randall wong

Saturday, March 03, 2007

yesterday or today?


This is a Grandville caricature of music making in the 19th century, but it's probably even more applicable today. The triumph of steamed powered mechanical music isn't very different from the over-produced, over-engineered stuff we are getting now. And they retain about equal levels of authenticity. With all the current sequencers, sound software, looping, etc., engineering has supplanted music by voices and live instruments to provide that all pervasive wallpaper of sound we're bombarded with today.

Obviously, there is validity to work based on sampling and collage (e.g., artists like D J Spooky have created beautiful and provocative sound pieces). Without sampling technology, much of current music couldn't even exist, but so much of the stuff we do hear is techno hackwork.

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