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Friday, July 18th, 2008
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11:04a - Catalogues updated
Reorganized the gallery site again. Retired a couple dozen images. More importantly, I updated the Catalogue PDFs with the latest work and categories, also a new thumbnail size auto adjuster. The image title is also shown now, not just the image code.
Catalogue links on the front page of the gallery site.
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2:08p - rock band thoughts
I've bemoaned the state of music in the world repeatedly. Few people these days exercise their own skills in making music. A hundred years ago -- just a hundred -- before recorded music was commonplace, the only way music was experienced by the common person was either to play it themself, or hear played live in their homes or in the street.
Here in 2008 I would say easily 99% of all music heard is now prerecorded. If you just stand in the street, you don't hear anything but cars; perhaps a tiny bit of sound escaping someone's headphones. But no live music in the home, no live music in the street (except for the occasional busker, and of course concerts which one must pay for).
It's partially because we're so "busy" we don't make time to learn or play. It's also, admittedly, that we listen to far more music than we used to -- so the ratio is skewed. We're also so wrapped up in our cocoon-like detatched single family houses (or our apartments, complete with banging-on-the-ceiling neighbours) that we're entirely accustomed to only hearing (and seeing) only the things we specifically wish to hear. And, interestingly, the bar has raised -- since we're all hearing professionals perform all the time, when an amateur slips up, it's startling and disconcerting -- and few who aren't very confident (or daring) venture to perform in public.
A change is coming, though. I think games like Rock Band and Guitar Hero will help this dramatically. It will be a few years before the effects are really felt, but I can see the tide starting to pull out preperatory to rolling up the beach. Here's some points to this that I've been considering.
About those "guitar" controllers. They're getting more advanced, have you noticed? And while they have just a few buttons yet they're not quite true melodic instruments -- if a controller showed up with, say, twelve active frets -- or twenty -- then there's nothing holding you back from true music-making, especially if those frets are pressure sensitive. I give this perhaps five years, before an advanced controller of this nature appears. And those advanced "guitars" will soon become stand-alone devices with audio-output capabilities of their own. No more locked-to-the-TV problem. And with millions of new "Guitar Heros" out there, they'll be easily accepted and commonplace -- not some bizarre freak violin player.
The toy "drum" controllers are advancing very, very quickly -- even more quickly than the guitar. Already announced to be compatible with Rock Band 2 is a crossover play/perform drum kit that can plug into the game, or plug into a drum module that creates its own sounds for stand-alone use. This is partly because electronic drum kits have been around for decades -- all that hard work has been done. But that's not the most important thing that Rock Band drumming brings to the table. The game teaches rhythm, which absolutely isn't just for drummers. Keeping time is essential for playing music, especially in a group. So even just banging around on plastic sets confers valuable skills in musicality.
And while I think the microphone controller is perhaps the most useless of all of them -- singing of course being a skill that requires no instrument -- the essential success here is getting more people off their asses, making them participate. In the game, the singer is graded on pitch and performance, but in the real world, the important accomplishment is that the person is singing -- making sound, not just listening to it. Quite an improvement.
I hold, actually, newfound hope for the state of music in our society. It may take ten or twenty years, but the generation of kids and teens who are fondling little plastic guitars today are going to be much more free and open about creating music anytime, anywhere than their parents and grandparents. They'll be comfortable doing it, they'll have tools they're familiar with to perform on, and of course, because they've had hundreds or thousands of hours of practice slyly slipped into their free time in the guise of a video game, they'll be very good at it.
I'm sure these thoughts aren't unique to myself, but I'm glad to be thinking them.
So, anyway, come over and play sometime.
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6:42p - Another taste people do not want:
Garlic peaches.
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6:58p - Interface No.8 - Hunters
Image # CF12 View in Gallery.
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