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I have been playing the bass, an amateur I will admit to this. More of a novice really but I have really become a fan of distorting my bass with my hands on the strings, and I have a friend who is into the more bluesy, not simple, but not complex sounds, who says that distorting the natural notes is not music.

I beg to differ, I honestly think that just plain distortion isn't anything, but certain artists have made distortion into music.

What do you guys think?

Of course it's still music.

My opinion.

People claim that music these days isn't music, it's made by machines or distorted blah blah blah. But the artist put work into it, and it's still music.

I'll answer that question with a question:

Is computer generated graphics still art even though it is machine made and human inspired?
Is surrealist art still art even though it distorts reality?

if you distort the sound of the instrument, all it does is change the tone. it can still be making music, depending on how its done of course, but still.

that's like saying putting a mute in a brass instrument to change the tone no longer qualifies it as music. that's just stupid.

I don't mean computer generated music, I mean like what Les Claypool does with his bass. I mean people don't whammy the bass, but he does it. Distorting the bass is a rarity and he does it like no other.

I do really think that distortion is amazing, guitarists and all others are still creating music, not studio generated crap, stuff that they put together by mastering their crafts.

Is using computers as an instrument not a craft in itself? it's another instrument to be mastered, in my eyes.

I don't think the computer is, I think it removes the human element to music, and in my opinion, music needs sentience.

It is sentience, in a lower form perhaps.

Computer generated music is composed by a human. What do you think an effects pedal is? a computer, or a kind of computer.

I don't use the pedal, I use my hands, it hurts a lot more, but I want my fingers to be stronger. The wah-wah pedal is not really computerized, and also the slashing of the speakers the Kinks used to do wasn't computerized.