[cc-community] Is it the Music or the Musician?

David davidpalmer at westnet.com.au
Sun Jan 13 19:13:24 EST 2008


Shakti S wrote:
> Hi Kevin,

<snip>

The pop star that flies around the world
> displaces hundreds of competent musicians that are quit capable of  
> fulfilling that need in those places.

This has little to do with music and musicians and a lot more to do with 
corporate endeavours to sell a product line to as wide a spectrum of the 
market place as possible. Parasitism, greed, call it what you will.

> 	While the paradigm now is to replace human effort with technology,  
> have a look at what it is achieving.

This is a subject of some depth and breadth and it is in no way possible 
to assess all the positive and negative aspects of the technological 
spectrum within the sociological context in one sentence.

  Then analyze the outcomes in
> terms of needs and satisfiers, followed by asking the question: is it  
> functioning? While 30,000 children die of starvation every day, and  
> 2.5 billion people do not have potable water, I think you should  
> review your opinion on "opportunity".

This has little to do, for example, with technology, as technology is 
servicing the needs of massive amounts of other people that would also 
be dying of various forms of deprivation without it.
Technology is not at fault here, but the personal requirement of those 
that have control of that technology. This brings us back to those same, 
earlier stated negative qualities.

To banish technology from the arena is unrealistic.
Our attitude toward it has to change, yes, and another way of thinking 
has to be implemented and schooled.
This would be the productive - in the widest sense of the term - 
direction to travel in.

The Descartian Cartesian/Baconian/Newtonian clockwork paradigm has given 
us much - including the medium by which we are currently communicating?
But it has also stolen much by way of its very fragmented, alienating, 
divisive characteristic that has separated us from our environment, each 
other and has even erected divisions within our very selves.
The wholistic viewpoint needs to be reincorporated into the way in which 
we think.

  There is a definite problem
> here and I am trying to address it by the shift of the human  
> obsession with the possession of objects to the celebration of what  
> people do.

These are not mutually exclusive.
There is a conviction within the mentalities of the 'havenots' that 
those that 'have' are evil, conniving, miserly and destructive.

On the other hand, one of the richest men I have ever known was one of 
the most kindly, considerate and generous of people. A natural 
spiritualist, that was comprehensively involved, physically and mentally 
in the world around him, that abided by no theological doctrine whatsoever.

> 	In terms of needs and satisfiers the technological attempt to  
> simplify the complication of learning and then playing of music  
> fails, because it is equally complicated, it just displaces the  
> fulfillment of the mastery of a virtuoso, and the experience in the  
> moment of the uncompressed analog live performance.

This is simply a matter of degree and depends completely on the level of 
competence and maturity of the personality concerned.
The technological advances of a single malt scotch, a syringe and a 
loaded gun would sit on my kitchen table for the term of my natural life 
and never be employed.
It is not the technology, it is the personality.

(Well, maybe I'd have to replace the Scotch from time to time).

Being specific, within the realm of music, the line is drawn at the 
point where technology becomes the end, rather than the means, of 
creating music.

There is no note that has never been played before, it is the individual 
expression conveyed in the sequence, dynamics, and other aspects that is 
the statement of individual expression.

  But worse than
> that it takes away actions of meaning and replaces them with mindless  
> tasks, for the musician who uses technology to play music takes  
> themselves out of that creative loop, they are only a small  
> percentage of the output. Compare improvising over a figured base  
> (which happens in real time) to audio editing (which happens in step  
> time).
> 	Does anyone else wonder what is more important: the Music or the  
> Musician?

The one cannot be separated from the other.
The one is the direct product of the other and something that the 
creator has to live with, in exactly the same way as these words we write.
Regards,

-- 
David Palmer
Linux User - #352034



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