Hi everyone,
Every open source synthesis program has its own set of peculiarities, which will shape the work, style, sounds, process, etc. But does being open source count as one of those peculiarities?
I would love to know if anyone feels like there is a direct relationship between the music they make with Pd and the fact that Pd is open source. Do you compose music differently than you would with a purchased software package? Are your sonic standards higher / lower / unchanged? Are you more / less musically adventurous (what ever that might mean to you)? Are you more / less likely to use sounds from other users?
I've seen dozens of threads in various places that develop an idea over the course of several days, including songs, sounds, bigger programming projects. This seems to suggest a unique, open source approach / ethic, at least in the way people communicate about their work. But what about the music itself?
I'd be very curious to hear any comments on this. Thanks! jake
Hi everyone,
I would love to know if anyone feels like there is a direct relationship between the music they make with Pd and the fact that Pd is open source. Do you compose music differently than you would with a purchased software package? Are your sonic standards higher / lower / unchanged? Are you more / less musically adventurous (what ever that might mean to you)? Are you more / less likely to use sounds from other users?
I suppose I pretty much exclusively work with open source tools so my perspective is a bit skewed (I also went through school studying music so this adds an additional bias), but I think paradigm and interface has much much more to do with compositional style than software being open source or not: DAWs and trackers emphasizing the metrical grid, while Pd and SC being more freeform and sandboxy, SC having its extensive list of patterns and tempo clocks (although I've been lately kinda doing this sort of thing with in Pd with sequenced lists), Pd with its graphical dataflow interface, perhaps emphasizing musical experiences that involve more pre-coded modules hooked together and tweaked live via sliders and buttons (I actually haven't thought about this much, forgive me, lol).
I suppose that perhaps there are folks who are comfortable with solely using commercial products and folks who want to use open-source as much as possible (and people in the middle) and definitely in the popular music fields commercial products dominate. I'd say that open-source programming-oriented music environments have been more historically associated with academic institutions and thus "western art music" for lack of better terms (although I'm not really fond of that term), but there are folks leaning more on the "popular" side of things (not fond of that term either...) that do use Pd. However, I'd also say Pd's closest cousin Max/MSP has also been pretty historically tied to academic institions and the genres associated with such as well, although there are again folks who use Max/MSP for more "popular"-influenced music such as Autechre. Also, I suspect that these conceptions are changing, especially as the emergence of "creative coding" brings the expressivity of computer-technology-powered art to more and more people.
I suppose since open-source software tends to be more community-driven than there could be more of a proclivity to share code and sounds and so forth, but Max/MSP code also gets shared a lot and in terms of sampled sounds, well, sampling has been a thing for a long time... In my own experience, study of Pd's source has allowed me to learn and develop my own tools, but I wouldn't say that this necessarily leads to any sort of style of music. I'd say that perhaps with commercial products, you would expect more-polished and thorough documentation, but this isn't always the case. I'm not sure if I answered your questions at all...
Derek
I think open source people are more hacky and DIY and are less tied up, which has an impact on the result...
2017-02-24 23:25 GMT-03:00 Derek Kwan derek.x.kwan@gmail.com:
Hi everyone,
I would love to know if anyone feels like there is a direct relationship between the music they make with Pd and the fact that Pd is open source. Do you compose music differently than you would with a purchased software package? Are your sonic standards higher / lower / unchanged? Are you more / less musically adventurous (what ever that might mean to you)? Are you more / less likely to use sounds from other users?
I suppose I pretty much exclusively work with open source tools so my perspective is a bit skewed (I also went through school studying music so this adds an additional bias), but I think paradigm and interface has much much more to do with compositional style than software being open source or not: DAWs and trackers emphasizing the metrical grid, while Pd and SC being more freeform and sandboxy, SC having its extensive list of patterns and tempo clocks (although I've been lately kinda doing this sort of thing with in Pd with sequenced lists), Pd with its graphical dataflow interface, perhaps emphasizing musical experiences that involve more pre-coded modules hooked together and tweaked live via sliders and buttons (I actually haven't thought about this much, forgive me, lol).
I suppose that perhaps there are folks who are comfortable with solely using commercial products and folks who want to use open-source as much as possible (and people in the middle) and definitely in the popular music fields commercial products dominate. I'd say that open-source programming-oriented music environments have been more historically associated with academic institutions and thus "western art music" for lack of better terms (although I'm not really fond of that term), but there are folks leaning more on the "popular" side of things (not fond of that term either...) that do use Pd. However, I'd also say Pd's closest cousin Max/MSP has also been pretty historically tied to academic institions and the genres associated with such as well, although there are again folks who use Max/MSP for more "popular"-influenced music such as Autechre. Also, I suspect that these conceptions are changing, especially as the emergence of "creative coding" brings the expressivity of computer-technology-powered art to more and more people.
I suppose since open-source software tends to be more community-driven than there could be more of a proclivity to share code and sounds and so forth, but Max/MSP code also gets shared a lot and in terms of sampled sounds, well, sampling has been a thing for a long time... In my own experience, study of Pd's source has allowed me to learn and develop my own tools, but I wouldn't say that this necessarily leads to any sort of style of music. I'd say that perhaps with commercial products, you would expect more-polished and thorough documentation, but this isn't always the case. I'm not sure if I answered your questions at all...
Derek
-- Derek Kwan www.derekxkwan.com
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Thanks for your answers! On Sat, Feb 25, 2017 at 12:21 AM, Alexandre Torres Porres porres@gmail.com wrote:
I think open source people are more hacky and DIY and are less tied up, which has an impact on the result...
Yes, I agree.
2017-02-24 23:25 GMT-03:00 Derek Kwan derek.x.kwan@gmail.com:
I suppose since open-source software tends to be more community-driven than there could be more of a proclivity to share code and sounds and so forth, but Max/MSP code also gets shared a lot and in terms of sampled sounds, well, sampling has been a thing for a long time... In my own experience, study of Pd's source has allowed me to learn and develop my own tools, but I wouldn't say that this necessarily leads to any sort of style of music. I'd say that perhaps with commercial products, you would expect more-polished and thorough documentation, but this isn't always the case. I'm not sure if I answered your questions at all...
It is tough to say for sure, I agree! Thanks, jake
On Feb 25, Alexandre Torres Porres wrote:
I think open source people are more hacky and DIY and are less tied up, which has an impact on the result...
I do suppose that esp stuff like Pd vanilla with its small core encourages more investment in the tools, but at least for me, it's difficult to pin down stylistically what users of open-source tools such as Pd and SC tend to produce. Not to denigrate four-on-the floor, I think a lot of interesting things can be done around that, but I've heard quite a lot of generic four-on-the-floory kinda stuff made in both SC and Pd but then again you also have like Philippe Manoury stuff and sonifications all sorts of less in-the-box stuff being made in Pd. And I suppose Max is sort of the oddball out in terms of commercial music composition tools, but it seems like there's quite a bit of a "maker" scene around Max as well. Going through school (and I suppose it depends on where you go to school), a lot more things revolved around Max more than anything else: multimedia projects, any piece not mine I performed or saw performed, (well, I used to use Max a lot for my stuff I suppose too, but that was a long while ago =P).
Outside of Pd and SC, there are stuff like DAWs and trackers that are open-source like Ardour and LMMS and the Hydrogen drum machine which can although be used for things that are less "tied up", but also lend themselves easily toward more conventional music due to the griddiness that I mentioned in my last e-mail and you can find a lot of examples of this online.
Derek
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Alexandre Torres Porres -
Derek Kwan -
jake danson-faraday