How good can audio editing make you?

Miscellaneous topics on Carnatic music
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SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

How good can audio editing make you?

Post by SrinathK »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r6j9rD_j5I - Just for laughs. I mean, look at those impossibly perfect chords. No violin can really play like that.

It is possible to do fantastic things these days, including auto tune and tonal enhancement. The problem with that however is that in live performance, there will be a jarring discrepancy between what people have heard in the recordings vs the real thing.

uday_shankar
Posts: 1467
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:37

Re: How good can audio editing make you?

Post by uday_shankar »

These guys are brilliant with their audio editing experiments. I saw the guy on fb making music with a rubber chicken. There are so many creative ways in this hi tech age to have fun and what these guys do ranks high.

Perhaps technology will change, is changing, has already changed, music making in such radical ways, that we have to find a different perspective from where its inspiration comes or where the actual sadhana lies. Again, what is "fun" is difficult to mistake for a sadhana. For example, why even bother to have a live player. Everything can be synthesized and the machine can play all of it, in total perfection. The sadhana there is then not in the music making but the intense technological effort ? Does that inspire, does it have "uyir" ? I have been told that A R Rahman is a master of digital remix, no offence to his musical instincts... people do what's "successful", gratifying in the short term, etc.. as we all blunder along with our lives.

Any activity can be "automated" to a much better state of perfection than a live human can ever hope to do. Take a random thing like kolam, that beautiful, artistic thing that women and girls (and boys too) all over Tamil Nadu do with such care and beauty. But the geometry is far from dimensionally perfect. It is very easily conceivable that we can automate that process with a machine controlled by a computer. Giant, unbelievably complicated kolams can be churned out in record time. If such a machine comes about, and is not expensive, it could be very popular and essentially kill the sadhana of kolam. All houses, public places, etc... will be "adorned" with enormous, mega kolams of unimaginable complexity. It will be awe inspiring for a few minutes but as the days roll by nobody will notice it, in spite of it's great "beauty" and it will be a meaningless technological artifact. There goes a beautiful human process thanks to the stupidity of humans. In a way, this is a commentary on civilization, modernity, etc..

The use of technology to enhance a certain kind of human activity requires some thought or the original purpose of the activity is forgotten. With music making in the Indian context, I think the electronic shruti box and table machine are extremely useful things and really enhances the quality of practice, if we don't forget the purpose of music making. But the more complex digital tools are of marginal value. As for autotune, It is hard to imagine any good use for it... Time magazine lists it as one of the 50 worst inventions of all time:

http://content.time.com/time/specials/p ... 03,00.html

rajeshnat
Posts: 9906
Joined: 03 Feb 2010, 08:04

Re: How good can audio editing make you?

Post by rajeshnat »

Uday,
In short we always have to enjoy the journey and the process AND just not enjoy the final destination. Only the former gets registered long time.

Sachi_R
Posts: 2174
Joined: 31 Jan 2017, 20:20

Re: How good can audio editing make you?

Post by Sachi_R »

Uday, your post is sublime.

Those who didn't click on the Time link, Auto-tune was ranked #1 among worst inventions.

I am quite resigned to the possibility now that almost EVERY You Tube video that is canned and released (not Parivadini types) is audio enhanced and autotuned.

I find many violinists and others now routinely ask for reverb on the live stage.

By the way I am REALLY upset nobody watched the Amazon Prime Rahman Harmony series I so strongly recommended. Come on.

It is okay if you don't think much of my musical sensibilities. But don't pass up something very important musically. Please.

You know, these four pristine, original, natural, modest, "real" musicians are met and introduced by Rahman in the first four episodes.

Our hearts leap in joy.

In the final episode, they are brought into Rahman's world, looking lost, (in Panagal Park) awe-struck, and dumb, in the face of all that Rahman organisation and technology. They are then ushered into a large 22nd century arena of a huge amphitheatrical stage filled to the hills with lasers, holograms, gadgets and gizmos and SOUND.

Ordinary musicians who are audio-enhanced and autotuned then produce a crescendo of noise that overthrows all that's good in the first four. It even claims to stem from those pristine sounds (Rahman says he has sampled the original acoustic Al sounds of flute and string and drum and recreated sounds).

It is a holocaust that shames Hitler and Aurangazeb. A holocaust of all natural sound and music.

Please watch it. Even as I write this it may be going on to win an Oscar.

Sachi_R
Posts: 2174
Joined: 31 Jan 2017, 20:20

Re: How good can audio editing make you?

Post by Sachi_R »

SrinathK wrote: 15 Sep 2018, 23:09 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r6j9rD_j5I - Just for laughs. I mean, look at those impossibly perfect chords. No violin can really play like that.

It is possible to do fantastic things these days, including auto tune and tonal enhancement. The problem with that however is that in live performance, there will be a jarring discrepancy between what people have heard in the recordings vs the real thing.
OHOHOHOHOHOHO!
Srinath, what a video you picked.
Don't know whether I will die laughing or crying. Man. Too much.

ganesh_mourthy
Posts: 1371
Joined: 02 Sep 2007, 23:08

Re: How good can audio editing make you?

Post by ganesh_mourthy »

I would not mind if only I possessed it in the whole world, rather secretly.

shankarank
Posts: 4042
Joined: 15 Jun 2009, 07:16

Re: How good can audio editing make you?

Post by shankarank »

Now to Srinathk seminal question! How old are you? :lol: :lol:

When a nice voice comes along, it is really God that played those synthetic tricks on you! On the teenage rasika ( thanks Nick H!) :lol: :lol:

SrI SRJ lecdem - Columbus Ohio ( circa 2003 or so) . It seems MusiriIyervAL told him, a good voice is a bane of music ! :lol: :lol:

SrinathK
Posts: 2477
Joined: 13 Jan 2013, 16:10

Re: How good can audio editing make you?

Post by SrinathK »

If crossing 30 is defined as 'old age' (according to me), I still have just a bit of youth left. :mrgreen:

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