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Tools & Toys
Hello fellow travelers, pleased to be here on the same bus as you lot, I’m not very chatty but I’m constantly lurking around this forum every other hour for interesting readings and subjects of reflection.
One of my main subject of concern these past years, is the limits / differences between tools and toys, and as Kloon came up with the subject in another post, I thought I should really get down to asking the question.
The question, I think, must be asked in many ways, and asking the makers and users of such things (tools or toys) may bring totally different aspects into sight.
I’m mainly interested in the creator's point of view, because I really think it is a main subject of their development process.
But reading Kloon’s statement, brings me to be just as interested in the consumers point of view.
What do you think ? Do you prefer to use/make toys or tools ?
I’ll now give a messy personal view on the subject.
I love tools, and I like to get to know them so that they seem like toys.
Sometimes not knowing anything about them helps me a lot for using them like toys (even if my geeky mind tries to understand more than I which sometimes)
We say that a perfect tool is one that becomes an extension of oneself. Think of a pencil, or any tool in the hand of someone that uses it daily; and this image brings me to the turning point, our sexual attributes. They are tools (for reproduction), but I’m sure most of us use them a hell lot more for play (using them as toys) [Sorry if some people are offended, I’ll stop there on this image, but it can be explored]
Coming back to music, and virtual studios : my dream, as a kid (30 years ago) was to be like Jean Michel Jarre, Eric Serra, Vangelis or others, that lived in a spaceship full of bleeping interacting machines, and playing with them all day. As time went by, computer power and visualization wiped out my dream by giving me everything they had, but now fitting in my pocket, and only costing me a few months work. It meant that I could have the tools, without having to use them as tools.
I have the chance to have a lot of spare time for playing around, making music, trying apps... never earning any money with them (a part from a very few live gigs, that more or less pay me the fuel costs) And my main goal is to have fun, and when it’s in public, if I’m having fun then they are having fun. People enjoy looking at people playing. I love to see kids in playgrounds, inventing games, new ways to play, to have fun. And I love to see a band having fun on stage (even if it’s sad music). It’s all about enjoyment
For this Xmas, I offered my family the pleasure of seeing me playing around with my toys (like 30 odd years ago). I came home with my 3 volca’s and played around with them. I bought them mainly as tools for my music creation process, but they turn me into a kid again.
I think we have a very bad image of toys (made in ...), things for kids, while the tools are for the grown ups. Let the kids play around with the toys.
But it’s actually quite hard to find a distinction between the two.
a tool is useful : well unless you want to play.
a tool is used to work (earn money) : so I’ll use my toy hammer to put up my shelving.
a tool is expensive : so is a Xbox.
a tool is hard to use : a knife or a gun seems easier to use than a hoola-hoop.
a tool is for serious business : aha, this seems to fit.
So the main difference between a tool and a toy is only our point view, and this point of view is very important : “The power of a tool, the enjoyment of a toy”
Does that make you think of any apps... yes kind of loads. It’s the marketing and development approach adopted by most app creators. And it’s a logical way to satisfy most needs. Simple toy like interface with easy opening doors to all the power inside for ever changing rules.
Because rules (constraints) are a main concern in creation process, especially for tool users. Our love and hatred story with constraints probably influences our choice of vision on tools and toys, and vice-versa, but that’s an other subject
Anyway, sorry for all that blabla, I don’t talk much, so when I do I kind of forget to stop
Comments
Instrumentalists "play", while composers create a body of "work". Normally we play with toys and work with tools. Tools will take your finger off. But in the creative fields, artists break those rules and blur those boundaries all the time. Its hard to build a house with toys but very possible to make a record or sound performance with either. That's why we mustn't pay artists because they are having too much fun.
Pro artists work for pay, but most of us do this for fun. I get that. Oh what fun we have I should add.
@smeeeth said:
If that's toungue-in-cheek then it's one of the funniest things I've ever read. If it's completely serious... then it's one of the funniest things I've ever read, for entirely different reasons.
@mtyas Interesting thoughts. As a dev I try really really hard (probably more than I should) to only ever offer interfaces that can be played accurately without staring at the screen, because I fundamentally believe that this is a huge distinction that allows an instrument to be live-performable as an extension of oneself, rather than something that needs to be programmed with conscious thought and attention. So I always ensure that my app guitarism can be played like a toy. It's a self-imposed constraint because of which guitarism does much fewer things than its competitors (in terms of tool-like functionality), and in many non-live-performanace situations those other apps are more useful tools, yet my app's toyness keeps bringing people back to it. I noted with humble pride and a smile that in the "show us your music app organization screenshots" thread, guitarism was the most common and visible virtual guitar in peoples' collections.
As for "power of a tool, enjoyment of a toy" IMO only 2-3 apps have really achieved this - ThumbJam for sure, and perhaps Figure and GarageBand. Everything else is deficient on either its toy attributes or tool powers, sometimes both. I think however that no app has yet done what I think really needs to be done - to offer the accessibility of something like Guitar Hero / Magic Piano / Tap Tap Revenge, with the power and experiential authenticity of playing a real instrument. I hope someone does this soon (maybe me) as I'm really curious to see what impact it creates.
I find this an interesting thread. Having been a working professional musician and studio engineer, I experienced the transition many years ago from the "toy" aspect of recording/creating equipment as a hobbyist to the "tool" aspects of the commercial recording studio. As much as I enjoyed the tools in the professional environment, I missed the immediate satisifaction of being able to create music quickly with the toys I had started with before it became a means of making a living. Now that I have retired from that life and have returned to playing music for my own enjoyment, I am continually impressed with the high level of quality that the iOS format has to offer. It really is an interesting mix of toy and tool and I particularly enjoy being able to use these apps to sketch out ideas quickly and yet still have the opportunity to do a fair amount of professional level polishing. Anyway...my two cents on the subject. Thanks @mtyas for bringing this to the forum!
For me, the difference between a tool and a toy is the degree to which an app allows me to express myself versus forcing me to adhere to someone's predefined path. With Audiobus we can take something that might be relatively restricted and open it up by combining it with other apps to transform the experience into something quite different. These sorts of issues are why the Smule apps are interesting but I'm not drawn to them because it seems to be more of a musical version of paint by numbers rather than being able to express ourselves.
@Paulinko Yep the Smule apps rank high on the "toy" factor and very low on "tool". OTOH Auria is high on "tool" and low on "toy". But IMO ThumbJam ranks high on both "toy" and "tool".
I think midi plays a key role in this also. For instance, a app like Fingertip Maestro (a toy) could easily become a tool if midi was added. Midi gives it access to other apps that are considered tools.
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One distinction is that no toy has ever posted on this forum...
@PaulB I wish I could appify you. An app that posts PaulB-isms onto AB threads. That'd be one heck of a toy...
iPad, (PC/Mac), BM2, A Different Drummer, Animoog, Audulus, Nave etc, etc...
iPad, (PC/Mac), BM2, A Different Drummer, Animoog, Audulus, Nave etc, etc...
Who cares, as long as they're enjoyable to use.
As @mtyas said in his original post, these apps can be used as tools or toys, it just comes down to your point of view. But the question is an interesting one - do you use music apps more for fun / recreation or to 'get a job done' ? And the same to devs - do we make these apps more to be used for fun / recreation or to serve a specific functional purpose?
To me, the more challenging an app is, the more fun it is (see my list above).
If there's no challenge it's simply a toy and is soon discarded.
@Rhism said:
That would make me very appy...
@Yan said:
I'd rephrase that as "If there's no challenge it's simply boring and is soon discarded."
The word "toy" (and probably "tool") is getting overloaded with too many connotations to be useful here. What we're really talking about is how much fun an app is, and how useful it is. And of course apps can be both fun and useful.
@Yan said:
//Tritonman agrees with Yan.
@mgmg4871 said:
I agree totally about this app, midi would really bring it to a new level. When these sorts of apps are in Audiobus you can also use them as source material for the many great effects apps and use midi to play the effects. Some of the most basic sorts of sounds provide good fuel to stoke the AB/Midi/effects fire.
Attitude. That's the difference between a tool and a toy. My Scirroco was a really fun toy. For rally racers it was also a tool. Same here.
Then there is Creativity. Comes from fun, comes from play, comes from exploration unimpeded by having to deal with technology issues with the tools that get in the way of the fun. If you have to fight with it, it's a bad tool and not a toy, and creativity dries up and floats out the window. If you can play with it, it's both a good tool and a good toy, and magic happens.
How short is the cognitive loop between "what if ... ?" and "Aha!"? How much does it depend on how much time and effort one spent studying arcane architectures before their operation is autonomous? (or, in my case, architectures themselves are fun toys, but I digress).
I spent many years working with some very creative musicians. Some tech-blind, one very tech-savvy, but all shared this: if the happening followed immediately on the heels of the wondering, there was magic. If they had to wait while wrestling with the technology to move from the wonder to the doing, we might as well have given up and gone home. It was fighting this pain that drove us to do the MidiTap. MIDI was always involved in the pain. And still is, in the iOS world. And it led me to Warman's Law: that which can be configured must be configured; corr. defaults are always wrong.
I'm always trying to create tools music instruments that are a pleasure to use. That being said, if someone can use them without understanding why they're enjoyable and labels them a toy - then I'm fine with that, too.
IMO the distinction is in the intent of the user. If you sit down with an app with the goal of doing something specific (whether it's making a recording, performing live at a gig etc) then you're working on a specific task and that app is your tool. But if you sit down just to have fun with it, noodle on it etc whatever it is (and that creative noodling it may lead to a recording / performance etc later on, or not) then you're playing and the app is your toy.
IMO the original question was: which of these two intents do you guys most often have when you sit down with music apps? It's a hugely important question that has a lot of implications for how music apps should be designed.
I like toys best, apparently. I have the most fun "playing" with Figure. Next up is SoundPrism Pro into Loopy to lay down some chords, and then I jam with my guitar through my Apogee Jam (or Guitarism) over the top of that. None of it is serious, it is just playing around.
Slightly off topic but here is my view on the whole music creation process, being iOS or PC based, toys or tools. Keep in mind that I too am one of the older users on this forum and may not be as quick to grasp fundamental knowledge of said apps as some of the younger users. Getting old can be a blessing (as still being alive) but can also suck in not being able to do the things I could do when I was younger.
Sometimes (most of the time) when a little birdie is singing in my head to which I wish to recreate that noise, I find it slipping away as I set up the needed track, synth, patch, controller, etc. to get to the recording stage. This can take only a few moments or what seems like a lifetime.
A toy to me is just frolicking around with an app hopefully enjoying the sound enough to use it as a tool to start a project. Once the desire to create a project becomes apparent, I find it necessary to be able to bake an idea ASAP or the original thought is gone forever.
As an example, the other night in the shower I hummed out a basis for what I thought would be an interesting song beginning. Tile makes for good first impressions. I quickly dried off and fired up the iPad and PC in hopes to get this idea recorded.
Having to choose from hundreds of apps to get a compatible sound was the first hoop to jump through. Having the said app to be able to record was another matter. Thanks to the AB team for making that part easier (iOS 6 here so IAA doesn't come in to play, yet).
A little difficulty in setting things up to what I was trying to accomplish in the time needed before I forgot what I was trying do, I chose to use Sonar on the PC with the sounds coming from the iPad and recording both audio and MIDI simultaneously from my MIDI controller.
Finally recorded both MIDI and audio of about half of what I hummed to two tracks which sounded close to what I imagined. I must admit that my timing is horrific even with a metronome so I recorded free time without that noisy background racket (sp?)(metronome).
I tried to align the MIDI notes to normal grid values so I would be able to add more tracks (especially drums) but every time I moved the notes to fit the grid the timing became much unlike the original tune in my head. I tried different tempos to no avail and am not well versed in signature changes to determine what may fit best though I tried several sigs. I need to work on this part of musical theory without a doubt.
Needless to say, and I am not pointing fault at developers or their apps, is that the bird's chirp has turned into another bird's turd. Recorded but probably never to see any fruition.
Sorry for the too many words as the eggnog is creeping up on me. Just my 2cents worth.
Too many toys and tools can be a blessing. Thanks to all of you developers for giving us this "problem".
Thanks for all the comments so far. I've been weighing whether to get the Volca Beats (I already have the Bass), and this crystallizes some of why I'm drawn to it.
To Keebo: I know what you mean. When this happens to me, I sing or hum a few iterations into Audioshare's microphone recorder. No one's going to buy THAT record! But the original idea's there as a reference (or just a variant, as the idea evolves and elaborates).
"if the happening followed immediately on the heels of the wondering, there was magic" - Genius !!
@Keebo I want to print your comment, frame it and hang it on my office wall (except I don't have an office wall... or an office). And it's completely in line with @dwarman's earlier comment regarding distance from wondering to happening.
Which makes me wonder: what apps / workflows do you guys use when you have an idea and want to get it down quickly, production quality be damned? So far we have "Audioshare microphone recorder". What else?
Also found this interesting wrt the problem of recording something without a metronome and then wanting to fit it into a tempo so as to add percussion later. Anyone else have this problem? Is there any app / tool out there that helps with this?