Aphex Twin's _Selected Ambient Works Volume II_ is ten years old

... or i can just play the vinyl record on my record player. It's like magic.

Get a vinyl drive for your PC and then plug your computer into your stereo. It's like magic!

if you write "I don't like this," or "I think this album is terrible," then people get all outraged and act like you've just murdered their children.

I don't think this is true. Like crut says, people get irate when someone suggests that they don't really like something but are blinded by hero worship or herd mentality. For me the first rule of debate about music (or any artform) is crediting other people with sincere motives for their tastes. To do otherwise is to pretend that you are a more perceptive and honest listener and fans of the record in question will quite rightly tell you to go fuck yourself.

... or i can just play the vinyl record on my record player. It's like magic.

Except that you have to get up every 20 minutes to changed sides, plus the quality of the sound gets gradually worse as the record gets older. Not my definition of magic.

btw unlike harmony and tone, timbre is a completely subjective term

mmmm, not quite. tonal sounds get their timbre because they contain different combinations of harmonic partials. when I said figure out the timbral and harmonic nature of the sounds he's using I mean I've been loading the tracks into spectrograms and looking at the relative amplitude of each partial.

"to lionize" = to treat as a celebrity or cause for celebrity.
it's even the wrong word - it should really only be used to talk about people, not things. whatever, figurative usage.
are you lionizing, or attempting to lionize this album?
if yes, then you can take umbrage at my scoffing at your motives for lionization, but i didn't suggest how or why you were listening to it.
if no, then the criticism should not concern you.
if you're really dying to get that last nail into the cross, then go for it.
why do people lionize, or feel the desire to lionize anything?
releasing audio noodling on commodifiable formats is hardly classifiable as philanthropy, now, is it?
ffs, you guys are as bad as michael jackson fans.

Are there two people with control of your ilx account?

two people in my fucking brain

sorry for being tetchy, iglu.

me too.

anyway if our metric is selbstportraits and zuckerzeit and eno how bad can that be? we give boards of canada a pass, right?

exactly; I don't want to say I dislike this album, just that I'm glad the Selbstportraits only run 40 minutes, y'know? I dunno I'm kind of weird when it comes to ambient music - "Orbus Terrarum" is like my high watermark

Except that you have to get up every 20 minutes to changed sides, plus the quality of the sound gets gradually worse as the record gets older. Not my definition of magic.

― Tuomas, Wednesday, June 6, 2012 12:36 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ there are many threads about why people would choose to listen to a record over a cd, i suggest you read them!

also if you play your records with a good needle they will not really wear out--that is an old wives tale--take care of your records & they will outlive you.

And balance your tonearm properly!

people get irate when someone suggests that they don't really like something but are blinded by hero worship or herd mentality.

The question to me is whether we need to defend our opinions, particularly if we don't like something. I noticed that people get snippy if you drop into a thread and say you don't like something. In this situation, someone typically demands an explanation or otherwise derides the comment or the commentator (I've even seen people dig out other comments the commentator has made in other threads, as if to discredit or ridicule him-- fairly disgusting behavior); whereas, you never have to explain yourself if you like something. I guess I understand why, but it annoys me that people get so personal about it.

hey crut

you can't get two people or a two machines to reliably identify two different sounds as having the same or different timbre in any reliable way, as opposed to things like loudness and tone and rhythm

xp Huh, OK. That's not my experience of ILX at all, outside of a few specific ongoing feuds.

I'm all for people having to defend their opinion on a piece of work, pro or con! Poor defenses will be immediately apparent. Going a step farther and judging people for their judgments on works is a lot more problematic.

I wonder, though, whether we are allowed affective responses to art. Like, if I say I don't like Slipknot or Justin Bieber or Skrillex, do I need to explain myself? Do I actually have to go through some cognitive process where I must dissect my immediate reactions? I mean, my response to this stuff was never intellectualized before I had to justify to others my distaste for it.

In the examples you've given I don't think it would take too much deep thought to examine why you don't like them. I assumed the point of visiting a music discussion forum was to explore your tastes beyond "I like this, I don't like that." That's what the thumb icons on YouTube videos are for.

hey crut

you can't get two people or a two machines to reliably identify two different sounds as having the same or different timbre in any reliable way, as opposed to things like loudness and tone and rhythm

yes, because there are no measurable standards for timbre like there are for loudness and tone and rhythm. but you were responding to how I was using the term "timbre," which has nothing to do with people or machines identifying anything. I'm talking about the nature of the actual sounds used on this album and how the tonal sounds are constructed in terms of their harmonic content (I used "timbral" as shorthand for this).

like I never said timbre wasn't subjective

In the examples you've given I don't think it would take too much deep thought to examine why you don't like them. I assumed the point of visiting a music discussion forum was to explore your tastes beyond "I like this, I don't like that." That's what the thumb icons on YouTube videos are for.

I get your point, and it seems completely justified to me to have to defend your opinions on matters of public policy, but all the big thinkers on on the phenomenon of taste and art (i.e. Bourdieu, Veblen, Simmel) seem to suggest that taste is not gained through an intellectualized process so much as it is inherited and formed as a response to your social class and environment. Yes, we are on a music discussion board, but it's leap to me to say that every single thing posted needs to have a strict thesis and argument behind it.

I wonder, though, whether we are allowed affective responses to art. Like, if I say I don't like Slipknot or Justin Bieber or Skrillex, do I need to explain myself? Do I actually have to go through some cognitive process where I must dissect my immediate reactions? I mean, my response to this stuff was never intellectualized before I had to justify to others my distaste for it.

That's...a really good question. I guess it might depend on whether you're trying to convince anyone you're right? "I don't like it...but I don't need you to agree with me" is fine as far as it goes, but "I don't like it, and I don't think it's good enough to like" is going to require more on your part.

xposts

right crut but when you say you detect timbral complexity and you're trying to figure it out still i could just as easily say i don't perceive timbral complexity and i've figured it out and both of us would be right

here's a way that an undefended negative or positive comment can be useful: if someone else who likes the same music as me notices that I like/dislike something, it gives them more information about whether to invest their time in checking it out.

Exactly, I've discovered a lot of great music on here b/c of certain users who are into a lot of the same stuff I am, it goes beyond RYM-level "hey you like electro? check out Boards of Canada they are great"

Put it this way: nobody has any obligation to explain/defend their tastes but don't be surprised if someone asks you to.

fair enough; but I also don't think I should be asked to do it because of moral outrage or personal affront either. It's just an etiquette thing.

right crut but when you say you detect timbral complexity and you're trying to figure it out still i could just as easily say i don't perceive timbral complexity and i've figured it out and both of us would be right

I don't even know what you're referring to here.

it's an eternal challenge to me to figure out the timbral and harmonic nature of the sounds he's using

there is no "timbral nature"

you can't get two people or a two machines to reliably identify two different sounds as having the same or different timbre in any reliable way

i must not understand words, how is it that people can distinguish between a piano and a guitar?

I think he's talking about ways to quantify timbral differences

still dgi, but that's ok

people can't distinguish between a piano and a guitar, not reliably

i mean people can say "it sounds like a piano" but then all john cage has to do is throw some shit on the strings and suddenly you don't know what you're hearing. or, i could put you blindfolded at the end of a tunnel and ask you to try to figure out whether you're hearing a clarinet through a tunnel or a pipe organ and you might not be able to.

timbre is like color. you can say "this beam of light is at this wavelength and intensity" or "that beam of light is at that wavelength and intensity" or even "this other beam of light is made of these different wavelengths at these different intensities"

but you can't say "this wavelength is blue" and "that wavelength is green", or draw a line anywhere. and if you fuck with things like luminosity and whatnot people will see pink dots when they're looking at a fluorescent blue and green grid or even a spinning black and white disc.

i guess what i'm saying is that like color, timbre is a perception that a lot of people tend to agree on in broad ways, but it's not actually quantifiable the way tone and volume are. so when you talk about the "timbral complexity" of aphex twin you might as well talk about the "mood complexity" or "feeling complexity" or "sound color complexity" because that's basically what timbre is, it's a subjective perception.

on the other hand, leaving aside the normative connotations, you could talk about relatively complex and simple rhythms in terms of how what sorts of fractions and how many you need to accurately describe that rhythm ("the bass drum and cymbal do four beats every four measures" vs "the drum is beating in 7/4 while the cymbal is doing 3/4") and you could talk about relatively complex and simple harmonies and melodies based on what kind of chords are being used and how many different tones, etc

btw i think that whole "spectral analysis" thing that keeps popping up on the blogosphere is rather nonsensical but that's just me

i mean this isn't to say that crüt can't say "i think this aphex song is incredibly timbrally complex" but it would be just as easy for iglu to say "i think this aphex song is incredibly timbrally boring" and both statements would carry about as much weight

whereas if crüt and iglu were both standing in the same spot and iglu said "i think this foghorn is louder than that mockingbird" then you could easily rig up a computer to check whether he's right or not (assuming crüt and iglu's ears are equally sensitive to matching frequencies!)

how do microphones pick up timbre?

how do cameras record color?

look i'm just nitpicking here, if crut just mean that there's subtle effects going on w/ the way different harmonics and overtones are emphasized in SAWII that's fine, that's most of what we hear when we hear timbre anyway, right?

Tbf, he already acknowledged that's what he meant:

yes, because there are no measurable standards for timbre like there are for loudness and tone and rhythm. but you were responding to how I was using the term "timbre," which has nothing to do with people or machines identifying anything. I'm talking about the nature of the actual sounds used on this album and how the tonal sounds are constructed in terms of their harmonic content (I used "timbral" as shorthand for this).

(Btw, I'd be interested to know your findings, crut!)

I never used the words "timbrally complex" wtf

you are completely misunderstanding my point here

You can call it timbrally complex if it floats your boat, but this thing is full of Vintage Keys presets and I've never really rated it. Would rather hit up De Natura Sonorum or Monoton or Soliloquies for Lilith or...

nobody has called this album "timbrally complex."

why is this thread full of trolls who don't know how to fucking read?

Richard D James certainly thought a lot of this album was yellow.

I mean it's one thing to argue about what timbre means, like talking about the subjectively complex aftertastes of a bottle of vintage wine. And it's perfectly fine to just like getting drunk on cheap plonk. But to argue that timbre - or the taste of wine - doesn't exist coz, like, you once read Derrida, that is folly.

I am just baffled that someone would think I don't understand what timbre entails just because I said... I don't even know what I said that caused someone to think that?