Neil Young’s gear.

[Arpangel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJNpZZBjxNk

I’m not a guitarist, but some people are just inspiring to listen to, and the gear they use.

[thefruitfarmer]

Always had a lot of respect for Neil Young, I think he is someone who can write a song like every day.

I was expecting a vid of his pedals though.

[Arpangel]

Always had a lot of respect for Neil Young, I think he is someone who can write a song like every day.

I was expecting a vid of his pedals though.

Yes, he’s all over the place, it’s that a I like, very sloppy playing style, but over brimming with feel and vibe. He's always reinventing himself too, a true original.

[Martin Walker]

I was expecting a vid of his pedals though.

Yep, so was I

Martin

[Drew Stephenson]

Is it just a video of a big bag of weed?

[Arpangel]

I was expecting a vid of his pedals though.

Yep, so was I

Martin

There isn’t anything around about his pedals, some artists like to have some secrets, they’ll only tell you so much, come across that a lot, it’s understandable I suppose, like Kraftwerk, not letting anyone into their studio..

[The Red Bladder]

some artists like to have some secrets, they’ll only tell you so much, come across that a lot, it’s understandable I suppose, like Kraftwerk, not letting anyone into their studio..

The only time they did anything inventive and new was when Conny Plank did all the funky FX and he was very transparent about how he achieved certain sounds. Tape loops literally circled his studio, between filter banks and pedals and organs and vocoders and plate-reverbs and synths of all shapes and sizes and . . . well, you get the idea!

As soon as they dumped him, all we got was bog-standard synthesizer plinkety-plonk noises and the usual presets on FX boxes that anyone could and did buy. Whereas Plank had a profound knowledge of technology and musical structure, Kraftwerk seems to be very much in the mold of today's 'army of the clueless' who press presets on boxes that they don't understand and imagine that they are being creative.

[Arpangel]

some artists like to have some secrets, they’ll only tell you so much, come across that a lot, it’s understandable I suppose, like Kraftwerk, not letting anyone into their studio..

The only time they did anything inventive and new was when Conny Plank did all the funky FX and he was very transparent about how he achieved certain sounds. Tape loops literally circled his studio, between filter banks and pedals and organs and vocoders and plate-reverbs and synths of all shapes and sizes and . . . well, you get the idea!

As soon as they dumped him, all we got was bog-standard synthesizer plinkety-plonk noises and the usual presets on FX boxes that anyone could and did buy. Whereas Plank had a profound knowledge of technology and musical structure, Kraftwerk seems to be very much in the mold of today's 'army of the clueless' who press presets on boxes that they don't understand and imagine that they are being creative.

I have to agree here, Conny Plank is a massive influence on me, producing most of my favourite artists. And yes, Kraftwerk lost whatever they had after they stopped using Plank.
Plank never got the financial rewards, or recognition he deserved, he was treated quite badly by Kraftwerk.
Conny Plank turned down the offer to produce U2, as he didn’t get on with Bono.

[ManFromGlass]

'army of the clueless' who press presets on boxes that they don't understand and imagine that they are being creative.

Thank you for today’s laugh!

[Arpangel]

'army of the clueless' who press presets on boxes that they don't understand and imagine that they are being creative.

Thank you for today’s laugh!

But hang on, don’t you think Mr Bladder has a bit of a point?
Back in Conny's day you had to be very clever and imaginative to get interesting sounds and at the same time be unique and individual, simply because there were less black boxes off the shelf to press the presets on. Now those skills have been devalued because a lot of sounds are so easy to get these days. Want a reverse piano? Back then you had to record it, and play it backwards on a tape machine.
Phasing? You’ll need three tape machines, and there were no loopers then, apart from tape loops!
The result of all this was that you stood a good chance of doing something unique, as everyone wasn’t using the same gear, and everyone did it in a slightly different way.

[ManFromGlass]

I was thinking more of who would get into a bar fight first due to outspokenness, RB or me. I have a tendency to forget to use my inner voice too often!

As for your other point - back in the day there wasn’t as much gear around to make sounds with so, true, one had to work harder but it was a limited pool of sounds even within avant-garde compositions due to the limited access to equipment and equipment limitations. There were always those wonderful little breakthroughs though.

Today I believe I have access to 4000 patches in Omnisphere alone so I don’t have to lose my right brain creative rampage due to the left brain shutting it down because of a technical issue. The poor sod who spliced together 458 minuscule slivers of tape to get 30 seconds of maybe music had it much worse in terms of trying to keep the creative juices going.

But I think RB was thinking of those who put a few loops together and call it music. There has always been boring music but I bet there is at least 1 person who really likes that 2 loop "tune".

[Sam Spoons]

There are an infinite number of sounds out there (literally with analogue synthesis) but there are a finite number of sounds that are sufficiently different from other similar sounds to be considered unique*. The problem, these days, is that so many sounds have been created/discovered/used that it is much harder to come up with something original (and sufficiently different from something similar).

* There are, also, a finite number of melodies or chord sequences.

[MOF]

* There are, also, a finite number of melodies or chord sequences.

Says who? On another SOS thread, re copyright, some computer programmers have generated billions of tunes and I’m not sure if that’s truly the limit.
Copyright relies on four bars of similarity. You’ve got 128 notes in the midi specification, typically six note values from semibreve to demisemiquaver, dotted notes and their ‘rest’ counterparts in any order you like.
I don’t know what the mathematical permutations of those elements are but it must be huge, otherwise we’d see a lot more court cases than we have to date.

[Sam Spoons]

Huge yes but finite.

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

Not necessarily finite. Presumably you can go on shortening or indeed extending a wavelength to infinity in either direction. You wouldn't be able to hear the notes as such but they would be there. So on your giant midi keyboard you could still create a melody starting from C8,000,942 in theory?

Just did a quick google and the greater wax moth can hear up to 300k so there's already a whole new market out there for very high pitched music. Presumably they play it at their moth balls?

[Arpangel]

I was thinking more of who would get into a bar fight first due to outspokenness, RB or me. I have a tendency to forget to use my inner voice too often!

As for your other point - back in the day there wasn’t as much gear around to make sounds with so, true, one had to work harder but it was a limited pool of sounds even within avant-garde compositions due to the limited access to equipment and equipment limitations. There were always those wonderful little breakthroughs though.

Today I believe I have access to 4000 patches in Omnisphere alone so I don’t have to lose my right brain creative rampage due to the left brain shutting it down because of a technical issue. The poor sod who spliced together 458 minuscule slivers of tape to get 30 seconds of maybe music had it much worse in terms of trying to keep the creative juices going.

But I think RB was thinking of those who put a few loops together and call it music. There has always been boring music but I bet there is at least 1 person who really likes that 2 loop "tune".

The trouble with computers, software synths etc, is that in the eyes of the laymen, the comment always goes something like..."you did that on a computer yeah? easy innit"
It’s as if, you haven’t spent days getting that sound, or movie edit, so there’s no skill or value attached to it.

[MOF]

Just did a quick google and the greater wax moth can hear up to 300k so there's already a whole new market out there for very high pitched music. Presumably they play it at their moth balls?

[Martin Walker]

Huge yes but finite.

Are we talking about Longjohns again?

Martin

[Sam Spoons]

As long as we use 'tonal' music the max possible melodies will be less than infinite (i.e. 'finite') only if we have an infinite number of notes in an octave* can the possible number of melodies be infinite.

* That would be 'avant garde'

[The Red Bladder]

I was thinking more of who would get into a bar fight first due to outspokenness, RB or me.

I'm 6'2" and used to box. The last idiot who called me out was not that long ago and ended up on the floor.

But I think RB was thinking of those who put a few loops together and call it music.

I part, yes - but the one thing that stands out for me is the sheer lack of genuine creativity.

We have all these unbelievable and fantastic tools nowadays and all 'The Army of the Clueless' do is press presets.

We have every possible species and flavour of reverb. But I have yet to hear reverb being used as a creative tool - well, except by Conny Plank who fed reverb back into the desk and filtered it to create new sounds that could feedback and change timbre.

I seldom hear anyone doing anything experimental with the human voice - which is the best synthesizer of all synthesizers. Never mind all your Moogs and Korgs and Yamahas, start with the human voice and exploit all of its possibilities FIRST - then move on to the electronic side of the game.

I could go on and on and . . . but I have work to do!

[Drew Stephenson]

I do have wonder how wide your listening reach is.

We have every possible species and flavour of reverb. But I have yet to hear reverb being used as a creative tool - well, except by Conny Plank who fed reverb back into the desk and filtered it to create new sounds that could feedback and change timbre.

I seldom hear anyone doing anything experimental with the human voice - which is the best synthesizer of all synthesizers.

I hear people using reverb creatively frequently, likewise lots of people doing interesting stuff with the human voice. We've had discussions about it on here, and hell, I've even done it myself.

Maybe we just have different ideas of 'interesting'.

[The Red Bladder]

Those were quick examples - I mean everything is just stuck in the same old groove.

Add pictures to your music. Where's the 3D sound? where are all the new ideas?

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

Those were quick examples - I mean everything is just stuck in the same old groove.

Add pictures to your music. Where's the 3D sound? where are all the new ideas?

I'm sure grumpy old men have been saying this since music consisted of Mr and Mrs Ug banging their elk bones on hollow logs.

[Dr Huge Longjohns]

As long as we use 'tonal' music the max possible melodies will be less than infinite (i.e. 'finite') only if we have an infinite number of notes in an octave* can the possible number of melodies be infinite.

Not true. So you have a melody that jumps from C1 to C3 in the first two notes. Are you saying this is the same melody as C1 to C1? So I jump from C1 to E972. That would be a new melody by any standards, surely?

[Wonks]

only if we have an infinite number of notes in an octave*

That would then have to be re-classed as an infinitave.