Can Computers Make Music?
Posted by Grand Poobah on November 30th, 2012
I’ve been taking classes in music production from Berklee College of Music Online recently, and one thing that has really struck home with me lately is how much computers have changed the nature of music production. Having done computer-based production for quite some time, it was not exactly news to me that computers have made making music easier and more affordable. It’s great that I can produce professional-quality music in my basement. However, it’s also now feasible, even easy, to make music without even being a musician. You don’t have to be able to play an instrument or sing on key anymore. You can easily string together clips of other people playing their instruments and make a new song out of it. You can use software to correct all the sour notes that come out of your mouth or via your fingers. You don’t have to be able to play in time, either. The software will correct your timing and even easily change your playing to have a more natural-sounding feel. It’s kind of frightening, really.
I won’t deny having taken advantage of various studio trickery in my time, but I will say that I value real people playing real instruments in real time over constructing the illusion of such with software. I hear the glossy, over-the-top productions on the radio these days, and see the Photoshopped photos on the covers of magazines and get angry, frankly. In “We Can Love” I wrote, “I’m so tired of plastic faces on every screen/The real world is marked with scars, the sacred and obscene”. I really feel like we’ve lost something, that the surface appearance of things is valued more that the substance. The illusion of crystalline perfection can’t truly mask the emptiness underneath, though. I have to believe that the countless hours I spent learning to play and improve my technique, and all the time I’ve performed for an audience, lend my music something that can’t be truly simulated by computer software. Otherwise, what was the point?