In 1948, crooner Bing Crosby gave Les Paul, inventor of the electric guitar, one of the first Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorders. In the garage of his Hollywood home Paul set up his own recording studio where he began experimenting with new multi-track recording techniques, producing the tune “Lover (When You’re Near Me),” on which Paul used the new technology to record multiple guitar parts and
vocals.
As with all technology, the machines became smaller and cheaper, making it accessible to a larger population, giving birth to the home recording revolution.
Since then the proliferation of PCs furthered the recording capabilities of novices and professionals alike, making it possible for anyone interested in creating their own professional recordings to do so cheaply. Unfortunately, this ability was taken for granted by a slew of no talent hacks, who thanks to the internet, were given a stage to release their “genius.”
While do-it-yourself ethics brought excitement to the musical landscape through multiple garage and punk rock bands, when combined with the internet it also effectively killed off quality control, as anyone with the slightest inclination now had a distribution channel for total bullshit posturing they called music.
Of course this is not a wholly terrible enterprise as it also granted music that record labels may have found “uncommercially viable” an outlet. Acts that were experimental or unable to be classified under a generic and bland genre could find their audience and receive accolades for their brilliant eccentricities.
As the technology grew and innovations were made ways to manipulate tracks digital multiplied, eventually given birth to Autotune; aka fix your shitty voice.
Combined with man’s inherent nature to seek fame and amass fortune, an explosion of talentless starlets and the listlessly rich began their music careers with the thanks to Autotune. Anyone with enough money to buy a catchy tune and rent a studio could produce a hit single. Remember Lindsay Lohan’s, albeit, short lived musical career?
Conversely, artist have taken the technology and used it to breathe life into their muse. Perhaps the most successful in this enterprise, at least commercially, is Kanye West. Like a virtuoso bowing a Stradivarius, West worked the technology ever so, creating a sound all his own that is now widely copied.
Of course like any art, he pushed his creation into a Baroque period ushered in with the release of his robot love story opus “808 and Heartbreak.” Ok, so it wasn’t about robots being in love, but it sure as hell sounds like it.
While West’s motive to create a linear story in a audio format is commendable, he must not have got the message that the concept record is dead, made passe thanks to the rise of Apple’s iTunes. Songs are no longer listened to in their intended contexts, but mixed and matched at the listener’s discretion, obliterating any cohesive thought that works may be carrying over from other tracks.
This was pushed further by the iPod, which allowed users to take their complete music collection anywhere. While this made listening more convenient, it also made digestion of a record less of an event. It is no longer in fashion to sit down and actually invest time into a record. In the instant gratification “I want it and I want it yesterday” society we live in now, the general population isn’t interested in an artist’s message, but in filling in the silent portions of their lives.
Yet it seems that a backlash to this has begun as sales of vinyl records are on the rise. Over the past three years, sales of vinyl has increased 41 percent and Nielsen’s SoundScans, which tracks record sales, reported that vinyl was the fastest-growing format this past year, though these figures may be skewed by the fact that vinyl records hung precariously on the endangered species list for roughly two decades.
Despite this, the digital age is ingrained in our society much to far to go back now. We can only hope that the process of natural selection deliquesces the downsides of technology’s affect on music, allowing the positive attributes to flourish.
