# Playability vs. Creative Freedom



## Samuel Kristopher

Given that we live in a time where a Mahlerian-scale orchestral piece can be played by just one person with a computer and decent virtual instrument software (whether or not one likes the result), there must be some of you out there who have thought about writing a piece with unplayable parts, and perhaps even done so unashamedly. 

Personally, I've always felt that the limits of playability are comforting - I've felt that the further I stray beyond that boundary, the more meaningless the music becomes. The other day though, as an exercise, I wrote something straight away down onto Sibelius without any consideration for playability, and found it to be quite fun and freeing. 

Obviously, the practical question is whether one is writing music to be played in real life or not. Personally I'd like to think I could one day, but I'm starting to think I'd also have some fun exploring the realm of "unplayability". Perhaps that is to today's music what Chromatism was to the Romantic? 

Thoughts?


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## Vasks

Electronic music/Music that doesn't need real people to play it has been around approx. 70 years. There will always be a small but enthusiastic group of listeners for it. So go ahead if you that's what you want to do.

However, once Xenakis...yes him..told me directly...yes I actually met him face to face in the early 70's...that he believed it was important to incorporate live musicians into electronics so that the element of human expression would be integrated. 

Personally I'd rather write for real musicians, even though it's not always easy to get them to play my stuff. The tradition of having real people playing for a real audience that watches, listens and reacts is the way for me.


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## Bevo

I'm self-taught in music theory, and have never played an instrument, so you basically just described me in a nutshell!!! Lol I wish I could play some of my works, but if you can't, you can't... I just love creating music too much to stop!!


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## Alexanbar

I think that some cases of non-playing music can be turned into playable one.

for example, you can be entrust fragments of melody two identical instruments instead of one


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## Samuel Kristopher

I know it's been around for a while, but I'd say virtual instruments that approach being indistinguishable from real ones has only been around for a handful of years at most. But I agree, really, writing for real musicians is much more fun and interesting I think.


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## Xenakiboy

Vasks said:


> However, once Xenakis...yes him..told me directly...yes I actually met him face to face in the early 70's...that he believed it was important to incorporate live musicians into electronics so that the element of human expression would be integrated.


If that's true, then my fanboy level just went up a little. Time to listen to Mahler now...


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## Rhombic




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## Samuel Kristopher

Wow, interesting composer - I'd never heard of him. Makes for a bit of interesting evening reading


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## Crudblud

As someone who has only ever written music for computers, I guess it's creative freedom all the way for me.


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## Pugg

Alexanbar said:


> I think that some cases of non-playing music can be turned into playable one.
> 
> for example, you can be entrust fragments of melody two identical instruments instead of one


I really doubt this, if it's not there........


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## Samuel Kristopher

Pugg said:


> I really doubt this, if it's not there........


I wasn't quite sure what he meant by that - maybe he just meant that, a piano playing an impossible arrangement of four voices could be split into two pianos playing a manageable arrangement of two voices?


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## hreichgott

Well, I'm a human and I like to play music written for humans 

I do think music on computers is a great invention because it allows people to experiment and test stuff out without having to make it into a piano piece first. There are ways in which having to try everything out on a piano can itself be limiting.
I also love well-crafted computerized performances like those Crudblud comes up with. However, for a performance like that there is so much human time, effort, creative and artistic energy invested in HOW every note is played. I really do think it is more of a human performance than a computerized one when performance issues (how the notes are played) are that well-crafted in detail by a human.

The thing that drives me crazy is pieces that are supposedly written for humans, but you can tell they were written on a computer and they ended up being written FOR the computer. Like little groups of 17th notes instead of just writing an ornament, or adding a million extra octaves and extra notes in chords for no musical reason beyond that the MIDI piano doesn't sound good with a sparser texture. The computer is happy to play little groups of 17th notes and it sounds better the more extra octaves it has, but a human wants to play an ornament and to have the right number of notes to fit that musical idea.

I would also suggest (performer's bias again) that we think of playability not as a limitation, but as a way to share creative freedom between the composer and performer. The composer creates a beautiful world for the performer to walk through, and then to lead an audience through. Finding ways both to help the performer walk through that beautiful world, and ways to show the performer what's really most beautiful and interesting in that world, is what "playability" is all about, and it can be very creative indeed.


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## Crudblud

hreichgott said:


> I also love well-crafted computerized performances like those Crudblud comes up with. However, for a performance like that there is so much human time, effort, creative and artistic energy invested in HOW every note is played. I really do think it is more of a human performance than a computerized one when performance issues (how the notes are played) are that well-crafted in detail by a human.


I think of my approach to this kind of composition as being the "right" one, that is to say I arrived at it after many years of practice by finally meeting the computer on its own terms, not going in with the assumption that it is roughly analogous to a human being. Now, people are going to think I think they're stupid when I say that, "of course no one thinks computers are like humans!" And of course they don't think computers are like humans, not on the level of verbal communication, but there is the assumption, among very many composers who do use computers, that they can give the computer the same old information they give a human and get the same results.

Previously when I have offered criticism of particularly misguided uses of MIDI (I think these would number among the computerised pieces for which you have a particular dislike), as has happened quite a few times on this board, the usual "it's not my fault, MIDI sucks" response has been forthcoming. This again comes from misconceptions. I mean, first of all, most people think MIDI is literally a bunch of cheesy fake instrument sounds, they don't realise that it is actually a highly complex system for triggering and controlling sounds, and that it has a massive and incredibly versatile feature set. Thanks to its complexity and abundance of features, it is actually possible, using those stock standard cheesy sounds, to emulate a full complement of instrumental techniques, to have vibrato and glissandi and sforzati and harmonics and all sorts of things, to say nothing of far more simple and less intensive procedures like tempo mapping and tiered dynamics.

I think in general, anyone would agree that if someone doesn't put in the time to learn what a given tool is and how to use it, it's no wonder when they end up using it to create things that are frankly no good. I once made the analogy of a composer who writes a violin concerto without studying the violin beforehand. He hands the score to the violinist who is to play the première, and the musician takes one look at the music and says "this is unplayable." The composer says: "It's not my fault, the violin failed to meet my requirements." Now of course people look at that little scene and they say "well the composer is obviously an idiot," but that's only because the violin is ingrained in our musical culture, everyone knows what a violin is, it is one of the most popular instruments all over the world and has been for centuries. MIDI simply does not command that kind of respect, and despite the situation being identical, a composer who does not take the time to understand MIDI is not looked upon in the same way when they turn out a steaming pile and act like it's somehow the tools that are to blame for their incompetence.

I understand that I got a little off-topic there, but I think it's important to mention those things, because the current situation with so many people making really awful music with computers only serves to solidify the idea that the computer is merely a "chromatic machine gun." The assumption that you give a computer a Beethoven sonata and it spits a Brendel performance back out is the unspoken reality of how most composers approach working with computers, by which I mean that most composers assume that they give the computer a score and it interprets. But computers cannot interpret, at least not like humans, their approach is absolutely literal, so you have to work with them in a different way.

I grew up composing on a computer, and as such I never learned how to write standard notation; I've always used other notations, mostly piano roll. Piano roll is especially good for computers because it deals with time literally, every note length corresponds precisely with how long a note actually sounds. Standard notation deals with time in a very loose, imprecise manner, you have your allegros and your andantes and your largos, and these are not strict values, they are open to interpretation, and those interpretations can vary broadly. But a computer, if it has software that tells it what "allegro" means, is going to be stuck playing at a rigid 130bpm, because it can't interpret things, it has be told exactly what to do. In order to simulate human playing, a computer would need sets of rules to follow based on commonly understood conventions (e.g.: allegro = 120-160bpm), but this again is rigid, and even in broad rule sets the computer is merely selecting pseudo-randomly, probably guided by an algorithm, from a bunch of predetermined courses of action. No matter how granular these rule sets become, the computer is still incapable of actually "performing" the music with the same kind of interpretative approach that comes naturally to a human being.

By which winding ways we return to the initial point. A large part of the problem is that composers don't meet the computer on its own terms, they want to hold it to the standards of human performance, and when it cannot meet them, they, by dint of their own ignorance, feel fully justified in excusing themselves for having created a piece of crap. I don't expect this to change overnight, it requires the breaking down of misconceptions which are very deeply rooted, and a similarly ingrained kind of snobbishness which dictates that acoustic instruments are legitimate, often to the exclusion of all else. I can only imagine, however, that rather than requiring people like me to proselytise on its behalf, the computer will appreciate in musical legitimacy over time as newer generations become more and more attuned to the technology.


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## hreichgott

I like how it bothers me when composers write for humans in an insufficiently human way,
but it bothers Crudblud when composers write for computers in an insufficiently computery way


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## Samuel Kristopher

> I can only imagine, however, that rather than requiring people like me to proselytise on its behalf, the computer will appreciate in musical legitimacy over time as newer generations become more and more attuned to the technology.


I agree a lot with this, and everything else you said about needing to work on hard making a digital performance sound good. That's why I love Sibelius' piano sounds - because I've fooled a lot of people (perhaps not experts, but laymen) that my tracks are played by real people.

Not that "human-ness" necessarily has to be goal of the sound though.


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