How Technology Has Helped Develop the Music We Hear Today
Introduction
Music has always been part of human life with people using music and lyrics to express their feelings, emotion, and influence of their culture across the world. Music has greatly advanced in its developmental process from ancient to modern music as a result of technological changes and advancement. Technology advancement in the modern world has transformed the music industry with a significant change being observed in the form and quality of music produced today. Technological transformation has enabled music to become more relevant and accessible to the target population. The music production industry has experienced more advantageous opportunities with the invention of popular instruments like electric guitar and music synthesizer to replace the earlier used instruments like traditional drums and trumpets thus advancing the quality of music produced in the modern world. Technological advancement has greatly helped in development of quality of music produced in the modern music industry with advancement of the tools and instruments from the ancient to modern and advanced instruments as presented herein.
Ancient Music Production
The ancient musicians are referred to be primitive singers as they behave in a different way in the type and quality of music they produced. The ancient music is considered of low quality mainly due to instruments and devises they used in their production. The musicians often refrained from utmost pitch and power. When frenzy pushes them to the extreme, the musicians strained their singing which mainly transformed their performance voice. The traditional and ancient musicians were expected to be superhuman with the use of supernatural performance to move the crowd (Sachs, 2008). The singers used their natural powers with the use of their nose, cries, yodels, yells and squawks, a musical strive that is never observed in the modern singers. Manual use of vocals and tone variation and change of sound explained their natural talent and experience to define their extreme knowledge in the musical world.
The so-called primitive singers used voice masks, the special devices that were used to veil their inborn voices. For example, the shaman of the Chukchi in Northeastern Siberia used his drum to modify his voice during the performance. He used to place it directly into his mouth and turn it in an oblique angle to produce sound variation which increases taste and value of his musical performance. Ancient singers also used traditional trumpets acting as megaphones and they were extracted from hollow branches and large canes used by the music players to add the flavor of the music. A traditional tribe in New Guinea held the traditional trumpet shell before his mouth while singing to produce a very hollowed sound that was more attractive than using his bare mouth. the singers also used a small and tightly stretched membrane-like instrument called mirliton that gave the singers’ voice a buzzing nasal timbre (Sachs, 2008). Generally, the traditional music was derived from speech and the advancement of the flavor and quality of the traditional performance required experience of the performer or the singer to use the manually controlled instruments to enable voice variation and change in the pitch and the tune of the song.
Technology Advancement in the Music Industry
Technology advancement in the past few decades has altered the entire music industry, changing the way human being interacts with his world or environment around them. With the current technology, one can access music at any time and place thus enhancing the entertaining, mental therapeutic, educational, and socializing roles of the music among others. The music industry has embraced technological changes in modern society, accepting to modify and transform the way people consume and create their music. The technologically advanced areas include the development of streaming software, electronic storage gadget with the capacity to hold bulk music, and recording devices capable of producing clear and audible music videos and audios (Logan, 2014).
Introduction of digital software is the biggest game-changer in music production. This technology allows musicians from all abilities to write, record, and produce the reasonable quality of songs without necessarily visiting the producers. Technologists have invented programs like Logic and Pro Tools which improves the sonic quality of music. Logic Pro and Pro Tools are very popular audio recording software options that have greatly transformed the music production industry. Pro Tools enables the modern music industry to produce high standard recordings (“AUDIO RECORDING SOFTWARE: AVID PRO TOOLS VS APPLE LOGIC PRO X | F.I.R.S.T. Institute,” 2018). The technology is mainly used for music production, post-production, recording band, and music broadcasting, a technology that was not existing some decades ago. On the other side, Logic Pro is a more popular modern technology in the music industry used in recording programs for musicians, songwriters, jingle producers, and producer base among other music production related processes.
While talking about technological advancement in music production and development, we can also consider the use of loop pedal technology, a very popular technology adapted in modern music performance. Loop pedals allow recording and playback of the piece of music in the modern music performance with the use of dedicated hardware devices called loopers phrase samplers. The technology also allows the use of software which runs on the computer with an audio interface which also allows music playback. Loop pedals allow performance of an entire song with varying beats and instruments on their own. Ed Sheeran is a good example who has perfected his use of loop pedal in his music performance (Tschmuck, 2014). Musical Instrument Digital Interface software allows communication in electronic instruments and tools during the synthesis and production of music.
Relationship Musicians and Modern Musical Instruments
The modern technology has brought about a close relationship between the player, technique, and musical instruments in the music industry. Such features have fostered complexity in the relationship between musical instruments and musical concept that is now made clear to the modern musicians. Technology has established a radical difference between the technical basis of digital synthesizer, samplers, and drum machines which are used to change the value and taste of modern music (Theberge, 2012). The sound production of these modern electronic and digital musical instruments is completely different from the one used in ancient age. Their sound production hardware is completely different from the user interface with devices allowing them to be played in an independent manner. The speed of adaptation of these technologically modified instruments in the production of popular music has greatly promoted the sense of unease with technology adaptation in the current music production industry.
Digital musical instruments are designed with hybrid devices or technology in which drum machines, synthesizers, or samplers are programmed in a way that they are not only involved in sound production or production or melodies and rhythmic patterns but also used for technical reproduction of music. Producers for popular music in the modern days enhances the production of prerecorded patterns of sound that is consumed by the target audiences. The new technology has also enabled music consumers to prerecord sounds and patterns of a music, altering the structure of the music structure, allowing the reworking, transformation, and arrangement of musical sounds in a more presentable pattern (Theberge, 2012).
Technological Transformation of Music Production from Primitive Tradition to Modern Sound Production
Considering a case of a drum, drummer, and the drum machine, the sound rhythm in the primitive technology was produced by beating around the membrane-stretched across a circular frame with wooden sticks. The recent technological transformation in drum construction involves substitution of the synthetic head of animal skin without mainly altering the features of the instrument. In the ancient performance, drum playing techniques involved coordination of the body and mind rhythm with an independent movement of the limbs and physical balance of the body, this was only attained after years of practice to enable perfection in sound modification and developing learning ability especially while playing the drum with a group of musicians.
This primitive technique greatly differs with the modern drum machine, with the sound production of the drum being considered to be independent of the drummer experience and techniques. Modern drums produce digital recording pf synthesized sounds. Development of technology has enabled programming of the instrument, connecting it with other sound-modifying instruments like keyboard and a computer. The production of this high quality programmed sound does not require physical coordination and discipline of the drummer. With the modern technology, music production has improved at a higher rate with modification of sound, rhythm, and quality of the music as compared to the ancient music.
Conclusion
Technology change has greatly influenced music development across the world. The music industry has experienced advancement in music production and editing with the advancement of technology. The ancient primitive music production and performance involved much of the performance experience and techniques. The traditionally used instrument to modify musical sounds and rhythmic pattern with the singers refraining and use of power and natural experience to modify the quality of the music produced. With modern technology, human effort is rarely dependent on the improvement of music quality as most instruments are programmed and technologically synthesized. With the change and advancement experienced in the modern music industry, is clear that technology has played a great role in p0roduction and development of music available to the consumers in the music market.
References
AUDIO RECORDING SOFTWARE: AVID PRO TOOLS VS APPLE LOGIC PRO X | F.I.R.S.T. Institute. (2018, November 6). Retrieved from https://www.first.edu/audio-recording-software-avid-pro-tools-vs-apple-logic-pro-x/
Logan, J. (2014). How has technology innovation changed the music industry and the affect it has had on the artists, musicians, song writers and music industry VIP’s? Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/post/How_has_technology_innovation_changed_the_music_industry_and_the_affect_it_has_had_on_the_artists_musicians_song_writers_and_music_industry_VIPs2
Sachs, C. (2008). The Rise of Music in the Ancient World, East and West. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=b_wL59PKIwMC&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=from+ancient+music+to+modern+music&ots=Lb-vOA_88o&sig=nKhjTlt6aSRbSgFkHTiVolBxQSI&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=from%20ancient%20music%20to%20modern%20music&f=false
Theberge, P. (2012). Any Sound You Can Imagine. Retrieved from https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=asBnYmKKz6kC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=modern+technology+used+in+music+production+&ots=OWLmr441yB&sig=be6yktEliMiH9lUA8dYPt0SrIXA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=modern%20technology%20used%20in%20music%20production&f=false
Tschmuck, P. (2014). Creativity and innovation in the music industry (2nd ed.). University of congress, NY: Springer.
