Originally Posted by mr dave

After a good 15 years of flip flopping on this very issue... I'm still on fence and leaning back on the 'no' side of things. It really depends on where you draw the line. Air is a perfect example of that blur between both camps.

Then you've got a pair like Autechre who (at least at some point in the past) created their music exclusively by using/creating mathematical formulas they'd then dump into their own homebrewed software and hope for the best.

I think Billy Corgan said it best back in the day (paraphrased) - If you can't play your new song on an acoustic instrument you don't actually have much of anything.

Yes, there's a certain je ne sais quoi with great electronic performers who can transform their laptop into something else. But ultimately a laptop is not an instrument, it doesn't create so much as replicate. If push comes to shove and there's a technological apocalypse in the near future how many of those 'musicians' and producers who work exclusively with DAWs and the like would actually be able to pick up an instrument and entertain their peers? Plotting a series of notes in a tracker is not at all the same as playing that same series of notes on a piano, nor does it actually make the individual a musician in my ears.