The Creative Use of Contemporary Music Technology

Research paper delivered at the University of Surrey, February, 2004

Introduction

Talk of 'contemporary music technology' usually means computer-based music-making. (Assumptions are made regarding equipment: home PCs, synthesizers, software like Cubase, Logic, MAX, etc., external hardware like AKAI samplers, and-so-on).

It has been said that 'the history of musical instruments is a history of technology', and this is the context for the kinds of tools just mentioned.

They are all means to the same end: that of producing and performing music.

As such, the idea of their creative use is shared across all forms of music-making.

It's an interesting point that often, part of the reason why 'contemporary technologies' get set aside for scrutiny and discussion (in particular, about their creative value) can be traced to a mistrust engendered by certain ideological assumptions:

i) tensions relating to how we perceive authenticity of musical expression; the natural expressive 'live' performance versus falsifying mechanised automation, i.e. what we perceive as extensions of the performing body.1

ii) an unease, in some areas of music education at least, with forms of music-making that have little or no relation to the technologies of notation.

Bearing these points in mind, it is useful to think of contemporary music technologies as related to broader and shared technical, musical and social practices that are continually influencing and cross-fertilising one another.

And that to avoid a deterministic view (i.e. that the electric guitar led to rock'n'roll, or that the sampler led to techno) we can view it as both an agent and a symptom of change; as 'permeating' (alongside many other aspects of musical activity) rather than as 'determining' musical practice.2

That said, today's computer-based technologies have brought about new possibilities in composition and performance that open up new avenues of creative practice and cultural experience.

Obviously, these changes have a history (going back to the advent of music's recordability and the development of the recording studio 4) and now with the hindsight of several decades behind us, they can be simplified across some key areas.4 So, what are they?

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1. Further reading: Gilbert, J. & Pearson, E., 1999: Discographies: dance music, culture and the politics of sound (London: Routledge), Chapter 5

2. Further reading: Theberge, P., 1999: ' Technology ' , in Horner, B. & Swiss, T., eds., Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture (Malden, Mass: Blackwell)

3. Further reading: Chanan, M., 1995: Repeated Takes: a short history of recording and its effects on music (London: Verso)

4. Eno, B., 2004: ' The Studio as Compositional Tool ' in Cox, C. & Warner, D. eds., Audio Culture: readings in modern music (New York: Continuum)