Cold Technology, Hot Beats: The Soul Of Electronic Music
The tools we use to make, record and listen to music are changing fast. Any computer with a sound card and an internet connection can be turned into a futuristic recording studio, record label and radio station. Even video game consoles and cell phones can function as musical instruments and recording systems. Production tools that until recently were esoteric and costly are now within reach of millions of amateurs. And with a few pieces of easily downloaded software, anyone can sample or remix any existing recording.
Any rapid change necessarily carries some anxieties. Electronic music undermines some of our most closely held beliefs about talent, originality and ownership. Trained musicians grumble that automatic pitch correction and beat quantizing are cheating. Others fear that sampling threatens to undermine our copyright system. I want to assuage these anxieties. I see a lot of possibilities in the spread of new tools. Electronic music merges recording playback with the creation of new music, inviting listeners to actively participate, rather than passively spectating.
For all the rapid change in the way music is produced and transmitted, its essential role in our lives has changed very little. We use the same emotions to respond to drum machines and synthesizers as we do to skin drums and bone flutes. The tools are less important than the musicians using them; the machines can’t program themselves. No matter what happens to technology, there’s an underlying continuity to our musical expression and its community-building powers.
Cold Technology, Hot Beats tells the story of electronic music, both from a science and technology perspective and a cultural perspective. Drawing on the stories of a few key musicians and producers, the book explores recording, playback, editing, synthesis and remixing in a lucid, easy to understand way.
James Brown, time and drumming
Herbie Hancock, voices, speakers and synths
Kanye West, pitch, tuning and harmony
Delia Derbyshire, recording and looping
Michael Jackson, sampling, remixing and mashups
Represented by Molly Lyons, Delbourgo & Associates.
Hear some of my own electronic music.
See my research on Delicious. Related tags: Audio, Audio editing, Autotune, Electronica, Herbie Hancock, Hip-hop, Looping, Mashups, Memes, Michael Jackson, MIDI, Recording, Remix, Sampling, Turntablism, Video games.
Visual outline and sample maps on Flickr.
