| Instructor: Dr Ho Chee Kong |
Digital Music Technology: Boon or Bane?.
Jervais, Choo Soon Heng. USAR02 ["Music And Technology"], University Scholars Programme, National University Of Singapore.
At first the art of music sought and achieved purity, limpidity and sweetness of sound. Then different sounds were amalgamated, care being taken, however, to caress the ear with gentle harmonies. Today music, as it becomes continually more complicated, strives to amalgamate the most dissonant, strange and harsh sounds. In this way we come ever closer to noise-sound.
--Luigi Russolo: "The Art of Noises" (1913)
The development of technology has similarly seen a drastic development in the field of music. From the use of technology in the development and enhancement of musical instruments such as the electric guitar and the like, we have moved on to the realities that computers offer to us; that with technology, musical know-how and the ability to generate music is no longer complicit. We can now generate music, even if one does not possess any inkling of formal and traditional musical forms and knowledge. Technology has spawned an entire new genre of music that was made possible - that of computer music. It is however too myopic to proclaim the death of the musical spirit. Not everyone can be a Beethoven or a Jimi Hendrix. Rather, the electronic revolution has enhanced the avenues of music that is made available to us; such that the less talented or less privileged can create credible music, and those that do possess the talent and knowledge can go on to make use of such technologies to bring their music on to a higher level.
The development of electronic music can be traced to Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1821-1894). He was a German physicist and mathematician who built an electronically controlled instrument, known as the "Helmholtz Resonator", to analyse combinations of tones using electro-magnetically vibrating metal tines and glass or metal resonating spheres. He was however interested not in the musical possibilities of his invention, but rather in the academic study of sound that the instrument enables. Following, the first electronic instruments built from 1870 to 1915 used a variety of techniques to generate sound: the tone wheel was to survive until the 1950's in the Hammond Organ but the development of vacuum tube technology took prominence. The Vacuum tube, patented by Lee De Forest, found that its main use was in radio technology but De Forest discovered that it was possible to produce audible sounds from the tubes by a process known as heterodyning, and he quickly realised the musical potential of the heterodyning effect. In 1915, he created a musical instrument, the "Audion Piano". Other instruments to first exploit the vacuum tube were the 'Theremin' (1917), 'Ondes Martenot' (1928), the 'Sphäraphon' (1921) and the 'Pianorad' (1926). The Vacuum tube was to remain the primary type of audio synthesis until the invention of the integrated circuit in the 1960's that created a new generation of easy to use, reliable and popular electronic instruments.
The next and current generation of electronic instruments, and which are of direct interest to my essay, were the digital synthesisers in the 1980s. The advent of the digital age marked a startling revolution in the way in which music can develop, and is developing. Software has replaced the need for us to meticulously record and notate music. With the availability of the digital medium, sounds can be manipulated by the musician to create very different tones and tunes, thus bringing about a new age in the evolution of music. The digital synthesisers enable the musician to manipulate a variety of tones and tunes, sometimes to mimic other instruments, and at other times to simply replace them. A person is unlikely to be well versed in all available instruments, but with the digital synthesisers, the sounds of instruments as diverse as the cello, the trombone and the electric guitar can be reproduced onto the keyboard, and therefore manipulated easily by the musician. Where once the composer found himself constrained by the difficulty of incorporating various instrumentations into his work, the digital synthesiser enables him to produce and play those sounds from his keyboard. In addition, sounds are also being constantly reworked, and common sounds that we can find in everyday living are being reproduced and incorporated as music of the new age. These developments have created new genres of music such as the naturalistic New Age movement that uses and/or replicates sounds of nature to create "music for the soul". Another notable creation made possible by digitalisation is Techno, which will be discussed in detail later in the essay as a case study.
Though traditionalists tend to denigrate the possibilities that digital music offers, often criticising the impersonality and artificiality of digitally created music, it can perhaps be viewed at from a different and more positive perspective. As Edward J. Dent (1876-1957) in his book The Future of Music remarked, "The mechanical inventions of recent years have provided us with increased facilities for the diffusion of music" (Dent, 44). Though Dent was not specifically referring to digital music, he does touch upon a crucial point; that technology is at our fingertips to aid in the facilitation of music, and not to subvert it, or mechanise it. Digital formats have meant that music is no longer constrained by its medium. Space and time can be circumvented in the possibilities that the digital medium offers. Take for example the development of the mediums of distribution made possible by digital recordings. The Compact Discs (CD) and Mini Discs (MD) serve as evidence of the proliferation of the digital formats in the market today. Almost all music can be found on these formats, from Classical genres to new age Techno genres. As such, time is circumvented, where even the classics of the past can be reproduced and enhanced for present day enjoyment. The commercialisation and popularisation of music ensures that the search for better ways to listen and appreciate music is always on, and the digital revolution assures us that the distribution of music can only be enhanced. This has led to the development of digital formats such as MP3 and Midi. Music can now be shared over the Internet in any of several different formats, and a musician in the United States can just as easily share his compositions with a counterpart in Singapore as he can with his neighbour. Space has thus become inconsequential in the quest for better music.
Of course, the downside and response to such open commercialisation is that the systems and formats tend to be abused. With easier access to the transfer of digital information, borne through the development of Internet technology, music piracy is at its most challenging to the industry. For every original shared piece of music on the net, there are a hundred pirated ones. Recent legal wrangling that has been dominating the headlines on music piracy would focus on the Napster case presently being tried in the United States. Napster is a software program that lets users share their MP3 music on the Internet, thus enabling large-scale piracy and flaunting of copyright laws. Music from conventional mediums can be uploaded as digital formats by those with the equipment, and then blatantly shared and transferred across the Internet throughout the "wired" world.
However, Napster's main defence, which is highly valid, is that they only create the means for the transfer of information, and how users use or abuse the system is not their fault directly -- and that claim is highly validated when we consider that when Napster's operations were under scrutiny, users simply switched to other existing programs that enable them to do the same. Napster was simply the most popular of the lot, and the one that the legal eagles decided to hassle. The crux of the matter is that eventually, the responsibility should be down to the individual, but the Internet has blurred the lines between the individual and the collective responsibility. Where the individual becomes lost within the system, it creates an anonymity and Internet façade that one can hide behind. One can just as easily register for Internet services and applications posing as someone else, and from a different country even. Internet proliferation means that it is hardly possible to control individual actions on the Internet. The focus then falls upon the issue of how to educate individuals into not misusing technology. In the instance of the music industry, that might just be crucial to the development of the industry. Following the age of CD music, the next logical step that follows would lie in the development of MP3s in the industry. With a host of MP3 players already vying for market control, the challenge for the music industry would be in harnessing the advantages of MP3 and minimising the problems associated with it. As Jon Savage in his article entitled Machine Soul: A History of Techno remarked, "Post-war pop culture is predicated on technology, and its use in mass production and consumption. Today's music technology inevitably favours unlimited mass reproduction, which is one of the reasons why the music industry, using the weapon of copyright, is always fighting a rearguard battle against its free availability". The digital phenomenon has already taken root, and the industry has to learn to adapt to rather than to attempt the impossible in trying to control it.
Evidence of the permanence of digital culture can be seen in the rise of the genre of music known as electronica. The early forms of electronic music can be traced to the German music explosion following the post war period. Most German bands during the immediate post-war period only played covers of American or British songs, and the dearth of originality led to a musical explosion as the search for a German musical identity took place. There, a two-piece band-group known as Kraftwerk set in motion an electronic music revolution. Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter were originally part of a band known as Organisation, but eventually broke away and formed Kraftwerk and proceeded to take electronic music into a different plateau and popularised it in the 70s. The music of Kraftwerk pre-dates electro, house, ambient and techno by almost 20 years, and can be considered a pioneer to the development of electronic music in the industry. In their own words, "The mechanical universe of Kraftwerk has been cloned or copied in Detroit, Brussels, Milan, Manchester, and even psychedelicised by the delirium of house music. You can define it as you want: sci-fi music, techno-disco, cybernetic rock, but the term I prefer even so is robot pop. It fits in with our objective which consists of working without respite toward the construction of the perfect pop song for the tribes of the global village" (from http://kraftwerk.playhear.com/html/main.isx).
Kraftwerk set in motion an electronica revolution in the music industry, and the significance of such a revolution is perhaps worth closer examination. Electronic music has brought to the forefront a transcending of language and cultures. It has also created an entire world full of potential musicians. No longer are individuals bound by the limitations of inadequate ability and knowledge of music. At its best, today's new digital technology can bring about a free interplay of ideas and provide the groundwork and avenue for a real exchange of information. With appropriate software programs, and a click of a mouse, aspiring musicians can just as easily produce a digital track as a classically trained pianist. However, that comparison is perhaps inadequate, as electronica falls into a different definition altogether of music. Instead, what is worth looking at is the fact that the digitalisation of music has created an entire new process to the development and composition of music. Kraftwerk, though comprising of two classically trained musicians, abandoned conventional instruments and instead adopted the use of electronic equipments. Schneider was originally a trained flutist, but he eventually discarded it completely. As he himself admitted, "I found that the flute was too limiting... Soon I bought a microphone, then loudspeakers, then an echo, and then a synthesizer. Much later I threw the flute away, it was a sort of process" (Dent, 44) that marked an acknowledgement that the rise of synthesised music has in a way made obsolete the traditional instruments, at least in this specialised form of music known as electronica. Instead, they turned to manipulating sounds that are conventionally un-musical. Noise and industrial sounds were adapted and reproduced in fusion with bass and beats to herald a new age in music. An example can be found in their work "Trans-Europe Express", in 1977. The highlight of the album can be seen in a 13-minute sequence that simulates a rail journey: the click-clack of metal wheels on metal rails, the rise and fade of a whistle as the train passes, the creaking of coach bodies, the final screech of metal on metal as the train stops. They were to follow this up in 1978 with "Man Machine", further developing ideas of an international language of music, and of the synthesis between Man and machine (from http://music.hyperreal.org/library/machine_soul.html).
The influence of Kraftwerk was to be seen in the rise of electronic music, and that influence is clearly demonstrated by the rise of techno. In the 80s, a trio of pioneers in Detroit began merging the sounds of Kraftwerk with funk. Juan Atkins, Derrick May, and Kevin Saunderson combined synthesizer beats with bass-lines inspired by groups such as Parliament, George Clinton, and Funkadelic. In 1983 Atkins and Richard Davies, also know as 3070, released the hit "Techno City" under the name Cybotron, and "Techno" was born (from http://www.gridface.com/features/techno.htm). Techno music is characterised by its heavy bass and repetitiveness. It was specifically created as a dance genre, and caters to the club scene. While African American techno jockeys dominated the 80s, the 90s saw a marked revival of the techno movement as the predominantly white European scene caught on to the beat.
The revival also saw the proliferation of rave culture around the 1990s. Rave parties were popularised, where drugs and trance went hand in hand with almost hallucinogenic states of dance zombie-ism. Drugs and music have had a long-standing, and very disturbing relationship. Waiting For The Man: The Story of Drugs and Popular Music by Harry Shapiro traces the development of drugs and music that seem to go hand in hand. Notable legends such as Elvis Presley, Jim Morrison, Sid Vicious and Jimi Hendrix (just to name a few) have all been stained with drugs. It seems to suggest that drugs and music influence and affect each other, either as a result of the lifestyle, or as a creative influence for the music. This claim seems to be once again substantiated as many illegal and underground rave parties sprung up, and "hardcore" techno was born. Unrelenting bass and fast beats accompanied chipmunky vocals and jingly pop-hooks. However, many of these tracks were filled with copyright violations and were distributed on bootleg records known as "white labels." By 1992, hardcore techno was mainstream in England with The Prodigy's "Charly" hitting high on the popular charts. When the record industry realised that techno could sell, it became much more commercialised as more and more artists came into the scene. With commercialism however, techno also began to adopt a more publicly palatable tone as compared to the original forms, but the drugs still remain and are very much a part and process of the development of the techno industry. Though techno does not explicitly encourage drugs, it is undoubtedly catered to a drug-induced dance audience in mind.
In techno, we see clearly the result of the digital music technology revolution. Within a short span of twenty years, it rose from conception to mass popularisation. Now, techno has entrenched itself into modern music. The club scene is dominated by techno, in its many forms and variants. Rave culture, though more moderated and less publicly visible (society now chooses to condone and ignore), still exists and has found its place within modern dance and club culture. Techno pop has become all the rage today, and groups such as Aqua have brought new life into the scene, where their techno influenced sounds present a certain mass appeal that pure techno did not manage to achieve. For all its constant evolution, techno and electronically generated music serves to remind us of the relationship between man and computers. Technology and man have become inseparable, and that relationship is reflected in his music. We can just as easily trace the development of music through the development of technology, and the fact is that we are constantly searching for new ways to produce new sounds. Electronic music offers us many diverse possibilities, and the computer age has seen a need for us to re-define our conceptions of music. Music nowadays cannot grow without technology, and the fact is that we need to grow with it as well.
However, taking another perspective, we can look at the rise of electronic music in a dystopian light, and look at the cautionary signs that warn us of our reliance on technology. Computers have taken over control of practically every aspect of our lives. Should all the computers in the world choose to shut down, most of the world would be plunged into chaos. It is this reliance on computers that provoke a story of caution such as that portrayed in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, George Orwell's 1984, and Anthony Burgess' Clockwork Orange. The subversive potential of music, though not scientifically documented, is certainly visible for all to see. Music has the potential to affect moods, and therefore actions. Subliminal messages can be transferred through the lyrics, or simply the tunes and tones. In Clockwork Orange, a situation is created whereby the actions of the protagonist are controlled through subverting the mind via repetitive suggestion. It contends that if a person is subjected to a suggestion long enough, it has the potential to control his very behaviour - and one such tool that can be used is that of music.
We see the role that music plays in today's society by the many forms it assumes. From the television commercials that try to convince us over and over again that Product A is good and that we can't do without it, to the national anthems that we sing practically everyday when young that reminds us of our allegiance to a particular country (divisionism as opposed to a collective world consciousness?). Dance music compels one to move and dance to the beat, and some contend that it perpetuates a drug-induced state of mind that simply blanks out everything else. New age music claim to be able to sooth nerves or calm the mind, or even excite the senses and raise passions to a higher level. Studies have also been made to suggest that certain classical pieces, such as Mozart's "Sonata in D for Two Pianos", has the ability to make you smarter. Undoubtedly, there would probably be corresponding studies to show that certain forms of music make one dumber! The over-whelming evidence seems to suggest that music can indeed affect actions and thoughts to a varying degree, and technology has created the avenue by which a form of mind control is actually made possible by simply discovering the right frequency or the right beat. To stretch the issue further, who is to say that this development is not being exploited right this very moment? Technology is a tool that man can choose to either use or abuse, and music today can be seen as either a product or a focal point of technology.
Digital music technology presents to us yet another dilemma of sorts. We have a situation where the quality of sound and music is enhanced tremendously via the use of computers. Where once menial and laborious processes of editing and refining took place, digital technology has enabled the producers to "clean up" recordings with ease. Tracks can be easily merged, cut or pasted over with the use of computers, and it has created a whole new twist to the industry. New sounds are constantly emerging as new techniques in sound engineering are developed. We see a situation where two artistes can collaborate to produce a track without even having to meet each other! The possibilities seem endless as even laymen, with simple programs, can manipulate and merge various musical tracks to create the sound or music that suits their purpose. Dance sequences constantly re-work various tracks to suit the dance. However, such re-workings are often done regardless of copyright laws. Such flexibility creates its own problems as we now have a situation where the music is truly "free" -- both in an aesthetic sense as well as a literal sense. Once released, artistes no longer have control over their music, or rather, they have even less control now then they ever did.
Another spin on digital music processing is that we can no longer trust that the music as released under a particular artiste is purely his own work and spawned of his own creativity. The producers and music directors have as much a say, and in some cases even more control, as the artiste. Albums are released to suit the tastes of consumers. Market demand rules, and digital technology creates a situation where the music is flexible and therefore easily manipulated. An artiste's voice, tone, pitch, timbre and volume can be easily adjusted such that we can no longer judge the quality of an artiste simply by the albums that he has released. Even Beethoven has been re-released as techno-trance tracks through digital editing. Who is to say that the sound technicians that run the industry are not the real talents behind the packaging?
Music and technology have developed side by side. With new technology emerging, music has also seen and met the need to evolve. Music Television has seen the introduction of images into the music. Artistes such as Britney Spears are known as much for their music as they are for their dance routines and sexy images on screen. Michael Jackson was revered as much for his showmanship as well as for his musical talent. The audience is not only listening, they are also watching. Digital imaging has seen the development of Music videos taken to another level, where we not only anticipate the release of a track, but also the mandatory video that accompanies every successful track as well. We can now access music and videos on the Internet with ease, and the proliferation is such that it is almost impossible to curb its spread. Illegal or not, Internet zone remains very much outside the practical control of any government. Right now, we also have mobile phones that can play MP3 songs, and who is to say that before long we shall have watches that show Music videos? Developments are already under way. Digital technology has changed the industry beyond recognition, and one can only wonder how far it can go.
To conclude, we can clearly see the influence that digital technology has exerted upon the music industry. The effects are there to stay, for better or for worse. The use of standardised digital formats such as MP3 and Midi has meant that music has now broken through the confines of its genre and has entered a global music community relishing the chance to develop music without the politics and controls that had previously blanketed it. Unfortunately, with the loss of control, it also creates a cacophony of problems that threaten to overwhelm the industry. While artistes remain unprotected by obsolete copyright laws, struggling aspirants would find it even more difficult to break into the scene as much needed revenue is constantly siphoned away by music pirates. On the other hand, digital music technology has seen an explosion in the development of music that looks to only grow greater by the day. Electronica, New Age and Pop have had makeovers and taken on new dimensions with the advent of digitalisation. Technology is here to stay, and evolve. Music likewise evolves with it, and we can only hope to adapt to it as quickly as it adapts to us. For all its problems, the digital age poses endless possibilities for music, and it remains to be seen what new dimensions it may yet assume.
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