ok it's kind of ridiculous to try and have any sort of serious conversation about this on a public forum such as this. reason being is that people are coming from vastly different backgrounds and are all trying to argue under the one roof. it's not going to work. the views of some people here are just so far removed from one another that any sort of logical discussion is impossible.
electronic MUSIC takes skill, electronic NOISE doesn't. but good luck with this genre, i'm sure the clubs will be packed out with people who just can't wait to hear the latest 'noise' dj play.
with quotes like this being thrown around I think it's fairly obvious that any sort of discussion on the matter is kind of impossible. this is not any sort of diss towards virtualmark or anything. it just seems from that quote that the apparent goal of every sort of musician is to pack clubs. of course most of us would agree that sort of thinking is obviously not true.
recently at college we were having a class discussion about the artistic use of sampling. the difference between using an entire loop versus chopping it up, digging for rare sounds, etc. etc. a couple of people in the class were unable to take part in the discussion simply because they believed point blank that sampling was wrong. cheap and lazy is how they described it. now that's fine if they want to believe that then that's their prerogative, unfortunately it made any sort of rational discussion concerning various sampling techniques and styles impossible. so they were simply left out of the discussion.
it is very difficult to have a discussion with somebody whose views are so disparate from your own. especially when both parties are so reluctant to move from their viewpoint.
I will try to draw a simple analogy. one that I believe is sufficient for a dubstep production forum.
-imagine if somebody downloaded a load of loop packs. they then assembled these into a full song. each element of the song was simply lifted from one of the loop packs (EVVY_DUB-STEP_VOL.3). all the drums, synths, vocal samples, bassline. all just loops from the sample pack.
-now if another person produced a very similar (or the exact same song if you want to be particular about the details) by programming the drums. programming the synth and bass patches, and also coming up with the melodies. went and grabbed some odd vocal samples, from field recordings or from some old VHS tapes.
now imagine if both finished songs are very (or exactly) similar. the finished product of both sound sonically similar, yet they are both different. different processes were involved in producing each tune. sometimes the process of creation is just as important as the end result. the above quote from virtualmark says that "
electronic music takes skill, electronic NOISE doesn't".
some people value the process, as well as the finished article. some people believe that the concept is very important. others believe that the only thing that matters is the finished article. and it doesn't matter how the piece was created. some people look at abstract expressionist pieces and say "
my child could do that", anybody who says that has completely missed the point of it.
lastly I always think it is very arrogant of anybody to proclaim that what they don't view as art simply isn't art. this sort of thinking is ridiculous, but I understand that extremist viewpoints are necessary so therefore I wouldn't want them to totally disappear. for a person to say "everything which I define as art is art. everything else is not art. end of story." is extremely arrogant. when you dismiss any artform as not real art, that is essentially what you are doing.
remember nothing exists in a vacuum. you cannot simply look at something without examining what it exists in relation to. noise exists all around us. it naturally occurs. a part of noise music is framing what naturally occurs around us (in much the same way humans frame our surroundings when we use a camera, it is the same principle). by doing so we recontextualize the piece. doing so (framing and recontextualizing a piece) is one of the basic values of what defines art.
