How We All Listened And Became Robots
By Wade Buehler
The electronic media has served to dull our senses to what music is all about. It encompasses all areas of our lives and has changed how we feel about music because of how it is prepared and presented.
Long before computers, television and all things electronic, there was music. It was written and played by musicians for people. It was emotional, it was about life, and it was alive. People gathered by the fire at night and enjoyed the warmth and they celebrated life with music. Music would see us through good times and bad times, through happy times and sad times. Minstrels and musicians would weave their tales and tell their stories this way. Music has become a part of our souls, and in many ways it's how we share our souls with other people. As a musician I have long recognized the fact that music is more than just a bunch of notes being played, it's really the sound inside our souls. It's about how the strings are plucked and strummed and the keys are touched and caressed. Music is formed by the manipulation of an instrument by the human soul. Yes, you can reproduce the sounds electronically, but you can't make the music.
The development of the electronic mediums to enhance music production and presentation has long been a double-edged sword for musicians. Anything to enhance listening to music has always been welcome by the musical community, but anything beyond that has been received less than eagerly. You can make sounds that are close, but you can't reproduce the heart of the instrument electronically, because you can't reproduce the human element.
Music has always been about the relationship between a musician an instrument and an audience, and when it's created electronically it suffers as art because of the lack of human input. This is the human element No machine can reproduce this. If you touch the same piano key five hundred times, you'll make 500 slightly different sounds.
This is not to say that electronically produced music is not music because it is. It has a purpose, and some people do like it and they accept the fact that it is music so therefore, it is. The problem is that the music produced by this medium for this medium lacks soul, life and personality. It's empty. It can be kind of cool, but it's empty.
Video games and other electronic media in this genre have also had a significant impact on music, but not so much in the type of music that we listen to, although that certainly has been affected as well, but rather, how that music was produced and how it will be accepted.
The simple fact is that it is out there and it's being mass-produced so a lot of people are hearing it and by sheer numbers it is being accepted. Not because it's good, but people hear so much of it that they start to think that they like it simply because its everywhere. As this continues it just weaves its way deeper into our musical consciousness and takes root and grows. Before you know it were robots.
