Julian Cope presents Head Heritage | Unsung Forum | a feeling : no really new music can be recorded any more.

Dog 3000

4611 posts

Re: It's all in the machines

Aug 29, 2008, 20:03

I certainly wasn't dissing "electronic music", but it does seem to me that a lot of what's being done today in that realm isn't really a radical break from things that were being done in the 70's if not the 50's (yer Tony Conrad, Stockhausen, Eno, Kraftwerk obviously . . . ) The "means of production" has changed due to the tech, but I don't really think the "palette of sounds" the computer opens up is necessarily broader. And samplers don't really expand the palette at all, since it's just recycling pre-existing sounds.

Computers main effect on music has been the way it has changed distribution (easily transmittable identical copies), and therefore the way audiences perceive music (see interesting rant below about people having downloaded "too much" music, that they will probably never listen to -- and basically this whole thread!)

In some ways the problem might be that the latest tech gives too much capability -- you can do literally ANYTHING, so where to start? It's too easy to do something that sounds like something you've heard before.

Whereas if all you've got is an acoustic guitar, the limitations of the instrument might give you more to "push against" as it were . . . . I often think the "anybody can do it" aspect of computers on music is detrimental. (Nothing to weed out the posers from the real talent! Elitist I know . . . )

I'm largely just rambling and brainstorming here. This is a very interesting thread, I think it hits a real nerve that a lot of people are feeling!

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