On a plane to Munich I had to sit with someone who talked my ear off about how computer based music was not "organic" or "natural" music, and that it had no "soul". I think he was really just nervous about crashing head on into the sea, which I was praying to happen just so I didn't have to listen to his ramblings for the next four hours.
Later when I got off the plane (sitting with a lot of time on my hands waiting for a connecting flight) I thought about how, despite my own opinions as an electronic musician, this belief that computer based music loses the "soul" of a sound raised a lot of questions.
The soul is the same concept to me as music is. The soul is intangible, but can also be developed and improved upon, just like things that are tangible.
The soul can also be recorded and played back through art, writing, film, rebellion, nature and all that good stuff.
The only thing is that we know a lot more about music than we do about the soul. Music is no secret to the ones who make it, or at least the process of making it isn't a secret.
Music obviously started with an instrument, maybe the voice or maybe 2 stones hitting together in some sort of rhythm, then it probably moved on to a goatskin stretched across a wooden membrane and some horse hairs on a bow etc. From what we can tell by looking back in history and seeing where we are today, music was used as a way to communicate as well as to tell myths, and helped the people listening to the stories to experience the myth's more intensely (that's all I strive to do, tell a ghost story while beating the drum, whether it be a real one or a lap top).
Taking a step back in time, it reminded me of my own issues with computer based music software versus analogue hardware. Despite my prejudices I'm almost entirely digital for the portability and the wide spectrum of possibilities that comes with it but one thing that keeps me yearning for analogue is the noise of it. My main problem with digital music applications is the silence that is there to start with. If you record nothing at all onto analogue tape and play it back there's still something there. I always needed some noise to begin the working process with, a tone or some hiss seeping through the faders of a beat up old Alan and Heath and then take it from there.
However now digital music applications are becoming more of a tool for creating noise, sometimes at the most micro of levels. What we're hearing now in music is that the sounds have become more and more complex. You can tell by listening to underground electronic music these days which is incorporating a higher bandwidth of hi frequencies and sub bass as well as contemporary notated music which had been leaning further to incorporating prepared instruments, electronic sounds and extended techniques. Both genres overall just incorporating a wider spectrum of noise, harmonics, overtones, beating tones etc.
What is happening is people are yearning for more noise and it's becoming more and more acceptable to hear it, so we are actually improving our ears by being able to hear sound in a different way. Who knows, maybe the more these sounds become filled with other noises and are incorporated into contemporary pop music, that within a hundred years our ears will be so open that we'll be able to hear a bird singing from a mile away, or a fox in the woods in the catskills while we're sitting in a coffee shop in Brooklyn.
So all this talk about noise just makes me wonder - Could this be the "soul" this person is talking about? Noise? Probably the best description of the intangible soul I can think of is that. The soul in music is noise, and the soul in us is also noise, the essence of us hidden because of the fear it would bring to see or hear it.
Later when I got off the plane (sitting with a lot of time on my hands waiting for a connecting flight) I thought about how, despite my own opinions as an electronic musician, this belief that computer based music loses the "soul" of a sound raised a lot of questions.
The soul is the same concept to me as music is. The soul is intangible, but can also be developed and improved upon, just like things that are tangible.
The soul can also be recorded and played back through art, writing, film, rebellion, nature and all that good stuff.
The only thing is that we know a lot more about music than we do about the soul. Music is no secret to the ones who make it, or at least the process of making it isn't a secret.
Music obviously started with an instrument, maybe the voice or maybe 2 stones hitting together in some sort of rhythm, then it probably moved on to a goatskin stretched across a wooden membrane and some horse hairs on a bow etc. From what we can tell by looking back in history and seeing where we are today, music was used as a way to communicate as well as to tell myths, and helped the people listening to the stories to experience the myth's more intensely (that's all I strive to do, tell a ghost story while beating the drum, whether it be a real one or a lap top).
Taking a step back in time, it reminded me of my own issues with computer based music software versus analogue hardware. Despite my prejudices I'm almost entirely digital for the portability and the wide spectrum of possibilities that comes with it but one thing that keeps me yearning for analogue is the noise of it. My main problem with digital music applications is the silence that is there to start with. If you record nothing at all onto analogue tape and play it back there's still something there. I always needed some noise to begin the working process with, a tone or some hiss seeping through the faders of a beat up old Alan and Heath and then take it from there.
However now digital music applications are becoming more of a tool for creating noise, sometimes at the most micro of levels. What we're hearing now in music is that the sounds have become more and more complex. You can tell by listening to underground electronic music these days which is incorporating a higher bandwidth of hi frequencies and sub bass as well as contemporary notated music which had been leaning further to incorporating prepared instruments, electronic sounds and extended techniques. Both genres overall just incorporating a wider spectrum of noise, harmonics, overtones, beating tones etc.
What is happening is people are yearning for more noise and it's becoming more and more acceptable to hear it, so we are actually improving our ears by being able to hear sound in a different way. Who knows, maybe the more these sounds become filled with other noises and are incorporated into contemporary pop music, that within a hundred years our ears will be so open that we'll be able to hear a bird singing from a mile away, or a fox in the woods in the catskills while we're sitting in a coffee shop in Brooklyn.
So all this talk about noise just makes me wonder - Could this be the "soul" this person is talking about? Noise? Probably the best description of the intangible soul I can think of is that. The soul in music is noise, and the soul in us is also noise, the essence of us hidden because of the fear it would bring to see or hear it.
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