Music Technology in the Community
Since the advent of MIDI in the early 1980s, music technology’s increasing user-friendliness, creative potential and decreasing cost has led to an acceleration in its use within communities. While broader sections of the community including the young, financially-disadvantaged and disabled have increased access to music technology, other groups e.g.senior citizens are still excluded.
Cultural structures, such as the National Curriculum in schools and wider attitudes to the perceived values of different genres (particularly favouring classical styles as ‘superior’ to popular music), have inhibited music technology being used to its best advantage.
Music technology has two main functions: as a tool enabling previously excluded groups to access musical activity, and as a creative means in itself of electronic music. For a technology to appear in the first place, it requires investment and anticipated return on that investment prior to manufacture and distribution: The innovation and diffusion of technology can only be justified on the basis of potential marketability (Théberge 1997: 153).
This means that more complex technology, which might be useful to some musicians, may remain expensive and inaccessible, while simpler products with greater market appeal but arguably less scope for creativity take precedence.
The concept of music in the community implies group rather than private individual musical activity. It could be argued that music technology has rendered the community music project less relevant:
It is now possible to create entire worlds of sound all by yourself with your computer; it is no longer necessary to be with other people (Taylor 2001: 139). However, community music projects are more widespread than ever due partly to a boost in finance (Hodges 2001: 186). Cost remains an issue: finite funds are available for an infinite range of possibilities.
Therapeutic uses of music are subject to financial constraints, partly due to difficulties quantifying the results in a way that can justify the spend: Music therapy still struggles to be accepted as a serious intervention for people in need, precisely because it will not necessarily be ‘cost-effective’ (Tyler 2000: 391-2).
In recent years, funding structures in the UK have been broadened through money available from the National Lottery (which started in 1994) and organisations such as the National Foundation for Youth Music (NFYM, set up in 1999) providing a structure for distribution of funds.
The NFYM supports community projects ranging from choirs and orchestras to DJ-ing and studio music production. The impetus behind its inception, however, came largely from a concern that young people should have the opportunity to learn an orchestral instrument and take part in classical music-making. A 2001 review of NFYM (Stevens 2001) seemed more interested in its achievements in classical genres than technology and popular styles.
The classical versus technology dialectic runs through much of the debate. Yet classical music has its own technological strand, from Cage in the 1930s using gramophones, to Stockhausen and his pioneering 1950s studio work to contemporary electroacoustic composers such as Denis Smalley and Trevor Wishart. Artists such as these have been influential on technological research and development as well as producing creative output with it. The pioneers of Detroit techno were heavily influenced by Kraftwerk, who in turn were influenced by the studio work of composers such as Stockhausen. It could be argued that the tendency in the UK to look at music as a series of opposites e.g. classical or pop inhibits the creativity possible with music technology.
Perhaps the most important recent development in technology has been the growing use of the internet. Hugill (2005) outlines the various ways in which it can be utilised by musicians, enabling the linking of spaces and musicians for collaborations in performance and composition, as well as its most popular musical use distribution of music files. Yet Hugill recognises that there is still room for improvement, particularly for activities such as online jam sessions: The main challenge facing this kind of interconnection was and remains technical: network latency, replicating visual cues, achieving a homogenised sound and so on (Hugill 2005: 433).
The internet also provides scope for a better understanding of music. For example, the experimental American composer Harry Partch produced homemade instruments between 1930 and 1972 and experimented with microtones. Before the internet, anyone in the UK interested in Partch had only a few recordings: the instruments are in an American museum. Now, says Hugill, it is possible to download and play interactive versions (Hugill 2005:436-7).
Tags: innovation, internet, MIDI, music, musicians, NFYM, technology, therapy
