It's A Computer! It's An Instrument!

First of all, never mind how long it's been since my last post. I'm not even gonna go there. School and plays and natural forgetfulness have all played their parts in getting us to here and now.

What's more important is that I just found out about the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition, held at Georgia Tech on February 28th. Basically, tech-savvy - and maybe music-savvy, but not necessarily - people competed for lotsa money with the creation of unique electronic musical instruments.

I'm not huge on tech lingo, but I will let you have a look here and ogle. There are videos for most, audio samples, pictures, etc. Of particular interest to me are the following:

- The first-prize-winning Silent Drum, by Jaime Oliver;
- Hye Ki Min's lovely-sounding Sorisu. It combines music with electronics... and Sudoku;
- The vocal and versatile Toob from Arvid Tomayko-Peters. I think I'd have lotsa fun with that one;
- The Disc.o from Andrea Haider, which gives CDs new life in the music world;
- The showmanship of Thomas Gerhardt (aka DJ Porcelain and the Plates), in spinning plates and activating samples. It's like DJing on crack;
- The paper-and-ink wonder of Greg Kellum's Touch Plane. Frankly, I am more sympathetic to this one than to any of the others; and
- The future of the Blue Man Group, if they know what's good for them - D. Andrew Stewart and Joseph Malloch's T-Stick. A great blend of music and performance.

I should say, however, that none of these instruments are in any position to replace those that I know and cherish. The GuitarBot is a nice experiment, but there's no emotion whatsoever. And I really don't have anything good to say about MIDI approximations of guitar and piano sounds.

Regardless, some of these instruments are simply beautiful. It's nice to see technology going in a human direction sometimes. When people find a nice symbiosis between emotion and technology, the results can be remarkable.

What do YOU think?

Sounds About Right

With all the technology in the world well on its way - if not completely switched over - to digital form, I'm worried that the qualities of music. Yes, it is easier than ever to produce music neatly nowadays, and the effects you can play around with are as limitless as your imagination. But do we need producing a professional sound to be child's play? Artists like Kanye West and T-Pain love to use Auto-Tune, and it's becoming a legitimate instrument in the music business. Thank goodness singers no longer need to stay in-tune so much, as long as they're ok with sounding like a robot.

That is, until robots themselves gain sentience and begin recording albums themselves, with such pitch perfection that humans will never again grace the Billboard charts, as the era of our robot overlords is ushered in over the airwaves.

Ahem. Can't say enough for the dramatic.

While it's a purely qualitative aspect of music - which is in itself judged solely on personal opinion, of course - I think there is a significant difference found when you run any instrument through a computer versus an analog recording machine. It's razor-sharp, yes. It's very easy to manipulate, yes. But there's a certain warmth, a humanness, a je ne play quoi about an analog recording. Plus we might get to hear what these guys' actual voices sound like.


Listen up to maybe the coziest song ever recorded. Preferably on vinyl, if you can.
Tony Bennett - The Way You Look Tonight

*Apologies for the French pun earlier. I don't know what came over me. That's the LAST time I eat French toast before writing.

Ze Future

What you're juuuust about to read is the first of a series of blogs on the future of music, as I see it. But more specifically, how it affects you and I as consumers of music. There are plenty of factors at play here, in regards to technology, and it seems to have everyone in a tizzy. (Did he just say 'tizzy'? I blame the schools.)

So, here's my take on the whole issue of downloading music. Be it legal or piracy, be it a problem for musicians or legal watchdogs, let's have a look at the future. Didja bring popcorn?

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Conor Oberst (a.k.a. Bright Eyes) once lyricized, "The future hangs over our heads / and it moves with each current event..." So what's hanging over our heads right now? Nothing less than the future of music as a medium - that is, how we're going to get our grubby mitts on some new tunes. The current events moving this future along? The lines drawn, whether real or imaginary, between the music labels, the policing groups (notably the RIAA), and the consumers. We, the consumers, have been getting away with lots and lots of downloading without paying for the songs we're downloading. Napster had its heyday, and there's also been KaZaA, Limewire, and others with their turns in the limelight - ah. That is by no means meant to be a pun on the aforementioned downloading service... but I like it, now that it's there.

But with this freedom and expression of the Web 2.0 ideals of user-created interaction, comes legal repercussions from those who are saying, "Hey. Wait. That studio time cost us money, the mixing cost us money, and you know for damn sure that our manager takes a cut. Where's our money?!" The labels that front artists the funds aren't getting funds back. There's a bit of a gap in the nature of our economy. Granted, the RIAA lunging after consumers and nailing 15-year-olds with billion-dollar lawsuits seems like overkill, but I've not known watchdogs to be underwhelming.

The question we all have to ask ourselves is this: Just because we can get something for free, does that mean we should? I won't bother comparing this to cars or furniture or any other physical possessions, but it's worth asking yourself. If musicians are suspected of using someone else's music, they can and will be sued. It's not fair to allow one copy of an album become accessible to an unlimited sea of listeners who will then have no reason to buy said album. Simply put, if you want to hear a new album, buy the album.

So how do I feel about illegal downloading?

Here's how.