VoiceX

The computer is god in the modern age. Are you suggesting that god`s software is insufficient? do you know anyone that can play faster, and more accurately than a computer?

Seriously though. Technically speaking, you can even play drums with a twig. The same idea applies to making music using your computer. Its not the software - its the composer. Oh sure we can both bore each other in a pointless debate whether or not MIDI composition can be considered as "art", because anyone with minimal musical sense and intelligence can do that. But I say the hell with all, and damn the technicalities!

I wont speak for anyone else, but when I listen to music I don't really care how its done, unless I wanna do it myself. Like in marketing - its all about the final product. And if that final product was done using a computer, if its good, than so be it

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Brian Krashpad

Computers are instruments like anything else.

Except when in the rare instance of actually recording to tape, even the rawest rock and roll band nowadays is going to use computers in the the mixing, recording, and mastering stages.

So computers are instruments. They take skill and learning to operate. I don't think that really gets to what most people in the debate are really meaning to say.

There is a huge difference between mixing/recording/mastering music with a computer and generating the music itself with a computer. A computer can't swing, or for that matter rock. Those algorithms have not been written, nor will they be.

Many people have no problem with that. That's OK. People will like what they like, it has ever been thus. The more a computer is involved in the actual generation of the music and rhythm itself, however, the less I tend to like it. This is not confined to the specific technology of computers, the same negative effect can be produced by analog post-production methods that wring every last bit of imperfection and humanity out of a performance.

But that's just me.

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Dr_Rez

Not true. A very recent example would be the Foo Fighters new album. While I didnt really like it all that much its beside the point. Grohl recorded the entire thing on tape and spliced/cut all of it in a 100% analog studio. The black keys have done that for a long time as well as quite a few other rock and blues bands. It can be dont just not as cheaply as digitally. For a new band to release something in that format is probably asking to much.

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Brian Krashpad

I'll amend my statement to begin "Unless you're on the level of the Foo Fighters or something..."

At any rate the point was that computers require skill to use properly, and can be used by bands with no electronic instruments generating tones; I wasn't contending that one couldn't record without them.

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Howard the Duck

not entirely true, i have programmed sequencers to "swing" and to "rock"

there's always the "humanization" feature, to make human-type errors

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Brian Krashpad

No. It's not reacting real-time with other players, which is what yields swing and rock.

It's fake.

It does not swing. It does not rock. That's not in a program. Intentionally placing "error" into a mechanica/digital generation of tones and rhythm is not what is happening with a live band.

These are subjective matters of aesthetics. No sense further arguing.

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VibesMusic

macbook pro's are instruments!

hommystyle

If computer is instrument, then sewing machine should be

Freebase Dali

GREAT IDEA.
Gonna borrow my mom's sewing machine in my next experimental project.

1moretroubadour

Absolutely a computer is an instrument.
It doesn't matter how the sound wave is produced; it's what you do with it.