To start: I am getting concerned on the progress of music in America. I am currently taking a technology in music class where we learn how to use technology in our music careers and I reflected on all the work classmates and I did in high school without any of it and the success and pride we all had. So here's a reflection:
Music
technology has wavered back and forth in my life in the last eight
years. I was first introduced to a very simple program called Noteworthy
Composer since Finale was super expensive and this free “evaluation”
software was enough to put my ideas into professional prints.
In the beginning, software was never really brought up as a source to use for creation, recording, etc. of any music activity in high school or at home. In fact the only time we ever did anything along the line of music tech was at Area All-State where fancy pants recording businesses would do a high quality recording of our concerts.
Notation software was not even on the general agenda. GarageBand had yet to be released and Finale was in it’s beginning stages. My highschool didn’t even get Sibelius until nearly six years after I had graduated and this was with having four classes based on theory and composition. We used manuscript paper, things were done by ear, we didn’t get retries, and we took more risks in our compositions.
Sadly I can say I have completely become the opposite of that. When I first started going to music school I had keyboard in front of the computer, software like Pratica Musica to tell me when something was wrong and to try again, notation software to experiment on and make compositions. I rarely sat behind a piano which is very sad. I am a firm believer that creation take place in a minimalistic setting and grows from there. Yet thanks to the ease created by what is available today I have become a hypocrite.
Personally I believe that software hinders talent. True creationism can’t be formed around the principle of “anyone can do it.” I understand the argument of the need for slightly deeper understanding in order to successfully use any of the technology effectively, and I will continue to use it because the reality is that I can produce music quicker and easier. But at the same time, my foundation was based around a world without it.
So for me it’s a question of the success of the future generations, not mine. Will we as composers, educators and students be able to say that we were brought up on music, or brought up on music software?
In the beginning, software was never really brought up as a source to use for creation, recording, etc. of any music activity in high school or at home. In fact the only time we ever did anything along the line of music tech was at Area All-State where fancy pants recording businesses would do a high quality recording of our concerts.
Notation software was not even on the general agenda. GarageBand had yet to be released and Finale was in it’s beginning stages. My highschool didn’t even get Sibelius until nearly six years after I had graduated and this was with having four classes based on theory and composition. We used manuscript paper, things were done by ear, we didn’t get retries, and we took more risks in our compositions.
Sadly I can say I have completely become the opposite of that. When I first started going to music school I had keyboard in front of the computer, software like Pratica Musica to tell me when something was wrong and to try again, notation software to experiment on and make compositions. I rarely sat behind a piano which is very sad. I am a firm believer that creation take place in a minimalistic setting and grows from there. Yet thanks to the ease created by what is available today I have become a hypocrite.
Personally I believe that software hinders talent. True creationism can’t be formed around the principle of “anyone can do it.” I understand the argument of the need for slightly deeper understanding in order to successfully use any of the technology effectively, and I will continue to use it because the reality is that I can produce music quicker and easier. But at the same time, my foundation was based around a world without it.
So for me it’s a question of the success of the future generations, not mine. Will we as composers, educators and students be able to say that we were brought up on music, or brought up on music software?
No comments:
Post a Comment