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Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#81

Post by Blackthorn »

solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

> All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience.

Electric bass? Heck, even in synthesizers, you have the EWI or the Haken Continuum.

Guitar (and bass) are obviously and far and away the most successful, but it does a disservice to a number of wonderful inventions to say they're the only ones. Just look at what the Japanese band T-SQUARE does with the EWI to see people innovating at the edges.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#82

Post by shermantanktop »

newzino wrote: post #23

[flagged]

What??? Where did you get this idea?

Any guitarist in a 1940s big band would have a big hollowbody guitar and an amp. That combination is incredibly prone to feedback. Everyone worked to reduce feedback and avoid it. That's what I do with my hollowbody when I play with a big band. It's the first thing that happens when you turn up.

Hendrix did not "discover" feedback, and in fact he did not discover the musical uses of feedback - you can hear it in BB King records that predate Hendrix, where feedback makes his notes "sing."

What Hendrix did was turn feedback into an intentional musical creation that he treated as a melodic voice.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#83

Post by highspeedbus »

Strange article. Even though I do like music and engineering.

>Electromagnetic pickups—(...)—fixed the loudness problem. But they left a new one: the envelope

Was it really a problem to be solved? Good tube amplifiers already existed back then. Clean guiar tone was not something frowned upon.

>Hendrix’s mission was (...)

>His solution was (...)

I don't think Hendrix was on a 'mission' to solve engineering puzzles at all. He was just experimenting, as an artist.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#84

Post by consumer451 »

stewarts wrote: post #68
consumer451 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just wanted to relate a story. I was speaking with my 14 year old nephew via messaging last month. It was about a deep topic, synthetic consciousness. He wrote such an intelligent reply that I asked him: hey, was this from an LLM? He was insulted. I did research with his parents and found out that 90% no, he's just a very smart kid. Is there a name for this this mode of confusion yet?

Strikes me as an opposite of the Uncanny Valley.

Indeed. Along the same lines, the recent "humans parading as agents" on moltbook story made me think... what is the inverse of the goal of captcha? That's impossible practically, right?

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#86

Post by solomonb »

jrm4 wrote: post #59
solomonb wrote: post #21

I strongly believe that if you set aside genre preferences the solid body electric guitar coupled to a tube amplifier is objectively the greatest electronic instrument ever created. All other electronic instruments, with the one exception being the Theramin, have a fundamental problem with human expression. There is an unsolvable disconnect between what the performer's actions and their audience. See: https://www.scr…

Great argument -- but I'd also counter that "the turntable" (i.e. in the hands of experts like Q-Bert, Craze, Rob Swift, Jazzy Jeff and others) fits this quite well -- especially re your "have the audience understand what he is doing argument"

Haha that is a great highly expressive counter example! However, as far as versatility of sound I still think the guitar+tube amp wins as you have access to all of western music theory and techniques as its still a traditional string instrument.

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#87

Post by [deleted] »

consumer451 wrote: post #51
purplekohav wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi! I work at IEEE Spectrum and there's no way an LLM wrote this. We have a pretty strict Generative AI use policy (bottom of this page https://spectrum.ieee.org/about ). I'm guessing this is from writers using actual writing techniques that Gen AI stole from...

I just wanted to relate a story. I was speaking with my 14 year old nephew via messaging last month. It was about a deep topic, synthetic consciousness. He wrote such an intelligent reply that I asked him: hey, was this from an LLM? He was insulted. I did research with his parents and found out that 90% no, he's just a very smart kid. Is there a name for this this mode of confusion yet?

[deleted]

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#89

Post by tempaccount5050 »

shermantanktop wrote: post #79
brcmthrowaway wrote: post #77

Anyone doing something artistically great is engineering in some way. The Renaissance painter, the ableton producer. It all involves mastery of tools.

That's stretching the term to the breaking point, for me. Is there some evidence of systematic analysis of component parts? attempts to model elements of the problem? data gathering and data analysis? simulation? Intentional application of principles of physics or some other pure domain to a real world problem? Artistic endeavors come from lots of places, not just people with an analytical mindset. Historically those…

> Is there some evidence of systematic analysis of component parts?

Music theory, Nashville notation

> attempts to model elements of the problem?

Ditto

> data gathering and data analysis?

Listening to a wide variety of music and understanding what make a genre a genre

> simulation?

Cover songs, writing to a style

> Intentional application of principles of physics or some other pure domain to a real world problem?

Literally sound engineering

Re: Jimi Hendrix was a systems engineer

#90

Post by alexjplant »

highspeedbus wrote: post #83

Strange article. Even though I do like music and engineering. >Electromagnetic pickups—(...)—fixed the loudness problem. But they left a new one: the envelope Was it really a problem to be solved? Good tube amplifiers already existed back then. Clean guiar tone was not something frowned upon. >Hendrix’s mission was (...) >His solution was (...) I don't think Hendrix was on a 'mission' to solve engineering puzzles at…

> I don't think Hendrix was on a 'mission' to solve engineering puzzles at all. He was just experimenting, as an artist.

1,000,000%. Guitar is one of those hobbies where people mythologize and build elaborate hagiographies around players they like and the gear that they used. Hendrix was a generational talent but I highly doubt he was sitting around enumerating problem statements and systematically exploring solution spaces. The Fuzz Face was one of like four dirtboxes available during that time so he chose that one. He flipped a guitar upside down because he could source one more easily than a lefty model. He leveraged feedback because he discovered it naturally and realized that he could make it sound totally badass.

The man clearly had a vision and executed it but his decisions were pragmatic, not the product of grand technical reasoning. It reminds me of the student who wrote a bunch of authors and asked to what degree they were conscious of the themes and symbolism in their work [1]. Many were not - as it turns out English teachers often put the cart before the horse. This is the rock and roll version of that.

I can't knock the article though as it has a lot of sound (pun intended) analysis in it as opposed to typical guitar forum dreck about NOS tube and hand-wired turret board magic.

[1] https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/12/05/document-the-...

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