Can you call people composers who compose music in programmes like GPO4?

Ok, there seem to be a general misunderstanding here. MIDI doesn't sound. MIDI isn't sound. MIDI is data. Your computers built-in soundcard comes with a GM sound module (GM stands for General MIDI). When playing that sound module, you'll hear crappy sounds. MIDI is just the data sent to the module. MIDI is also sent to Sibelius to tell it which notes to enter, and which samples to trigger. I believe you can choose to let it trigger GM sounds, and it will sound crappy. Let it trigger their stock Kontakt library and it will sound better, because the samples in that are far better. Use it to trigger EWQL and it will sound MUCH better. It's still MIDI!!

Samples are recordings. You can't say that EWQL violins sound quite close to the real violin. That would be like saying that a recording of LSO sound quite close to a real orchestra. Stupid right? The samples are recordings of each note of every instrument with many kinds of articulations to make it behave and react more realisticly. Still samples triggered by MIDI.

MIDI is data. Samples are sound. MIDI is data used to trigger the sounds of the samples.

But programs like GPO or EWGL are different. These are neither notation (of course they can be set to work for notation programs like Sibelius or Finale) nor mixing programs, these are just sound libraries. Most of us don't have the opportunity to have each our new piece played by an ensemble or an orchestra. And that's what GPO and EWGL are for; to provide you with your own orchestra.

Precisely this.

Sound libraries to anyone who don't have an orchestra.

btw: for the holidays, EW are offering a small package for FREE:

http://www.soundsonline.com/free-orchestra

Wow, that package is amazing!

Does anyone know how to pipe it into Finale, esp. Finale 2007? Or how to get it to play back MIDIs?

Very nice Christmas present :D

But just remember: If you ever use it, you'll never be composing

But just remember: If you ever use it, you'll never be composing

why is that?

Well that's what you say in your first post, right?

Well that's what you say in your first post, right?

I changed my mind since I found out that its just a library of instrument's sounds not short pieces.

I think the most valuable thing we've gained from this thread is learning that EWQL is the Young Composer's Santa Claus. I know it's not Platinum or Silver or whatnot, but the basic sound library for free is amazingly good for their market research and immensely beneficial for us. So, let's all be positive here and just move on, shall we? :)

I changed my mind since I found out that its just a library of instrument's sounds not short pieces.

Those are called loop libraries and they are equally viable tools for composition.

I changed my mind since I found out that its just a library of instrument's sounds not short pieces.

Then why in the world would you start a thread about it?

Then why in the world would you start a thread about it?

Cause I thought differently.

Ok, there seem to be a general misunderstanding here. MIDI doesn't sound. MIDI isn't sound. MIDI is data. Your computers built-in soundcard comes with a GM sound module (GM stands for General MIDI). When playing that sound module, you'll hear crappy sounds. MIDI is just the data sent to the module. MIDI is also sent to Sibelius to tell it which notes to enter, and which samples to trigger. I believe you can choose to let it trigger GM sounds, and it will sound crappy. Let it trigger their stock Kontakt library and it will sound better, because the samples in that are far better. Use it to trigger EWQL and it will sound MUCH better. It's still MIDI!!

Samples are recordings. You can't say that EWQL violins sound quite close to the real violin. That would be like saying that a recording of LSO sound quite close to a real orchestra. Stupid right? The samples are recordings of each note of every instrument with many kinds of articulations to make it behave and react more realisticly. Still samples triggered by MIDI.

MIDI is data. Samples are sound. MIDI is data used to trigger the sounds of the samples.

Sound into our ears is also data. Music playing in our head is ALSO DATA.

Here is a breakdown: Air pressure waves hit the timpanic membrane which trigger the incus, malleus and stapes to transfer the energy of the air pressure waves to move liquid inside the cochlea. This moves sensitive hair cells in the basilar membrane which respond to different frequencies by how far up the basilar membrane they vibrate the hair cells. After this, neurons linking with the hair cells transduce signals via the spiral ganglion along the vestibular/auditory nerve and into the Medial Geniculate nucleus (via the thalamus) and finally into the auditory cortex for cortical processing.

Along the way the original sound pressure wave is transduced, coded, recoded, and relayed via various unmentioned pathways before it finally can be interpreted as "sound."

I don't see at all how this is not "data" especially given the amount of conversion and interpretation of various relay points before it interfaces with the auditory association area which then INTERFACES with the DATA to determine whether its sound, noise or music.

Since it's data, it can't really be music/sound/noise can it, according to your definition, until it triggers the samples? Well there are regions in our brain (very developed ones) which can more easily differentiate timbre as compared to pitch. And how do you explain people not producing any sound externally but hearing it in their heads? Is that not also data but also sound?

All we are doing with these programs is making a different link, (not so dissimilar to writing on paper what one thinks) from the perception of sound in our brain or in our environment to an interface which can store these sounds. You are saying a composer is not a composer based merely on his method of storing musical data for whatever. It would be be similar to saying, by analogy, that people who write with a pen (or anything else you arbitrarily decide is "better") are more writers than those who use pencils/chalk/blood etc.

If your last paragraph is dedicated to me, you're wrong. That's not what I say.

You're right that music is also data - but the difference is the other way around. MIDI is not sound.

Cause they are not really composing/writing it, they just putting random pieces of sounds together.

Marcel Duchamp wrote a piece called "Erratum Musical" which fits the term "putting random pieces of sounds together." What you're talking about is obviously not random. And secondly, why would "putting random pieces of sounds together" not be considered composing. What other understanding of composing can there be but "putting sound/s together", random or not?

You can hear the piece and see comments on it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/NewMusicXX#p/search/0/BYwrvHTgepY

Marcel Duchamp wrote a piece called "Erratum Musical" which fits the term "putting random pieces of sounds together." What you're talking about is obviously not random. And secondly, why would "putting random pieces of sounds together" not be considered composing. What other understanding of composing can there be but "putting sound/s together", random or not?

You can hear the piece and see comments on it here: http://www.youtube.com/user/NewMusicXX#p/search/0/BYwrvHTgepY

I thought GPO works like it gives you sounds and you compose from them. If it did that, its not really composing, cause you are suppost to make your own sounds.

I thought GPO works like it gives you sounds and you compose from them. If it did that, its not really composing, cause you are suppost to make your own sounds.

GPO is a playback-device consisting of a multitude of high-quality recordings from the real instrument/s. As far as I know, it only plays what you want it to play. What is the difference between composing from a scale, C phrygian for instance, and as you say "gives you sounds and you compose from them." Weren't we all given sounds at some point in our life, in order to compose music? I don't understand what you mean with "make our own sounds". Should the composer play all the instruments himself in order to produce all the sounds himself? Is he obliged to fabricate an entirely new "sound", if that is possible, in order to write a piece?

GPO is a playback-device consisting of a multitude of high-quality recordings from the real instrument/s. As far as I know, it only plays what you want it to play. What is the difference between composing from a scale, C phrygian for instance, and as you say "gives you sounds and you compose from them." Weren't we all given sounds at some point in our life, in order to compose music? I don't understand what you mean with "make our own sounds". Should the composer play all the instruments himself in order to produce all the sounds himself? Is he obliged to fabricate an entirely new "sound", if that is possible, in order to write a piece?

I mean like if someone made 100 melodies, and gave them to you and said compose an orchestra piece. You put them together and make an orchestra piece. You didnt really composed it, cause you didnt make those 100 melodies. If you did make those 100 melodies, then you did compose it. Its not how GPO works anyway.

I mean like if someone made 100 melodies, and gave them to you and said compose an orchestra piece. You put them together and make an orchestra piece. You didnt really composed it, cause you didnt make those 100 melodies.

So in order to have composed a piece, you must have written it all by yourself?

I mean like if someone made 100 melodies, and gave them to you and said compose an orchestra piece. You put them together and make an orchestra piece. You didnt really composed it, cause you didnt make those 100 melodies.

So in order to have composed a piece, you must have written it all by yourself?

Yes!

ame='Silasj' date='21 January 2010 - 03:40 AM' timestamp='1264063201' post='328465']

Yes!

I disagree :P

I disagree :P

Ok, how else does it count as your own composition?

The only thing you can copyright is the melody so Lavr is actually right here. If you were given 100 melodies and made an orchestral piece you only arranged and/or orchestrated it. YOU didn't compose it. Carl Nielsen left his orchestration to his students. He still composed the pieces

What Lavr is wrong about is what GPO really is. Silasj is too, since he calls it high-quality

The only thing you can copyright is the melody so Lavr is actually right here. If you were given 100 melodies and made an orchestral piece you only arranged and/or orchestrated it. YOU didn't compose it. Carl Nielsen left his orchestration to his students. He still composed the pieces

What Lavr is wrong about is what GPO really is. Silasj is too, since he calls it high-quality

Compared to anything else computer-fabricated I've heard, in the same category, it's definitely high-quality to me. What you say about melody and orchestration makes sense, if you indeed have a piece with a melody and an orchestration of it, but what about Penderecki's Hiroshima piece, which part of that is there a copyright on then?

I don't see why copyright has anything to do with who the composer of a piece is. Surely we all consciously or not, "steal" from former works in our process of writing music. Imagine if a boy with no knowledge of Mozart at all, wrote a piece completely identical to one of Mozart's, wouldn't he be the composer himself too then? Does one's usage of a melodic phrase, limit everyone else from using such same phrase, in terms of who the composer is? If so, I think we should call it discoverer,rather than composer.

Check out EastWest Symphony Orchestra for high-quality samples

Check out EastWest Symphony Orchestra for high-quality samples

Check out my wallet for information on why that ain't gonna happen anytime soon :)