ButterscotchPimp said:

Honestly, that's the truth.

TonyVanDam said:

Betta ax sumbody

Stevie, Billy Preston, George Duke, Josef Zawinul, Herbie Hancock, Chick Corea Bernie Worrell, Lonnie Jordan, Larry Dunn and a load of others all had synths and different forms of e-drums way back in the early 70s.

anon said:

if you look at it like this yes real" music can stil be bad ( its in the eye of the beholder offcourse) because there are people who like hip hop and pro tools made tunes.
alright i wil get deeper on the talent part with talent i realy mean a good voice or being good at playing an instrument.
and if someone can make a 'good song with water then thats cool.

i dont consider music "real if some one looped 2 notes he played on a keyboard and 3 hits on his drums into a song on the computer

That's not the way it is for many of us here on the org. Lots of us like the uptempo funky stuff here. However, for most of the general public, yeah, slow to midtempo shit is the only stuff they like or even consider music. Why? Because they are young and only know slow stuff to midtempo stuff because that is what has dominated the majority of their lifetimes.

As for the older people my age that are into nothing but dull music these days, well, what can I say? If they are dull now, they were probably dull back in the day also. Hell, somebody had to be dull enough back then to make someone like Shitney Houston a superstar in the mid 1980s. She didn't get huge just from people's parents buying her records. There were some dull ass young people buying them also.
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[Edited 11/26/07 20:15pm]

Hell yeah. Funk....the whole funk.....and nothing but the funk. If it ain't funk, it's some motherfuckin' junk.

vainandy said:

Asses-shakin' on a platter booty shunky.....

It's because they are boring people to begin with. They are too damn serious all the time and can't let their hair down and have some fun. Just look what happens when a lot of these kids these days get together in large groups in nightclubs. A bunch of shooting and shit happens. Hell, when I was growing up, the only thing that was going to happen in a club with a huge crowd was a bunch of ass shakin'. But then again, if there had been no music fast enough to shake ass to, I would have probably gotten bored and started shooting also. Hell, you gotta find something to occupy your time.

I'm into more than just funk. I love disco, house, rock, some blues, a tiny hair of jazz, and even lots of slow jams. However, when times get to where there are no....listen closely.....NO jams worthy of shaking ass whatsoever.....not even ONE.....yeah, I'm going to raise hell on earth. It don't make no sense for people to be so damn boring. It's absolutely rediculous.

You're right. I do cry when I watch "Bodyguard". I cried when the shooter missed.

Exactly. I don't think, but I KNOW that I have better musical taste than most people. Am I a snob? Hell yeah. That's where the "vain" part comes in with Vainandy.

Here I am honey. Wild, live, in living color, raising hell, and talkin' shit.

Hell, I knew somebody was going to bring that up. Did Prince have weak sounding shit hop drum machines that barely tap or did he have strong sounding ones that shook the pictures off the walls? Was his drum machine the ONLY thing behind his music with no bass, no guitar, no synths, no handclaps....no anything behind it except a weak sounding drum machine? Hell no. Drum machines were only icing on the top of his cake. They weren't the whole damn cake.

The TOOLS used 2 make the music is irrelevent. It is the structure of the songs that is important. This loop based non-sense with no beginning, middle or end, chorus, bridge, is just trash.

Graycap23 said:

Brooklyn Zoo and D'Evils are good fucking songs, man!

vainandy said:

I think the point (well, the one I made earlier in the thread, anyway) is that Prince employed synthesizers during his heyday, often to a heavy degree. Does that make it any less authentic or worthy? Hell no! Most would argue that his best music came from the 1980-88 period, during with his use of synthesizers was at its highest.

I would go cut it off even earlier and say his best work was from his beginning through 1984 when he was strictly modern sounding with no horns and orchestras whatsoever. As modern sounding as his music, and so many other artists of the 1980s were, they still had real instruments along with their modern ones. The real instruments gave the songs strength and power, especially the real drums and bass. That's what's missing from today's music. Drums and bass give music rhythm and there is absolutely no rhythm in people's music these days.

vainandy said:

I agree in part, but I think that synth bass can be just as effective. The best Gap Band songs show that you don't need a real bass to have rhythm.

Well, the sound of whatever they were using had some strength and power behind it. Whatever people are using these days sounds soft, cheap, and weak like a 20 dollar casio keyboard.

vainandy said:

They are using digital synthesizers that merely mimick the old analogs, but they don't have the quality of analog synthesizers, even if the marketing departments would claim they are able to re-capture all the essence of the past units. An old Casio keyboard however would probably have more power to it than a basic Nordlead or a Virus, Casio has actually made some good shit too in the past.

'real' music is whatever moves me, i dont care what instruments were used to create it, if i enjoy it and can listen to it years after it was released then its real to me

Real music is like a good wife: warm-bodied, understanding and adaptive to your changing needs.

those gap band jams were synth bass on top of a live bass !
just like many other people were doing..

Moonbeam said:

vainandy said:

you have to admit they were the main ingredient in a lot of his best work, though.

but I'm not one that's saying that drum machines, synths, computers and all of that don't make for "real" music. as long as I like the end product, I couldn't care less if it was made with a toilet paper tube shoved up a duck's ass. I just think it's funny that in the Prince online community, there are so many people that decry drum machines, computers, synths, etc., when the guy we're here to discuss and pay homage to was instrumental in making those things popular in music, and created a lot of stellar work with them.

I totally hear where your coming from..I think the BIG difference here is that...Prince can play drums..Prince can play piano..Prince can play bass...Prince can write an original chord progression..Prince can come up with a musical melody ..Many of the people that got into production during the Full on Digital era..CANT do those things..They would be Finished if a law was passed that stated that all music must be created on Organic REAL instruments...Even vocalists..I work with them all the time..and "cant we fix it later" is as common as hearing "I want to try that again to get it just right" these days...SUCKING is an Option in the modern music world...Thats why Real music to me = the ability to make something that has a level of musicality to it without the aid of technology .. Everybody knows that boy bands and other crap have existed forever..But compare the lip singing computerized so called artist of today with groups like the Jackson 5..hell..even the Osmands... !

Aside said:

something that evokes emotions, whether it's fast or slow, and if the artist is sincere. Strong melodies, good vocals, good usage of instrumentation, or at least a good groove, even if it's synthesized all contribute to 'real music' for me.

Lyrics are an important component too, that can determine whether it's real music or not, although I'm not really one who's big on lyrics and just care about the music, though few people's lyrics have touched me deeply

Ultimately it's the final product that matters...NOT the instrumentation used to produce it.

I can take a real violin and a real set of drums and create gibberish that wouldn't be considered music by ANYONE.

Alternately, I'm sure that if Mozart were alive today, he could create WONDERS with a Casio that NO ONE would doubt was "real" music.

Music moves people on an emotional level, period. From Bach to the Beasties, it's the constant that also makes some music timeless.

If it doesn't then it's just noise but you'd have to ask EVERYONE about a piece of music to know.

prettymansson said:

While there are artists who use technology to mask their shortcomings, there are PLENTY of artists whose bread and butter is the synthesizer producing wonderful music. You can't tell me that Kraftwerk isn't pioneering and worthy of praise simply because their music is entirely comprised of synthesized sounds. Eurythmics are another fine example. They did prove that they could integrate organic instruments with commercial success on Be Yourself Tonight and the subsequent albums, but their peak was achieved during their synth pop phase, and their music has endured and stayed relevant.
[Edited 11/27/07 15:27pm]

Both Kraftwerk & Eurythmics can PLAY !
I even have an old video with Dave stewart on a tv show playing the acoustic guitar and talking about how he doesn't consider a song a SONG unless it can be played on a single instrument like a guitar or piano.

Moonbeam said:

prettymansson said:

Yes, but their most successful music is nearly entirely or entirely (in the case of Kraftwerk) synthesized. And I don't see anything wrong with that.