Tech is great, but let's still use our smarts

For my opinion, press or say 1. For my rebuttal, press or say 2. For my rant, press or say 3. To cut to the chase, press or say 4. To cut the cheese, press or say 5, but do so from a distance.
 
I agree with the intent of the posts, and its a well presented and intended point.... however, wasn't it Albert Einstein (a pretty smart guy by most accounts) who was credited with saying something to the effect of "why bother memorizing something I can look up ?"

In a way, the whole point of having these cool dynamic labels is that we don't need to memorize what switch does what and when. We worked smarted, (or at least the designers did lol) in utilizing available tech, to give us these cool color coded switches, LCD text displays etc

I kind of view it as just taking the overall playing experience and UI further with technology, in the same way GUI's allowed us to visualize things instead of needing to envision parameters, numeric values etc.
 
lqdsnddist said:
I agree with the intent of the posts, and its a well presented and intended point.... however, wasn't it Albert Einstein (a pretty smart guy by most accounts) who was credited with saying something to the effect of "why bother memorizing something I can look up ?"

In a way, the whole point of having these cool dynamic labels is that we don't need to memorize what switch does what and when. We worked smarted, (or at least the designers did lol) in utilizing available tech, to give us these cool color coded switches, LCD text displays etc

I kind of view it as just taking the overall playing experience and UI further with technology, in the same way GUI's allowed us to visualize things instead of needing to envision parameters, numeric values etc.
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The way I see it, changing to a MIDI controller with dynamic labels is not the slippery slope to sloppy memory as its a useful tool to perform better. You can still train your brain doing other, more important cool stuff. Like learning Klingon, or the various fighting styles of the Jedi. It does not turn your brain off and dull the senses like using your smartphone does. If you're smartphone is the equivalent of doing heroine, then a smart dynamic MIDI controller is the equivalent (in my opinion) of enjoying a fine glass of wine or beer after dinner. Sure, there are better things for you, but its not the end of the world.
 
Muad'zin said:
The way I see it, changing to a MIDI controller with dynamic labels is not the slippery slope to sloppy memory as its a useful tool to perform better. You can still train your brain doing other, more important cool stuff. Like learning Klingon, or the various fighting styles of the Jedi. It does not turn your brain off and dull the senses like using your smartphone does. If you're smartphone is the equivalent of doing heroine, then a smart dynamic MIDI controller is the equivalent (in my opinion) of enjoying a fine glass of wine or beer after dinner. Sure, there are better things for you, but its not the end of the world.
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my intention wasn't to say labeled switches are bad. at all. they are great.
 
chris said:
my intention wasn't to say labeled switches are bad. at all. they are great.
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You said they allow our minds to become lazy like with the smart phone.

But I feel that with their creation and availability to the average player, it's allowed our minds to get a bit lazy and also allow us to forget about the performance aspect of performing. It's kinda like the modern smartphone that majority of the population uses these days - it's a double-edged sword.
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Again, it's great that the displays can show us text and color to help us during a performance. But I see a similar "lack of effort to remember anything" because of the displays. Now instead of remembering that we put Drive here, and Chorus there, we instead read the displays first, process that thought, then press the switch. And that moment of reading and processing can interrupt the performance. I see people full on stop playing to look at their smart controller, read all the switches, "aha! that's where it is" moment, then hit the switch, and then start the solo late. If he had just memorized where his lead switch is, he'd hit it and play much faster.
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Memory isn't perfect either. I have to memorize my switch layout for every song, because the scenes are different on every preset. I still make mistakes that way, not to mention accidentally hit the wrong button by mistake. I reckon that a controller with different colors would be very helpful indeed, like the Line-6 M-9/13 series. And if you look at the controllers of pros like The Edge, who has an insanely large controller with switches for every effect he might want to call upon at the spur of a moment, they're ALL labeled. So he knows which one to hit. If the pros think its useful, and to them performance is even more important, then I see no wrong in that.

Like I said, its a useful tool, there are other ways to train your mind. And maybe we shouldn't blame the tools for letting our memory slip, but ourselves for letting us get distracted so easily.
 
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