blog post Extended Play #2: Has Technology Made Music Better?

Moi aussi!  :(

Hey guys, the links are fixed now. I think our podcast system was temporarily prorogued. We are now Back in Session. Hope you enjoy the podcast.

Thanks to you and your producers for this great podcast. When I read your lead in piece referencing It Might Get Loud and Jack White's viewpoint I thought I was going to have an opportunity to be insightful but I think you hit the right nuanced look at the question featured in this weeks podcast. (I haven't seen It Might Be Loud, but I've read a few interviews with White in guitar and music mags and think I know enough about him and his recording style to have a feel for what he would have said in that movie)

It's fine for Jack White to be romantically attached to technology that captures acoustic waveforms in an analog format (I am too to a certain degree, I love the warmth of tube amps as well the depth and crackles that vinyl gives) and I would also say it's fair to say that technology doesn't itself directly allow for 'better' music (ie. just because we can perfect any vocal track to be pitch perfect it does not mean the songs are crafted better or better products) but, as Buffy tells all of her students, it is a tool. Technology continues to make more tools for generating music as well as making those tools more readily available to a wider range of people. As one of your interviewees mentioned, recording technology changed how to listen to music dramatically. Technological improvements in recording and dissemination (anything that makes sharing of music easier, ie mp3 codec, p2p filesharing, ipod like devices) are now completing the circle and bringing listeners back to live performances. Radio3 is a living, breathing example of that. Artists set there music free to it and gain a fanbase that way. At plenty of live shows that I've been to in the past year I meet lots of people who are there because R3 brought the band to their attention. Also, with more people making/listening to music because it is easier to do through technological improvements equals a larger talent pool making music than there previously was. Better music will grow out of that. Anyone who can't see that technology has been a net plus for music and musicality must be, well I don't want to be uncivil to those who have a differing viewpoint from me, but I think they are wrong.