Lost in Music's Democratic Shuffle

originally published February 28, 2007

Did you know that once upon a time music was composed using weird little symbols on paper and instruments with no cords? As with most things, music began slowly, bloomed fragrantly, and then multiplied exponentially. History is a dusty place, filled with powdered wigs and concertos scribbled by candlelight, but how music has journeyed from monks chanting toward the heavens within damp stone cathedrals to five-pound portable music studios is nothing short of fascinating.

Ludwig van Beethoven had been dead less than a century when the first purely electronic music instrument was invented. When the theremin was developed by Russian professor Léon Theremin in 1919, it was truly unique in that it required no physical touch in order to be played. It consisted of various circuitry and two antennas around which the player's hands were waved. Shortly thereafter began a flurry of advancements upon this model, leading to more and more sophisticated methods of creating "invisible" sound. The tape recorder was born during the second World War, and it wasn't long before composers were splicing the sounds of industry and nature to make sounds that challenged the idea of what music was. This process became known as "musique concrète." Surely there were many in this era who said, "Anyone can make music now."

But enough history. The timeline of what followed is interesting but unessential. Computers began as monolithic rooms with brains, but in just a few decades, they have shrunk to the size of Trapper Keepers and now sport an amount of processing power that would have made scientists of the 1960s reference "The Jetsons" with a smirk. We were supposed to have flying cars by now, though.

Pop Heads Online

Meanwhile, pop music took over the world, and someone was busy updating those electronic instruments even further. Hence the synthesizer-crazy 1980s. Still, throughout all of this rapid progress, a great deal of effort was required to write, record and release music. Record label execs had to enjoy your show (or at least your feathered Aqua Net hair) in order for you to get a shot at having the general public hear your genius. Garage bands in the late '60s, punk groups 10 years later, and many other fitting examples could tour around in a duct-taped van and through their blood, sweat and tears touch a few lives, sell a few records or homemade tapes. The same thing applied to the small number of musicians whiling away their youth in basements, tweaking very expensive keyboards or through some cosmic ability and angelic patience composing music on Commodore 64s. The most important thing the space aliens who conquer Earth will remember about music leading up to the late 1990s is that it almost exclusively required talent or a boatload of PR. All the hardships of creating music worth hearing ruled out anything but that music. I have no choice but to use the word talent in a broad sense. After all, I clearly remember Poison. And Flock of Seagulls. And the Fat Boys. And the Steve Miller Band. And so many others who make me wish there were a more watered-down version of the word.

But these were the exceptions rather than the rules. The ones you actually heard about were very much the vast minority. Everyone else's music never traveled beyond their friends' ears. And then a little thing called the World Wide Web came along and changed everything. Combine that with the breakneck speed with which computers became powerful and, most of all, affordable, and the entire concept of music, from any number of subgenres to the germination of an idea to composition to editing to distribution was forever altered. It took several years to build momentum, but now, with or without flying cars, finally anyone can make music.

I like to use Brian Eno as an example when discussing the technical end of the creative process. Eno started off his career as a glam-rocker with Roxy Music, but soon left the band to explore his far more experimental proclivities. Through largely inventing ambient music, he used countless methods of recording, extracting and playing sounds. In 1981, he and David Byrne (of Talking Heads fame) recorded an album of found-sound collages titled My Life in the Bush of Ghosts , employing tape splicing to essentially create the same effect a sampler duplicates instantly today. Eno and Byrne did it the hard way, in other words. Such ingenuity, vision and determination were required during all those sessions, and the end result influenced countless artists who followed.

Diamonds in the Rough

Anyone with a modest amount of know-how could, with a bit of Googling and clicking, download similar samples online and with a basic music program, shape a track in the fashion of Bush of Ghosts in a few hours. It almost certainly wouldn't sound as good, but the ratio of time spent would be startlingly off-balance. Today there is music-making software ranging from basic to professional, and all of it contains a wide range of sounds at the user's disposal. You can even build a full orchestra with little work and score music for your buddy's zombie movie. The availability of pirated copies of these programs makes them all the more convenient. Pick your beats, your hook, your bass line, grab a microphone and you can bang out a hip-hop track in a day. Burn it right to CD immediately so you can cruise the streets playing air guitar to yourself. All that's left is getting it out there, which has never been so ridiculously easy. MySpace.com is so popular it's silly, and the sheer magnitude of the site's intrusion into daily life is impressive. It seems like every day I get an online friend request from a music artist, typically a one-person electronic project.

As a music critic, I feel that your music has little right to be intruding into people's lives simply because it exists. There's already plenty of terrible music that sells thousands, even millions, of copies. The majority of these MySpacers are 17-year-olds who just got into Boards of Canada and want to make chill beats… or 30-year-olds who always wanted to make chill beats. But there are 40,000 artists labeled "ambient," and I was so intrigued, I spent a recent day sifting through some of them randomly. It was a bit scary how rushed or poorly thought-out most of the tracks sounded, although I did stumble across one artist - Loren Dent - who gained a fan. IDM, rap, even more traditional genres like folk on MySpace's music section are overflowing with music that simply takes up space and makes it difficult for the diamonds to shine through. I've no problem with "playing around" with music as a hobby, but the dilution of music's innate power is saddening. The Internet has become an enormous sponge sopping with spilled milk, and I can't help the urge to cry over it. The easiest solution is to treat this bombardment of inane music like email spam, but the bigger picture keeps getting in the way. Eventually, the great artists will be lost in the whirlpool, except apparently for Lily Allen.

There's obviously a lot of good to come from this, as well. Processors with such immense power enable control over each fraction of a second, and sculpting sound on such a magnified level yields limitless possibilities. The comparative effortlessness of making music today is resulting in some people creating genuinely great stuff when otherwise they might never have taken the plunge. But these are primarily artists who are keeping it old-school, those who produce bit by bit, weaving patience into every tone and tedious microscopic manipulation of every beat and bar. It's just difficult to find them on MySpace or without extensive searching on the Internet.

Hobby Versus Art?

So where does this leave us? Where does it lead us? With music alone there is enough information every day to drown in, and the tools necessary to create anything your imagination can conjure can all fit under your arm while you order a latte at the coffee shop. One day, record labels, stores and hard copies of music will suffer the fate of the 8-track. Vinyl records might be the cockroach that survives, if enough audiophiles pay up, but everything else will go purely digital. I will not go gentle into that good night, but the world will stampede over me with their iPods to get there. As technology advances further and more affordably, will the present boon in music production continue until virtually everyone lays down tracks and the quest for that special album becomes downright quixotic? Will there even be albums? When does the concept of music become pedestrian? How much cream before you can't taste the coffee?

My fear, put simply, is that making music is fast becoming more hobby than art. Music was once an attempt to reach the unknown heavens and embody all that being alive entails. To transition from such sacred intention to an excuse to put off homework is tragic. I can hope that talent will continue to be the touchstone, and, in the end, all that matters is whether or not the music does its job. If you're making music, all I'll say is good for you. Keep doing it. It's a form of release if nothing else. It's nice having your very own creation available to the entire planet, but once you take that first step toward promotion beyond your circle of friends, you need to ask yourself some serious questions. I'll just wait for the next Brian Eno to change everything again, and in the meantime ponder what brilliant new pearl is about to be removed from an ocean of mediocrity. And maybe crack my knuckles dramatically and learn to play piano.

Michael Wehunt

Liner Notes is Flagpole 's music opinion column. To contribute, contact music editor Chris Hassiotis with ideas and pitches at music@flagpole.com.