Essay- 2

Aaron Esteban 131

Before the creation of the computer and the internet, the music industry was very primitive and lacked any new innovations but when computers started to fuse with music production, the music industry grew at immense pace. This is because of the accessibility and ease of use that computers and the internet bring to the table, this means that almost anyone with a personal computer or smartphone can create music and create it easily. Many companies have released their own music production software (Digital Audio Workstation) such as Logic Pro, Ableton and FL Studio. There are also free and open source DAWs such as, Audacity and Rosegarden but these programs are not as advanced as the commercial DAWs. These DAWs allow new musicians to produce their own music without the help of a big record label.

The 1970s gave birth to the genre of electronic music, this type of music was created with new hardware called the synthesiser and new techniques such as sampling, this new genre conveyed a sense of eeriness and the unknown and that is why it was popular when paired with sci-fi shows and movies. Dr Who’s main theme is a popular example of how synthesisers were used back when they were new. When Dr Who’s main theme was being created by Delia Derbyshire the technology was very expensive and not many people knew how to use it. Now this type of music production is very inexpensive and easy to understand. Synthesisers became widely popular as many artists started using them as did vocoders but over time vocoders became less popular because computer software can now easily simulate the effect. Vocoders are still used by some artists, the most well-known being Daft Punk.

More and more artists started to jump of the technological bandwagon and artists like Michael Jackson and A-Ha used synths in their music which created a sound that defined the 80s. Early video game music was synthesised and games such as 007 Goldeneye (N64) a very distinct soundtrack that emulated the popular James Bond music on a synthesiser. Other games such as the 1999 classic, Deus Ex, tried to create the sound of the future while using 80s synthesisers.

Many traditional methods of creating music adapted new technology, the guitar had pedals that could change the effect of the guitar on the fly and the drums had a new MIDI alternative that allowed the user to play the drums directly on a computer and change the sound. The MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) was open source and helped the synthesiser and electronic music as a whole grow because of its universal capabilities. MIDI allows all of your instruments to connect seamlessly to the computer. Without MIDI the production of the music would be more time consuming and would be harder to perfect. The Mu-Tron III allowed instruments to change their sound, it was famous because it could recreate human like vowel noises. Stevie Wonder used this device and even endorsed this. Other amazing technologies that the 70s created would be the compact disc, Walkman and even the early iPod concept. Music technology was advancing very fast and many new technologies died off very early in their life because of how fast the market was advancing.

The DAW was a place where MIDIs interacted with each other, now these programs are very intuitive to use and have an easy learning curve but when they were first introduced the only people that knew how to use it would have been the people who created it. There was no guide for the program and that made them very unpopular when they were new software. The DAW became the must have tool for production of electronic music. “The amount of effects that these programs offer allows me to make to make new songs with a vastly different feel and allows many different emotions to be implemented.” Local electronic musician Airaidios said when asked about DAWs. These DAWs are very powerful but recently companies have decided to in some ways “dumb down” the program so it appeals to a wider audience. Doing this can anger hard core fans and somewhat alienate them. Some amateur programs like GarageBand have been used by professionals. The Gorillaz album 'The Fall' was made on an iPad. The GUI on some of the DAWs is very convoluted and hard to master, artists use modern synthesisers with these advanced DAWs, an artist uses many synthesisers all with different sounds and this allows the artist to experiment with many styles and many sounds.

All of this leads to a pretty simple conclusion, technology has indeed improved production practices. Professionals can pump out tunes at an alarming rate thanks to the intuitive nature of the DAW programs and thanks to synthesisers artists can experiment with a very large catalogue of different and interesting sounds. Thanks to the improvements of technology production is easy and long gone are the days when you had to be very precise and one slip up would ruin your song. Experimentation is so easy because you can always undo mistakes. It may take some challenge out of creating a stellar track but it’s still fun to make music. Overall music technology is wonderful and has improved how we make and listen to music.