I am a total gadget nut......I love playing with new technologies, learning how to use softwares, apps, etc. I've never really considered just how much technology can isolate us. I've found myself arguing for how technology connects us, but has technology reached a point that it has replaced human connection? Since the dominance of cellphones, that seems to be the case.
Ever find yourself texting when you could call? Could visit? Could meet someone for lunch to discuss something rather than sending them an email? Maybe I am just getting old.....but I feel myself more and more wanting to battle this tendency to isolate myself from others via technology. I want my son to experience things without googling everything first.
The film Sound City, and the spinoffs it has induced; articles, blogs, etc, has touched on how technology has changed the way music is made. As a former graduate of audio engineering school and a technology freak, I have been all for the Neato!-factor. The gadgets, the different gear, and techniques to 'improve' the sound of music. How that is often done, is by isolating musicians in ISO-booths......or soundproof rooms so that their parts can be re-recorded or 'fixed'. Or simply to stop the bleeding of one sound into the microphones on a different instrument. Or how about not using microphones at all? Direct lining instruments, and then re-amping them later. (The process of taking a direct signal and patching it through different amplifiers, etc, to later simulate sounds). Then the next step is, just laying down all the parts to a song separately.....no longer needing to have musicians in the same room at the same time! Or even being in the same city/country and just sending files over the internet. Or just doing everything yourself. That is the trap I most often fall into.
It doesn't stop there......at music. This 'upgrade' in the way we work invades everything. Teleconferencing, conference calls, living life live VIA satellite. When did it stop being about a way to be there when you couldn't be there......and turn into a reason to just not need to be there?
My fondest memories of being in a band come from band practice.....or being on stage. You feel like a musician when you can make music with a group of people......improvise, push the envelope, challenge yourself to nail a part on the fly. Needing those other musicians to add their part that you can't reproduce. Blending your feelings and passions with another person to create something you can't do alone or in isolation. Why do we throw that out the window when making a record? Retreat to our soundproof booths from behind triple paned glass and go for coffee while the drummer puts down the beat to a click track? Is variation weak? Is being human not good enough? Sure, sometimes the creative process requires some experimentation that can't be done on the fly.....but most of the time that is not the reason to digitize the process. It's the want to make things better than we can humanly do.
The musicians I respect most can perform their music effortlessly live......without the veil of production. The act of playing music becomes pure expression because the want to 'get it right' is no longer there. Getting it right is a state of mind. The buzz they get from stretching music to new heights and never quite knowing what will happen next is the drug that they feed the audience. People miss that feeling or never have experienced it at all. Then they go to experience it and walk away from the concert hall raving about how much 'better it was than the album'. Then they tell their friends to watch the youtube video later to see what they missed, but the electricity isn't translated to the micro speaker on their friends' cellphones. They can't feel the floorboards thump with the feet of 500 fans stomping, hear the way the sound reverberates from the walls and watch the ways the crowd and musicians interact. They don't see the mistakes because they have all been scrubbed out for the video.
Being the guy who generally makes the videos and fixes stuff......I admit hypocrisy.
So.....I'm at the point of the post where I am supposed to start reeling it in. Making the point, giving the pinchline, or the 'what am I suggesting we do about it?'. I don't really know the answer......but several things come to mind. Stop trying to make everything perfect, stop being afraid to make mistakes or sound human! Realize that the 'mistakes' are often the best part because they remind us that we are listening to a group of people making music together rather than a computer. I hear the word 'authentic' tossed around a lot these days. As though authenticity is in short supply in today's digital world.
I'm getting closer to the point.....
Get together with people and make music......try something to see how it will turn out rather than planning everything out. Meet someone face to face to tell them some good/bad news rather than flipping them a heads up text. Go analog......in life. Easy for me to type, (I realize the irony here), but hence why I have all but ceased conventional studio recording and gone back to only recording bands live......or at least live off the floor in my studio. I want to feel that magic and capture a great performance rather than building one from the ground up. I want to make a band go home and practice until they are good enough to sound amazing live.
If you are still reading at this point.....you are either identifying with the musicians perspective or considering how it applies in every day life. And it does. Let's get back to using technology to remove barriers to us connecting......not letting technology connect for us. If you are watching something amazing and everyone is trying to film it on their phones......just watch. Experience it. Let your memory be the only record of that event, and then get together later with people and tell the story. Don't just write it in a blog and edit it till it sounds just right. **wink**
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