h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Whatever your tastes in music, it is clear that the majority of modern music is highly engineered, computerized, and electronic.

Lost on today's performers is the idea of a live performance with an actual band playing instruments. The number of performers seen on television who perform to a taped instrumental (often also lip-synching the vocals) has increased. Electric guitars replaced horn sections, synthesizers have replaced guitars, and ultimately engineers have replaced talent.

When I hear a well-played acoustic set, I always give the artist/performer the benefit of the doubt and try to listen and evaluate the musical qualities of the performance. All too frequently, though, the performers are using so much electronica and playing at such a high volume that the sound is little more intelligible from white noise.

A colorful old Italian man at my old music studio continues to claim that rock & roll destroyed the world. While I don't agree with that, I feel technology has depersonalized what many people listen to. I applaud the new groups that continue to try to innovate with musical blends of voices and instruments; I condemn music buyers for allowing studio engineers to substitute for skilled performers. Isn't it more exciting to listen to someone who's practiced their craft for years than get a CD of someone who has little talent but a big production budget?

Billie Holliday had a gorgeous voice. It was not engineered. She did not have a beautiful face, but it didn't matter because her voice was unequaled. Today, she'd go almost unnoticed outside of her hometown because people are so accustomed to hearing blended, equalized, electronically mauled sounds.

I could not agree more. For many years I have been making music with just Guitars, Bass and Drums (at stupidly loud volumes I admit) and I find that when I give out Demos, anyone under the age of 20 can not belive that I'm not using a synth!! The fact that I am PLAYING a real instument and the drummer is hitting things with sticks makes them shake their heads with pity!!!

As someone who is busy writing a possible project on Kraftwerk, I think it is worth point out that 'engineering' music may take as much talent, in it's own way, as anything else.
The Man Machine were four classically trained musicians who saw a different way forward, is all. What bands like the Chemical Brothers and Renegade Soundwave do is as valid as anything else out there-it's a matter of taste.

OOOOps.... my last posting was done when I was very bleary eyed and I appear to have come across as a technophobe! I am a big fan of electronic music and will agree that it is a valid musical genre. I guess that the point I was trying (clumsily) to make was that a lot of people today seem to think music can only be produced by computers and there are no alternatives available.

I think it's certainly fair to say that htere are a number of blinkered types out there who hold that to be true, yes.

OK, so if it's "engineering" music, which you seem to be somewhat willing to discuss, is it possible that we've entered a new genre? Is it now sometihng more along the lines of a computer program? Is it possibly to be considered something different, as a painting and a sculpture are understood to be different mediums, though both artistically expressive?

My difficulty in accepting highly electronic music is what I see as a distinct lack of emotion. I have a very, very difficult time accepting a programmed flurry of electronic sounds as being 'music' when I compare it to John Coltrane's playing on the "Live at Birdland" album, or Vassar Clemens' fiddle on John Hartford's "They're Gonna Tear Down The Grand Ole Opry".

Though I don't want to wax too metaphysical, the artists I mentioned above spent years and years of rigorous, physical, and intellectual practice to develop their craft. Is there a totally different paradigm for engineered music, as opposed to performed music? Is there a certain intangible quality to that which a living being can impart to a note which cannot be matched by computers? Can a computerized song be compared with what they did?

Maybe the answer is that they shouldn't be compared at all--perhaps the medium is so different that you can't argue for musical equality. I'm trying to keep an open mind, believe it or not, in asking this. What do you think?

People are strange things and their tastes differ. Look at some of the songs that never got to Number 1 (I live in the UK so it's the UK chart I'm referring to)

Baker Street - Gerry Raferty

Vienna - Ultravox

The latter was kept from the top spot by a song I'd love to have never heard, called "Shuddupaya Face"

I would also bring the media into the equation as well - look at the song "Evergreen" by Will whateverhisnameis, that song was ALWAYS going to be number 1 because the media brainwashed an entire generation/nation into thinking it was a great song. Listen to it closely and it's mediocre at best.

I must admit, dance music, which is heavily studio created is not my cup of Darjeeling and never will be. I did however love some of the early Jean Michell Jarre stuff. Maybe it's a rhythem verses melody thing. Melody wins it most times for me



Bassman

'Vienna' sounds horribly dated these days, a very bad example of electronic rock compared to the vitality of what John Foxx had been doing with Ultravox before he was replaced by Midge Ure.

I've just come into work listening to 'Made In Medina' by Rachid Taha. It's use of electronics to compliment both the rock and traditional North African aspects of the music is stunning.

As to the idea that you can't do with a computer what you can do with a sax, no, but then John Coltrane couldn't have composed the sublime melodies to be found in Kraftwerk's best music. Music is about an interaction between performer and audience. How it's achieved is irrelavent.

As to attempting to split it into two schools, who does that benefit exactly? Why can't the two styles continue to inform and influence each other, in ways such as US3's 'Pass the Torch', a thrilling and moving blend of jazz and hip-hop?n (Sanctioned and released on Blue Note, before somebody has a fit...)

I think I'm trying to be puritanical but in an open-minded person's clothes. Rather hypocritical of me, but it's as close as I get to trying to see things someone else's way.

Jazzdom is particularly known for its snobbery; in some ways worse than classical music snobs, jazz snobs can really be awful. Not that all jazz listeners are such, but those that are REALLY are. I know sax players with 50s/60s sounds who think that modern sounding players are contemptible. Louis Armstrong did not like Dizzy Gillespie at all, and only in his later years acknowledged the younger player's contributions.

There is a very real sense that newer electronic music lacks the quality of the older acoustic stuff because it's too easy. I've played clarinet and sax for over ten years, often practicing for hours a day to achieve a better sound/technique/harmonic understanding, and I don't like the idea that a kid with a synthesizer and a sequencer can play something more popular after a few months' work.

Perhaps someone on this board could inform us as to how long it takes to master the art of composing and performing electronic music, and a little bit about the difficulties and complexities? Maybe if traditional acoustic musicians and listeners knew more about electronica they'd have more respect for it.

I think it depends what sort of electronica you are talking about.
Kraftwerk deliberaterlty chose to use synths (a fledgling form way back in 72) because it offered them a bigger palate of sounds to compose with.
Wendy (nee Walter) Carlos used to have to sequence each note seperately on his MOOG when he composed the soundtrack for Clockwork Orange.

Synths do represent an easier way to perform music, which may or may not be a good thing, depending on your point of view. The trick is to use them properly. Whether or not you consider bands as different as Kraftwerk, Daftpunk, Laibach, Leftfield and Gary Numan to be doing that is purely a matter of taste.

I hope I can offer some sort of insight. My main instrument is the guitar. Always has been and always will. For me, it is the means for my emotions to be expressed through music. (That, and a vocal style described as a drunk tramp shouting at passers by!)

I brought a sequencer as an aid for home recording. For some unknown reason, the wife objected to my drummer playing in the living room at 3.00am. Just like a computer, it will only perform functions that you have programmed in. Put in a crap bass line or poorly constucted song and the end result is gonna be rubbish. You've got to have basic musical ability at the very least to stand a chance of producing a worthwhile song. From interviews I've read about Air, Leftfield, Kraftwerk etc, they can all play instruments but prefer the electronic medium.

Time to make music! I always start with the bass drum and then add snare, toms, hi-hats, ride, etc. Play and replay to get the levels right. Put on a bass line. I can play bass, so it's not too hard for me but I've seen people struggle to get a nice flow. Add keyboards,strings, bleepy noise. Play and replay to get volume levels and balance. You have now recorded your intro. This will probably be 8, 16 or 32 bars long. Now do it all again for verse, chorus, bridge, drop down, build up, outro, finish. Join them all together and play. Realise it's wanky and start again. I've known people spend months on one track and pour their hearts and souls into it. Do these emotions come across on the song? That's not for me to say.

At least they are making music, even if it's not something I would like. My little brother wants to be a DJ and when I suggested that instead of spending months playing other peoples records, he could actually learn to make the music he loves, he looked at me as if I were insane! Hope this has helped a bit.

Here's a good one - how about Tubular bells. Mike Oldfield is a guitarist, although he played all the other instruments, he cheated. He played everything an octave low, and put the tape recorder to half speed because he wasn't proficient on the other instruments. If he'd used a synth, he could have done everything on that and only have had to get his head round a standard keyboard. But this is classed as an all time great album.



Bassman

Your concept of making music is so totally, completely different from mine I almost don't know where to begin addressing it. Without question someone doing electronic music seems to take a much more prepared approach; perhaps this is largely what has been/will be happening in popular music.

By prepared I mean that most of the sounds are generated, refined, timed, edited, etc., before the music is heard by an audience, or even before the performer/programmer/engineer has a concept of the whole. Compare that with jazz, where the melody and basic harmonic structure is known by the performers, but after stating the melody they compose/improvise/interact musically in a performance that no one, including them, has heard before. Even in a fairly well rehearsed pop-song format, performers have to be able to play technically and emotively to achieve some degree of aesthetic quality.

Things change, music is obviously no exception. I can only conclude that those listening to electronic music are looking for something largely unrelated to what I like in music. It seems that many people feel that way, making electronic music more popular at this time. I don't know what is driving that.

There's an interesting question: WHY do people like what popular today, instead of still listening to Sinatra? Clearly there are those who still like Sinatra, even younger folks, but then why are they so outnumbered by Britney Spears fans? What in human terms of like and dislike is driving the move towards more electronic and highly produced music?

I couldn't say for sure. As I like Sinatra AND Kraftwerk, but find most jazz a crashing bore, I may not be the best to answer that.
Certainly the rise of music like rap and hip hop has to do with alienation, the rise of a do it yourself ethic that didn't require musical expertise, just access to a record player and a quick wit and a way with words. Just as country was the white man's blues, Rap is the black equaivalent of punk.
Groups with a skill like that possessed by the Wu Tang Clan should be given respect though-what they do, when they do it well, isn't easy at all, and requires split second timing and an ability to use language in a away that is more vital and dynamic than any other source on earth at the moment.
As for Britney, well, God bless her. What's wrong with a little bit of showbiz now and again?

One of the problems about improvised playing is in the recording. I live in London and have to go 70 miles away to a studio that can record us live. We have the basic song structure worked out but i like to improvise solos and vocals as we go along. You can only do this when the band are playing together and can take musical cues off each other. Most studios can't/won't record this way. Each instrument is laid down, one at a time until everything is in place. You can be singing vocals three days after the drummer has hit his first beat! Full marks to anyone who can improvise in such conditions. I'm not enough of a musician to do this.

Another factor is the ability of musicians today? Take the musical genres that have been mentioned previously: jazz/classical/guitar/rap/hip-hop/electronica/N.African etc. All able to play their b*****ks off but its just a drop in the ocean to what people seem to want - J-Lo, Corrs, westlife. I can't quite see J-Lo demanding her first vocal take will be the only one she does as her own personal muse is demanding that she try something radical and anymore than one take will destroy her musical integrity

I have heard two different tales about Sinatra.
1) He used to turn up for a recording, listen to the songs once, sing all in one take and then leave.
2) He would go over the songs for months, swimming lap after lap, to practice breath control and stamina and only record when he thought he understood every aspect of it. maybe he did both.....brilliant!!!

Give him a couple of years and he could be as good as Robbie Williams

You have to go 70 miles to find a studio? Jeez that takes dedictaion.
Can i ask where you live? (Rough geographical region sufficient.)

I regularly travel 75 or so miles to reherse or gig, as I don't live locally to where the rest of my band is.



Bassman

Wimbledon area. I should of been a bit more precise. There probably are at least 6-7 studios in Central london I could use which could record us live but they are so expensive there is no way we can afford them.

Looking back I should of said " due to economics we have to drive 70 blah,blah,blah"

I sometimes post things in such a rush, often things get left out. Still it's a very small proportion of studios that can cater for what i want to do!!

Bassman...... 75 miles for a rehearsal???? You poor thing. I have to travel almost 4 miles to get to mine Luckily for me all the band live within a 5 mile radius. 75 miles????? ouch.

Well, no problem with what you said from me. I just wondered if I was able to offer somewhere nearer as a potential alternative and I don't honestly think I am.

75 miles for a rehearsal must seriously cramp the band's style man, or do you not find that problem, Bassman?