Notation and Sequencing Software

[Chilperich]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

So this music describes people's thoughts on having to pay their mortgage, their daughter's wedding, having to fill up the dishwasher? This weekend's weather? Annoyed because Aston Villa lost 2-0? And all the other concerns of priviledged western audiences? Or maybe we're all wandering around making impotent attempts to shoulder the (non-western) tragedies in which real suffering occurs?

What emotions are we left with after they've been radically changed?

I don't want to trivialise or dismiss the all-too-real suffering that is occurring on a vast scale outside the materially privileged developed world, but I think that there is still a great deal of genuine suffering here as well.

Ironically, a great deal of suffering is caused among very materially comfortable people precisely because of a lack of want and an excess of leisure. You could (although I might question your real motivations) take a very moralistic line against, say, affluent matrons who pop pills and down unfeasible amounts of alcohol in large, well-appointed villas, and go on to say that their suffering is self-inflicted, and that if they were less self-absorbed and greedy it wouldn't be occurring at all. Modern psychiatry (and pharmaceuticals), the self-help industry and bogus religions have all sprung up to minister to this kind of unhappiness.

However, a man dying of an inoperable cancer is in a pretty wretched condition, whether he is in Stockholm or Kinshasa, although I'll admit that medicine and palliative care are likely to be far better in the former. A mother who has recently lost a much-loved child is just as likely to be distraught in Los Angeles as in the rainforests of Brazil.

By all means let us have compassion for suffering everywhere, and do whatever we can to alleviate it wherever it occurs. This is the human condition, and we are all part of it.

[birabiro]

The United States has invaded other countries 45 times since world war two. Of course the suffering of the people who happened to live in those territories is immense. We, as a people, also live with the aftermath of war. The soldiers come home and wreck havoc in the lives of their families. They suffered trauma, and/or they are drug and alcohol abusers, and their suffering is spread throughout society. Our cities are filled with homeless people, people with psychiatric problems, and people who have traumatic home lives. The underside of greed and materialism is grim. Real suffering goes on in real person's souls all the time. Hunger and sickness is visible in every US city I have ever visited. And starvation of the soul is visible in every middle class neighborhood as well. Not to mention illness and death.
The third world makes hell look good. Organized religions. terrorists, greedy companies, degradation of the soil, the air, the water - famines of gargantuan proportions, tsumanies = daily news. What do you mean by we don't suffer?

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by birabiro

What do you mean by we don't suffer?

Less so in the privileged West since the rise of modern medicine, universal health care systems (in Europe) better diet, sewage, clean water infrastructure, etc. Bach, for example, had twenty children, ten of whom died in infancy. That's quite a weight of sorrow to bear but was typical of the time. You needed a good, solid religion which guaranteed you'd see those children again if the parents weren't to go mad with grief. And once you had the religion you needed the music to back it up, to lubricate it, to propagandise it's values to an illiterate congregation. That realm is now closed off to modern, western composers. As Herzeleide says, they write about tectonic plates instead.

I agree with everything you say and don't underplay the extreme suffering which still occurs in rich, western societies. But the scale of it is reduced - the extreme, everyday impact on the entire population of early death and untreatable disease - or suffering has moved to existential realms where people 'suffer' should their car be less expensive than their neighbour's.

Sorry, I should have split this thread off from notation software. I'll try to disentangle it.

[chillowack]

Originally Posted by Philidor

So it's a labour-saving device and I can't see anything immoral about using it

Again, I don't see anything wrong with that. It's like being separated from a lover. Their real presence would obviously be best, but does that make it immoral to look at their photo?

Why do we feel we must "defend" our use of notation software? There's absolutely nothing wrong with it, it's a wonderful technological innovation that greatly aids and facilitates the composing process.

As one who has tried both the old and new ways of composing, I can attest that, practically speaking, composition software offers many useful benefits, and can greatly aid the composer. It is the same as any new invention or innovation: at first it is fiercely resisted by tradition, but gradually it is accepted, and eventually it becomes the standard.

If Mozart, Beethoven, or any of the great composers had had access to such composing technology in their day, I don't think they would have frowned upon it, I think they would have incorporated it into their composing arsenals. Why reject something that can aid your work?

[marquis66]

Originally Posted by chillowack

If Mozart, Beethoven, or any of the great composers had had access to such composing technology in their day, I don't think they would have frowned upon it, I think they would have incorporated it into their composing arsenals. Why reject something that can aid your work?

I will say that I think that the use of composition software means we write differently than we would if we didn't have it. And I don't just mean more quickly/efficiently. I think that there is an actual difference in my music versus the way I wrote before I had access to notation software. Of course, I was very young, and it could have been a matter of education, as well.

[Herzeleide]

I think software can affect how people compose, though negatively. Students just fill in the bits as they go along, with only the vaguest bit of planning. Composition traditionally would require a lot of work in the inner ear, and/or sketching and planning and experimenting on whatever instrument. Software (like many aspects of society now) offers a quick easy democratic route which has adverse consequences on students' general musicianship.

[marquis66]

Originally Posted by Herzeleide

I think software can affect how people compose, though negatively. Students just fill in the bits as they go along, with only the vaguest bit of planning. Composition traditionally would require a lot of work in the inner ear, and/or sketching and planning and experimenting on whatever instrument. Software (like many aspects of society now) offers a quick easy democratic route which has adverse consequences on students' general musicianship.

I think that there is a lot to this, and it is something that I have had to work actively to keep from doing because it is so easy. In Finale terms, my comp teacher always used to describe how certain pieces looked like they were written with the mass-mover tool.

The nice thing is that I use the software to experiment with sonic combination far better than I could have on any instrument. You have to go in with the knowledge that the software will do whatever you ask it to do, and it is up to the composer to make it musical and playable.