The Impact of Digital Music on Composition, Performance and Listening By Richard Ingham Electronic generation and transformation of sound

played a major role in historical developments in music in the twentieth century. Since the electrical 'singing' arc of William Duddell in 1899, composers were fascinated by the potential of radically new sound sources (much as composers and instrumental technicians in the nineteenth century had developed orchestral expression). Computers have become commonplace in the work of designers, visual artists and installation artists in the last twenty years, but electronic music has been an important part of musical development since the 1950s. Both art music and commercial music made use of synthesised sounds throughout the 1960s and 1970s, but the creation of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) systems around 1983 began an explosion of new opportunities. Synthesisers and sequencers (for digital recording) from rival manufacturers could easily be combined and chained together. Yamaha's DX7 keyboard also appeared in 1983, featuring affordable digital sound synthesis. Analogue synthesis was out of favour, but in an interesting later development, once the ear had reached digital fatigue, these generators were once again in demand, in the same way that musicians quickly realised that traditional acoustic instruments were quite attractive after all. The invention of magnetic tape for recording purposes came at a fortuitous time for Karlheinz Stockhausen, who was one of the leading serial composers of the post war period. His music was extremely demanding (on both performer and listener), some of it on the verge of impossibility in performance, particularly in the advanced conception of time and proportion required of the performer. However with the development of electronic manipulation, in theory any line or combination of sound events would be possible; thus the first generation of electronic compositions were produced. Enormous aesthetic problems were now encountered, however - the concert environment at programmes of electronic compositions consisted, not of an audience listening to, watching and experiencing music-making, but of a surreal audience staring at a stage which contained two loudspeakers, through which came a pre-recorded series of sound events, which would be identical in every performance. It was realised that the audience could have the same aural experience by staying at home and hearing a recording on the gramophone or radio. Simultaneously, preconceptions about sound, performance and appreciation were all challenged. One multi-media solution was Pome Electronique by Varse, which was commissioned for the Philips pavilion at the 1958 Brussels exhibition. The work was relayed through many loudspeakers placed all over the interior walls of Le Corbusier's building. Stockhausen's solutions were twofold: in the 1960s his Kontakte was produced in a version for tape, piano and percussion, where the tape, although unchanging and pre-recorded, was a part of an essentially live presentation with two musicians; in Mikrophonie I, two performers play a tam-tam in a variety of ways while two others control live electronic manipulations of these sounds. Two later and highly successful orchestral works combine orchestra with live electronic transformation (Mixtur) and orchestra with tape (Trans). Thus one of the many unexpected results of electronic music was a heightening of awareness of the role of a musician in performance, and that of an audience, both of which had naturally been taken for granted, but now aesthetic debate would have a more crucial part to play in artistic development. The synthesiser in its original incarnations had no direct relationship to any conventional instrument, but it was possible to produce definite pitches (ie relative to conventional instruments), and keyboard controllers were used for precision and familiarity. The use of synthesised sound in rock music was for many years entirely driven by keyboard controllers, to the extent that "synthesiser" implied a keyboard instrument. In the 1980s, and particularly after the

invention of midi, wind controllers, guitar controllers and drum/pad controllers became more common. Digital drumkit and other percussion sounds, along with keyboard driven band effects (most commonly string section "washes" and brass "stabs") are present on almost all commercial pop recordings. Dance tracks in particular are often made up of entirely digitally created sounds, recorded and edited via digital processes. Rock/pop music was a prime candidate for digital editing, as many of the original sounds were digital. Following the development of analogue to digital recording devices, all acoustic signals can now be stored digitally -- and consequently edited digitally. Therefore orchestral performances can now be transformed in a highly detailed way similar to pop recordings. Digital editing technology has had a profound effect on the development of rock and pop music in the use of sampling and ease of repetition. Sampling, the use of extracts from previous music recordings and even those of celebrated speeches (the postmodernist approach encompasses anything from Martin Luther King to Kenneth Wolstenholme), has simultaneously opened up new areas of artistic development and threatened a crisis in the copyright system. Repetition in dance tracks and others is very easy to produce, such that a whole piece of music can be devised from the raw material of short "patterns" on drums and bass. Repetition is very powerful and ideal for rave culture where trance-like states are enjoyed by the participants. Jazz, while not having the huge commercial appeal of popular music, has exchanged contemporary ideas frequently with classical and rock musics. Taking rock rhythms in the 1960s, and digital sounds and editing in the 1980s and 1990s has been an essential part of jazz development. In return, samples of seminal jazz recordings have influenced dance culture, notably those of Herbie Hancock and Miles Davis. Miles Davis' album Bitches Brew (1969) was an early example of static patterns overlaid by fragmented melodic and harmonic textures. Aspects of the development of jazz at the end of the century can be heard in Return of the Brecker Brothers (1992), where the track "Song for Barry" opens with a short rain-forest Pygmy melody played on a (digital) marimba, repeated extensively as a backing riff via digital recording and editing, and joined by an array of other digital percussion. Over this the opening melody is played on a midi wind controller (digital breath-driven synthesiser) - the melody is played live but recorded digitally. The same player overdubs the later saxophone melody. The confusion between "live" and "electronic" editing takes another turn with the use of "live electronic" editing in the 1999 album Drawn Inward by Evan Parker and the ElectroAcoustic Ensemble. Elements of the free improvisation are captured (sampled), transformed and fed back into the live mix to create another musical line, either simultaneously, or with a short delay, or much later, at the discretion of the live electronic controllers. This is genuine inter-active music, where digital technology becomes a live participant in a spontaneous performance. The use of digital technology for inter-active musical creation is also prevalent in contemporary classical or art music, where instrumental musicians are joined by engineers controlling electronic transformation, again either for simultaneous use or for storage and polyphonic layering later in a piece. The obvious comparison here is with the visionary works of Stockhausen (eg. Mikrophonie I, see above). the electronic inter-active potential is one of the most exciting in contemporary music. Thus the worlds of classical music creation, jazz performance and pop recordings embraced digital technology willingly, and in a positive artistic way. What of the performer and that process which delivers music to the listener? The aesthetic debate between "emotionalism" or heteronomous aesthetics and "formalism" or autonomous aesthetics has continued for centuries since Plato, Aristotle, Aristoxenus and Philodemus propounded their theories. Expression within music is a very powerful factor; while philosophers and aesthetes debate the precise nature of communication and expression, the performer will play, preferring for the most part not to delve too deeply into his/ her own mind for fear of losing the direct contact with sound and its manipulation. The debate has continued through the stages of

electronic music development (for instance the problem of recorded sound and its use without a live performer). Synthetic sound production, and its mimetic possibilities, have created a sub-section of debate - not whether music is legitimately imitative of nature, but whether science can produce imitations of music itself, and does emotion remain? In the case of the midi wind controller, the wind player no longer has the sensation of activating a column of vibrating air directly connected to the body, hearing and feeling the immediate sound within the head cavities. Instead, the same method of sound initiation (breath activation, movement of fingers, gradations of tongue attack) result in a sound from a loudspeaker. The breath and finger messages are transformed into midi note numbers and other information which is passed to a digital synthesiser. This in turn produces the electronic tones as audio signals which are sent to an amplifier, possibly through a reverberation unit, and out to the listener via speakers. This journey of information would appear to be rather cumbersome and alienating for the performer, yet is quickly mastered, much as the experience of playing in different room acoustics requires thought and preparation. One of the many wonders of digital sound creation is that it has made musicians reconsider their own working processes within traditional music making - viewed overall, the acoustic combination of air, fingers and tongue to activate the live tube is probably more complex in terms of brain activity than the digital method. So in many ways, this is just another instrument, which has to be learnt on its own terms, but which has the potential to be very expressive (this can only be driven by the performer, in just the same way as an acoustic instrument can be played with or without expression). In actual fact, the truly exciting aspect of the midi wind controller, as with other synthesisers, is not that it can imitate existing orchestral instruments, but that it can generate completely new sounds and combinations of sounds. This has featured much more in experimental classical music than in the commercial field. Just as the composer needs the performer, the performer needs the listener to complete the process of music making. The listener today is faced with the results of a barrage of technological devices in recorded music, and often in live musical performance. Debates rage over whether a synthetic brass section is as effective as a live one (it isn't, but it is easier to mix, is cheaper - one player instead of four - and doesn't drink as much). The most interesting teaser is whether a digital grand piano is as good as an acoustic grand piano. Due to curiosities of perception and experience, the general answer is, yes it is. This is because most people's experience of a piano sound is from recordings, using either a digital piano or an acoustic piano transformed into electrical signals. Because most of us hear acoustic pianos through a recording process, this destroys many of the acoustic features only available to the ear in a live situation therefore by the time the sound comes through the speaker it might as well have originated from a digital source. If, however, the listener is placed in a room with an acoustic grand piano and a digital grand piano with amplification, the difference is astonishing - the acoustic piano produces a sound world many times more complex and interesting. The acoustic tone is more interesting because it is more complex, utilising control of finely weighted keys, string overtones, natural resonance from the piano and within the given room acoustic, and pedalling for further overtone control. The listener, thanks to digital technology, now has the power to revolutionise the dissemination of musical ideas via the internet. As recordings are published on the internet, immediately available with no international boundaries, the commercial relationship between listener and composer/performer is in a highly confused state. Copyright and the laws of intellectual property are enjoying open season at the moment. It's quite fun to observe the situation, as the digital revolution picks up more and more speed, yet artists need income from their work in order to survive and continue to be creative. This is the biggest revolution in musical economics since Haydn the court composer became Beethoven the market place composer, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Now, instead of buying commercial CDs at the local music store, the listener can create the album of their choice, the order of tracks, participating artists

and printed cover. The composer, in an interesting alteration to the creative process only possible through digital technology, can also alter the working environment and creative sequence. Not many years ago a composer would write the score of a piece, present it to musicians who would read it, play it and record it. This of course still continues, but nowadays the composer can sit at the keyboard, play a piece whilst simultaneously recording and editing. The score may be printed out afterwards if required. This alteration of sequence has already had a dramatic impact on composition studies within music education, at the same time producing many more potential composers and a concern over musical literacy. Elsewhere in music education the use of computer technology for play-alongs (accompaniments) made to order has provided an enormous amount of material for instrumental tuition. As digital music provides ever more genuine artistic possibilities for the composer, performer and listener, the technology will be embraced along with a continuing sense of wonderment at the analysis-defying beauty of our traditional heritage of music making. Richard Ingham is Visting Professor of Jazz at the University of St Andrew #2. It Changes Your Drinking Habits Did you ever wake up in the back of a taxi after a long night of tossing down cognac and prune juice and wonder how your pants got replaced by a thick but clumsily applied coat of colorful body paint? Well, now there's something to blame it on besides your bad childhood: music. What they play in the bar doesn't just affect how much you drink, but what you drink. How the hell does music do that? Did you know you can make a person buy more expensive wine just by playing classical music? Experiments prove it. It makes people feel like they're in a wine commercial or in a movie depicting refined, snooty rich people. OK, that one sort of makes sense -- we doubt anyone ever drank Wild Irish Rose while listening to Vivaldi. But in another blind study, different types of music playing in the background caused drinkers to change how they'd described the drinks they already had. Laid-back music led people to rate drinks as "mellow," and upbeat music resulted in more people calling their drinks "refreshing." Even stranger, in another study researchers placed German and French wines in supermarkets, with small flags next to each display so customers could tell which countries they came from. They then played some unobtrusive international music in the background. When German music was played, the percentage of German sales rose, and vice versa. This wasn't because customers thought to themselves, Ah! Germany! I will celebrate the Fatherland with some nice wine! Questionnaires showed that customers couldn't recall what type of music was playing and thought they'd chosen a particular wine simply because they'd felt like it. The people selling you the drinks know all of this stuff -- or at least, the successful ones do. We've pointed out before that bars and nightclubs often play fast music to increase alcohol-based profit. But other establishments, particularly upscale restaurants, prefer slow, relaxing music, which, believe it or not, can also make you drink more. The tempo of music is linked to your body's arousal level, or the "speed" at which your nervous system operates. Fast music heightens arousal (heh), so patrons will do everything more quickly, including eating and drinking and leaving their infant by the salad bar. Which is good for a restaurant owner if he's just concerned with getting you out the door so he can serve more (and presumably better) people.

On the other hand, slower music means that you eat at a more leisurely pace. Maybe you'll even stay to chat with your companions after you're done with your meal. All this time passing means you're likely to buy more drinks every time the waiter comes around to ask, and at a restaurant that's charging $70 a bottle, that makes up for any lost table space. Some restaurants go as far as to purchase a personalized selection of songs specially designed by "sound branding" companies, which select songs based on whatever tempo or atmosphere the restaurant is aiming to achieve.

http://www.cracked.com/article_19006_the-5-weirdest-ways-music-can-mess-with-humanbrain_p2.html#ixzz2MYRUuatk

#2. Your Music Preferences Are Sealed by Adolescence

Imagine if everything you said, did or liked by age 18 was stuck with you forever. Your clothes, hairstyle and friends, and that stupid nickname you gave yourself -- all permanently tattooed on your adult self for the whole world to see and mock. How many of us would be walking around with lopsided Salt-n-Pepa hair and insisting that everyone call us "Spinderella Jr.?" It's not a pretty picture. Fortunately, we mature. But there is one area where neuroscientist and music expert Daniel Levitin thinks we're permanently marked before we hit voting age: our music preferences.

Once again, don't look at us like that. It's just a totally random image of music and voting. You already probably know that there are certain things that are much easier to learn as a kid than as an adult (like, say, a foreign language). There is a point when your brain gets a little more set in its ways. But when your brain is new and still developing, it's constantly creating new and different neural pathways to perform all the mental tasks that will be required of it throughout your life. So your parents' musical preferences, whatever is on the radio, the rinky-dinky songs your preschool teacher taught you -- anything is fair game to form the foundation that will be your musical taste. And your brain pays attention, developing neural pathways to recognize the music of your culture. At age 10, you start to bonk out the music that doesn't fit in with your recognizable scheme of "good" music. At age 12, you begin to use those newly formed tastes to figure out your place in the world ("You will know us by our SPIN DOCTORS T-shirts!"). By 14, for the most part, your musical preferences are a done deal. As evidence, one music critic points to the biggest music icons of the past 50 years to bear this fact out. Both Bob Dylan and Paul McCartney were 14 when they were first exposed to Elvis, and both cited that exposure as the fuse that lit their world-changing careers. When the Beatles hit The Ed Sullivan Show, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Wonder and Billy Joel were all age 14, presumably watching it on TV.

Of course, these could be chalked up as fun a point. But think back on what you were listening to when you were 14 - is it that much different from what you listen to now? Maybe a little more juvenile, maybe a little more Limp Bizkitty, but you probably haven't done a 180 and completely abandoned the genre of music you loved as a teen. If you were a hip-hop fan then, there's a good chance you still are one now.

#1. The Music Industry Has Pop Down to a Bland, Loud Formula

We would never try to make a judgment call about the quality of modern music -- we're not that old (yet). But the fact is that pop music has grown more and more homogenized over the last 50 years, and there's science to prove it. There's even a graph. The Million Song Dataset uses algorithms to analyze pop songs recorded since 1955. The music bot evaluates songs based on things like loudness, note diversity, chord progression and tempo. What Musical Johnny 5 discovered was that musicians today are copycats, and they're sounding more and more alike every year. Once you break down individual elements, a pattern emerges. Even though the data set is examining a variety of pop genres, such as rock, hip-hop and metal, the trend is very clear: less variety, more loudness. Just as your grandparents suspected. In fact, researchers have concluded that modern listeners have now been trained to associate loudness with novelty:

"Hence, an old tune with slightly simpler chord progressions, new instrument sonorities that were in agreement with current tendencies, and recorded with modern techniques that allowed for increased loudness levels could be easily perceived as novel, fashionable and groundbreaking."

That's right; they think we're so stupid that we won't recognize an oldie if it's updated and loud enough. And do you know who was the king of creativity in the music department? The baby boomers. The same generation that gave us yuppies, the Social Security crisis and polyester pantsuits were once on the forefront of musical creativity, and no one has topped them since. Here's the aforementioned chart, which shows "timbral variety," or diversity of sounds present in pop songs since 1955:

Those outliers are probably punk, rap and David Byrne just existing in a room somewhere. So think about 1950s music for a minute. You might imagine guys in matching suits, harmonizing and swaying softly while poodle-skirted girls hula hoop in the background and Sputnik yo-yos. Dick Clark might be in the mix somewhere, depending on how much imagination you have. But according to analysis produced by the Million Song Dataset, that white bread music was still more imaginative than whatever you're hearing on the radio or streaming now. The only difference is that your music is probably louder. Once pop reached its zenith in the 1960s, when musicians were literally using bell bottoms, cannabis and face paint as instruments, music slowly got less diverse.

Now remember what we said about how your musical tastes are locked in early; if this is what you were raised on, it's what you'll keep looking for the rest of your life -- anything outside of that narrow range of sounds seems weird or wrong. It's kind of hard to branch out and be experimental when your audience has been trained over the course of a generation to only recognize certain sounds as being "good." They don't have bad taste; they're just slaves to biology. But at least that explains the success of __________!

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