Don't blame the computer! Blame...

[Agzilla]

"the computer screen is definetly a inspiration killer.. and the proof is right out there on your radio station today......"

Saw this in the ITB thread and it made me think... Cos i've never written music anywhere but on a computer or in my head, and i never had a problem with inspiration when writing stuff for the love of it...

As far as radio goes, mainstream anyway, the same old big distribution payola and giveaway 3 for 1 tactics have been employed long before everyone could have a studio at home in a box..

In fact if we go back further, to say Victorian times, many folks had a piano in the house and bought the hits as sheet music (the birth of publishing) ..which they then played themselves!

If everyone has a PC and writes their own beats and lyrics at home on computer it's no different, in fact it can only be good in the long run, after all it is the users own composition, unless all you focus on is money.

Making a living out of music is hard, always was, and will only get harder, lotta engineers outta work perhaps? Small studios closing down?

With the internet and mp3's emerging as the prefered method of distribution it is looking bad for the industry (physical) too..

But for people and expression, empowering the creative endevours of the regular Joe `public.. things have never been better..

You CAN create your track and have a go at expressing yourself without a loada Fostex fourtrack hiss, you don't need a budget to get into a studio enviroment, just build one in Logic.. No A&R approval needed to go ahead, say what you want to say, your way.

Kids are making music they love on Reason and rockin it on pirate radio for others to hear citywide without an exec in sight!

Guys put together joints in their bedroom, burn some CD's, perform a load of live shows and can win awards!

But there's the thing, live shows, that's the only glitch with the scenerio. The social aspect and performing digital music live! I know Live is good and Serato, Laptop jamming is all well and good, but it looks like crap onstage and there's not enough energy in live knob twiddling, MC's can help as can a decent scratch DJ but at the end of all the creative proccess it needs a good live performance to go all the way...

Just watch a Prodigy live set, they have been there for years and made some groundbreaking digital music, but even with face paint, dancing and fire breathing MC's the live show is sometimes pointless lookin'.. prancing around like old school Top of the Pops.

You need personality, just because you are a character it doesn't mean you have character. Don't blame the computer, it can only do so much for us, there's not a star quality charisma plugin yet!

Peace.

[theblue1]

The more things change... the more they stay the same.

In any manufacturing/production process, as technology changes, it changes the business around it.

Turntablism goes back more than a quarter century. Other aspects of what we now think of as hip hop culture have evolved along the way... the computer has, in the last 5 or 10 years, opened up yet another wave of innovations and cultural change... home recording and production, loops -- commercial and otherwise, mashups (I just noticed th at "mashup" is now a term of art in business, as well... for a moment, I was floored).


I'm not sure exactly what the thread(s) you reference were talking about, but I've seen plenty along the lines of what I imagine you're talking about...

And, along with the understandable wailing and lamentations as the recording business goes through convulsive changes in its business models and pricing structures, we also see a retrenchment away from some of these newer technologies in some quarters (usually the ones with a heavy investment in older technology -- unsurprisingly).

So the complaints radiate out from these changes and challenges: new technologies are inherently inferior; dramatically falling prices and nw recording platforms have set the bar so low that the field is flooded with newbies and folks who not only don't know much -- but don't know how much there is to know -- or how badly they need to know it; music made with new technologies is soulless and plastic; etc, etc.

Obviously, some of those complaints have merit and others, while understandable, are clearly misguided.


But there is a fundamental process at work here: the evolution of technology and markets and popular culture -- and the interactions between them.

People can rail about those changes and the rippling side-effects -- but they aren't going to be able to stop them.