Space Cowboys
There are three interviews with some of the longest serving house and techno producers published this week. Larry Heard is interviewed at Resident Advisor. Carl Craig is interviewed by Romanian site Beat Factor. And Mike Huckaby (a lot less well known perhaps) is interviewed briefly in Eye Weekly.
I read all three of these one after another, and what I found interesting was the diversity of opinion between three artists whom you could casually lump together as “stalwarts” or “legends”. It’s easy, whether you intend to praise or damn them, to imagine artists like this as purists, united in some strict creed of anti-digitalism and disdain for the modern era, but in reality that is not the case.
Similarly the analog versus digital debate, whose battle lines have become wearily furrowed, is given a nice Botox injection by Huckaby’s comments about Reaktor. That is, if like me, you never considered Reaktor’s role in the issue.
Huckaby says: “It’s really interesting that all these people making electronic music don’t want to learn synthesis. That’s just silly. It’s like if you’re an Olympic sprinter and you don’t want to do aerobics or something.”
For those who don’t know: Reaktor is a fairly complicated computer programme that allows you to create your own synthesisers. So why does it make light of existing debates about hardware analog synths versus software synths. For the laity, that’s big machines that you can touch and see versus programmes on your computer that you can’t hit someone with or spill beer on. Sorry if this is patronising, I’m assuming there are people even more technophobic than me, the least technologically minded DJ on planet earth.
I should start at the ground floor. My attitude to art is that it doesn’t bother me greatly if somebody spent 5 years or 5 days on a record, provided I feel end result is worth listening to and I enjoy it. You hear almost more stories of hugely successful songs down that were written in 10 minutes as you do tales of tracks that took ten years to complete.
But let’s just say that it mattered hugely to me how long somebody spent on a piece of music. Let’s say that the level of hard work and effort put in was directly linked to my enjoyment of music. If I did believe in this hierarchy of hard work, then surely I would have to argue that every electronic music producer should use Reaktor, and build their synths from scratch.
Surely I would have to believe that relative to Reaktor, analog synths are no less a preset than software ones? Surely the debate about “computers versus hardware” would then be rendered irrelevant, and the real question would be “has it ALWAYS been too easy for dance producers to make this music?” Or even better: “can computers make it MORE COMPLEX for dance producers to make music?”
Using analog synths and hardware is arguably an “easier” way of making music than using Reaktor, especially if presets are, as we’re told so often, the corrupting element of computer produced music. What’s interesting about Reaktor also, and correct me if I’m wrong on this, is that in theory synthesis can create such a wide range of sounds as to make the machine used utterly irrelevant. I mean, does using a programme where you make your own synths influence the sound of someone’s music in the slightest? Or are they completely in control?
Of course, I don’t believe in hierarchies of method anyway. Like most people, I judge and rate music based on how it sounds, not by second guessing how it was made or how much effort that took. Anyone who makes a record while emotionally hurting or while out of work or while addicted to drugs may deserve praise as a human being, and those stories are important, but the record itself deserves praise for nothing other than how it sounds.
Similarly what’s the difference between an artist who is naturally gifted and lazy, and makes music that you like, and one who works his ass off cos he’s learning, and makes great music that you like?
Somebody, like Huckaby, who teaches themselves synthesis in order to make records is clearly dedicated and hard working, as anyone who has attempted to learn Reaktor will attest. But if he had no musical talent, or no ideas, his hard work wouldn’t matter.
Or say his idea was to make music for butter commercials with that knowledge, his hard work probably wouldn’t matter to you or I either. As it happens I like his records, but it isn’t because he has learned synthesis or worked hard. It’s not that those aren’t interesting pieces of information about him, it’s just that to me they are only interesting once I’ve decided the music is interesting first.
Afterall, if the lengths an artist goes to in the creative process were enough to make me value their work, then I wouldn’t have to listen to it, or watch it, or see it, would I? I’d already have made up my mind, at least partially. And that’s not prudence, it’s prejudice.
tom/pipecock wrote:
i’ve said many times that the problem with modern production tools is that they are too complex, they make it so that people spend time on shit that is not necessary. the reason heard, craig, and huck are good at what they do is because they all learned how to do it on the simple shit first. when they use more complicated gear, they do not get bogged down in the technicalities of it (unlike say many IDM producers or most of the old “glitch” guys), they know what the end product needs to do.
the idea is that in the hands of people who know what theyre doing, anything can be used and can sound good. but what you have in electronic music now is many people trying to go straight to their PhD in computer programs without getting their undergraduate in making good songs first. theyre simply flexing technical skill, and to me that is as boring as it can be (whether youre talking digital [max/msp] or analogue [turntablism]). songs should always come first.
that said, reaktor can be as simple or complex as you like. out of all the softsynths ive fucked with, it was my favorite. but to understand it, you need to know synthesizers VERY well, which to put it mildly, most people don’t. my knowledge of synthesis has made my signals and systems and digital and analogue filters class much easier for me than most other students in the class!
using presets is just lazy, but it is not the main problem that makes dance music suck now. drum and bass is excellent at having producers spend hours and hours on a bass sound only to play the weakest “melody” you can think of with it. what good is that to anyone? techno is starting to become like this, all these complex echoes and shit. fuck that, write a good melody and you can put any kind of simple reverb or complex reverb on that shit and it will sound like gold.
Posted 31 Jan 2008 at 7:40 pm ¶
ben j wrote:
The one concern I have with Huckaby’s reasoning is that it once again reduces dance music to one element that doesn’t matter that much in other music, in this case individual sounds. Is a song really better because it has that one sound that people then go on to recreate for the rest of the year?
Worst case, you end up with an anthem like (to go way back in irritating dance music history) ATB’s 9pm (Till I Come), which you probably heard once or twice in 1998 or something. And then heard over and over again as people sat down to craft that “unique” sound and put it in 10,000 more songs.
Huckaby is of a higher class, because his knowledge actually allows him to know what knobs to twiddle to perfect his sound, whereas most “sound” records probably arise mostly from luck.
Just to complete the circle of my reason, maybe that’s why he’s been a beloved DJ/producer for decades and everyone hates ATB.
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 2:24 am ¶
Sotek wrote:
“Just to complete the circle of my reason, maybe that’s why he’s been a beloved DJ/producer for decades and everyone hates ATB.”
LOL
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 4:18 am ¶
Jacob wrote:
I thoroughly agree with Tom here - people are too happy to dress things up in fancy clothes and neglect the basis of a song. I think though producers feel under pressure because in this day and age it’s simply not enough to write a good song, you have to show you’re doing something exciting and a little bit different to get noticed. In doing this, both producer and audience can get caught up in thinking “aww wow this sounds really odd and trippy” but then there not really be anything other than that to make it memorable. To take an example from a really good release last year: “Rackadoom” on Tips felt to me like a dry exercise in weird messed up voices without much of anything to back it up.
Don’t get me wrong though, I do feel its important for people to push themselves and to find new techniques/sounds, its just all a balance.
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 10:28 am ¶
Ronan wrote:
But if you liked it you wouldn’t say that?
That idea sounds like good old fashioned subjectivity dressed as objectivity.
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 10:32 am ¶
Jacob wrote:
Is that addressed to me Ronan?
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 11:09 am ¶
Ronan wrote:
Yeah…I just meant you probably wouldn’t criticise a record that worked for you as a “dry exercise in messed up voices” or whatever…or would you?
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 11:16 am ¶
Jacob wrote:
Well no probably not, i don’t tend to criticise things I like…but then there are lots of things that I like that probably aren’t hugely innovatory. Maybe my argument was fucked, I just woke up, but its hard anyway to separate objectivity and subjectivity when criticising music.
There are no hard and fast rules either, I just feel that people trying to run before they can walk is less likely to lead to things that are successful in the long term.
I have to go out, maybe i’ll try and explain myself better later on.
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 11:23 am ¶
Ronan wrote:
Cool, I’m not having a major go at your point either, just questioning really. Your comments are always welcome here Jacob (even if you are the future of rock and roll
)
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 11:28 am ¶
tom/pipecock wrote:
over on Test there is a nice interview with claro intellecto where he says this:
“There is a danger that you can go too deep, especially with electronic music, and get carried away with the concept. Sometimes people can be snobby, but to be honest, I’d rather make a killer groove, programme a great 4/4 beat. Theo Parrish is a good example of this: the elements in his tracks are so simple, but it’s hard for anyone else to get it to sound so good. Once music gets too complicated, that’s when there are problems.”
i think that basically sums up what i feel about it, and of course he references one of the true greats at keeping it simple.
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 5:56 pm ¶
Ronan wrote:
I agree with that, though I think most good dance music has that feel to it, a small number of nice elements.
Posted 01 Feb 2008 at 7:43 pm ¶
chinstroking.com wrote:
Using Reaktor is cheating. You can’t use a pre-built program to make synths yourself; you should be building the program to make the synths yourself, and not using a code builder either, because that’s also cheating. It’s manually typed “1’s” and “0’s” or nothing.
Huckaby, what a fuckwit. Why make things more complex than they need to be?
Posted 13 Feb 2008 at 8:43 am ¶
Ronan wrote:
fuck manually typed 0s and 1s…I believe the often hallowed “banging a pot and pan together” wins out here
Posted 13 Feb 2008 at 7:58 pm ¶