You would be considered a composer, creating compositions. There was a silly term for this many years ago; a Loopologist.... Or a "Sample-poser"
It's semantics, and silly ones at that. Music, regardless of it's source or generation, is music. There will be those to argue this, but they're pointed headed morons that are caught up in math, not art.

HIp-hop, the biggest musical revolution of the last 25 years was accomplished by folks who by and large didn't play an instrument. Its influence, of course, has been immense. Even a completely non-hip-hop album like Nirvana's Nevermind has the bass turned up to a point that was unthinkable on a rock album just a decade earlier.

I have no idea if Dr. Dre plays an instrument, but I know that he has a incredible musical ear and with today's technology can turn out some really interesting sounds.

I guess you could call yourself a producer.

Couple of good points made here...I forgot about the HipHip genre and yes, like it or not it is an art form and it is music.

I recall seeing an interview with Fatboy Slim who's entire repertoire is of computers samples and beats. I find his "music" very catchy and fun to listen to. Chemical Brothers, Moby, The Crystal Method, all artists of the modern loops/beats/samples with no intrument playing style of music. And yes I consider all of these guys artists.

Spot is right. Sometimes you just have to look beyond how something was technically created and look at the final product of art.

...heck, maybe the "computer" IS the intrument....heh.
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Interesting topic.

I have Acid, but I don't use it for serious work, even though I know I could.

Reason - I have this thing about being able to tell people that the music in each video program is "mine" - that I created it. With Acid, the phrasing and timing of each loop was done by someone else, and whilst I know this is a legit way of building a composition, I have this need to do it all myself.

It's a self imposed limitation, but I guess we're all stuck with our own psychology.

It's the same old MIDI argument with a new spin. As others here have said, you still have to know womething to make something that's pleasing to the ear. Yes, Acid makes that even easier, but it doesn't put the loops together in a specific combination and mix them and add reverb or delay...

I took three years of music theory. I use MIDI & loops a lot because I'm not very good at any particular instrument? Does that make my music any "less" of a form of art or me any less an artist? Listen to it and decide for yourself. The one thing technology is never going to do away with is the subjectivity of the consumer. Whether you like me or not is probably NOT going to have a thing to do with who was playing the guitar track in my song...

Spot's right about the people who are so critical of technology, but you need to have perspective on it. Is a trash can an instrument? It can be. I just saw an IMAX featuring the Stomp troop and they were playing road cases, iron banisters and body parts -- it was amazing. And what's the difference between me asking a guitarist to play a riff or finding one in a loop library? I'm still the one making the decision and putting the song together. Some might say, "yeah, but you didn't WRITE it." Well, no I didn't. But I could if I had to -- and how many of today's "musicians" can actually read/write music? Does that make them any less of an artist?

And then there's the limitations to Acid (not being able to "sustain" a note, etc.) that make it it's own art form all together, in a way.

Making music and playing music are different.

If you ask someone holding an instrument to play "Mary had a little lamb" then they will play it.

If you ask an Acideer to play it, well, maybe yes, maybe no.....depends on the loops and the skill level and time constraints.

I would really hate to hear a jam session of 4 PCs running Acid trying to come up with something decent on the spur of the moment.

But it is similar to playing an organ, with drum tracks and auto-chords etc. They are still playing music even if the machine is doing most of the work.

"Player" and "Composer" are two different beasts. And in today's world, "Composer" can mean a LOT of things...

Spot is an amazing flute player. I can take his samples/loops and put them into a "great" song. That doesn't make me a "Player," but it DOES make me a "Composer." And it doesn't matter HOW I reach the end result -- what's the difference between telling people how I want them to play (ala John Williams) or finding the performances I want for my piece?

No matter how "easy" technology makes it, there is still a skill involved in making good/great music and it is, inevitably, still under the scrutiny of the subjective. "How" it is achieved is really inconsequential. In the end, it's all about the music -- and how the music is received.

A composer - last time I looked - writes, or now taps on the computer, dots on staves. Will understand the "craft" of composing and will use it for aesthetic reasons to express him/herself. Composers don't have a problem "writing" a key change for any number of instruments in an arrangement. I am not, yet, arguing Craft over Expression and that knowing the craft will create competent and life inspiring pieces. I am saying that a composer has at his finger tips the craft to be able to "turn" that which is in his head into a "readable" script [ the dots! ] for musicians to play.

In ACID I "hear" sounds and groups of assembled loops. I cannot play ANY of the instruments nor could I write or compose for those instruments and as such this does not make me a composer. It also doesn't get me any closer to being able to compose/write for these instruments. I am not learning the craft.

So what does ACID do for me? It allows me to select and group loops to make potentially interesting sections of "music". These I can knit into a video section I've edited. The loops might fall short of what I want. I don't have the were-with-all to change these matters. But these audio sequences have been assembled by me - period.

Grazie

Acid is to musical composing what Lego is to architecture. It will let you build musical pieces with great complexity and beauty, but you always inherit surfaces and attitudes (yes!) that were created for different purposes. With your creativity and your skill you can bypass the "blanding factors" or at least cover them up. Thus you can produce highly original and relevant music. Skilled composers does not always achieve that - even with their dots and whatnots.

The word composer does not imply any level of musical quality, nor qualification. It's not a protected title. Some composers fill out the silent gaps in video productions, while some frequently add to the sum of human endeavour. It is certainly not their tools that make up the difference. You can bang two stones together and call yourself a composer.

What disturbs me is that so many video productions are filled with so much musical blandness that spending an hour in a hotel elevator would feel like a relief and a challenge in comparison.

Next to good writing, hardly anything has stronger potential than music, in giving video (and film) impact with spectators. Why then, is that potential so seldom and sparingly realised, especially in documentaries?
Tor

Spot-on Tor! Spot-on . .. . G

I have had Acid for a few years. I am not a musician, and because of this I never really got to try and seriously use it. This was until I upgraded to Acid Pro 5.0.

I produced my first composition, and played it to a number of friends. Much to my amazement they were very impressed!!

Like any great composer, I have also produced my first "Unfinished Symphony" (only kidding!).

I still have a great deal to learn, but am very pleased with Acid Pro 5.0 and have a much better understanding of the power of this application..

Looking forward to purchasing JohnnyRoys book on Acid when it is released, to take me to the next level.

BrianG

Stonefield, is your friend suggesting you "push" your music on your website as a "commodity", as in another service to sell clients? Or rather just feature more of your Acid compositions to enhance your site?

If so, that brings an interesting twist to the world of original compositions, so to speak. Could one compose a score based on "royalty-free" loops and be entitled to copyright protection with the final product? Not that that is what being considered by you, or what your friend is suggesting ( I don't know), but I think it makes for damn good fodder for this interesting thread you've started! Hmmmmmmmm

I am a musician, composer of original music, and with Vegas (since 3.0) have been recording original music. I've been actively writing for bout 10 years and my take on Acid music is summed up basically as this: I believe it excels as non-descript background music to enhance an experience, be it video or just background music in general; not meant to make one's jaw drop as in "wow, who did the music?", rather to push, promote, improve, enhance some OTHER target focus, LIKE the video presentation, or to set a mood for WHATEVER else your focus is; ya know, like what background music is suppose to do. HAVING SAID THAT, I believe if someone cleverly arranges the loops in the composition, AND THEN brings in a musician, a melody instrument musician, to lay an original melody with his/her instrument, and add there human touch and expression to the composition, NOW THAT, is a potentially viable product. That way, all you are dealing with is one person, one entity, and the composition is truly unique, pay the piper (so to speak) to freeform a melody, just solo around on it, might it then be even copyrighted material, and now you can offer a truer original compostion to a client that he/she can now know that they are buying a piece of music that maybe cannot be ripped off and reused by anyone else without fear of legal recourse? I guess I am asking as much as reccommending

my 2 cents
John

"not just anyone can sit down and pull loops together to make someone that is actually enjoyable to listen to"

Oh... and I thought we came from bees, not from somebody sitting there playing with loops!... lol

What Tor said.
Randy

A comparison of "musician" vs "Acid" is like the difference between writing a book with a typewriter or a can of "alphabet soup".

This is a pretty interesting thread. I have always thought of the word “musician” as being someone who plays a musical instrument. I wouldn’t call ACID a musical instrument per se’. It is more of a composition tool. That might lead you to say that people who compose music using ACID are “composers”. But some people may reserve the word “composer” for someone who writes the music for all of the parts. Fair enough. Since we are searching for a “word” to use, I would say that at a minimum, people who create music with ACID are “songwriters”. Here’s why:

It has nothing to do with loops at all. If you’ve ever written songs as a band, you know that the guitar player may have an idea and tell the drummer, hey, play boom, pa, boom, boom, pa. How is that different from finding a loop of a drummer playing boom, pa, boom, boom, pa? It isn’t!

I’ve been in recording sessions (I play keyboards btw) where the songwriter has said to me, “make it sound like Springsteen”. So I come up with a part around the chords of the song that has a Springsteen feel. How is that different from finding a loop of a piano that is in the style that Danny Federici, Bruce’s keyboard player from the E Steet band? It isn’t! Quite often song writers don’t know exactly what they want and rely on the other musicians to feed them ideas around a theme. (That's why bands sometimes write songs together) That’s what ACID lets you do as a single person.

Unless you play every instrument you need in a song, the song writing process involves trying to convey to other musicians, the sounds and ideas that are in your head. With ACID you just audition loops until you hear what you want. It’s exactly the same process, except the drummer doesn’t keep tapping while you’re trying to think. ;-)

Stonefield, I would say it is safe to call yourself a songwriter and should market your music like any other songwriter. It is a songwriter’s creativity that either assembled the live musicians, or the ACID loops (or a little of both) that made the song come to life (loops don’t just jump onto the timeline by themselves). Your web designer friend is right, start pushing your music. It is your song regardless of how it was assembled.

~jr

I agree with John. I guess in my mind, I think of "composing" as making music that doesn't have singing/lyrics in it. Just one of my (many) little quirks...

I have to say I've heard some pretty amazing music made in Acid, and I don't think it makes the music less "legit" if it isn't written out, part by part. Check out PhillyC on acidplanet sometime. His stuff is incredible, and he does it all in Acid.

Also, I think the finished product is the final testing ground. Yes, there is a difference in method between writing two eighth notes on a staff for a violin part and putting "PP" above them and playing two eighth notes into a sequencer, turning the velocity down and running it through a violin section in Giga. The end result is the same -- and they are both deliberate acts. Now, if I take those two eight notes and bring the into Acid and put them together with other sections I've "created"...what do you call that?

me and my brother made a cd. the two songs below were created with acid and finalized with vegas/sound forge
as far as music goes anyway... my brother recorded the lyrics on his roland 16 track.. and then we ported them into vegas...
so, basic music done in acid...
fine-tuning files in sound forge...
and all put together in vegas...
give it a listen..
this was allll (for the most part) done with acid/vegas...
am i a musician?? i thinki so!

http://naniboujou.com/threefifths/9_analects.mp3
http:/naniboujou.com/threefifths/4_flfthsomniac_philharmonic.mp3

pj

I usedta really sneer at 'loopmeisters' who can't play a lick on a REAL instrument, but can drag sounds-recorded-by-others into something resembing music. Which doesn't include hiphop or rap, IMO.

But now that I've seen the power of ACID, I'm sold - within limits.

I'm a good keyboard player, and just did an entire album with a guitarist in my home studio using my keys and MIDI rack and playback gear, along with his guitars, Samplitude, and ACID.

He has a large ACID library of various kinds of percussion - full kits, hand perc of all kinds.

After identifying a basic time signature (not all of them 4/4) and tempo, we used ACID to create initial drum tracks, converted to stereo WAV, and imported that into Samplitude for the main recording, audio plus occasional MIDI.

Later, we converted the Samplitude instruments-minus-percussion tracks into a WAV, imported THAT back into ACID, and then customized the rhythm environment to match the music tracks within ACID. Then we made a stereo WAV file of this updated rhythm track, and imported it back into Samplitude.

Mixed within Samplitude, normalized the mixes and even assembled the album tracks onscreen for final burn to Red Book CD.

Really fast and intuitive way of working.

So.. I really liked ACID for what WE used it for - as a really cool drum/percussion generator.

But part of my prejudice remains. I'm sure that there's enough instrument loops out there for a non-musician to create something, as I said, that superficially resembles music. Are you a musician if that's what you do? Well, anyone can call themselves anything. But what will a musician with expertise on their instrument consider you?

Non musician ACID loop-gurus can hide out within the rap/hiphop community, because that's all they can do, too. I admit my prejudice.

Great topic...golly gosh it’s actually got me posting in the [gasp]...Video forum...

I don’t actually think being a ‘musician’ necessarily has anything to do with someone’s ability to play a musical instrument.

For me it’s all about someone’s sensibility: Their ability to listen to a piece of music, to really understand it, and their ability to come up with a sound, part or idea that enhances it.

The classic example of this for me is Ringo. Technically speaking he was only an average drummer. But I think he was a brilliant musician. He could play the simplest thing but it always seemed to complement the songs so perfectly.

His ‘musicianship’ in songs like Ticket to ride, Tomorrow never knows, A day in the life, Get back and Come together is superb.

Compare that with the endless succession of drummers who are technically brilliant and can play every trick in the book. But who more often than have no idea how to really make a song work.

I reckon there are people who play musical instruments and there are musicians.

While these two often go hand in hand I think it’s eminently possible for someone to be one without being the other.

Stonefield's original question: What would you call someone who makes music with Acid ? I'm curious...

Do you add sufficiantly to the given material? If so, the work produced is a musical composition and you're a composer. If not, it can be pastiche, soundscape, ambience or even plagiarism. Performing rights societies should have definitions on hand to sort out any particular case, should it come to that.

With Acid, at least some of the material will be previously recorded bits or loops. That's no problem, but you still have to create a unique piece of work. Somehow it must be greater than the sum of the parts it was made from. This is the challenge.

Your friends may say it's great and that you should put it up there where the big names are. They may know the difference between art and wallpaper, but they are your friends. That could get in the way of their proper judgement. Same with your enemies. Take it to someone who has a professional or semi-professional attatchment to the style or format your work is related to. They may tell you not to give up your day job, but ask them what your work lacks and what you need to concentrate on. (Put up a link and let this forum jump on it for a while.)

Musical composition must have Useability (do comply with the requirements of the format, don't change the beat in a dance tune), Urgency (press on, don't linger, say what you must say and get out. Make sure it's really important.) and Unity (make it one identifyable piece with a beginning, a developing middle and an end, not a hotchpotch of loose ideas. Kill your darlings.)

Acid or no Acid, if you make music like that, you're a composer. Let the world hear you.
Tor

RE using the 'Ringo Argument' to justify not being able to play an instrument.. first, Ringo WAS a drummer, a simplistic yet powerful one. So he could actually PLAY. Second, it is well known in Beatlemaniac circles that Paul McCartney played drums on many of the Beatles' later recordings, especially ones with tempo or time signature changes.

So it's a hell of a stretch from 'the Ringo argument' to Weevil's statement 'I don’t actually think being a ‘musician’ necessarily has anything to do with someone’s ability to play a musical instrument.'

Sure it does. If you can, minus a roomful of technology, play an instrument well enough to entertain one or a roomful of people, you're a musician. If you NEED that computer and mixer and compressors and playback amp and oh-so-flat monitors, or if all you have as evidence is a CD to hand someone, you're something LESS than a musician. In My Opinion.

I'm editing this because of another thought.. in this world, to some people it's enough to create the CD artifact, and take that as evidence that one is a musician. I see where I diverge from that position is that I still play live music in a real classic rock band, and have the vestiges of the idea that a recording is a snapshot of a live performance. I KNOW the Beatles and many others have used the recording studio itself as an instrument, creating recordings that could never have taken place in a real-time, acoustic performance.

So if you utterly, completely remove the millenia-old idea that MUSIC equates to LIVE PERFORMANCE, then I at least understand these instrumentally challenged persons that nonetheless make claims to musicianship - and the only evidence they can present is a recording.

The fact that you've eliminated the necessity for live players during the recording process only means you've shoved the 'expertise' off onto the product (ACID in this case) programmers, and the legion of instrument players willing to play short segments of their art for you to... borrow from... loop... assemble...

But among real players, and there's still a lot of us, the art of convincingly entertainingly and compellingly playing one's instrument is the epitome of musicianship.

Karl