“The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.” ― Orson Welles

I've mentioned this in other posts but I think it deserves further discussion...

I might be making music in a practice room with real instruments, synths, effects, mixers and other gear, and find sounds and ideas that I'd be happy with. I'd know the limitations of the gear and thus know how unique the particular sound would be in relation to what is normally produced.

But if I found those same/similar sounds through a computer or via some presets, would I be as satisfied? How could I know different/better sounds can't be made?

This is just one example. You can be limited by knowledge, either lack of or by a certain intention (e.g. like Stockhausen had definite intellectual ideas like 'mediation' to remove a lot of other possibilities for musical direction.) It's interesting what Keith Hudson did with faders on his 'Pick a Dub' album. If he'd had access to a multitude of effects we have now, would he have discovered and exploited that enough for it to have become a signature?

I realise this is potentially vast in terms of how many different aspects of music or art we could take this discussion. But I think it is the key to overcoming writer's block or disillusionment. I mean, how limited can we get? What you can do with a tin can and a contact mic (and a cassette recorder) might be artistically better that what you can do in a 24-track studio. Well...

I think it is even simpler than that. There seems to be a pattern across all of the arts. Young artists experiment with lots of different tools and media, to try as many things as possible. And then they start to cut that list down to a small number of tools that they get to know well and can express themselves with.

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

But there are other ways to work within limitations. If you write just for acoustic instruments or sounds, the number and type of instruments in the ensemble will impact on your writing.

I've always envied (in a way) song writers like Bob Dylan who at first just had a guitar and wanted to write songs and accompany himself. That's so clear and simple as a goal. It's all so different for me. Write it -> learn to perform it on instruments -> record and produce it, etc. I get a traffic jam of things to do. I'm building an instrument to play on my album now. I've ran into all sorts of issues with that, so I've decided to make some other music first.

No taxation without representation

- Jonathan Mayhew


No hang on, that wasn't it...


Without limitation there can be no manifestation

- Dion Fortune


That's the one.

Found it! A few years ago, I was writing a blog called 'Why these and not the others?' for which I gathered lots of quotes about limitations and the beauty of simplicity. The blog gradually got smaller because people had already said everything I wanted to say on this. I thought they were lost. Here are the quotes:

"Limitation creates form." ~Krishnamurti

"The enemy of art is the absence of limitations." ~Orson Welles

"You know the worst thing is freedom. Freedom of any kind is the worst for creativity." ~Salvador Dali

"The freer the form, the more concentration you require." ~Tom Hudson

"It was only four tracks on the machine, but I was picking up twenty from the extra terrestrial squad." ~Lee 'Scratch' Perry

"Any definition of 'golden age', for me, [whether] within music, within art, within literature... it is the point where the desires of the creator are greater than the technology that is available. There comes a moment where the technology gets closer and closer to the imagination and creativity of the writer... and in the end, if you're not careful, it overtakes... and suddenly serendipity, which before was from your own sweat and blood [now] comes from saying "if I press one of these 397 buttons on this synthesizer, maybe I'll get something out of it". Now, at that moment, the machinery is driving the creativity; the creativity is no longer driving the machinery. Maybe that's where the 'golden age' stops... maybe." ~David Cain, BBC Radiophonic Composer, 1967-73.

"I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer." ~Johannes Brahms

"It is not hard to compose, but what is fabulously hard is to leave the superfluous notes under the table." ~Johannes Brahms

"Oh! I must somehow manage to do a figure in a few strokes." ~Vincent van Gogh

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." ~Leonardo da Vinci

"You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough." ~ William Blake

"Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity." ~Charles Mingus

"It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest." ~Paul Klee

"Tauntingly, he called me a 'butterfly' and made some very cruel remarks about ...my other interests outside music - painting, writing, and reading. He often said, "Ek sadhe sab sadhe, sab sadhe sab jaye," which means if you do one thing properly and very well, then all other things will come easily later, but if you start with too much, you end up with nothing." ~Ravi Shankar (on his guru Baba Alluadin Khan)

"If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has, at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things." ~Vincent van Gogh

"Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth." ~Ludwig van Beethoven

(This order reminds me of an idea I had to arrange all kinds of quotes and proverbs like a thesaurus so that they are related and each helped to provide insight about the nearest ones. I still think someone should do that, but when I read the last few quotes I realise I have learned to let even good ideas go.)

Quote J.A.S:

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But I think it is the key to overcoming writer's block or disillusionment.

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I'm not getting what you're on about here mate. Maybe it's too early in the morning.

Perhaps you could enlighten us further as to your proposed cure for writers block?

Ta.

I think writers block and disillusionment can be caused by becoming overwhelmed by all the available possibilities of technology/instruments/musical knowledge.

"Why do I choose this over that? That might be better..."

But when you work within quite tight limitations, it frees up the imagination because a lot of other directions are dead ends.

If you decided to write for a monophonic instrument with a three octave range, for instance, you know there are no chords, only melody and short arpeggios to write with. So you know what directions you HAVE to go in. (Of course, when you've done that, there's nothing to stop you adding some harmony or whatever, but it's a good place to start.)

It makes us think, how can I make this more interesting within these limits? When there are no limits, there are too many ways to make our music more interesting and we can get sort of 'lost in the wilderness'.

This sounds like the agony of someone who lacks a reason to make music!

Reason? No, I don't need a reason. It's pretty much all I like doing apart from the obvious human things.

I'm not talking personally here, but generally for the sake of discussion. For all I know, perhaps I'd think you don't restrict your musical options enough!

When I said "it makes us think, how can I make this more interesting within these limits?", I didn't necessarily mean 'think it' verbally whilst sweating over a manuscript. I meant playfully. But there are composers like Bach who did consciously impose such limitations, like writing on the theme of his name B(b)-A-C-B(H), and other composers also used very specific restrictions to determine their musical direction so that they could cut their way through the long grass.

Robert Levin (famous for composing and improvising in the classical-era tradition) said that the restrictions of the classical period were an aid rather than a hinderence to the creativity of the period. I'd say that's similar to what David Cain (BBC Radiophonic Composer) said in his quote about a 'golden age' growing out of technological limitations. Likewise, I don't think Mozart utilised the top and bottom notes of his five-octave piano coincidentally. Even a composer like him used to get lost, as the some of his abandoned compositions testify. (He'd occasionally take a few modulatory 'wrong turns' and just give up on it, then start something new.)

I don't expect everyone to agree (much less like) this notion (because it counters the typical ideas of creativity and freedom) but there are enough quotes above for anyone to at least consider the possibility that the obvious notions of what drives creativity might be wrong.

It can be fun and still challenging to work within the limitations of a genre and still to come up with something worthwhile.

It's like saying an artist only using a canvass, paint and a brush is 'limiting'. Well it is in a way, then again the possibilities are so broad that the options are almost endless, certainly enough for a lifetime of creativity.

Most artists place limitations on themselves by accepting the discipline of a given genre or medium, the painter, the sculptor the novelist... the songwriter.

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Nadia Boulanger taught her pupils that "the more restrictions you place on your music, the more freedom you have".

When Quincy Jones went to her for lessons in composition (as did Robert Levin, Walter Piston, Philip Glass, etc) he said he found it really hard to get his head around this concept, but then began to see what she meant. She used to do things like make her students copy out a piece of music in all twelve keys so that they heard things differently in each key.

For a big part, I think, "vintage analog sound" comes from the limitations of gear in the old days. If you had only a tape machine, limited overdubs, and mixed live through an analog desk, you had to have a -plan- for your track. This required the band to practice their stuff, and the producer to know it inside out to mix it. When everybody is so involved, you will surely get a nice, warm and spontaneous sounding recording. Now there is hardly any limit in technology anymore, you have nearly unlimited possibilities to make something sound perfect. In many cases that will make music sterile and cold. But these are the possibilities that everybody was hoping for in the early days, and some people worked really hard to make it reality.

I think, I would be a spoiled brat if I would say, technology and absence of limitations are hindering my music making process. Maybe this is a thing for us keyboardists who can develop entire tracks in the sleeping room. For me there is a simple cure: get out and play live in a rehearsal room, or on stage. If you have a mobile recording gadget you can record and take ideas home, click around all night on your DAW and take the improved ideas back to the rehearsal room, then back home, etc etc.

IMHO, knowing something about music theory, about other musicians, about your instruments, about sound and about production is -never- keeping you from making "spontaneous tracks". Staying in your bedroom is.

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Music Chromelegs
Gear Rhodes | Cp70 | Nord Electro

Limitations define us.

Edited by Airfix (31/05/12 07:35 PM)

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For a big part, I think, "vintage analog sound" comes from the limitations of gear in the old days.

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I also think those limitations created homogeneity of sound. Like when renaissance painters only had four colours to work with, the result was that all the mixed colours were related in tone and texture. Not like today, with that naff 'Rolf Harris' look, where every colour comes out of a separate tube.

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I think, I would be a spoiled brat if I would say, technology and absence of limitations are hindering my music making process.

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Well, I don't think anyone should blame the present state of the art or technology and I do think it's important to be of your own time -not harking back to some 'golden age'.

But, imposing our own restrictions can often show us a new way through. For one, I prefer to have the restrictions of real (physical) instruments to confine my imagination, to begin with at least. A lot of possibilities are taken out of my hands right there. If every instrument had 8 octaves there would need to be more decision making on my part. But more importantly, the restrictions of instruments are natural and we can hear that. For example, a violin player struggles at the far reaches of the instrument's extremities, which also sounds authentically different throughout its range. There's also resistance with real instruments. You can blow a trumpet until your face goes blue and not get a decent note out of it.

I feel the same about using hardware. I can't quite get into all this endless tweaking of virtual dials, which then open up to reveal a new set of dials and buttons. It is amazing, but I'm not sure it's healthy for our present lifespan.

Quote J.A.S:

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until your face goes blue and not get a decent note out of it. All that control of colour will end up in the music.

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I like Rolf.

I like Rolf too, I don't think he's got an elitist or pretentious bone. I hesitated before using the example.

Quote J.A.S:

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I think writers block and disillusionment can be caused by becoming overwhelmed by all the available possibilities of technology/instruments/musical knowledge.

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After giving this some thought, and after initially being slightly reticent to explore the points you make with any degree of intellectual rigor (and being slightly mumpsimus in my old age!), I have to say JAS that I have now come to appreciate the subtlety and clarity of your points.

As a composer myself who regularly suffers from writer's block - or WB as we some times refer to it 'in the business' - I have tried to apply your concepts through a more pragmatic approach. I think exploring your ideas through some form of prosaic methodology which can be applied as a creative 'boundary', might allow myself and others to regulate many of the heterogeneous elements that encumber the compositional process.

To this end, during a period of WB that has occurred over the last few days, I have applied these new concepts. Initially, as a suitable starting point, I took a 'bottom up' rather than 'top down' approach. This, coupled with a singular delineation of the technical constricts of software and computers, led to a discovery which allowed a new form of artistic non-eclectic precipitation of creative reductionism to feature as the formative singularity from which a new composition evolved.

It is very much a work in progress JAS, but it shows I think how limitations do (when explored through finite tolerances) offer a starting point - a springboard if you like - for interesting compositional processes.

Here's a short clip to demonstrate how my work is evolving using this new methodology. I have called it 'Limitation Symphony'. Eventually it will be in three movements.

Limitation Symphony - Opening (Extract)

I will post more later.

Well, nothing is going to get on my t**s this evening. I saw an airship today!

Time is the biggest limitation. Are we not better to just get on with it than talk about it?

"you lose your push when you beat around the bush"... Captain Beefheart.

Go straight for the jugular. Big bold strokes. This is me...feck you!

I find myself still trying to perfect that every day. It's fun

Quote J.A.S:

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Well, nothing is going to get on my t**s this evening. I saw an airship today!

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Wow that's awesome! I wonder if the pilot has experimented with limiting the amount of air in it.

Quote J.A.S:

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“The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.” ― Orson Welles

But if I found those same/similar sounds through a computer or via some presets, would I be as satisfied? How could I know different/better sounds can't be made?

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If I were a professional carpenter there is no way that i would use my hand-saw to cut wood, i just wouldn't have time. I would probably use a circular power saw and just get the job done. But i love wood and making things with wood. Using my saw, smelling the wood as it cuts, getting into the rhythmic action of the of the cutting motion, seeing where my mind goes while i complete the task and looking at the final cut to see how the experience translated to the object - is all part of the love. I use very few tools, and still use a hand drill, chisels etc.

That might be what he means. It would be very easy to make the things i make very quickly and probably with a more pro finish if i just went to the shop and bought all new wood, power tools, brand news screws and hinges etc. But i don't, i scramble through my boxes of off cuts and tins of odds and sods and just make the thing as best i can with what i have... that's the art. That's what i'm in it for.

You have to ask yourself why you do it, why you make music? Is it about the subject or the object?

To me, the object is just that, just an object. It has nothing except it's functionality. Once you introduce a human emotion to materials which will be shaped and modified for their own sake, for the beauty of the experience and the will to communicate humanity through the materials, you have art. And the more humanity you put into the materials, the more you'll communicate and the more you'll experience in the creation.

I used to do quite a bit of music programming when boxes started to appear on the market back in the 80s and 90s. They seemed to solve a lot of problems that i faced when creating music. But i found that the joy was going out of it. The productions were cleaner and they had stuff on them that i couldn't play, instruments i didn't have.

But the only real pleasure seemed to be coming from the final work and not from the creation, and they were cold. Not on first listen, on first listen they were perfect, just what i wanted. But as "art" they had no staying power, no personality and they aged very quickly, became irrelevant. Whereas the stuff i'd done before had so much warmth and personality that i was geting pleasure form them for years.

The only way i can describe it is that they seemed to be a picture, of a picture, of a loved one. They weren't the "real" picture.

It's easy to spend all morning looking for a Tambo sample when you have three or four real ones on the shelf (been there and it was part of the turning point for me) And of course there's not many things in life better the playing a tambo that you found in some market in africa or haggeld to get thrown in when you bought a guitar or something... It has it's own life and you interact with it... That's music, pure and basic and true.

This isn't all about limitations, but limitations do make us put more of oursleves into the work.

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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Wow that's awesome! I wonder if the pilot has experimented with limiting the amount of air in it.

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Yes, he let it explode so we all had silly voices for an hour.

Quote zoosound:

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Time is the biggest limitation. Are we not better to just get on with it than talk about it?

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I think it's also time-saving to find shortcuts or alternative ways to work, rather than getting half-way and realising it's not going anywhere. This can happen to the best of them, hence the abandoned compositions in many a classical composer's catalogue.

Quote ow:

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It's easy to spend all morning looking for a Tambo sample when you have three or four real ones on the shelf (been there and it was part of the turning point for me) And of course there's not many things in life better the playing a tambo that you found in some market in africa or haggeld to get thrown in when you bought a guitar or something... It has it's own life and you interact with it... That's music, pure and basic and true.

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I completely get what you're saying here. I have been questioned recently about buying a tambourine. "Why didn't you just use a sampled one?"

I'm not into that at all. Firstly, I don't know much about MIDI stuff, secondly, there are many sounds to be had from a tambourine depending on what angle you hold it, how hard you hit it, etc, and thirdly, surely it's easier just to play it in. Also, there's the importance of natural human rhythm. Human rhythm is only inaccurate on the short time scale, but overall it balances out and should have it's own 'swing' about it. To program it all in and then fake the "swinging", this seems to me pointless and sexually perverse.

Hold on a sec, by your logic wouldn't the thing be to use the sampled tambourine then? Cos that's more limiting innit? i.e less sounds available because of less control of the way it's hit/angles etc???

secondly, there are many sounds to be had from a tambourine depending on what angle you hold it, how hard you hit it

Now I'm really confused.

Quote J.A.S:

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Like when renaissance painters only had four colours to work with, the result was that all the mixed colours were related in tone and texture. Not like today, with that naff 'Rolf Harris' look, where every colour comes out of a separate tube.

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But wouldn't you have preferred them to use one colour? And paint in a monotone? As one might be led to understand from your later monophonic instrument example??

If you decided to write for a monophonic instrument with a three octave range, for instance

Would that produce better art? Would it ease 'painter's block'?

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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But wouldn't you have preferred them to use one colour? And paint in a monotone? As one might be led to understand from your later monophonic instrument example??

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First, how do you think monophonic sound is equivalent to monotonic colour? Monophonic instruments don't restict us to one note, but to one voice. Secondly, why do you (pretend) to assume that the limitation has to go to the ultimate extreme? Are you (trying to) confuse this with 'minimalism'?

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Hold on a sec, by your logic wouldn't the thing be to use the sampled tambourine then? Cos that's more limiting innit? i.e less sounds available because of less control of the way it's hit/angles etc???

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The idea of limitation is to be more creative from limited resources. This includes creating a wider variety of sounds from a single instrument.

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Now I'm really confused.

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I doubt that. I'm sure you're deliberately oversimplifying my position in order to be (transparently) facetious. What is it that you have such a problem with to go to all this trouble with the MIDI file and all? I suggest that you've convinced yourself that other people are automatically stupid if they think differently than you. Why not focus on the quotes I included by other artists instead? Surely you don't think they're all stupid too?

I thought they were fair questions, certainly got me thinking.

He thought he could trick me with his 'Limitation Symphony' post, and then reveal he was taking the pee. It didn't work, so now he's resorting to straw man arguments. Unfortunately, I think this will result in the thread being locked, which is probably his goal.

Why would he want to trick you? Sometimes there's much wisdom hidden in comedy. After all this is just a discussion, there's no right or wrong, just bouncing ideas around. It's a fair question, a tambo sample is quite limiting.

You need to ask yourself "who?" and not just "why?". Unfortunately, I can't elaborate.

Hmmm, they seem valid points to me but if you'd rather just transmit and not receive then no worries. You kind of embarrassingly tied yourself up in knots in the end

It's a fascinating subject anyway and I'm glad we explored it in such detail.

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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You kind of embarrassingly tied yourself up in knots in the end

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Is that what you've told yourself in the mirror? I can't believe I'm even bothering but...

If I elaborate on my original (un-cherry-picked) post... the reason for not limiting myself to a tambourine sample is that it will be devoid of life and colour, because natural human rhythms that occur from shaking the thing contribute a lot of extra material and dynamics to the part (from that imposed limitation), because there is a subtle 'swing' to human rhythm that is important, and because it's probably easier to just record it in.

You're trying to interpret this as minimalism, i.e. imposing extreme limitations. I wasn't suggesting we do that, I merely offered an example of what might be the extreme end of the spectrum (i.e. "what you can do with a tin can and a contact mic").

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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But wouldn't you have preferred them to use one colour? And paint in a monotone?

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Why do you (pretend to) restrict your interpretation of this as extreme limitation? Painters who used four colours (red ochre, yellow ochre, [dark blue] black and white) could derive all the required colours, the result being a more homogeneous effect (since all the colours grow out of just four). Four is enough of a limitation. Why do you think it has to go down to one colour to remain faithfull to the idea of imposing/working within limitations?

Quote J.A.S:

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Quote Exalted Wombat:

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You kind of embarrassingly tied yourself up in knots in the end

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Is that what you've told yourself in the mirror? I can't believe I'm even bothering but...

If I elaborate on my original (un-cherry-picked) post... the reason for not limiting myself to a tambourine sample is that it will be devoid of life and colour, because natural human rhythms that occur from shaking the thing contribute a lot of extra material and dynamics to the part (from that imposed limitation), because there is a subtle 'swing' to human rhythm that is important, and because it's probably easier to just record it in.

You're trying to interpret this as minimalism, i.e. imposing extreme limitations. I wasn't suggesting we do that, I merely offered an example of what might be the extreme end of the spectrum (i.e. "what you can do with a tin can and a contact mic").

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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But wouldn't you have preferred them to use one colour? And paint in a monotone?

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Why do you (pretend to) restrict your interpretation of this as extreme limitation? Painters who used four colours (red ochre, yellow ochre, [dark blue] black and white) could derive all the required colours, the result being a more homogeneous effect (since all the colours grow out of just four). Four is enough of a limitation. Why do you think it has to go down to one colour to remain faithfull to the idea of imposing/working within limitations?

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At what point do you suggest we curb our limiting? Four colours? Three? Is that too much? Real tambourine with more sounds / performance variables over the more limiting samples? Monophonic intruments but not restricted to one note? Or two? Or three? Or....

You get my drift I'm sure.

Quote Exalted Wombat:

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At what point do you suggest we curb our limiting? Four colours? Three? Is that too much? Real tambourine with more sounds / performance variables over the more limiting samples? Monophonic intruments but not restricted to one note? Or two? Or three? Or....

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Another straw man argument. As if I suggested I should be the one to decide where to set limits for other people's art. Where did I suggest that?

It's the nature of the situation or the mind of the artist, that presents or suggests the limitations. Again, four colours was enough for many painters to produce all the required colours, so the palette automatically offered itself as a limitation. Three colours wouldn't have offered a full basic spectrum. Other painters included more pigments they felt they needed to express themselves.

CMYK. .. it's so terribly clever.

Quote Airfix:

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CMYK. .. it's so terribly clever.

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No actually: red ochre, yellow ochre, blue-black and white*. Again, all the colours in a palette derived from those particular pigments will also have their own particular hue and texture that results from the homogeny. This is because the sources of the pigment also contribute, not just because of what colour category they technically fall into. It doesn't have to be clever to be effective.

*Source: 'The Art Forger's Handbook' (Eric Hebborn)

Quote J.A.S:

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Quote Airfix:

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CMYK. .. it's so terribly clever.

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No actually: red ochre, yellow ochre, blue-black and white*. Again, all the colours in a palette derived from those particular pigments will also have their own particular hue and texture that results from the homogeny. This is because the sources of the pigment also contribute, not just because of what colour category they technically fall into. It doesn't have to be clever to be effective.

*Source: 'The Art Forger's Handbook' (Eric Hebborn)

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Fascinating, I had absolutely no idea.

Okay, now about limitations in performance... not so much Django Reinhardt finding out he could do more with just two (left-hand) fingers than most people can do with four...

...but like the string quartet. I'm sure the convenience of only having four musicians (one of which was often the composer at the time, e.g. Haydn and Mozart) but the limitations of having just four players, and four string instruments each with their own particular restrictions. I think that presented a very attractive 'palette' too, like the guitar, bass, drums and vocals did in the 1960s -it sort of covered just enough ground, especially with the occasional addition of another instrument like the harmonica or organ.

I think a good example of composers who lack such self-imposed limitations are those who write Indian popular music. How many instruments can you cram into a song? There's no instrumental line you can possibly follow for more than 10 seconds on those tunes! Funny though.

Quote Stage73:

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For a big part, I think, "vintage analog sound" comes from the limitations of gear in the old days. If you had only a tape machine, limited overdubs, and mixed live through an analog desk, you had to have a -plan- for your track. This required the band to practice their stuff, and the producer to know it inside out to mix it. When everybody is so involved, you will surely get a nice, warm and spontaneous sounding recording. Now there is hardly any limit in technology anymore, you have nearly unlimited possibilities to make something sound perfect. In many cases that will make music sterile and cold. But these are the possibilities that everybody was hoping for in the early days, and some people worked really hard to make it reality.

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I'd say the quote by David Cain (BBC Radiophonic Composer) reflects what you are getting at here (see below). We could call it 'George Lucas syndrome'. He did great things when he was forced to use his imagination to escape the extreme limitations of the 1970s, but now, when you can get pretty much anything onto a screen, it's easy to forget that less is often more. Hence, no more wide angled vast expanses of space in the Star Wars prequels, just explosions in every corner of the screen, unecessarily naff CGI and silly creatures everywhere. He couldn't even leave the old films alone. Of course, it's about the $,$$$,$$$ too.

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"Any definition of 'golden age', for me, [whether] within music, within art, within literature... it is the point where the desires of the creator are greater than the technology that is available. There comes a moment where the technology gets closer and closer to the imagination and creativity of the writer... and in the end, if you're not careful, it overtakes... and suddenly serendipity, which before was from your own sweat and blood [now] comes from saying "if I press one of these 397 buttons on this synthesizer, maybe I'll get something out of it". Now, at that moment, the machinery is driving the creativity; the creativity is no longer driving the machinery. Maybe that's where the 'golden age' stops... maybe." ~David Cain, BBC Radiophonic Composer, 1967-73.

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