why do you play other people's music?

[Dhsu]

People are constantly putting their own spin on something that exists, and they've been doing it for decades.

You mean centuries? Or even millennia if you count oral stories and legends?

[Xenon Odyssey]

Pretty sure the existance of the thread is for the OP to ask some vague question that has millions of answers and interpretations, and when someone posts an answer that isn't the OP's, he spouts a bunch of hate.

As a person, why would I want to play Beethoven? Because I can. Why the fuck does anyone else in the world do anything at all? Because they can.

Tristan and Isolde = Romeo and Juliet

[cobaltstarfire]

keep on making these claims with no supporting evidence. iirc, you, much like darkesword did that in my last thread too. an excellent way to prove a point.

I don't need to give supporting evidence because a blind deaf man could find it on the internet and all around him in the real world without trying.

I'm pretty convinced if you aren't aware of artist culture than you haven't ever looked beyond the tip of your own nose, and guess what, I'm not going to do the work for you, you lazy annoying bum.

Or maybe you're just a really good troll, that fails at being amusing like most the other resident trolls of this forum.

Edit: OH just for one quick one off so you can't fully go "wah wah wah you are biased and evil and never give me any proof" Ever heard of Stock art? Yeah probably not, I'm not telling you what it is, figure it out yourself.

[xRisingForce]

You want examples? You've never seen fan art or read fan fiction?

these things never grow into something bigger. they are kids entertaining fantasies. even doujinshi in japan is FAR from mainstream. quite in contrast to music.

Disney movies are Grimm's Fairy Tales; sometimes Hans Christian Anderson.

the book itself is not being rewritten, it is being adapted into a visual format. entirely different.

The Ring is a remake of Ringu. The Grudge is a remake of The Grudge.

of the people who've seen both, it is almost unanimous that remakes don't live up to the originals. the ring and the grudge don't even come close to how scary the originals were.

DC Comics' "Elseworlds." Marvel's "What If?"

these are not reinterpretations done by someone other than the creator.

West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet. Wicked is the Wizard of Oz. Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead is Hamlet without Hamlet.

this is your only example that holds any water, and it is still more of an adaptation since west side story is a musical, not a play. the catalyst behind a lot of remakes and adaptations are to modernize antiquated ideas, beliefs, and cultures for modern audiences, or many even to bridge cultural gaps (like with ringu)- that is, to satisify curiosity rather than some expressive need. i'm not invalidating either approach, but i guess it's a okay reason as to why so many remakes/adaptations of/into movies have been sprouting up lately.

[Fratto]

oh, please enlighten me! what other artistic scene is even comparable to the level found in music?

keep on making these claims with no supporting evidence. iirc, you, much like darkesword did that in my last thread too. an excellent way to prove a point.

West Side Story is Romeo and Juliet. Wicked is the Wizard of Oz. Rosencrantz and Gildenstern Are Dead is Hamlet without Hamlet.

Disney movies are Grimm's Fairy Tales; sometimes Hans Christian Anderson.

That new Friday the 13th movie is coming out soon. It's a remake.

The Ring is a remake of Ringu. The Grudge is a remake of The Grudge.

Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai = a Bollywood version of My Best Friend's Wedding.

DC Comics' "Elseworlds." Marvel's "What If?"

Etc.

Hell, he beat me to it. His list more than makes the point, though.

then, why was no one in my other thread able to concede that their interpretations were lesser? rather, some viewed them as equal and some as even greater. there are clear displays of that attitude all over OCR.

You're misinterpreting almost every feeling the mixers have. No one covers or remixes a song they think sucks. Read what's his name's post who I'll edit here in a second when I go look back at the other page. His Tin Pan Alley example is pretty much perfect.

every characteristic producible by an instrument can be sampled, and there's nothing dehumanizing or less human about using those samples in stead. sampling is a relatively new technology, and it'll only progress in years to come.

You can do lots of things with samples, but you really can't reproduce the humanization at this point.

i have to call bullshit on this. where are you pulling this from?

A decade of playing and studying jazz. A degree in music. More school that I'm in now for big band arranging. Being close with many local jazz artists. You know, the usual ways that people learn things about their surroundings.

and which famous composer opts to make albums of others' pieces as opposed to releasing original work? i understand that everyone likes to cover, but in professional circles it is done sparingly. even in jazz circles, people like arturo sandoval, maynard ferguson, john coltrane, sonny rolins, write tons of original material.

Most of the jazz composer/arrangers of time (I'm talking probably 40s to the 60s) played in bands where they would be one of several writers. Sammy Nestico played in the Dorsey and Krupa bands yet would end up arranging for Basie. My guess is he didn't play in the Gene Krupa band only when the called a Nestico chart.

You also need to learn the difference between a band leader and an arranger/composer. There is plenty of overlap, but putting Maynard in a list of people with "tons of original material" is a little bit of a stretch. Most of the time he had someone arranging charts for him that had been written long before. Lok up Bill Holman, I believe. Definitely Bob Brookmeyer.

Most standards you hear jazzers (except this new atonal, mixed meter avant garde jazz) play now were written decades ago and a ton are actually old Broadway songs that have been made famous through jazz musicians. Bebop took old chord progressions and just wrote new melodies over it. It's really amazing, actually.

Research your jazz. It's a crazy, copied, rehashed mess. And it's beautiful.

the "urge" that you speak of is exactly what i am trying to identify through this thread; what constitutes it, how deep it is, and things like that.

I hate not playing. The urge is pretty fucking deep.

[Dhsu]

these things never grow into something bigger. they are kids entertaining fantasies. even doujinshi in japan is FAR from mainstream. quite in contrast to music.

If you think anybody ever said remixing was anywhere close to mainstream, you are sorely sorely mistaken.

And whether remakes hold up to the original is very subjective, and either way does not make the example invalid.

[Shadow Wolf]

OP said:

Some stuff...

Everyone else said:

Some other things...

Many of us:

Don't give a shit...

A Select Few:

Are highly amused by it...

But maybe it's time we all:

Stopped requoting the entire fucking thread every post.

In fact...

[xRisingForce]

You're misinterpreting almost every feeling the mixers have. No one covers or remixes a song they think sucks. Read what's his name's post who I'll edit here in a second when I go look back at the other page. His Tin Pan Alley example is pretty much perfect.

i'm not saying remixers think, "this song sucks and i'm gonna make it better," i'm saying, "damn i kick so much ass i surpassed the original work."

You can do lots of things with samples, but you really can't reproduce the humanization at this point.

so.. what is the elusive auditory quality that constitutes humanization? why isn't it replicate-able through samples?

You also need to learn the difference between a band leader and an arranger/composer. There is plenty of overlap, but putting Maynard in a list of people with "tons of original material" is a little bit of a stretch. Most of the time he had someone arranging charts for him that had been written long before. Lok up Bill Holman, I believe. Definitely Bob Brookmeyer.

yeah i'll definitely look into it, thanks.

Most standards you hear jazzers (except this new atonal, mixed meter avant garde jazz) play now were written decades ago and a ton are actually old Broadway songs that have been made famous through jazz musicians. Bebop took old chord progressions and just wrote new melodies over it. It's really amazing, actually.

i was just gonna point this out; i thought that it was kind of interesting to note that since jazz's academization with the establishment of berklee, the people that flock to study jazz want to play it more than compose it. back when jazz was a fairly underground form of music, there were a lot more composer-performers. it's kind of in line with the classical tradition as well: a lot of composers during its formative years, but following the academization a lot more people are building careers as performers. i don't really study music history so that observation could have, and probably does have holes in it. kind of interesting, anyway.

[DarkeSword]

these are not reinterpretations done by someone other than the creator.

Yes, of course, because DC Comics is one guy making all the comics. Marvel too.

You know that different writers do different things with comics, right? Frank Miller vs. Grant Morrison, Alan Moore vs. Geoff Johns. How many times has Superman's origin story been revisited? Original Earth-2 Pre-Crisis Superman, Byrne's Post-Crisis Superman, Waid's Birthright Superman, hell Geoff Johns is writing SUPERMAN: SECRET ORIGINS this summer!

Hell look at the entire run of Ultimate Spider-man; Bendis takes key points throughout Stan Lee's Spider-man's history, starting from the origin, and reinterprets them into a tighter, more focused, more cohesive story. I mean come on, the original Clone Saga lasted over three years; Bendis does it better in something like four issues. And you can bet your ass Bendis will never resort to "It's MAGIC!" to nullify 20 years of wedded bliss between Peter and Mary Jane Parker.

As for fan-fiction and fan-art being nothing but kids fantasies, those kids fantasies are the very basis of most modern fandoms. Nothing ever comes of them? Just because they don't get packaged up and sold means they're worthless? Just because it isn't "mainstream?" Bullshit. There is plenty of worthwhile fan art and fan fiction out there.

And doujinshi isn't mainstream? Clearly you've never even heard of Comiket.

And you know what? Where the hell do you get off saying this?

i'm not saying remixers think, "this song sucks and i'm gonna make it better," i'm saying, "damn i kick so much ass i surpassed the original work."

I'm sorry, but you don't know a damn thing about the intentions of any of the remixers here. So quit being so presumptuous.

[cobaltstarfire]

I'm sorry, but you don't know a damn thing about the intentions of any of the remixers here. So quit being so presumptuous.

You know he's just going to say the same thing to you that he's said the past bazillion times "proov it! I don't know it exists and I know everything so it must not exist!"

Really, every valid thing everyone has said has gotten a "nuh-uh that's wrong, my way is the only right way" or it has gotten a "I've never heard of it so it doesn't exist and you're stupid for saying it to me!"

I kind of think he's just a really stinky un-amusing troll.

[Tensei]

I kind of think he's just a really stinky un-amusing troll.

DING DING DING, we have a winner!

[PriZm]

I'm sorry, but you don't know a damn thing about the intentions of any of the remixers here. So quit being so presumptuous.

What he said. OCR is not a bunch of pretentious fucks; you know nothing about the remixers here.

Also, regarding the argument of remakes < original work, it is very subjective, and I know many people who preferred the remakes of The Ring and The Grudge over the originals.

At the very least, the people who made the remakes must have liked something about their work enough to, you know, make them. It would be like saying : "OCR does not count as a valid example of reinterpretation because most people like the originals over their remixes".

You refute every argument that goes your way by using "some would argue" or "most people" or "almost unanimous" or, in some cases, ad hominem. Add to this the fact that you write like a first grader who just discovered a thesaurus (zenith of disrespect ? really ?) and it makes for a very annoying argumentation.

Maybe instead of assuming that interpretation by someone other than the original compositor is "lessened" (whatever you mean by that), you should ask actual compositors why they like/dislike to have people reinterpret their creations.

[LuketheXjesse]

this is "Lukeythejesser post in this thread" with the purpose (humor) replaced with trolling

[SoulinEther]

i'm not talking about small differences that don't change the overall work...why aren't paintings interpreted in this way? poems? books? choreographies? plays?

Any written text that is translated from one language to another can fall into this category. Goethe's poems - i've read a few in English... The Oedipus trilogy (AND here's a two-fer: Jean Anouilh even decided to CHANGE part of it with his play Antigone).

Hell, even Sparknotes' No Fear Shakespeare does the same thing, changing Shakespearian texts from O-I-am-slain iambic pentameter to Oh-I've-been-killed modern English...

Reinterpreting whole works of literature is lengthy and difficult, especially into a different language where some concepts in the text in one language, which may be central to the piece as a whole, do not translate properly. Rhetorical strategies aren't conveyed the same, necessarily; sometimes new ones have to be made in their stead.

And as for No Fear, there's an inherent wit, humor, bitterness -beauty - in Shakespeare's use of diction, syntax, and overall structure that gets decimated by trying to convey his words using everyday language which lacks the genius that went into the original work. (Yet so many people I knew in high school were completely dependent upon it to make any understanding or appreciation of Shakespeares' works. They're getting thematic concepts, perhaps, but not the enjoyment of his writing!)

Are you satisfied? ...No, that question won't do.

Will you ever be satisfied? (the answer, of course, should be "No" - otherwise, you've some bias and are trying to find an answer that suits your own needs.)

[plawp]

Because it sounds nice.

For a second I thought this was the first post, which would have been LOLish.

Sorry for the randomness, but considering what this thread has turned into, I LOL every time I think about this.

xRisingForce, all you had to say was "Because it sounds nice.", and you probably would have made the best internet post of the 21st century.