Music Technology and Lifemusic

I feel like I'm on some kind of cusp.

Digital instruments are enabling for some, undoubtedly, as well as being attractive for younger people to work with. But they can also be a double-edged sword; imbuing in me the instant response of - “Oh, I don't know how to work with that / I'd have to learn an entire new skill-set / I'm bound to make it all go wrong.” This can lead to a deflation in my precious balloon of self-confidence. And my confidence in my own abilities is perhaps the most important tool I possess.

This kind of equipment, in uncertain hands, can lead to the feedback loops, breakdowns and delays. Precisely what I fear. In the hands of an expert it can look like the trappings of some kind of received religion, with the instruments of worship being used and handled only by the elite minority.

But music (and any other) technology will only stay that way to me – remote, unreliable - if I allow it to. Younger practitioners of and participants in the Life Music method are far less likely to have this aversion to technology. I am, after all, old enough to remember a world without digital technology of any kind whatsoever, and as such I seem to come pre-programmed (hah!) with a strong feeling of not being able to master it, which is twaddle; I just have to apply myself to these things with a slightly greater degree of effort than, say, my thirteen-year-old daughter. There's a burgeoning body of research that indicates that brain plasticity and therefore the ability to learn new things is nothing like as age-dependent as I used to think it was.

I'm reading a book called “The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything” by the acclaimed educationalist Sir Ken Robinson. In it there's a chapter entitled 'Is It Too Late?' Robinson sums things up neatly by saying,

“There is strong evidence to suggest that the creative functions of our brain stay strong deep into our lives: we can recover latent aptitudes by deliberately exercising them. Just as physical exercise can revitalise our muscles, mental exercise can revitalise our creative capabilities.”

So I've no excuse to not just knuckle down and get on with it. Better still, I can get my daughter to show me how to do things, which undoubtedly improves the relationship between us and gives her own self-esteem a welcome boost. She gets her ego massaged and I get knowledge of an extremely handy little iPhone app called “Beatwave”, which I have used to great success recently. Plus, it is great fun just to play with in odd moments.

Life Music for me is centred on play. You play music, not work it, and I believe the word 'play' is no accident; in order to master new skills and equipment, it is basically essential for me to try and become more like a child again, and just play with the stuff.

Is there any thing to say that a session based on the Life Music method cannot use only digital sounds? I couldn't answer that question without trying it – playing with the idea, essentially. For example, how about trying to make a piece of improvised music using the keypad tones of mobile phones. (Did you know we've had touch-tone telephones in this country since 1971? I didn't.) Yes, it may be tempting to dismiss this idea as nothing more than a gimmick, a bit of fun, or a funky little ice-breaker, or just 'not real', but if it engages people and relaxes them and makes them smile, might it not be a good thing? As Rod said: “If it sounds good it is good.”

Less physical connection to the music-making doesn't have to mean that I'm less physically connected to the music itself. Indeed, it is a great deal easier to leave my iPhone on my chair and get up and dance, something that is much harder to achieve when I am squatting in front of a balafon or a metallophone. In fact, the dancing might even be more healthy for me than squatting in front of a balaphon or a metallophone! I don't think my mental and spiritual connection with the music is altered by digital technology, at least not once I get the hang of using it. It is still me doing it.

For others, playing on a digital instrument, because of its relative lack of bodily exertion, might allow them a larger degree of participation as well as a longer time doing it before they get tired. This too is a good thing, because I often find that it can take people a good twenty to forty minutes or so to really get into whatever it is they are doing, music-wise. It is often after that magic twenty-minute mark that I find the greatest advances being made. Conversely, I have come away from gigs and drumming weekends in some considerable discomfort before now, from playing intensively for just an hour or so at a time, and I like to think that I am used to it! So how must it be for those who are not?

Learning to use digital music technology is something that I fear 'having' to do, perhaps because it reminds me of how I struggled to learn to use a computerised lighting control board when I was at drama school training to be a stage manager. I was under a lot of pressure. I got there in the end, though.

So what's next? I could continue being very comfortable right here where I am, thank you, using hand-made acoustic instruments. But what would happen if I applied that attitude to the rest of my life as well? I'd certainly not be here typing this on my MacBook. Supposing I'd never learned to use a microwave, or a video recorder, or a digital camera, or a mobile phone. Where would I be, exactly?

I've just spent twelve minutes tinkering with my mobile phone and cannot get it to play anything except the theme music to “In Treatment”, which doesn't help my argument any. Time to call in the services of my own personal Wonder Teen … maybe I should enlist her to help me run Life Music sessions ... Laura x

I feel really pleased that Rod has raised this question so simply and clearly, pointing out his own ambiguous uncertainty as well as the workshop leader’s simple dismissal of the difference.
I think there is a real difference between sounds generated by real wood or metal and such frequencies being carefully repeated by a cardboard cone or other speaker. It may not be a surprise that when analysed on an oscilloscope the difference is not to be seen: should one expect a machine to be able to distinguish between machine sounds and those driven by human involvement first hand? I think not. I think there is a responsive movement to the quality of a sound within the soul or heart that a sensitive or trained individual can feel, that a machine can not. Wonderful though machines are, subtle, powerful and ubiquitous, they have made life less deep and rich than it used to be in the bad old days.
Sometimes one can draw conclusions from effects things have in the long term even if one can not agree on a distinction in the short. To this end I would like to draw a comparison with flavours. In the 1970’s food additives that were synthesized to a chemical structure exactly like real fruit extract were passed to be described as ‘natural flavouring’ by law. The effect on food has been that the extra intensity of synthetic flavouring is now expected of nearly all food. Manufacturers of organic yoghurts and the like have found that using real fruit only is not enough to sell their products. People expect the hit the tongue gets from ‘natural flavour’ additives.
My suspicion is that the nature of the electronic instrument will, if allowed slowly take over from ‘real’ musical sounds.
I think Rod Paton makes an important point when he distinguishes between the nature of the sound and the nature of the movement that produces it. When larger bodily movement, and noticeable exertion of the muscles is required to produce a sound two things at least are engaged, the flow of effort within the body and the developing control to make that effort harmonize in rhythm or tone with a hoped for result. Both these things are important in helping people to become more present to themselves and to any issues they may have brought to the sessions.
One might argue that this step is in the same direction that Orff took us by introducing "instant access" instruments, in that a barrier such as skills learning is bypassed. I would argue that a step towards electronic instruments is a step in the opposite direction in that the process of learning an instrument or of not knowing (yet) how to make the sounds one would like to make leads to a nervousness in performing. a nervousness that Orff really wanted us to move away from. Electronic instruments are also associated with such a nervousness, not least, as Rod points out in the potential for soul-searing howls of feedback. Electronic instruments may be deceptively easy to play at one moment and suddenly require expert attention the next. This does not allow people to relax into a warm feeling of creativity like they can with "instant access" instruments.
Healing through Sound is, to my mind associated with the inner warmth of joy and confidence that e-instruments can only synthesise.

Tobias Kaye
www.SoundingBowls.com

The main reason for the usefullness of Digital Technology is that recording and reproduction of music is freed from some of the problems of the analogue world. Things like Wow and Flutter of record players and tape machines, vinyl clicks, electrical artifacts etc. It is also a very accurate way of recording instruments and voices. My first digital system I described as a 'digital mirror'.

These articles on digital sound talk about the 'type' or 'quality' of sound rather than the impact of digital technology ( with a side reference to 'feedback' which is of course, firmly rooted in the analogue area of music production using PA).

The most fundamental influence of digital technology is the way that sound is recorded and reproduced now. Any sound to be recorded is sampled at rates up to 96 thousand times a second (sometimes more) then a digital circuit measures the analogue level of the sound at that point in time and translates that into a binary number which is recorded in digital memory. This number is of varying bit depth - typically 32 bits inside computer equipment and mixing desks down to 16bits on CDs (The CD standard is 44.1 Khz sampling rate at 16 bits depth). The higher the sampling rate and bit depth, the more accurate is the analysis and later synthesis of the sound. The accuracy of the analogue to digital converters (AtoD) and the digital to analogue converters (D to A) which perform this function are the key elements in the perceived quality of the recording.

So the sound you hear from the speakers at a concert from a CD has been analysed, boken down into tiny time slices, measured, saved in computer memory, digitally mixed, imprinted on a disc, read by a laser, synthesised or re-assembled, smoothed to remove digital artifacts and then the resulting analogue signal is amplified and drives the speakers.

And the music goes round and round and it comes out here!

It is a little twee to talk about the purity of an instruments sound if it has gone through a modern recording process......

Having said all that, the technology has been refined over decades now and in blind tests, the clarity and accuracy of digital sound is nearly indistinguishable from the sound of the original instruments to most peoples ears.

(There is still a vestige of the '70s/80's arguments about CD versus Vinyl recording quality but that is another story.)

Digital instruments are a whole other dimention of course. When a 'real' acoustic instrument is recorded it has all the nuances and variations of pitch and tone translated into digital signals in an attempt to faithfully re-produce the original. A digital instrument (usually referred to as a software or hardware synthesizer) can use adjustable in-built digital signals to produce just about any sound you can think of - and many you wish you hadn't- within the dedicated device or computer. A large number of digital instruments use sampled or synthesised real life instruments but there is the possibility to produce sounds that have never, and probably could never, be created by physical instruments. To ignore the possibilities of digital instruments would be a retrograde step I would suggest.

There are many ways to control these instruments and to give expression to your music. Yes you can have simple buttons - like a melodian or a shruti box. You can also have piano type keyboards, touch sensitive keyboards, aftertouch keyboards, breath controllers etc. Built - in enhancements such as reverberation can synthesise the sound of a cathedral and other spaces - the possibilities are endless.....

I Make no comment on the 'quality' of the sounds or their 'usefullness'. It is all in the ears of the hearer.