American Composers II & New Technology - Essay Example

Capturing Sound Sound recording has positively changed the way we listen to and create music. Starting with the phonograph the American public was able to hear music in their homes that had only been available previously through live music. Live performances and allowed people to enjoy music but it wasnt always affordable. With the phonograph, they were able to hear sound in a more intimate setting. The record that was played on the phonograph was important to these first beginnings because it was the first time a plastic disk was able to be played. For the early listener this made the music tangible "when sound is recorded and preserved in a physical medium, however, the listeners consumption need not end when the singing is over, for the music can be separated from the performer and be replayed without the artists consent" (10). This also allowed people to choose what they wanted to listen to and collect records. The availability of records at reasonable prices allowed the consumer to have as many as they could afford. They allowed people to listen to their favorite artist for less than the price of a concert ticket (12). The cassette tape developed in 1963 made this an even easier venture because of its construction and size (12). This small cassette "changed the pop music scene" (13) because it again was cheaper and the manufactures could use smaller labels and individuals could create their own recordings. On example of this is shown in the research done by Peter Manuel who studied North American Indian Music. Because of the cassette different people could make GCI was able to make a variety of songs using a small group of singers who could record these variations (13). As time moved on music became more portable because it became smaller and easier to take wherever someone was going. This allowed listeners to determine where they listened and they could listen to music with other people. One of the drawbacks for some listeners was that although they could enjoy the music they couldn’t see the person who was singing. The Stereophone and the Illustrated Song Machine were created to resolve this issue by adding a simple mechanism that played pictures in time to the music when played on a cylinder. These were invented in 1905 gave rise to the "projecting phonograph" created by Albert Wier. (19) These illustrations point out the fact that in the early days of the phonograph people wanted to have an experience that was as much like real life--if a voice was coming from something in their home, they wanted to see who was voicing the sound. As time went on people started to research this need for people to have to see what they were hearing. An experiment by psychologists Harry McGurk and John MacDonald showed important seeing the individual was to the overall enjoyment of the music. Their experiment showed that "what we hear is deeply influenced by what we see." (21) An example of this happened in the 1980s with the group Milli Vanilli. They became very popular because of they were extremely good looking and they danced very well in their routines. The challenge for them was that they had lip-synched the records of "two unknown performers." There was a backlash and they were never heard of again but the point was that the record producers wanted to make sure that a "pretty" package was put before the public so that their enjoyment would be stronger (21). Other researches found that it was more of a positive situation when an individual couldnt see the actual person behind the voice when listening to music because it allowed them to concentrate more fully on the music and not the individual. As Katz says, "the removal of visual cues, certainly no accident, separates body from sound, heightening the sense that the music comes not from humans but from heaven." (21).The debate whether people need to see something or whether they can do without the visual and just make it up in their minds continued to be debated. The invention of recordings also allowed people to expect that what they heard on one recording would the same on another version. This spoke to how the music was repeatable by different artists. Katz says that as listeners hear particular music their expectations of what is next is enhanced. As an example, once a listener hears Beethovens Fifth Symphony they expect that whenever it is heard again, it will start with the first four notes (25). For performers repetition could either enhance or hurt their work but some composers were influenced by its use. One of the composers that were influenced by repetition was Steve Reich. He did a lot of work with minimalism which was the "repetition and gradual development of brief musical cells" (30). He experimented with the concept of "tape loops" where he took a too a length of recorded magnetic tape, taped them together and then played it back on a reel-to-reel machine and studied its effect. What he found was that the loops would go out of synch slowly which created a process that he named, "phase shifting" (30). One example how repetition may have enhanced a composers work was Reichs Music for 18 Musicians that he created in 1976. This was scored for piano or electric keyboard, clarinet, violin, cello, various percussion, soprano and alto female voices (handout). The music is interesting because it is meticulously done using repeated phrases that are centered on a train. We hear train whistles and certain repeated phrases ("its a problem", "Im gonna pass this train, " "1939") that enhance the music because the pulses actually sound like a train moving down a track (sound recording). The repeatability of music created a venue for what was considered good music and because it was portable, it allowed people across continents to hear it. As an example, it was a way for African Americans to start hearing classical music at home as they were often banned from live performances (52). Because music could be repeated, it was portable and it was affordable people were able to hear it in many places but not across America; this was resolved by the invention of the phonograph (53). The phonograph was open to all and it was especially useful for those who didnt feel they could afford concerts and poor people (55). The phonograph changed many things about the American culture when it was brought into peoples homes. For instance, there were a variety of ads for the Victrola and other phonographs that shaped popular opinion. These ads ran in magazines like Colliers, Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post. These ads were geared towards women because women were the ones who bought most of the recordings at that time and because the home was the womans domain. (57-58). The phonograph also gave men an opportunity to listen to good music without being "unmanly" or without risk of being called "sissy" or "soft". The phonograph also allowed a "feminizing influence of music" because women were now able to engage in "tinkering and small talk" which was traditionally a mans activity. (59). Interest in the phonograph died in 1939 but music continued to grow. As interest in music continue and advanced into the 60s and 70s the forms of music also changed. With the invention of the Walkman in 1979 you could take your music anywhere. In the late 1970s digital sampling created an opportunity for composers to begin to use technology to enhance their recordings. This was a way that composers could make a "picture" of a specific sound or set of sounds (138) which meant that sound could be changed into data and once it became data it could be manipulated in many ways down to very small details (139). One individual who uses the computer to "almost exclusively" create his music is professor of music Paul Lansky. Lansky uses the computer and music to digitally manipulate speech to "create fantastic musical textures in which semantic meaning is tantalizingly out of reach" (141). A good example of what he does is in the eight-minute piece, Notjustmoreidlechatter. The piece starts with a cacophony of voices that are of every speed and they bombard the listener from all directions. Although it seems like many voices, it was one voice and he digitizes other sounds into it. (143). The piece sounds like a chaos of sound but it is a more complex piece; it "demonstrates the musical and aesthetic potential of digital technologies" (144). Sound recording has positively changed the way we listen to and create music and because of it we have everything from classical music to rap, to techno pieces to many other aspects of music. We have moved from the phonograph to taking small digital to mp3 players and Ipods. As technology continues to move music forward Katz says that it will be the "users who determine the impact and value of recording" (190). This idea is important to note because technology has created a situation in which music can be looked at in a variety of ways. Because it is repeatable performers can either mimic other peoples music or use the music to study and learn more. Composers can see their recordings as something to be protected or something to be repeated so that more people gain exposure to their work. For users technology shapes how they use music but ultimately they have the say as to how valuable it is to their needs (191). Read More