When Perfect is Imperfect - Are we Forgeting What a Real Orchestra Sounds Like?

[Garritan]

In society there are many pressures to conform to societal ideals. One of the ideals is the media's notion of beauty and the unattainable "ideal" body image. Unrealistic expectations and pressures to conform have led to a variety of eating and psychological disorders.

But there is also an ideal being perpetrating by the music industry that is also leading to a disorder. An ideal where every instrument is always perfectly in tune, where every player intonates perfectly, where dynamic ranges are compressed, and mistakes are never made. This strain of infectious disease common amongst electronic musicians is known as "MIDI-ITIS"

The GPO Orcestration Competition Concert taught me a great deal.
During the rehearsals, Andy and I wrote and told you about my bout with MIDI-itis. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32891
The real orchestra did not sound exactly live the MIDI-mockup and I had some unrealistic expectations. But listening to all those players, what made it great is that nobody was perfect - but when it was all put together - it was great!

We are so conditioned to hear perfect music to a point where it is almost superficial and sterile. Our ears are so trained to hear perfect pitch and perfect intonation by every player that would be impossible in real life.

Are we beginning to miss something?

Are we forgeting what a real orchestra sounds like?

What are your thoughts?

Gary Garritan

[Fabio]

Yes Gary, the doubt is strong.

I frequently think about that, and for instance I like to insert in renditions random timbre, intonation and rhythmic "imperfections" to make it perfect! :o

The best result is when it's not random, but it's included by human touch (life playing, and analytic variation during programming).

But the pro recordings are probably creating a false image of music, that is frequently producing disappointment during true performances.

I'm anyway optimist: the sound of acoustic instrument and the atmosphere of the concert are enough to make us forgive the "different-from-the-record" effect...in both classic and pop music! ;)

[Christopher Duncan]

I think that there's a strong case for both types of music. Nothing will ever replace the nuances of human players. Sometimes that's a good thing, sometimes that's a bad thing (don't ask about my experiences with rock & roll drummers... http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif ).

On the other hand, having been through countless struggles over the years where we desperately tried to fix something wrong with the song (poor timing screwing up a heartfelt percussion track, bad intonation trashing the perfect emotional vocal take, etc.), I find it entertaining that these days we long for the imperfections that we used to abhor.

I'm a very strong proponent of the "if it sounds right, it is right" school of thought. I think that either approach is flawed only when you lose sight of, in my opinion, the only question that's important in music: what does the listener hear when they press Play?

Intellectual and professional curiosity aside, no one gives a rats rear end what brand of paint Picasso used on his paintings, or how many bristles were in his brush. The only question was, "is this painting cool, or is it junk?" Depending on, say, your opinion of the cubist stylings (hope I said that correctly, I'm not a painter), you might dig it or want to burn it. Ultimately, who was right? Were Picasso's bizarre creations what painting was supposed to be, or was it rather the impressionistic approaches of Monet, or perhaps the more realistic approach of Rubin? In the end, none of them are "right" or "wrong". They're just different things, and what hangs on the wall at the end of the adventure is all that matters - does it convey what the artist wanted to convey? Everything else is incidental.

Are imperfections in human performances good or bad? Is the computerized, tweakable perfection of MIDI good or bad? The answer is... it depends. What was the composer going for? I've written some pieces of music where human nuances were mandatory and MIDI would never do. I've also written others where the regimented "perfection" or consistency of MIDI perfectly expressed what I was feeling, and a human player would never do.

Bruce Lee created his own martial arts system called Jeet Kune Do. One of the fundamental principals was to explore every style you could, and take what works for you personally from each, building your own customized approach to fighting that made sense for your physical strengths and weaknesses. If you adopted one technique but not another, the latter wasn't considered "bad" - just not right for you. The mantra was simple and practical: use what works.

MIDI, people, small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri... these are just our paints and brushes, folks. In the end, nothing matters except what you hang on the wall. Don't limit your creative options by coming down on one side or the other of the MIDI-itis issue. Use the strengths of each when they further your creative goals, and call them both correct accordingly.

[Jimi]

The incredibly tasteless auto-tune abuse pervading the (music) INDUSTRY is what really bugs me. Nobody sings like a robot, and it sounds lame when you make a person sound like a robot. Yet the "trend" just becomes more entrenched with each passing merger.

This robo-geek music is for wimps who can't handle anything with balls. When did muzak become so hip? Blah...! It just drones on and on with zero dynamics and robo voices and not a single memorable tune to speak of. Wake me when it's over... I'm going into cold sleep for now!


In society there are many pressures to conform to societal ideals. One of the ideals is the media's notion of beauty and the unattainable "ideal" body image. Unrealistic expectations and pressures to conform have led to a variety of eating and psychological disorders.

But there is also an ideal being perpetrating by the music industry that is also leading to a disorder. An ideal where every instrument is always perfectly in tune, where every player intonates perfectly, where dynamic ranges are compressed, and mistakes are never made. This strain of infectious disease common amongst electronic musicians is known as "MIDI-ITIS"

The GPO Orcestration Competition Concert taught me a great deal.
During the rehearsals, Andy and I wrote and told you about my bout with MIDI-itis. http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/showthread.php?t=32891
The real orchestra did not sound exactly live the MIDI-mockup and I had some unrealistic expectations. But listening to all those players, what made it great is that nobody was perfect - but when it was all put together - it was great!

We are so conditioned to hear perfect music to a point where it is almost superficial and sterile. Our ears are so trained to hear perfect pitch and perfect intonation by every player that would be impossible in real life.

Are we beginning to miss something?

Are we forgeting what a real orchestra sounds like?

What are your thoughts?

Gary Garritan

[LFO]

Imperfection is the heart of humanity.

-LFO

[Richard N.]

I agree with Christopher.

Basically it's down to the person creating the music to decide what level of "perfection" (and this has to be a subjective term with any sort of art) is required in each piece of music.

However, I would comment that even those who strive to create a "human" sound through incorporating imperfections in their creations are actually trying to achieve a sort of perfection - i.e. the perfect balance between a mathmatically accurate, and an amateurish error ridden performance. Surely they are trying to create a "perfect" imperfect performance that still sounds professional?

[SeanHannifin]

Isn't the cure for MIDI-itis just a little beverage poured over the head?

[Richard N.]

Isn't the cure for MIDI-itis just a little beverage poured over the head?

Sean, for someone so young you do have a real drink problem.....

The beverage goes into the mouth, NOT over the head.

:)

With a couple of beverages inside me, I can be almost as imperfect as a real human!

[etLux]

Seems to me a great many people are listening to the sound, and not the music.

etLux
www.DavidSosnowski.com
.

[SteveMitchell]

Wow. What an eye-opening perspective. I remember when I was so buried tit-deep in all the music I was doing via MIDI. Then, I was lucky enough to catch a live performance of the Strauss Death and Transfiguration - a work that I was recently pouring my heart out on in a MIDI realization (sequenced of course by Dr. Siu), and at that point, I was shocked back to reality. I'm not saying that the sound I was producing sucked, but let's get real here, it severely lacked the nuance, detail and otherwise Humanistic touches that I heard at that live performance by the DSO in the Meyerson in Dallas.

The result of that experience was to motivate me to drop back the scale of the works I was doing. Instead of 123 piece orchestra, concentrate on works that could be performed by a much smaller ensemble, maybe even chamber works or similar. This makes me think that the next generation of music-making tools that we encounter really need to have a sense of randomization about them - that is the abilty to vary the timbre, intensity, and volume from note to note. Our control would need to be limited only to the level of this randomness.

Stevemitchell

[trentpmcd]

In the last year I went to about a dozen orchestral concerts (I’m hoping for two dozen in this coming year) and can say I prefer the sound of a real orchestra, even one as imperfect as our local one (Nashua Symphony) to any recording ever made by a margin of about 100,000 to 1. Strangely enough, I often “get” some of the more out there music (Eliot Carter, etc.) when I see/hear it live much easier than on a recording. I usually hear what every player is doing and how it interrelates while I’m lucky to follow the main melody on a CD.

A couple of years ago I bought every pop or rock album with a copyright date within a year of my shopping spree (I skipped things which I knew I didn’t like – 99% of pop radio for example). I found that the only music I could listen to was from the indie labels. Anything from a major label was so over produced all of the life was sucked right out. The music itself on the indie labels was usually pretty simple, but at least it had some soul.

A couple of years ago I also saw a few rock concerts. I do prefer live music.

[Markleford]

I love imperfections. I love dirt and rust and grit in my art.

I strive to get a "human" performance out of my algorithmic systems, and that requires both capturing flaws in samples and introducing errors and artifacts in the actual timing and pitch of notes.

I think GPO does some great stuff with its VAR controllers.

Yes, I think we're forgetting what a real orchestra sounds like, if only for the fact that a real orchestra will sound different on every night it plays.

But I also think the thing that makes an orchestra special to me is that a performance is *hard*. There is danger, there is risk, and there are only a bunch of error-prone beings tasked with making it happen. But that's all a vibe, a spirit, a feeling that I get from experiencing the tightrope act on stage. Will they pull it off? Will they fail?

That's the difference between a "performance" and mere "playback".

And if an orchestra gets "too good" at a piece, then they start sounding like a machine. That's when I lose interest: if it sounds exactly the same each night, then there's no use in hearing it after the first time when played by humans. Just burn it to CD and be done with it.

But, eh, some people really dig machine music, and a great melody will always be a great melody, played by humans or otherwise. But I'd miss the other aspect of music when the computers take over, and maybe that's just in my head and not actually in my ears.

- m

[Christopher Duncan]

Sean, for someone so young you do have a real drink problem.....

The beverage goes into the mouth, NOT over the head.

http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif

With a couple of beverages inside me, I can be almost as imperfect as a real human!
In Sean's defense, since he's obviously referencing the infamous Andy/Gary/Midi-itis beer pouring incident, I'd say that it's Andy who's exhibiting alcohol abuse of the worst kind - waste! http://www.northernsounds.com/forum/images/smilies/smile.gif

[joaz]

I was busy Garritanising a midi rendition of Shostakovitch's 10th symphony,a couple of months ago,to start to get a feel of the software,and what it's capable of.After a few days tweaking here and there,I began to think that what it sounded like was 30 or so extremely good sounds.Whereas an orchestra sounds like 1 thing.(or at least a good orchestra does).
I don't mean this as a criticism of GPO,after all I am a novice with this software,and the fault if any,lies with me probably.
The thing is, it made me listen hard to some recent recordings,and I was struck by how a lot of modern orchestral recordings also sound this way.There must be so many close mic's applied to the orchestra,that you almost become aware of every violin players sound,instead of that indefinable alchemy that is created by Harmonics beating against each other.
A classic case in point is Mahler 5 with Simon Rattle and the Berlin Phil.
It sounds really Hollywood,and to my ears there is just too much detail.Of course this is a matter of taste,maybe you love it that way.But on the topic of the quest for perfection de-naturising the music,this all seems part of a growing trend.
The huge difficulty in Midi renditions is introducing the right amount of randomness.I prefer the term random to imperfect,because to my ears sound without randomness is far from perfect.The controllers(Random Tuning,Timbre) in GPO definitely help in this regard,although personally I find them hard to calibrate.I always seem to get not enough or way too much. :confused: Again this is probably my incompetence :o
The positive side of midi-itis,is that what you get attached to is your own conducting of the score.This is not to say that there is no other way to shape a piece,but that you prefer your own nuances.
Then again,forgive my crudity,but everyone likes the smell of their own farts. :D :D
regards

[efiebke]

Long ago, I established a strongly held belief that midi-sequenced music will never replace live musicians playing real instruments. To me, this is especially true in terms of quality of sound and "naturalness". No matter how "hi-tech" digital-midi music gets, it will never fully replicate the subtle perfection/imperfection of live musicians playing real instruments. With this said, on many levels I thoroughly appreciate and enjoy midi-sequenced music. I appreciate the control one possesses in sequencing music. Relatively speaking, I can make it sound as "natural" or "un-natural" as I want. I can produce the sequenced music to the hilt or make it sound pretty darn "imperfect" and human. And like any other musician playing their instrument, the more one practices the better one gets. I treat and respect sequenced music like I would any other musician playing their "ax". It takes time, education (formal or self-taught), practice and more practice to gain control and expertise with the "instrument". And to me the act of midi-sequencing IS playing an instrument.

Now. . . Do I like highly produced music? It depends. I appreciate the craft and expertise involved to achieve such sounds. But generally speaking, no I don't like highly produced music. It's just not my cup of tea. . .

Happy composing and sequencing, folks! :)

Ted

[DPDAN]

Seems to me a great many people are listening to the sound, and not the music.

etLux
that is a great post Etlux! :)
dpDan

[etLux]

Odors aside, Joaz [post above], that's an important point about synthetic sound.

Unless I'm mistaken, no one yet has come along with software instruments that acoustically interact with each other -- as they do in a real orchestra.

This is especially true of strings. In my younger days, I wasn't a bad cellist, and played with various regional and university orchestras; and I distinctly remember I could "feel" the other cellists' articulations and bowing reverberating via the sound box of my own instrument.

(If you ever watch a top-flight string section carefully, their bowing is often like geese flying in formation ... probably, this sensing of each other is why.)

I wonder if this is why synthetic strings, no matter how excellently done, never quite make the mark...

etLux
www.DavidSosnowski.com
.

[etLux]

that is a great post Etlux! :)
dpDan

Thanks, dpDan. Look, this, too me, is a crucial point. What I said was:

Seems to me a great many people are listening to the sound, and not the music.

Now, it's all well and good from an engineering point of view to concentrate a great deal on the perfection of the sound, intonation, etc. And in a performance, certainly, you want to get the notes right and turn in a solid playing.

But!

Music is an expression of thought.

If you're too damned preoccupied with the purity of the sound, or whether or not the horns quite "made the octave", etc... you're pretty well missing the entire purpose of music, to begin with.

etLux
www.DavidSosnowski.com
.

[joaz]

.
This is especially true of strings. In my younger days, I wasn't a bad cellist, and played with various regional and university orchestras; and I distinctly remember I could "feel" the other cellists' articulations and bowing reverberating via the sound box of my own instrument.
etLux
www.DavidSosnowski.com
.

For me,the way strings affect each other,IS the sound of a string section.It is very complex how the harmonics genereated by the first violin,subtly alter the sound of the 2nd violin,and so on.As for random....... :eek: How about the cello player ate chilli tonight,so he is sweating a little more so the harmonics generated tonight are different.However his desk partner is unconsciously altering his tuning to compensate :confused: .There must be a gazillion factors harmonics-wise that make the sound of a live orchestra a richer sensory experience,than the best sample library.
Having said all that,I never managed to persuade a 100 piece orchestra to hang around my house till I need them.Whereas Mr Garritan has managed to coax the little critters,into my computer,to await my every command.
Lets face it folks a live orchestra is an Orange and a Sample Library is an Apple.Let us not criricise either one for not tasting Lemony enough ;)
regards

[BlueMax]

There's a very good reason why sequencers over 10 years ago had a "humanizer" function! I think that feature's been dropped with the modern software because it wasn't highly sought after.... but it makes a world of difference when a few people are less than perfect.

To the point where, like music itself sometimes, it just can't be explained. No matter how good the software is, it will never TRULY replace a human musician.... even if much of the commercial world doesn't appreciate the difference.

[snorlax]

Several random "stream of unconsciousness" thoughts:

1. Let's not confuse "variability" with "errors." Human performance has a degree of variability in pitch, timbre, timing, etc, that we are increasingly able to program into MIDI. Give VAR1, VAR2, and different humanization routines, we can come pretty close to humanity if we spend the time and use the tools properly.

2. I'd say that our expectations are formed more by recording than by MIDI. I was in a studio a while back recording some euphonium-tuba quartets. My part had a run of sixteenths at 144 quarters per minute. I biffed ONE of them and punch-in of that one note was trivial. Also, doing an overdub, I hit a real clinker--major instead of minor. It was trivial for the guy to find the note, drag it down on his Mac from C# to C natural...and no one was any the wiser.

Also--how much post-production does it take to get the recording to sound as natural as it did when you played it? In our case, there was EQ, reverb, other mastering stuff I don't know about, expansion, compression, etc...

3. This expectation is having its effects on "live" ensembles. Several orchestras have had openings for brass recently in which no candidate was taken--and these are first-class performers who already have orchestra gigs. Could it be that audition committees are expecting people behind the curtain to sound like a recording?? Some people seem to think so, to the point that people taking auditions--especially brass--so fear chipping a note that they play blandly and without much expression.

After reflecting on this, I want to think more in terms of recording technology than I do about MIDI in causing us to forget what real performance sounds like.

PS--I will be posting some "Snorlax Live and Raw" snippets tomorrow from a recent show. No processing...no editing...no nothing. Plenty of randomness here, folks, but a wide range of moods and styles...hold yer ears...

Jim

[Houston Haynes]

I don't think that live is better than digitized, or vice versa. They're simply different. There are people I know and respect who collect multiple recordings of the same piece - both classical and jazz. One of them collects them to have different interpretations to study in the score as he listens. The other likes to have all of the different performances in order to mix and match them, and to be surprised when one of them is picked more or less at random on his computer.

I also don't distinguish an audio recording from a MIDI mockup. Anything that is captured, and can be modified and then made static takes on a different type of existance that a piece of music (or opera, or stage play for that matter) that is performed live. The performers and the audience know it - it's a high-wire act, with all of its attendant exhilerations and pratfalls.

That's why Denzel Washington takes $1700 per week to play Othello on Broadway when he could be making $20million per movie. It's also why summer-stock Shakespeare in the park - even when played poorly - is almost summarily better than anything you'll find on TV on a give night...

...perhaps it's not "perfect art" but rather a more complete human experience.

[FredProgGH]

Well, on one hand I have certainly fallen victim to the urge to over-perfect. To quantize everything, to tune everything, and it can be a bad thing. BUT- I think we should remember what we are trying to emulate. Not mediocrity, but the best. The LSO does play with near-perfect intonation. Mike Portnoy does play drums like a clock. To me, GOS sounds like a damn good group of players- far from too perfect. They are the players I would want to try and hire. That being said, there are subtle human imperfections in performance involving pitch and timing that can enrich the overall sound and I try to remind myself to not polish them out, or to add when necessary.

I think the bottom line is if you approach things with a musical ear and you come out satisfied at the end, you're OK.

Whoever was talking about Auto-tune sure was right- it's a miraculous tool if used judiciously but in a few years when the fascination wears off none of these current people will be able to hear their albums because they will sound so artificial. And I've been very guilty of abusing it too. It's like a drug. when you hear that perfect pitch, you can't not have it. Auto-tune is like musical crack.

[snorlax]

Hey, Youze!

If you want to hear some live "approximatura" check out the "Snorlax Live" topic.
There's some live stuff, warts and all.
Definitely not pitch-shifted, compressed, or anything...just raw!!
But it was still fun to play!!
Jim

[Styxx]

Hey, Youze!

If you want to hear some live "approximatura" check out the "Snorlax Live" topic.
There's some live stuff, warts and all.
Definitely not pitch-shifted, compressed, or anything...just raw!!
But it was still fun to play!!
Jim
Very nice indeed! Thanks for sharing.

[cptexas]

I was too lazy to read all the posts, so I don't know if any1 mentioned this or not.

I feel that MIDI has constricted my creative abilities. Now I rarely incorperate a piano in my music just because the GPO steinway takes so freakin' long to load. I never use instruments that aren't in GPO or any of my other sound modules, I almost never give the brass flutter tongues because I can't figure out how to do it realisticly with any of my sound modules or GPO. (if you know how to do it PM or email me ;) ) Whenever I write I now make a consious effort to not limit my creativity to GPO and MIDI. I'm working on a peice right now that, so far, has even fooled me into being real. But I REALLY want to put in that flugelhorn solo, or that G soprano flute solo (beautiful instrument, BTW).

OK, I'm rambling now. :rolleyes: :D

So that's my $.02 worth.

-Chris

[imagegod]

Are we beginning to miss something? Gary Garritan

Of course we are...but not in the way that you think. Take a so-called forged painted. What, precisely is forged? Why, only its provenance. The actual artistic relationships are 'real' (i.e. powerful/moving) and will always be real. A 'fake' Mona Lisa that looks exactly like Mona Lisa is, for all intents and purposes, a Mona Lisa.

Similarly, a 'fake' orchestration with 'real' musical relationships is all a (good/great) composer is concerned with. A 'Moonlight Sonata' played on a toy piano maintains the same musical relationships as a 'Sonata' played on a 'perfect' Steinway. And a good composer understands this.

Which doesn't mean they don't won't to hear it on that so-called perfect Steinway...only that they know what is maintained in the translation and thus what their priority is: the power and passion of great musical relationships. :D

[Richard N.]

An interesting observation (well I found it interesting anyway)....

I currently doing a project on a couple of Mussorgsky pieces, part of which involves listening to a number of different recordings by different orchestras of those pieces.

So far I have only listened to two of the 4 recordings, but the one that I have enjoyed the most on first hearing (and I would have to emphahsise "enjoyed", I won't know which one I prefer for a while yet) was the more "rough" version.

I didn't enjoy it more because it was "rough", I enjoyed it because it had more "gusto" in the appropriate places. The roughness was casued by the orchestra "giving it some welly" with the knock on effect of some split and splattered notes (they weren't wrong notes, just not hit quite right - but in my book this comes under the classification of "mistakes").

I would conjecture, though, that should one of the yet to be heard recordings contain the same gusto but without the mistakes, I will enjoy that version even more.

Time, and a subsequent entry on this forum, will tell.

:)

[Edi]

...

We are so conditioned to hear perfect music to a point where it is almost superficial and sterile.
Are we beginning to miss something?

Are we forgeting what a real orchestra sounds like?

What are your thoughts?

Gary Garritan

I think the word "perfect" may not be the right one to express your thought here. "Perfect" is a very rich word used in many ways (richness always breeds ambiguity...not a bad thing). God is perfect in some religions. The quest for a perfect Martini is considered really worthy in some circles.

I think a better word might be "precise". Many years ago, when the digital watch first came out and I was working in computer technology, a student who was working with me said, "Digital watches are precise but that does not necessarily make them accurate". I think this reverberates well in this conversation: you can make a performance very precise along many parameters, but perfection is much deeper and more illusive.

Ed