A few words about music technology

I wanted to jot a few things down at this initial stage. 

The development of new ways of writing and composing music using computers in the last 20 years has revolutionised the music industry. No longer does the musician have to go through years of formal (and expensive) training to become a successful recording artist. No longer is the composition of music entirely within the hands of the social elite.

Modern composers can, if they wish, launch their favourite (often very cheap) Digital Audio Workstation, select some presets, add a few MIDI notes here and there, do some basic mastering and have their track on SoundCloud in a matter of hours. If they compose music in this way they will no doubt find their music sitting alongside the tens of thousands of other tracks made in the last few days/weeks/years that have been written in the same way. Andy Warhol was right, everyone is able to have their 15 minutes of fame in the future. But is this what this new technology should be about; just 15 minutes of fame?

My answer would be no. In my view, a better approach to this technology is not to bash out track after track of meaningless soulless music but to shape and craft music in a way that all of our favourite recording artists do. The best music, to me, is the music that breaks the mould, pioneers a new way of listening or appreciating music, something which makes our ears prick up and our spine tingle. This is not easy to do, and takes practice - it will never be done in 5 minutes and there is no 'quick fix' to making something outstanding. 

Robert Henke mentions some very interesting thoughts which relate to this in his article 'live performance in the age of super computing' - http://www.monolake.de/interviews/supercomputing.html and his other article imaginatively entitled 'live performance in the age of super computing II' - http://www.monolake.de/interviews/hitchhiker.html