remember that in Mozart's time there was no technology to record, today there is and that is a part of the art form used with ALL its implications. But to each his own I guess. I use to believe that writing your music on paper as I use to do and will still do when ever needed, was a Holy art form, but with time I changed that belief.
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    Guy, I think we're talking about different things.  I wasn't suggesting for a second that music on paper which sits in a house has value - in my opinion, it has none.  I was talking about what we get as composers by having this tool; William was saying it's a new art form because you don't need to have an orchestra laying around, and I was saying you ALREADY don't need an orchestra laying around if you truly know your craft - that doesn't make it a new art form.  You're absolutely right that there is a mountain of great music out there by musicians who couldn't read or write, and I'm in no way invalidating that or calling it lesser.  I'm just addressing his comment that the ability to have an orchestration right at our fingertips means it's a new art form, which I disagree with, because you can orchestrate without it.  A tool? Yes.  A whole new thing?  No.  That's my feeling.

    And to my point about internalizing the music, you must agree that if you didn't have to work out the music note-by-note on the piano, if it could simply stream from your creative mind instantly onto paper (or Finale/Sibelius for that matter) it would be a thing of beauty.  But I called that the ultimate SKILL, not the ultimate ART FORM.  I don't think being able to do that is an art at all, it's a skill, so to me, having this ability with virtual instruments is likewise a tool, not an art form.

    _Mike

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    Yeah, I know, I was just giving you a hard time. ; )
  • J
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    I guess one question that would come up would be, is there a market for this? 

    Coming from the background of a piano teacher and not having any formal orchestral training, my immagination lit up like fire when I learned of the "virtual orchestra."  Now I can orchestrate my compositions.  Back then, however, I was using ROMplers to create my orchestral sounds and the quality was, at best, fair.  Now that I have VSL at my fingertips I don't worry so much about my samples being, what music supervisors have told me for years, "not broadcast quality."  I suspect now they will tell me, "wait a minute, you have a trumpet solo going on nonstop for four minutes, that's not humanly possible."  Well of course it is if you're using samples.  So now, I'm being hindered by not knowing the rules of orchestration which I'm learning bit by bit.  But why should the rules of orchestration hinder our artistic expression if we have the technological means to recreate what we're hearing in our heads. 

    Like you said, I think we're fighting an uphill battle here though.  Hopefully someday it won't matter so much that you have a trumpet solo going on nonstop for four minutes or your 1st violins are tuned to one extreme while your second violins or celli are tuned to the other.  As long as the music you create is aesthetically pleasing it shouldn't matter. 

    At least that's my dos centavos.  Interesting thread.
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    William, I'd like to hear your thoughts.
  • W
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    Well, all of my background is traditional, written-out orchestration, and all of my original "mockups" (a word I question)  are after-the-fact MIDI performances of handwritten scores. I am right now working on a score whose paper is falling to pieces, written for full concert band in 1976, performed live with players' parts I scrawled myself but now playable more accurately because of VSL, which not only has all the commonly sampled band instruments, but also Eflat soprano and alto clarinets and cornet.

    At the same time, look at what happens, throughout all of history, to composers who only write out scores - often their music sits in drawers often for the entire life of the composer.  A piece of music is not a silent musical score - it is a performed, sounding piece of music, whether it is imagined fully in the mind of the composer or not. Schubert's 9th Symphony in C  - his greatest - sat literally in a  drawer for his entire lifetime.

    So that is what I mean when I talk about a new art form - the art of being able to REALIZE a piece of music by yourself, whether it was imagined within your mind fully or worked out with various "crutches" or not.  And not having to become a salesman or a businessman simply to convince an orchestra music director to allow you to exist as a heard composer.
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    Another way of putting this is that a really good sample library MAKES AVAILABLE to more artists the sounds of the orchestra.  In the past, only the elect few - often not the best composers but merely the ones who simply "knew" somebody - were the only ones who could use the huge range of expression found in the orchestra.  Nowadays with a sufficiently powerful library almost anyone can use orchestral timbres in a composition. This can be abused and made to disguise poor writing as has been pointed out, but it can also be a great new tool for artistic expression.

     I would like to know what composers are actually digging out old unplayed scores and performing them new with VSL. I have been doing this and found it startling how I had actually created a piece of music that had been SLAUGHTERED by live players and which I had concluded - based on the terrible peroformance - was no good.   Or another example is Dave Tuba King doing very interesting work with  those massive symphonies he is transcribing. They present huge practical difficulties in live performance, and so samples can be very significant in a project like that as well. I remember that Soenke Schnepel here presented a highly complex atonal work and has a CD of it that many orchestras today would shun because it is not a pleasant-sounding old warhorse every audience is familiar with.  That is another area where samples can be important - as a means of debuting modernistic or avant garde music that the general public is unwilling to listen to but should have an audience.
  • J
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    First I wanted to point something out, and to make a quick disclaimer: I'm sure that both Mike and Guy feel the "truth" of their statements above lies somewhere between what each of them is saying. These typed-out forum messages can become entrenched in support and opposition - "for" and "against" arguments - so quickly that one realizes only too late that one is arguing "for" something they only believe in under specific conditions, or "against" something they actually feel is perfectly legitimate...

    So, with that said, I think maybe an aspect of what William getting at - or perhaps just the way I've been thinking along a similar line - is the idea of the samples somehow slipping from their ties to "real" orchestral instruments. At least, that's what I would think of when considering the idea of music composed specifically **for** Vienna Instruments, not composed for acoustic instruments, then translated into Vienna Instruments. Of course, as Mike mentions, analog and/or digital synthesis has become the foundation for a great deal of music that is only "at home" in a mediated form, as there is no "live" alternative available - no mimesis to be carried out... No "real" to emulate, other than the reality of the influence of electrical impulses on a speaker cone.

    But the situation is more complicated for using Vienna Instruments as a sort of "native" medium. I think this is partly because it's very difficult to actually hear these "instruments" without reference to a model of the real. I mean, if we imagine the timbres we want for a synthesized piece, we may start with some example of another work we enjoyed, and try to figure out how the sound was produced - what synthesis technique was used - then make alterations to that sound, in order to make it our own. Or we might have some knowledge of the various synthesis techniques available, or maybe even specific plug-ins, and we may imagine new timbres that "should" be possible using those techniques, or plug-ins, and go about realizing them technically. These synths, and the sounds we've developed, then become our instruments, or our "palette". But with Vienna Instruments, at least for me, the reference point is always the "real" instrument. And that is the limitation. Of course, this is *my* limitation, but it's still a limitation, and it's difficult to get around.
    Over the past year and a half, or so, I wrote an album based on this sort of investigation. Some of the stuff is posted here:

    http://www.myspace.com/mrwheetuk

    The last track is a remix I did for a friend of mine, so it's a little bit of an outsider, sonically speaking.

    While I like what I came up with, and think it's quite a good album, it's not quite what I set out to do. The reason, basically, is that it's still much more thoroughly rooted in acoustic performance than I'd originally hoped it would be. I just kind of gravitated toward the idea of producing a sort of "virtual band", and really wrote the music for that band. In fact, I took it so far that even the synthesized parts are always written to be playable by one person, and are actually mixed using amp simulation! Crazy. But this is just something that kind of emerged during the process... And I think the reason it emerged in this way is that I was completely seduced by the realism of the Vienna Instruments, and could hardly resist producing a virtual band when working with them. Strange, but true.

    Anyway, I have in mind a new album, with quite a different approach. I think, this time around, I'm going to program a sort of VI host which implements the VIs under a kind of synthesis paradigm. The idea will be to use the VIs as the basic "waveforms", but to house them in a MIDI program that mixes them, automates program changes, detunes, and so on, in a way that mimics different types of synthesis.... Could be interesting, could be a bloody mess. Who knows... Considering how long the first album took, it also may never happen! ;-)

    But I also like William's idea of sort of "resurrecting" old orchestral pieces using the VIs. In fact, if I ever find the time, I'd like to program some of the orchestra pieces I wrote back in the 90's, when I was a wildly ambitious young autodidact, writing orchestral scores out by hand on, and packing them up in the closet once they were done!

    J.
  • G
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    A few sub topics have evolved from the main one but I think all inter-related, so this becomes somewhat confusing to the point what come first the egg or the chicken? In my case, I like to function backwards, that is if I take the example of Mike who will write down on a pad the full score before proceeding to a performance or mock up of it, and full admiration for working this way, but the way I prefer to work is write the piece in my head as I'm orchestrating it, on my computer with VSL, in my case. The big advantage is I can write a ton of music this way without having to go nuts trying to find the right circumstances for an orchestra to play it live. The way I figure is probably not more than 2%-5% of my total production will ever get a chance to be played by a real orchestra, and for many others I'm sure it's the same thing, so is it really worth it? I'd rather haver some fun on a daily basis and still with some pretty realistic sounds, and when I look at all of my orchestral production so far since I started with VSL I can say I have quite a bit to show for. If ever requested I can always score a piece on paper for a real orchestra, but to tell you the truth these libraries are getting more refined by the day that it's something I'm not too inclined on focusing myself on. There is something else to consider as well, there are many people out there who are very talented composers but will never have the same access some will get, for what ever reasons, to writing for a real orchestra. Virtual music composing leaves most composer on a more equal basis to showcase themselves. As far as internalizing the music before hearing it with instruments, yes it's important but not THAT important. I mean didn't Stravinsky write on the piano? I'm sure he discovered plenty of cool sounds just by trying them out, need I say the famous "Rite of Spring" passage: E flat 7 over E chord,also a perfect hand fit... I sometimes do similar things with VSL and it's not unusual that people will say: "Guy, some of your orchestration is very original, I never would have thought of that!" I think there is so much we can internalize, often it will be an amalgam of the sounds, timbres, chords we are already familiar with, that's not to say we can't create some amazing things. I don't know this for a fact but I'm sure Ravel must of constantly asked musicians to try unusual things on their instruments to hear how they sounded. Ultimately what REALLY counts is your decision on how to dose all these sounds, no matter how they originated. So back to the question, for some it can be a new art of writing with virtual sounds and others not, it's probably a personal thing, really depends on your approach.
  • M
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    But Guy, again, does having the ability to hear it in your house without needing a live orchestra make it an entirely new art form?!  I still don't see the connection.  Sure, the experimentation is nice, and the convenience is nice, but they sound like conveniences to me, like options, but don't represent anything entirely new.  Yes, there are composers who will never get the chance to hear their music live, but I don't see writing it on a computer makes it something entirely different or new...  it just gives them a chance to hear their orchestral music realized more easily.  People can make home movies on videocameras without needing a film camera, dolly track, grip and shooting permits; does that make the movies they shoot an entirely new art form?  

    _Mike

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    I see your point Mike, but I was more debating whether it changes the way you write music doing it the "non traditional" way, that is being influence by the type of libraries, samples, articulations etc you are dealing with, and you were saying it does not change anything for you in your writing since you internalize your music before any further steps, right? I personally will not write the same way for, say VSL as I would for a real orchestra, so this is the point and where the art factor is new. But ok the overall "ART" is still sounds we express and that does not change, but all I'm saying is writing with virtual sounds is an art of its own meaning it involves a lot of different approaches and specialization to make music, and I think when something reaches a high degree of refinement there is a new art form that is born, a little different than the example of handing anyone a video camera and tell him to make a home movie, will that be art? Absolutely not, or likely not. I think knowing your libraries is a totally different thing than knowing your orchestra, so somewhere you must admit Mike that there is an art form there, especially when one is considering all types of genres, string quartets, symphonic works, ballets, action, dreamy string sections, solo works etc. So again, it's to what degree this will reach that makes an art of its own, at least to me.
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    Wow... I mean... I guess technically you could call being really good at choosing which samples you use a sort of "art?"  Even if I grant that, though, do you really think your point here is in line with William's original definition?  Again, I'd be much more inclined to place electronic music realization in its own art form category when it's comprised of things that are unique to the medium - impossible tunings/ranges, processing, or combined sounds not possible in reality.  That sounds new, to me.  

    The title of the thread is Composers Who Use Samples for Art.  I won't argue that a symphony written with the help of samples is every bit the art writing it by hand would be - of course it is, it's just a different tool being used to realize it.  I argued from the beginning that using such samples just wasn't an entirely "new form of art," rather a different way of getting to the same place.  While I can see semantical points like, "choosing good samples is an art form unto itself," I still further feel that if you want to place something in the category of new, it has to be precisely something not possible before.  Realizing orchestral music was possible before samples.  Difficult for a lot of people for logistical reasons, but that doesn't mean they've created an entirely new art form by buying a Gigastudio.  Now if they take those samples and create sounds and music which are not possible to replicate traditionally, NOW you're talking about a new art form.  That's my take, anyway.

    _Mike

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    Well, elaborating a little on my point about the context of what the composer is hearing, try the following thought experiment.

    Imagine a composer, young or otherwise, who for whatever reason has no "live" context for the *sounds* of Vienna Instruments. This person literally hears them as a bunch of "presets" on a VST synthesizer. They drag these presets onto matrices, and build some patches, based only on how they imagine these sounds layering together. Then they start to compose music with the saved presets. The music may or may not be unique and interesting, and it may or may not be playable by human musicians, but it would essentially be a form of computer music, at least from the perspective of the composer. In point of fact, it may be extremely difficult to realize live, even if the performance itself is not particularly difficult, and since the VSL samples are confined to proper playing registers, there shouldn't be anything literally impossible, given adequate instrumental forces. However, even the slightest inaccuracy in the **balance** of instruments, the rate or depth of vibrato, and so on, would suddenly fail to "replicate" the "original" piece, which only exists, in its true form, in the Vienna Instrument-based version. The composer would recognize the "live" version as a "fake" in an instant...

    The point is simply that, in such a case, the original IS the VI version, and any "live" performance is the replica. Alarm Will Sound's album of Aphex Twin tracks is a good example. Further, given the technical impossibility of replicating every subtle nuance of a VI version live, the idea must at least be entertained that these are two completely different forms, in the very same way that a piece by Pierre Henry is totally different from one by Aaron Copland.

    I know... I'm pushing it... But you get the idea. And actually, if the fate of the world's orchestras continues along its bleak path, there may very well be generations of composers to come who *only* understand "orchestral sounds" as samples. These composers will hear 'Violins tutti C4' from 2 different libraries as distinctly unique timbres, just as they would two different string pads from different VST synths, or the different general timbral characters of Roland and Korg oscillators...

    cheers,

    J.
  • J
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    ...just to clarify. I realize the Alarm Will Sound album of Aphex Twin tracks is a different deal, because the Aphex Twin stuff isn't intended to *sound* like an acoustic ensemble... but you get the idea.

    Also, I just wanted to connect the above example to my original point: it is our own limitation that we cannot hear the Vienna Instruments without filtering them through the image of the real. Which is why I'm playing around with the idea of an interface which hides the VI form me, and allows me to play with timbres in a much more abstract way.

    sorry for blabbering... I'm done for now!
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    The analogue of video/filmmaking applied to sampling/live music is very appropriate.  Because, in answer to Mike's question is a homemade video different from a movie - YES!

    It is hugely different, as anyone who has ever tried to make a Hollywood-style movie, with all of the constraints of commercial filmmaking, knows all too well.  In fact, the entire reason that movies are in general so underdeveloped as an art form - compared to literature for example - is that they cannot be done the way that an individual in his digital video studio can do a motion picture, free of the compromises that are inherent in the medium of cinema done on photographic film which DEMANDS that the artist become a "showman" and a businessman and an audience pleaser at the same time he is trying to do cinematic art (if he even thinks of it, which is rare).  So this one practical difference creates an enormous effect and a completely separate art form.  The only way for an experimental/avant garde/artistic filmmaker to work in the past was in 16mm or 8mm, and these have huge limitations compared to 35mm film (involving not only the film stock size and resolution, but the use of optical printing, laboratory expenses, etc. etc.).  So digital video, especially HD, which is comparable to 35mm in detail and manipulative ability with an NLE system, is a completely new art form that allows an individual to realize filmic concepts that have never been possible to do before..

    By the same token, the simple pracitcal differences in using samples, as opposed to live orchestral music, create an entirely new artform, because a composer can express immediately - with the fluency of a painter's oils and brush -  musical concepts in actual sounding timbres that have the range of expression of the orchestra (or nearly so).  This changes immensely what is attempted, what is even thought about as a possible composition.  Consider the uniformity of most live-player music - it is always the same ensembles, and woe to the composer who tries to write for something unusual.  Or too big, or too little, or too long, or too short. Or too hard.  Or too easy.   It is not only instrumentation, it is orchestration, it is form (such as those huge symphonies Dave Tuba King is realizing and can hardly be attempted let alone well-done by live orchestras), it is contrapuntal structure, perhaps even harmonies and time signatures that are not possible with live musicians.   So these freedoms allowed by sampling, which in themselves might seem mere practicalities, taken together, do indeed create an entirely new medium of artistic expression. 
  • W
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    That is an interesting example JBM, about the composer who had never heard live orchestra using highly detailed, close-to-live samples like VSL.  In the worst situation. it would result in bad abuse of sounds that if heard live would be written for much better - such as one does really hear when a bad film composer (as opposed to the practice of good ones) writes block chords and smears them all over large ensembles that would normally be playing different individual lines.  However, in the best situation it might result in a completely new kind of music that was free of "baggage" that centuries of musical tradition have created. I feel that some of Ligetti's more radical orchestral pieces are like this, as if he was writing for samples before they existed because of his use of pure timbral combinations of single notes played by different instruments - something that samples can do perfectly and instantly (as opposed to all the difficulties in switching articulations within complicated lines, etc.).
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    William Your original and last statement of your posting, states something like." I feel isolated ". That appears to be the case with me also. I have chosen to use VSL for personal Compositions only. Or Classical tradition to be exact. And not go for the money in scoring or orchestrating Songs etc. Thus proves to be in rout of the lonely maytag repair man in perponderance. I would have never guessed that, at the early stages of Sampling. As presently I do agree with everything and everyone and their deep and analytical understanding of their work and habitual daily use. I just can confess on my angle of using these samples. And should very well mention that there are no one way of doing something but as these technological breakthrough continue to add up, so do the ways and means of use, and the many ways of creating. I myself have chosen to create by using the piano as the primary instrument as well as accumulating piano pieces all along which in return will give me the material to play live as well as orchestrate. Thus capturing two birds in one hand. And maintaining the primarial musical structural or theoretical picture in mind as well as in the ear. Or hearing. As far as the realistical sounds of the samples, there are many ways to engineer and recreate the indigenous tonal qualities. I confess, I did not have the time to experiment and iconically emulate the authenticity of the original. But Its not that difficult. for example something as simple as using mono tracks can create the original thin airy sounding stringed instruments. Or the use of a preamped plugins. Which are rare to say the least. Most ordinary people also get used to what they are hearing immediately and can't tell the difference. Beethoven broke the mole of the original sound anyway. I've always said; will anyone question the tonal quality in comparison to the realistic one if the Composition is of a Beethoven stature ? Also from another perspective, Occasionally One does hear some very nice orchestrations. Which just by hunch and being around from the last era of non samples. You hear perfect and powerful arrangements that just didn't exist from the last era without samples. The English have made good use of these samples, as well as the Italians. You can just hear the arranger auditioning samples to create the vast and powerful orchestrations of today. For Ex; The remix and arrangements of the song by three dog night. "Out in the Country". As well as Andre Bocelli's Orchestrative arrangements, Or Sara Brightman.. ect.. I may be wrong about my hunch also, But its something new from this era that i'm willing to bet. I've also found out that no matter what instrument you think will work. It almost will never as one auditions the different options. Tonal color is surprising. And the use of Sampling is of a luxury that one didn't have before. And I also still maintain that Composition is king. The process is a lengthy one. And there are no ways around it. Yes Mozart, Shubert, Shuman, Mendelson ect.. wrote from their head to Orchestra staffs. They all also paid a price for it. God gives and God takes away. The process is lengthy and absolute, despite all and everything that we will ever invent or improve. Great Art is Real ! Note: As for the person that bashed my brand new white car door the last time I logged in for a discussion. please, if you must bash another door, make it the right this time, so they'll match. Thank you. I'll leave the light on for you.