Quote:
Originally Posted by rds /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Let's forget about reproduction for a moment. The magnetic strings of an electrical guitar induce a voltage in coil that has inductive and capacitive properties, the voltage is then amplifier 50X and played through a speaker.
Whether that is a natural sound is perhaps arguable, but a lot of people myself included would say no. It's no more natural than a sound I make by writing a math equation that models the flux through an inductor with the output being sent as a voltage to speakers.
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"Whether that is a natural sound is perhaps arguable" . . . This we agree on. But in the context of this thread (and, I'd argue, this forum) "natural"
reproduction I take to mean reproducing the timbral information of a recorded source.
Beyond that (as in, when speaking of natural sources of recorded sound), the argument collapses into how conservatively you define "natural," and that argument is going to get silly fast (and it has no relevance whatsoever to the issue at hand, which whether you like it or not, is
sound reproduction).
Every musical instrument, from a gourd to an Elektron Machinedrum is technology, and there's a few levels of artifice to get from a gourd to what you are thinking of as an "acoustic instrument."
So your argument is that anytime an electric impulse is involved in the sound creation stage, it's not a "natural" source. Great, glad that's been established. It has no bearing whatsoever on whether reproduction technology is "natural," that is, "true" to the recorded source.
Quote:
| It's no more natural than a sound I make by writing a math equation that models the flux through an inductor with the output being sent as a voltage to speakers. |
Would you like me to list a few hundred ways in which an electrical impulse generated by, and effected by, a finger manipulating a steel string is clearly distinguishable from that example? Because I can, but it's still not going to yield any useful discussion re: "natural."
Your example is a bit closer to plugging my guitar directly into my Apogee Duet and recording without mic'ing my amplifier, even though in my case there's still at core manipulation of a physical object. Again, this argument isn't especially illuminating. If you want to press, I can say, fine: a "natural instrument" is one which produces acoustic phenomenon (sound waves) at the end-stage (to be heard or recorded with a microphone). So if you were to record an impulse directly, through an I/O device without any acoustic element (sound waves) you could call that "unnatural." But it's still a purely semantic argument here, and not really worth the time to work out.
I suspect, probably without reason, that your resistance to this is based primarily on your musical preferences. So I apologize if you're
not the type who would have rioted at the first performance of Le Sacre du Printemps because that bassoon was playing
way too frigging high. (kidding, again).
