Arts , Tech

The sound of drag and drop

Mum was dead chuffed with me over Easter. After sorting out some quirks on her new computer I buried myself away with it, headphones on. An hour or so later I returned to present what I'd done. I hooked it up to the hi-fi and pressed play.

A minute of bluesy/funky music blasted out. You could tell everyone was impressed.

Everyone except Jez, that is. He knew what I'd done. I'd not played a single note. Instead I'd thrust my hand into a lucky-dip of loops and glued them together without much thought. "Some of my students try to get away with this," he said.

But is it really cheating? It wouldn't take long for me to run out of loops at which point my lack of musical creativity would be clear. The same's true of photo-editing programs. You can use them to make all sort of enhancements, but if you don't have a good eye or original flair you'll not get very far.

Which is precisely what my second composition showed.