Heidegger

Says Pete:

> Electronic technology allows one to pay directly with sound. You can start
> with a sine wave and mold it into a new sound. Or you can use an electronic
> instrument, and express some music with it.
>
> Electronics have been used that way musically since men figured out how to
> make sounds electronically.
>
> In the 1970s, electronics became cheap enough to make machines that could
> synthesize any sound, so long as the sound’s physical characteristics could
> be calculated. Bands could afford to buy machines that produced the sounds
> programmed into them by the manufacturers.
>
> In the 1980’s sampling technology dropped in price along with the price of
> computer technology. It became possible to take a sample of any piece of
> music, store it in standing-reserve, and call it back, along with other
> samples, and organize them in a sequence, to produce new music.
>
> Hip hop started with DJs using turntables to play short bits from different
> records together and rapping over the mix. In the mid-eighties hip hop
> groups moved to electronic samplers and sequencers, and in the nineties
> personal computers became powerful enough to replace dedicated electronic
> devices. Computers also made it easier to edit and manipulate samples, and
> also to create new sounds. Musical cultures sprang up around particular
> electronic sounds (Acid House’s use of a particular setting on the Roland
> TB-303) and samples (drums from the break in The Winston’s Amen Brother are
> the basis of Jungle, and many genres that followed).

Yep, Pete, but you missed out one the main changes in making music
electronically that doesn’t so much deal with sound (whether synthesised or
sampled) as with musical information: the advent of MIDI (musical instrument
digital interface) in the 80s which enables musical information (pitch,
duration, step time, volume, synth preset {instrument or sound}, polyphonic
channel, etc) to flow between synthesisers, drum machines, keyboards, drum
pads, computers, etc, according to a standard protocol independent of
apparatus manufacturer. This enormous advent of MIDI completely changed the
way musicians and composers work with music conceived, produced and edited
by electronic means. For example, a file created in a MIDI sequencer (a
MIDIfile) is effectively an electronically communicable score (not the
sounds of instrumental practice but the instructions necessary to realise
the piece, whatever the final sounds and instruments).

But how do these technological practices influence the actual music produced
and composed with their means, and how does this influence change (if at
all) the notion of what music is?

regards

michaelP

Posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 6:04 am
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