Today’s dissension is one from analog Gen X’er fed up with the synthesized nature of music being produced as commodity for an unsuspecting generation, and passed off as “Art.” Is the music really Art? Does it have nuance? Is there room for human expression within the computerized synthesis? When will sampling end? Does anyone else hear the music as being a parody or an affectation of someone else’s expression? Anyone else annoyed with the synthesized voices of autotune? Does anyone else see how this process is dehumanizing musical human expression? Let’s explore this…

Having grown up in the 1970’s and 1980’s computer technology was pretty limited. Synthesizers as musical instruments were coming into the mainstream during the second British invasion, yet guitars, bass, drums, piano, and vocals were still mainstream. Groups like Depeche Mode, Pet Shop Boys, and the Eurythmics advanced the use of keyboard synthesizers within music. In the United States the rock group Styx used a lot of different synthesized sounds in their music. The vocoder use by Earth Wind and Fire, Herbie Hancock, and Peter Frampton became a cliche by the late 1980’s. This revolution in synthesized music technology gave rise to Grunge in my opinion. Unfortunately, Grunge faded away as the anger with society couldn’t be maintained in a healthy way.

Despite that back to roots movement (Grunge) the synthesized music technology continued to be used by the recording industry and the Rap/Hip Hop and Popular musics embraced it. Now one can not escape the synthesized sounds of drums, hi hats, cymbal crashes, and bass patches thumping out the same rhythms over and over with different words or choruses over a two or three chord progression all over music today. It all sounds stale and static with the lack of timbral diversity, the auto-tuned singers magically sounding like a modern vocoder. Sadly all of the children and young adults of the last two generations think this is good music. They have a limited attention span for acoustic music, or a complete revulsion to it. It is heart breaking.

Where is the humanity or human expression? There doesn’t seem to be any, as the human component is being computerized as well. The musician is being forced to recreate a performance from a studio session without giving any room for artistic evolution. The backing band has been replaced by an i-pad or a lap-top computer using software to recreate synthesized sounds invented by producers or past composers that developed the science of electronic sound synthesis. The live performance is the same every night without fail. In my opinion this leads to a sterile musical experience of two dimensions. The music is missing its third dimension. The warmth of timbre and the blending of overtones across a space that creates acoustical reverberations that lead to an aesthetic musicking experience. In other words… Where is the human component?

The essence of beauty in music as an art form is the human element. Our human frailties and inconsistencies based on an endless number of variables create unintended consequences that are engaging to the music experience. I will provide a couple of examples to demonstrate these moments of sheer delight, or utter terror with the musicking experience.

How Now is a solo piano piece by Philip Glass. It is a minimalist piece of music divided in eight sections with the fourth section being the most performed throughout the work. This piece uses the upper half of the keyboard, but the use of pedals allows the warmth of overtones a piano creates to sound naturally over each phrase. The length of the work is around 25-30 minutes and due to the level of repetition it can come off as sounding a lot like a computer generated piece of music. A recording of How Now by Valentina Lisistsa that I like to experience is full of performance inconsistencies that many would find imperceptible. If you choose to listen to this piece pay very close attention to the note articulations (fingers hitting the keys.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0aaEalL1XI There are many notes throughout the piece that change articulation and volume due to fatigue or other factors. These simple changes add to the performance. It becomes part of the pieces musical development. This human frailty of fatigue becomes musical. Without it, (in my opinion,) the music becomes sterile and trancelike. This little bump of fatigue makes the musicality of the piece grow more organically and allows the sections to breathe and live for a brief moment. I hear these little changes by performers in a lot of Glass’ music whether it is live or recorded.

Another is the song She’s Too Good for Me by the artist known as Sting. It appears on his album Ten Summoners Tales. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMM1j12DFQI This is the original recording. The guitarist and the clock sound are playing at 90 beats per minute. When the drummer comes in he is playing twice as fast at 180 beats per minute. This gives an impression of a shuffle or punky swing when you consider the metaphor of the song. The slow middle section of the tune goes to minor which is quite effective in surprising the listener musically and emotionally. This musical surprise is the element missing in popular music of today. This is a neat little tune. Not quite rockabilly, pop, swing, rock, and definitely not classical. The song exists in a genre of the composers creation.

Now Sting is an excellent example of an artist that likes to evolve his music through performance. He recorded this song with an orchestra on his Symphonicities record. It was very fashionable to do this in the early 2000’s. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3QUnTnV1qs This performance is more organic. The strings give that guitar ostinato from the beginning more warmth and breadth. The overtones are deeper and wider in context. The drummer is playing with brushes giving the rhythmic feel a wetter sound. This sloppiness with the string bass driving underneath swings the song even more. The highlight of this new version is the string feature from the 5-16 second portion of the recording. You can really hear the woodiness of the strings in the aggressive bowing. It is so warm, yet violent within the intensity. The song is transformed by a different sound without changing the form, tempo, or lyric. This is a marvelous musical surprise in contrast with the original.

If you listen to the live recording with orchestra the woodwinds and brass get a chance to add more color to the song. When you add the audience a whole different musicking experience is there for one to participate in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt4BdDIYauU Sting’s vocal performance in this final version is even more lively and expressive. The energy being shared between audience and performer is electric. You can sense the excitement of the experience by both artists and audience. You can’t do that with a computer. Yet, you can this with 50+ players. This is the humanity in music that I miss from the computer generated music of today.

I encourage you to listen to each piece of music. How Now might be a challenge at 29 minutes, but the three minute She’s too Good for Me selections are easy to make it through. As a musician, teacher, and connoisseur of music I desire that human connection to this performance art form. I want to hear slight mistakes, alterations, bends, improvisations, and energy. This is where community musicking happens. It doesn’t happen with a lap top. It doesn’t happen with auto-tune. Well maybe it does, but is it as exciting, energetic, or human? I want to see recording companies more interested in the art of music rather than the commodity of music. I dissent with the latter process, it kills creativity. It sterilizes our human development… I’m almost beginning to sound a bit like the composer Richard Wagner in his treatise Art and Revolution… round and round it goes…