Forum wk 3 1st year presentations

Well, most first years just presented their music concrete pieces. I'm baffled, there is no way every single first year is an ambitious young electronic art music composer, is this just another demonstration of the skew of favour within the EMU to this archaic monster? There are a multitude of aspects to 'music technology' most of them more profitable than the composition of (often) obscure music that (potentially) alienates the listener... Having said this, some of the compositions actually sounded cool, way to cool to be titled 'art' it's like serialist music all over again. Yay for Webern, the element of compromise! I think it is a credit to the technician when a concrete piece sounds like something you might hear and enjoy on 3D :-D. While it was a little rough still, I liked Scott H's intro for his song. There were some innovative foley sources and I liked that his composition had a purpose upon completion and was not just a composition for composition's sake. Non CC presentations included the audio track for a short animation (which seemed like a pretty seamless effort to me, well done), demonstrations of some video game music which Josh has composed (please note, in his enthusiasm to break into the industry, he is working for free. Something maybe justifiable if the video game company is not actually making any income at this time but none the less worrying. I wonder what sort of royalty scheme is in place fr the composition of video game music and sound effects) and Alex's AA. General consensus was that Alex had pulled a pretty good mix. He informed us that he had gone easy on the post production (the exact opposite of my current mind set). This has set me wondering, critique of a mix being the wholly subjective activity it is, can we even ascertain a 'good mix' without a reference. And then, are you convinced your reference is perfect, or are you just using it because you like it? Why is it I am forced to process my kick drum to fit into a certain mold? A kick drum in a room sounds nothing like a kick drum through a PA or recorded, who decided that the sound needed altering? Puzzling, maybe. Personally, I think that once I have nailed imitation, I shall try and reinvent everything :-D