Comments on: IHR #75 (Enhanced) – Podcast Awards, Synth Strings, Music Creator 5, Lily Allen

By: mark

mark — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 18:28:04 +0000

Hey Derek,
I wanted to say thanks for following up with your coverage of Cakewalk’s Music Creator 5.
Mark

By: Derek

Derek — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 18:05:52 +0000

Darren, I don’t know many music retailers personally anymore, and the general state of the economy, among many others things, affects musical instrument retailers so much it may be hard to tease out the effects of video games specifically. Plus, in Vancouver (and Canada generally) there’s been a huge consolidation of music retailers over the past decade. Long & McQuade and Tom Lee Music dominate so much that small independent shops are pretty hard to find, though there are still a few, and there remain numerous stores that sell pianos too, but that’s a different market. It would be interesting to know.

Sir Little, I really like your approach there, and you’re quite right that conflating “musician” with “instrumentalist” does lead to confusion. It gave us a nice excuse to rant for a bit, though, didn’t it?

By: Sir Little Way

Sir Little Way — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 16:24:32 +0000

The “what makes a real musician” discussion has been a very popular one since at least as early as the 1980′s. I think the problem with the topic and what makes it so controversial is that almost no one who argues about the topic realizes that they’re falling into a linguistic trap which causes them to be unclear about what they themselves are discussing:
Specifically, many of the most vocal arguers don’t seem to be aware that there is a difference between a “musician” and an “instrumentalist”. More specifically, “instrumentalists” are a subset of the larger set, “musicians”. I think it becomes very simple when one understands this distinction.

Anyone who creates music, recorded, performed or otherwise, is a “musician” as a matter of simple definition (whether or not they’re a *good* musician is another topic entirely, a matter of opinion, and not very interesting to me in the context of this discussion), but if that musician isn’t able to capably play any particular instrument fluently then they’re probably *not* an “instrumentalist” of very high caliber.
However, the moment they pick up an instrument and produce a horrendous squawk out of it which no one can bear to hear, sorry purists, they are in fact an instrumentalist – just not a very sought-after one :)

This leads us to the fact that most people who frame their discourse in terms of this person being a “musician” and that one *not* being a “musician” are very often talking more about what they like and don’t like than anything else. Or else they’d simply say that the 12-year-old suburban punk in the garage down the street isn’t as good an instrumentalist as Frank Zappa was and leave it at that, no reason to get all huffy because what they’ve just said is likely a technical truth.

The most important point about this discussion (and one of the things I respect about you guys is your apparent grasp of it) is how little any of it matters:
just as with visual art, people who are driven to make music, whether it be “good” or “bad” music, will continue to do so and a subset of the people to whom that particular music doesn’t appeal will continue to try and define what they are hearing as “not music”.
Ignore them all and keep producing, people!

Also, thanks for the great podcast.

By: Darren

Darren — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 08:29:56 +0000

I haven’t listened to the podcast, but I was wondering something similar. Have Rock Band and Guitar Hero increased or decreased the revenue of music stores and instructors?

On the one hand, such games might act as ‘gateway drugs’ to encourage people to try real instruments. On the other hand, they might satisfy that slight musical or performance urge amongst players. Where such people might have explored learning an instrument, Rock Band or Guitar Hero become a suitable replacement.

What do you think?