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Do you consider the laptop to be a musical instrument?

  • Yes

    Votes: 73 40.8%
  • No

    Votes: 106 59.2%

Do you consider the laptop to be a musical instrument?

80K views 352 replies 99 participants last post by  Ethereality 
#1 ·
I'm curious to find out what you all think on this matter.

Whatever your opinion, why not give us an insight into why you feel the way you do?
 
#46 ·
Correction; A reasoning that almost all composers (at least the great ones) since the dawn of time have been plagued with.
Well, since Beethoven. Beethoven was the first composer to actively try to write music that is considerably different that his predecessors and in another direction. Mozart, Haydn, Bach never did that. That isn't to say they are not innovative - there is a difference. Let me reiterate; they be different, for the purpose of being different.

Anyway, I thought this thread was for the discussion of the laptop.
I never brought it up.
 
#48 ·
In the limited concept of being different to be different, Beethoven was the first important figure, because after he did it, everyone did. The 20th century was plagued with the idea so much that they *sometimes* let that concept grow more important than the music itself. You got to stop living in a world of false dichotomies and strict literalness.
 
#55 ·
Rubbish, Haydn included another movement onto the symphony! How much more radically different does he need to be?!
Please read what I said again. I never said they aren't different.

In any case, how do you suppose the styles of Bach and Mozart came about? The only reason we hear what we hear of Mozart is because of the revolutionaries that came before him. The revolutionaries that were plagued with the dreaded curse of being different so as to give us lovely tonal works!
I never said being different is a curse. Please read and don't misrepresent what I have repeatedly said. Maybe it's too subtle, I don't know...
 
#56 ·
2nd that opinion - derailing threads is something we have luckily avoided for a very long time and it made this forum what it is now - a great and friendly place with lots of useful information. Let's just keep it that way. I do not fully understand the need to discuss the laptop as a musical instrument, still - I have seen some examples where it is used as such and it would be great if someone provided something like that.
 
#57 · (Edited by Moderator)
The only way they are an "instrument" is if you use the definition of "tool" for instrument. A computer is not a musical instrument any more than a radio is a musical instrument because it "plays" music. It is a tool (or piece of equipment) that can be used to play or create music, but, no, it is not an "instrument".

-------------------------------
 
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#58 ·
Hmmm. Well, I voted "yes." Seems pretty simple. You can make music with laptops, so that means that they're instruments. I'm not sure why "original purpose" matters all that much. The turntable wasn't intended to be an instrument, but that doesn't keep dozens of people, from all over the musical map, from playing it as one. Same for the tape recorder or the radio (which one poster has already rejected as a musical instrument, on very shaky grounds, indeed).

Anything that can be made to sound is, potentially at least, a musical instrument. Is that so far off from how this whole music thing got started in the first place? It certainly wasn't "In the beginning there were pianos and violins." More like, "In the beginning there were logs and sticks and conch shells." Oh, and maybe a voice or two.

I wonder if Elgar would permit me to ask a question of the posters so far: How many of you have heard someone playing a laptop? Here's a youtube clip. (Youtube is not a good place to hear music, but it is a place.)

Since I've been to dozens of laptop concerts over the years (and know many laptop performers), I can say that this clip is only one tiny example of the immense capacity of a laptop for making music. (Laptop is only a designation for a type of computer, after all. And computer music has been around for about sixty years.)
 
#62 ·
I'm not sure why "original purpose" matters all that much.
I don't think it does - except purely in order to settle on an agreed definition of 'musical instrument' so that we're all talking about the same thing. We still don't seem to have achieved that. It seems to be like trying to decide whether a lump of rock used to bash a stick into the ground can be called a hammer. None of these are really musical questions - they're linguistic ones
 
G
#59 ·
some guy we meet again :)
Is a Motor Car a musical instrument??
As far as the youtube link goes the question here should be, is this music?? I could only listen to the first 25sec to me it sounded like a lathe turning a piece of cast iron without any lubricants.
 
#63 ·
As far as the youtube link goes the question here should be, is this music?? I could only listen to the first 25sec to me it sounded like a lathe turning a piece of cast iron without any lubricants.
But it demonstrates that the laptop can be used in a concert situation. If you don't like the sound of a lathe, there are other sounds a laptop can reproduce or synthesize.

And yes, a car engine can be used as an instrument, not a good one given its extreme lack of versatility and range, but an instrument nonetheless (god save the poor composer who decides to write for one!)
 
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#71 ·
OK, I'll reiterate my point then, that this thread is about whether the laptop is an instrument or not, not if it plays music you like or not.

As for "that youtube clip" not being music, well, I'd be interested to know who designated Mr. Kiely as the one who gets to decide what's music and what's not. And it's a very good thing that Yagan's ideas have no real, tangible bearing on the matter! Wow. There's a ton of music that suddenly would cease to be music any more. Can't have that!! "A lathe turning a piece of cast iron without any lubricants," in Andante's fine phrase, is a beautiful noise says I.
 
#64 ·
But it demonstrates that the laptop can be used in a concert situation.
That isn't an argument, and does not suggest anything. Anything can be used in a 'concert situation'. Hell a guy taking a ***** on stage is music to some people. That doesn't mean it's an instrument or that it is music. It proves absolutely nothing.

And yes, a car engine can be used as an instrument, not a good one given its extreme lack of versatility and range, but an instrument nonetheless (god save the poor composer who decides to write for one!)
Top Gear put various car engine pitches into a computer to play some piece. Sounded like ***** and you couldn't hear anything. Oh, and just because some people who call them selves artists say that a car is an instrument, doesn't mean it is true. I actually heard today a composer almost admitting that he tries to be different at the detriment of musicality, and the the concept of uniqueness is the most important aspect of modern art.

A computer could be an instrument, calling a car an instrument is just destroying the actual meaning of 'musical instrument' completely. If anything can be a musical instrument (or anything can be music), the meaning (of both are/)is destroyed completely.
 
#68 ·
calling a car an instrument is just destroying the actual meaning of 'musical instrument' completely.


Who decided the anvil should be used as an instrument?! Surely it is a practical apparatus (much like an automobile) and should be segregated from musical affairs! Damn that experimental Verdi!
 
#66 ·
I know of a guy that canned his faecal matter and sold it for a hansom profit as art. Then there is the guy here in Perth who was cooking his own blood into a sausage and selling it without the buyers knowledge; then how swimming into the ****** of a live female whale it music.

The sausage was also apparently music.
 
#69 ·
...Then there is the guy here in Perth who was cooking his own blood into a sausage and selling it without the buyers knowledge; then how swimming into the ****** of a live female whale it music.

The sausage was also apparently music.
Here in the UK we had a spate of that kind of thing in the 1970's. It was on the verge of catching on big time when Greenpeace and animal rights activities put paid to it. As you might imagine this ban sure left a gaping gap in the classical music market. I think that's what may have explained the subsequent growth in "minimalism".
 
#67 · (Edited)
Except Thomas Adès gained a double-starred first in music from Cambridge, was signed up by a publisher before he was even twenty, is a virtuoso pianist, is also a conductor and one of the pieces which uses the aforementioned instruments is 'Asyla', which earnt Adès one of the most prestigious awards for composition in the world - the Grawemeyer. He was the youngest ever person to receive the award. In addition to his supreme musical achievements and astonishing musicianship (I've spoken to instrumentalists who have been conducted by him, and they attest to the precision and sensitivity of his ears) his music is also very original and very competent technically in a traditional sense. Most importantly, it sounds fantastic.

Please stop talking about things about which you patently know nothing. Paint-cans and newspapers are no less valid percussion instruments than maracas, anvils and tambourines etc.
 
#76 ·
Well, it produces sounds that are ordered in a certain way to form a compostition - or be part of a composition, so it qualifies as a musical instrument. Whether we like that instrument or the compostitions that result from it is a different matter.
 
#78 ·
Well, it produces sounds that are ordered in a certain way to form a compostition - or be part of a composition, so it qualifies as a musical instrument. Whether we like that instrument or the compostitions that result from it is a different matter.
Considering the already destroyed meaning of 'composition' -- when 'peeing on the train tracks to stop the train' (that is the score BTW) is 'music' and a 'composition', the meaning of 'composition' has henseforth been destroyed -- by oh so unique modern composers, and considering anything in the physical world can be 'ordered' anything in the physical world is an instrument. What this means, is that the term 'musical instrument' has no meaning what so ever, at all, zero.

Not to mention the vast majority of our population who listen to pop/hiphop/drum&bass/euphoric dance. All the sounds for pop n other popular musiks are computer generated/synthesized, just remember that when you're bopping to the strains of Darude or Dizzy Rascal!
That's because the corporations who make the music want to save money. Cheaper paying some tech/music guy who knows Garage Band than a bunch of actually good mucisians.
 
#80 ·
What about a bit of cotton? What of a tree? What of a Credit card? What of carpet? Hair? Saliva?

Anything CAN be organised, and by current definitions in this thread, everything in the physical world is an instrument without exception... period.

Now, that means there is no meaning in 'music instrument', at all. Which means, the term is useless and we are destroying it.
 
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#81 ·
I'm wondering how one can get from
everything in the physical world is an instrument without exception
which sounds OK to me, to
that means there is no meaning in 'music instrument', at all.
It merely means that nothing cannot be used as a 'music instrument', that's all.

Which means, the term is useless and we are destroying it.
I see. We're destroying a useless term. That's a good thing, right?
 
#83 ·
We're destroying a useless term. That's a good thing, right?
It wasn't useless, say in Mozart's life. It has no meaning now that we have abused it beyond recognition. You know that, and you also know you are arguing for no reason.

It merely means that nothing cannot be used as a 'music instrument', that's all.
When everything is a musical instrument, the term 'musical instrument' has no meaning. Maybe read about language more.
 
#84 ·
When everything is a musical instrument, the term 'musical instrument' has no meaning. Maybe read about language more.
Perhaps more to the point, when virtually any old noise is considered by some to be "music" it is not surprising that they consider any old device capable of making a noise to be a "musical instrument".
 
G
#86 ·
Andante,

Yagan said, "the term is useless and we are destroying it." See the order there? First the term is useless, and then we are destroying it. Destroying a useless term would be a good thing, eh?

You see? I was just giving Yagan a gentle nudge to pay attention to his words. Everyone, pay attention to your words.! So many contributors to this thread have gotten so caught up in bludgeoning, they've forgotten what Elgar asked for in the first place, which was simply to know whether we think the laptop is a musical instrument or not.

So far on this thread, the nots have it, but so what? Perhaps Elgar realizes now that this was possibly the wrong group to ask this question of. Or that the answers would be predictably predicable. People who don't like contemporary music would of course say nay. People who do would say yay. That is, one's response to this depends utterly on one's attitude towards music. Those with an exclusive attitude are going to be very unwilling to accept things like laptops as instruments. Those with an inclusive attitude are not.

Perhaps we could look outside this thread for a moment, to practicing musicians playing music. Do any of these people use the laptop to create music? To perform music? Yes, they do. Would those people be appalled or at least amused by this whole conversation. Probably yes. There are those on this board who would argue, sorry, I mean assert, that what these people produce is not music. Too bad. Those musicians are going to keep on performing it, and listeners like myself will continue to enjoy it, just as we will continue to enjoy Bach and Brahms and Stravinsky. Because ultimately, it all comes down to enjoyment. And if I enjoy Bach and Brahms and eRikm, then there's a possibility that eRikm is pretty good, eh? Whether or not you or Gorm or Yagan think so.

Just a possibility.
 
#88 ·
Everyone, pay attention to your words.! So many contributors to this thread have gotten so caught up in bludgeoning, they've forgotten what Elgar asked for in the first place, which was simply to know whether we think the laptop is a musical instrument or not.
The disagreements seem to derive from the fact that there are two separate issues: (i) whether the primary purpose and actual main use of a laptop is as a musical instrument, and (ii) whether a laptop can be used for this purpose under certain conditions and given a suitably wide definition of "music".

I would answer "no" to the first question, and "yes" to the second. The primary purpose/use of a laptop is not as a musical instrument, any more than the primary purpose/use of a motor car is to carry trash in its trunk to a garbage tip. The fact that a car can, and sometimes is, used to carry trash does not make it a garbage receptacle/collector any more than it makes a car a love-making instrument if some people may occasionally use it for that purpose!
 
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