Orchestration

http://www.soundsonline.com/product.php?productid=EW-177

This particular product is quite incredible. The company East/West recorded every instrument of the orchestra in a world class studio doing every possible articulation. They also did this for the piano and spent months and months editing all the samples. There were no other companies that had really put together a MIDI sound set that sounded this real, but these guys have done the closest thing by just taking the time and budget, and just doing it right. Pretty much anytime you hear orchestration in TV shows or lower budget movies, this is the program they use. Its an interesting disconnect between the body and the music, because technically someone played that exact note and articulation that you are programming, but they did it in a different order and a different place. Its like you're given a bunch of legos, each one representing a specific recording of music.

Eigenharp

Some time ago, I found out about this "instrument":

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8294355.stm

To summarize, the article describes a bassoon-like electronic instrument, capable of creating basically any kind of tone you could want. It's played by manipulating the fingerboard on either its front or the sides, or by blowing into the mouthpiece (this is where it gets its resemblance to the bassoon). The video demo in the article is actually pretty cool.

One quote from the article really made me think about the body's involvement in all of this: "It's not just the sonic thing - they are visually compelling, and there's a reason for that - we've got pretty fed up with watching people twiddle knobs on stage."

This made me think of how technology has impacted our performance space. It seems logical that setting up a show with a laptop and a few speakers makes less of a corporeal connection with the audience than does a rock band jamming on physical instruments. To me, part of this stems from the idea that while their minds compose the music, it is the body itself that actually creates it, by plucking, bowing, blowing, or drumming its way to sound. This instrument attempts to re-create the impression of a human body creating the sound in electronic music.

Here is the Wikipedia page for the Eigenharp, if you're curious: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenharp

I lost my Mojo! (Also, That 1 Guy)

There’s a new program called Mojo that’s currently bankrupting the music industry. Mojo allows a user to connect to the iTunes library of any other Mojo user close by in a wireless network and take music at will. (Regular network iTunes connections allow you to listen to others’ music, but you can’t put it into your own library.) Or, if you know someone else’s username, you can take their music from anywhere in the world, as long as they are connected to the Internet. You can sit in the library or a big lecture hall, open up Mojo, learn about the musical tastes of about 10-15 people, and steal the entire library of any of them. As you could imagine, a person could amass a huge collection of music this way, without ever paying for it.

What else is new? All sorts of new technologies allow you to acquire music without paying a cent. But are there any benefits, and how is Mojo different?

Most people I know who use Mojo end up finding favorite users to take music from (it lists users’ real names), and often these are people they have not met. If they do know these people, they will usually engage them in a discussion about their music. Hey, I saw your library on Mojo – good taste. Any more recommendations?

Most new technologies for music acquisition are contributing to the phenomenon of music as an increasingly solitary experience. Gone of the days of going to a record store, where the employees know you and your tastes and make recommendations, then ring you up and wish you a nice day when you leave. Humans are removed from most of the process of online music acquisition. Maybe somebody gives you the initial recommendation, but then you go on your computer, search for a torrent, download it, and achieve your goal with no more human interaction.

Mojo can facilitate an engagement with the musical tastes of others, and importantly, these others are either people you know or more commonly are people in your immediate vicinity. Mojo creates a micro-community of users sharing their musical tastes with each other, and the opportunity for real human interaction is there.

On another note, I initially wanted to write about how technology offers new methods of musical creation, but I see that that topic has already been covered. However, I still want to show you guys something. This guy is called That 1 Guy, and I saw him for the first time at a music festival in the middle of the Everglades; 10,000 people were freaking out to this goat-looking guy in a top hat manipulating a giant pipe with steam coming out of the top; every once in a while he would take off his shoe and play it. It was the best concert I’ve ever seen. He is a classically trained bassist who invented a machine that he calls the Magic Pipe; it is rigged with every type of technology possible. What’s more, the music that he makes with it is actually great! Watch these videos.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8DdKQCgUq4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCN7k3-PUss&feature=related

Future shock?

When thinking about the topic of technology, music and body, i come up with the video i watched during my History of Jazz class last semester:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nK0Pi4wC8Hk&feature=PlayList&p=DB952BF84A1DF9D4&playnext_from=PL&playnext=1&index=1

It's the music video for Rockit by Herbie Hancock; the song is recorded in his electronic music album Future Shock during the 80s. During that time both the music was quite a blow in that Herbie exploited revolutionary special effects, including scratching and other turntablist techniques, which formed the DJ culture in the following decades,combined with electronic keyboard and drum synthesizers. The music video was even more shocking with its portrait of mechanized mannequins mimicking the life of human beings. Disassembled legs and torsos of the mannequins move around and fulfilling the tasks of everyday life. The body parts are animated by electrical signals and controlled by mechanic arms, the procedure of which indicates the absence of brain and emotion. The only part that relates to the real human body is the television presenting Herbie Hancock's own hands playing the keyboard, but the television got smashed at the end of the video, symbolizing the last trace of humanity is destroyed.

There is a contradiction of attitude shown in Herbie Hancock's creation. Rockit on one hand celebrating a whole new genre and discovery of possibility in music, but on the other hand revealing the horror for the possibility of a dehumanized future. The music became a hit and played repeatedly in pubs for both reasons, with the latter become paradoxically the obsession of contemporary people.

This kind of obsession can be more easily seen in the popularity of the electrical band Daft Punk. Here's a video of their live performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9MszVE7aR4

The members of Daft Punk only show up in public wearing the robot mask, never revealing their real appearance. Interestingly they claimed themselves robots that turned from human beings. The dance cannot be more appropriate for their music, being highly repetitive, fragmented and angular, detached from any kind of personal expression. The human bodies are represented as being homogenized, in almost a religious way, under the higher order of electrical signals and sounds.

Comparing those two videos, which are 20-30 years away, we see a lot of similarities of expression, that electrical music being de-personalized and bodies being detached from both visceral and cerebral functions. Both of them become enormously popular no matter what their stances are in their music making because they both visualized and audiblized the fetish for the mechanized corporeality.

headphones.

I think one of the most interesting things technology has brought to music and its relation to the body is concept of headphones -- portability and isolation.

We often take for granted how easy it is that we have ways of experiencing everything to some kind of soundtrack.. these days, it is rare to see people exercising or walking to class or driving a car without listening to music. this adds an entirely new dimension to the physicality that can play into musical engagement.

Even within one simple activity, exercising for example, headphones allow for a higher level of experiencing both the music and the body movement. Bodies can move rhythmically in time with the music or more aggressively during climactic phrases, and the music can be associated with the physical stimulus of exercise. Music can be enjoyed for its exercise-appropriate value (perhaps a quicker beat, a driven and energetic sound, etc.) and can be embodied and realized physically by its listener. The isolation of oneself in sound is empowering and increases focus. It may also give the listener a sense of privacy that makes exercising more comfortable. Or sometimes it's a tuning into oneself and a change of perspective from being an element of the outside world to being an outsider observing the environment. This aspect in particular applies in many more fascinating situations that exercise...

The world looks totally different when you're listening to music. When you decide to smile at a stranger you're passing by because you just heard the most uplifting and inspiring part of a song, your body interacts with the world differently than it would have without the music. The idea that listening to music in this way provides an alternative physical awareness and consequential interaction between the body and its environment in all kinds of different situations is perhaps the most powerful implication of the technological development of headphones.

Music, the Body, and Technology

Today, in music theory we watched this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LnoD3NUux3M

It made me think about how so much of today's music is obsessed with auto-tuning. Recently, it's been used to the point where the voices don't sound remotely like anything that our bodies can actually create, but no one seems to really have a problem with this. I myself am kind of torn. On one side, I like some of the songs with auto-tuning, but on the other, I really don't like the overuse of this system because it makes "singers" out of people who aren't. With the abundance of technology like this that can "correct" the tonality of any singer and make their voice sound like whatever they want it to, which defeats the entire purpose of being a singer, and leads to people becoming famous for reasons unrelated to singing, or are already famous for something else and decide to "become a singer" even though they don't really know how to sing very well. The biggest problem is, society (or rather, the majority) seems to be okay with this. Will this continue to escalate (as in has since auto-tuning has been invented)? And if so, how far will it go?

Music, the Body, Technology: Joshua Fried

After thinking about an example that I could find that would adequately demonstrate the convergence of music, the body and technology, I decided to embed a clip of Joshua Fried, a NYC musician/dj/technician. Fried has a solo show entitled "Radio Wonderland" where he begins by turning on a standard am/fm radio and cycling through the stations, looking for something interesting. Then he connects the radio to his equipment and begins to create a beat/melody by manipulating the radio sound wave. Involved in this process is his mixer, a set a shoes that act as a drum pad and a steering wheel that acts as a turntable and tempo controller. All in all, what he does is utilize the technological tools that we have as an 'electronic' society and manipulate the sounds we hear on a day-to-day basis into "music". With that said, after taking a look at this video, I asked myself a few questions that I would like to share, questions I think anyone would ponder after experiencing "Radio Wonderland":

1. Is this music? There are definitely unique sounds that are being made, there absolutely is a beat, I thought I was 'moved' by the sound, but is there something inherently different in this performance that is not related to or can not be compared to the 'regular' music we normally listen to?
2. Is there musical embodiment? Clearly Fried is not playing music with conventional instruments (other than maybe percussion while utilizing his shoe drum-pad), the audience doesn't see him strain to hit a high note or utilize his digits. Has technology removed all embodiment?
3. Does technology create a some sort of 'cop-out' within the realm of musical creativity? I understand that what Fried accomplishes here is thought-provoking and certainly creative, however does his use of electronic mediums and mechanical devices remove his musical creativity from the realm of other artists we respect?
4. Is this performance purely a gimmick?

I have my own answers to these questions and I feel as though each person will relate to this performance differently, so watch the video and see if this 'music' emboldens your views, or maybe changes them.

Musical Movements

Here is the link to a brief article about an interesting program that captures 3D movements of the body for conversion into musical sound:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3873481.stm

Of course, it would take some time to learn how to interface with the software, but the goal is to make it possible for anyone to control a musical composition.

Music, Technology, and the Body: House (etc.) Music

When I think about music and technology, the first subject that pops into my mind is house/dance/trance/techno music.  (Forgive me for mashing together those terms, but I never really know what particular characteristics, if any, separate those genres.  They seem generally similar enough to me that I'd like to refer to them as a whole.)  Why?  Well, quite simply: this overarching genre exemplifies the fact that we can now create music solely via technology; i.e. our only "instruments" necessary are the computer and other such devices.

The fact that we can produce music solely by using technology is not actually that important, and indeed, many electronically produced songs mix in samples of human-sung vocals or human-played instruments.  I want to focus more on the nature of this kind of music.  Here's an example:

Characteristics I note in songs like this one include:

• a beat that is repetitive and ongoing almost throughout the song
• a "melodic line" that consists of a short phrase, also repeated almost continuously with some slight modulations
• gradual entering/fading in of more layers of repeated phrases/sounds
• vocals are often (though not always, but especially in remixes like this one) reduced to one or two lines that are layered in like all the other effects, and are also usually technologically modified

When listening to this combination, I find myself semi-consciously aware of the sense that most or all of such music is electronically produced.  At some level, my mind knows it's artificial -- but I think this is the key point that raises the body to importance.

Consider singer-songwriter, acoustic, Jack Johnson type of music.  From my experience, I listen to these kinds of songs and the lyrics are likely the most prominent feature.  If I'm paying any attention to the song, the lyrics might get into my head and start evoking personal connections and memories.  They tap into the emotional part of you.  Sometimes I listen to one of these kinds of songs and just sit still and lapse into nostalgia -- my body is not really engaged.

Now back to the house music.  The ongoing pulsating beat makes me want to get up and move my body in sync with its rhythm.  The entering layers of phrases one by one add to the energy of the piece, rousing adrenaline and excitement.  The vocals are embedded, and the lyrics are simple enough that I don't have to mentally process a whole story, but just let the words sink in as a repetitive sound.  This music tends to engage my body in what feels like a "primal" way: it bypasses personal histories and thoughts and begs me to "lose myself" in it.  All drug/alcohol-related possibilities aside, I find that this music alone can induce some level of euphoria; the body becomes so engaged with the music that higher-level consciousness temporarily becomes unimportant and diminished.

This video is bad quality and a little ridiculous, but it's kind of what I'm talking about:

Music and the Body and Technology

When I think about the interface of music, technology and the body, the easiest go-to is the development of new methods of listening to music; in my lifetime, from cassette tapes to CDs to the iPod and other MP3 players. One of the common themes over times time also seems to be an individualization of the musical experience, something that I know Myles is discussing in his paper.

When I think of popular music in the 1980s, I get the image of someone walking down the street with the giant boombox, blasting music to the whole world. Music in the case was not really meant to be an individual experience, but something broadcasted to anyone within earshot. Later, music became walkmen, and finally iPods.

But this individualism is also present in the music we have access to. Gone are the days where (most people) go and buy whole albums – especially ones that they don’t know anything about, just on a whim. Music (can be) free, and even if it’s not – we all preview a song before we think it’s actually worth downloading.

I think the iPod ads that were so prevalent in the past few years speak to this idea. Music has become very much individual, and at the same time, its relation to the body has changed. Music used to be an external phenomenon – something that was listened to at a concert, or perhaps broadcasted to everyone near by. But over time, it has become more and more internal; earphones, and more recently, earbuds move the stimulus both literally into the body (moving further and further down the auditory canal), and emotionally within the body (you’re the only one really experiencing the music). At least, that’s how I’ve always interpreted the silhouettes in the iPod commercials. They may be individuals, but they are in essence becoming part of the music themselves – thus, we only really see responses to music, and minimal or stereotyped bodily features