... mea culpa…

Brad

You know, it’s always the poor craftsman who blames his tools, LOL.  Before my Motif ES7, I did many projects with what I had. I never needed to have the latest and greatest (I still don’t have an Motif XS or a Korg Oasys, LOL). Nor did I have a suite of softsynths for my PC or Mac. In fact, I did a few commercials using my ancient Atari 1040ST running SMPTETrak from Hybrid Arts (late 80’s), and later graduated to Cubase (Mac)(90’s) and SONAR. I still remember doing tracks with just a DX-7IIFD, DX-100, Ensoniq SD-1, and a Roland MKS-100 sampler, D-110, TX-81Z and RX11 in a rack.  MIDI was such a godsend then.  I’ve had “producers” laugh at my gear and then apologize after they hear how well a track slams.  I’ve heard tracks from cats who own the latest and greatest that frankly sound like crap.  It’s not the gear; it’s what’s between your ears that makes the music happen.....

I came to totally realize, that the ONLY thing that stinks, it the musician that can play well enough to make what he/she has to create with.
Bashing different companies for their products, is only something that is personal, NOT the fault of the company.

Someone recently asked me why can’t I seem to create a song as well as one of my track I did using a Radio Shack midi 49 mini key, keyboard?
I simply replied, that the drum patterns are the difference, for on the XS, I have to compose my own, whereas on the midi keyboard, I simply choose a style and push buttons in time with the music I created on the other tracks.

So, it’s TOTALLY the musician that makes a difference in the music and sound,, NOT THE INSTRUMENT, and damn sure NOT THE COMPANY.

Sir Foley,,please STOP trippin bro, your sinking worse than the companies and instruments your complain and retardedly bashing.

The Funk Master - 18 April 2009 12:01 PM

Someone recently asked me why can’t I seem to create a song as well as one of my track I did using a Radio Shack midi 49 mini key, keyboard?
I simply replied, that the drum patterns are the difference, for on the XS, I have to compose my own, whereas on the midi keyboard, I simply choose a style and push buttons in time with the music I created on the other tracks.

Just out of curiosity,Brother Jerry, do you do your Drum Patterns from scratch or do you Edit Preset Patterns to suit either by erasing unwanted notes,adding notes or Remix?

It’s a hastle,but I’ve been creating most of my Patterns by erasing,adding and or Remixing and doing the “razzle dazzle” of Appending,Copying etc and flipping from Pattern to Song to, if I really like it, Create an Arp.

I’m always interested in “how” other people work with features. I’m still on the ES (XS coming soon)but after following some instructions by “TheBad 1”, I found a pretty cool way to creat my own Patterns and Arps with Presets and exploiting the features of the axe.
Just curious as I said.....

BTW...I can dig where you’re coming from. I’ve had to pull my hair out trying to get my ES Drums and the DCP Drums to “sound” like my Drum Machines. It was an editing nightmare,but I got pretty close and in some cases, got a better voice for the effort. I’m sure there was some frustration with having to get used to a different way of getting your tracks down and not getting it like you were used to.
As “The Bad 1” told me once, “People look for their ‘old axe’ in their ‘new’ axe and overlook the greater benefits in the ‘new’ axe” (or something to that effect).

mo-z - 18 April 2009 03:19 AM

You know, it’s always the poor craftsman who blames his tools, LOL. 

I used to hear this fairly often in my youth from various bosses, relatives etc. and after thinking it over for a bit I figured something out. Only a poor craftsman blames his tools because a good craftsman has enough sense and experience to buy decent tools in the first place.

Bob

Wastrel - 20 April 2009 01:44 PM

mo-z - 18 April 2009 03:19 AM

You know, it’s always the poor craftsman who blames his tools, LOL. 

I used to hear this fairly often in my youth from various bosses, relatives etc. and after thinking it over for a bit I figured something out. Only a poor craftsman blames his tools because a good craftsman has enough sense and experience to buy decent tools in the first place.

Bob

LOL 1 point Wastrel…

[DavePolich] Careful, Brad - you used “right” instead of “write”. You know how Scotch hates poor spelling...:).

Thought he was doing this deliberately to a point. In any case, this is your bit of correcting; it’s futile to try to pass it off on me.

[Wastrel--with an “e"] Only a poor craftsman blames his tools because a good craftsman has enough sense and experience to buy decent tools in the first place.

Oh, I think a really good craftsman makes his own tools or works in close association with a toolmaker. (Composition, however, doesn’t require any particular tools, at least not any audible ones.)

Here is a fictional example Wellie will appreciate:

“There is an art to the business of making sandwiches which it is given to few ever to find the time to explore in depth. It is a simple task, but the opportunities for satisfaction are many and profound: choosing the right bread for instance. The Sandwich Maker had spent many months in daily consultation and experiment with Grarp the baker and eventually they had between them created a loaf of exactly the consistency that was dense enough to slice thinly and neatly, while still being light, moist and having that fine nutty flavour which best enhanced the savour of roast Perfectly Normal Beast flesh.

“There was also the geometry of the slice to be refined: the precise relationships between the width and height of the slice and also its thickness which would give the proper sense of bulk and weight to the finished sandwich: here again, lightness was a virtue, but so too were firmness, generosity and that promise of succulence and savour that is the hallmark of a truly intense sandwich experience.

“The proper tools, of course, were crucial, and many were the days that the Sandwich Maker, when not engaged with the Baker at his oven, would spend with Strinder the Tool Maker, weighing and balancing knives, taking them to the forge and back again. Suppleness, strength, keenness of edge, length and balance were all enthusiastically debated, theories put forward, tested, refined, and many was the evening when the Sandwich Maker and the Tool Maker could be seen silhouetted against the light of the setting sun and the Tool Maker’s forge making slow sweeping movements through the air trying one knife after another, comparing the weight of this one with the balance of another, the suppleness of a third and the handle binding of a fourth.”

There’s a lot of futile rebuttals going on in here. A workman has every right to blame his tools if those tools are sh_t.So what are you all on about?
well anyway to stress my point about Yamaha not really giving us the goods to get the job done and also deleting much needed features that were previously there, i’d rather give you all a reason to leave their half baked synths behind and move on.

Lets try comparing an MPC5000 to an XS.

The MPC basically has everything the XS has, plus

-loop crossfade in the sample edit list
-step and grid recording in addition to piano roll and linear recording
-CD/DVD burner
-8 track 80 gigabyte hardisk
-960ppqn sequencer
-10 analogue outputs,optical in/out,4 midi outs and ADAT Lightpipe all standard(no expansion boards needed here fellas)
-650mb’s of UNCOMPRESSED premium quality sounds
-31 Filter types
-one of the best (built in) virtual analogue plugins i have ever heard(20 voices)
-master eq and multiband compressor

And when i do a side by side comparison with the XS in terms of sound, the MPC eats the XS alive, no joke! 
Neither an XS or Fantom G or Korg M3 come anywhere near this in terms of flexibilty, sound quality, or ease of use.

Even though i was an avid hardware lover, Yamaha simply refused to come to the party and do the right thing by us hardcore hardware heads, so basically by Yamaha being insolent and spiteful they forced my hand and caused me to move on because they just flatout refused to give us an all in one answer even though it was sorely needed and people were crying out for it and especially because it could have been so easily achieved years ago. So i even left behind the MPC and moved up a notch to play in the big boys arena thanks to computers and software
coming of age. Up yours Yamaha, your the most stubborn incompetent conceited pigheaded lame excuse for a music company i’ve ever come across and i’m glad i’m rid of you.
I’ll let the boys now how to safely move on and what to get in my next post.But the bottom line is that software is now making hardware playback devices truly redundant if you know where to look and what to buy, and i’m not referring for example to 999 out of a thousand softsynths either, which are simply sh_t and are being used by the majority of try hard’s that have been desensitized to low quality sound and wouldn’t really
have a clue what sounds good and what doesn’t.

THE DUKESTER....lol your so correct, it’s a pain doing the drums.

What I now do is simply play the tracks live with the quantize on auto.
I use PATTERN MODE all the time, breaking up 16 bar sections for every voice.
I use the REALTIME LOOP REMIX,, that’s my favorite feature on the XS and ES.
I use it on drums only though.

Man, I hope your keeping your ES also, for the two of them will be all you will EVER need musically.
Your going to have a total blast with that XS bro.
Oh, and make sure to get the AXXE from DCP,,,awsome guitar voices,,sure to keep you inspired.
I use AXXE on every song I compose,, and I own a real guitar..LOL

Now let me read what Mr. Foley has written. LOL
I’m going to study Bad Mister’s notes and see if I can improve even more.
I also have EZdrummer, but I’ve not used it yet,,,lots of dragging and dropping different sections on a track in Sonar PE.
Not being able to see well, makes it hard sometimes,,but I manage.

Anyone using pre-set drum-machine patterns is a plagiarist as well as an ass. I think of Bill Murray as lounge performer Nick Springs:

[Open on close-up of a Univox SR-120 drum machine. Camera pans back to show Nick adjusting the dials before greeting the audience from onstage]....[Turns on the drum machine, imitates the beats and bobs his head as he turns up the tempo] The Univox SR-120, ladies and gentlemen!

scotch - 21 April 2009 06:11 PM

I think of Bill Murray as lounge performer Nick Springs:

That *was* a pretty funny bit. At about the same time, right after The Band broke up, I went to see “Rick Danko and Friends” at a club in Hermosa Beach, Ca. The “Friends” turned out to be a cassette deck on a bar stool with Danko (drunk) mumbling along with it. I had the waitress send up a drink for the tape deck…

Bob

scotch - 21 April 2009 06:11 PM

Anyone using pre-set drum-machine patterns is a plagiarist as well as an ass. I think of Bill Murray as lounge performer Nick Springs:quote]

That’s pretty harsh,Perfesser. I will admit that most Preset Drum Patterns in your standard Drum Machine are sterile,but in a literal sense,one isn’t “plagiarizing” anything.They are bought and paid for.

“Personally”, I’ve been using a Drum Machine (now 3 if you count the one in my ES)for some 20+ years. Most of my patterns have been “created” based on Presets. In my first machine I dumped all of the Presets and created my own patterns. I did likewise with my second machine and with the ES,now that I “know more” and with the help of some of the guys here (particularly The Bad 1),I’ve “customized” Preset Patterns to suit what I’m doing.

I have some friends that use some of the limited programmable machines and they “can” sound cheesy,but they are “working”. I “personally” don’t use the sequencing capabilities at my disposal...but that’s just me. I like doing things “on the fly”. Would that improve my presentation”? Absolutely! That’s just not the way “I” work. There is a happy medium for sure,but I haven’t taken the time to set that up yet and it has been more important to “me” to learn and employ other aspects of the axe, like Voice Editing,Performance construction and yes...editing Preset Drum Patterns for live play.

The “purist” attitude I had some 25 years ago put me way behind in my ability to compete in the live music presentation market. I ignored and resisted the technological advances. It wasn’t until I scored my Motif Classic that I yielded to the acceptance of the advances and took advantage of them. That’s why I have been a consistant “resident” of Motifator.com.I knew nothing!Not even the terminalogy. I’ve spent the last 6 years trying to catch up on 25 years of advancement. We can wedge ourselves into this elitest attitude over applying the new and constently developing technology or take advantage of it, Certainly,as I still choose not to sequence in my performance,one may temper the degree in which they take advantage of the options,but to totally dismiss them is folly. Much of the perceptions of that use is folly as well. It is NOT “Plagieristic” to utililize Preset Patterns that are included in the purchase of a Drum Machine,Workstation,Software Banks or Recording Software that has Presents in its bundle. The user bought and paid for the contents.

Now if you are talking about taking some pre-recorded pattern that was created by someone else that had it on the market,sampled it and then used it for your own project without their permission or approval, THAT’S “Plagierism”,ie “Can’t Touch This” or “Rapper’s Delight”.

Everything about this business is changing from the way we do it to the legalities that protect our work. This includes how we perceive and judge these changes. Regardless to what we may “think”,these changes are happening and are going to happen whether we agree or not. And as a Conservative,it is one of the most difficult things to witness “throughout” this culture....but that opens up yet another door.
End of rant