impact of digital technology on contemporary popular culture
Technology has always been closely related to music ever since the first humans beat on a taut skin drum in an attempt to express themselves musically. Many centuries later and the technology has evolved alongside the music until now in our time when some may say the technological creativity has surpassed the musical in the world of contemporary pop. Every era views music through its own technology. The Harpsichord the tool of choice for early composers leading to the piano and the symphony orchestra; the fifties and sixties with the explosion of the electric guitar and rock’n’roll, prog rock of the seventies using space age sounds of the future produced by the Moog and the theremin, eighties and nineties discovering ‘electro’ synth’s, drum-machines and samplers through to now, our generation; the digital generation, fully automated by computers and implemented by MIDI. These new instruments of the modern age are imbound to popular music, just as when the electric guitar arose many serious musicians preferred to ignore this new technology and the composers that used these instruments and so the lines permanently crossed dividing this new popular music (which most people listened to) and the more serious music studied and taught in universities. Etzkorn discusses the split: Distinctions between serious and popular music typically elaborate assumptions about aesthetic norms. Serious music is assumed to be aesthetically more complex or satisfying than popular music. The sheer numerical preponderance of a style, called popular because of its quantity, is not expected to be able to attain the musical quality of the less frequent, or less popular, serious forms. ... The most important of these new innovations is probably the standardization of MIDI( musical instrument digital interface) allowing composers to control and compose a plethora of different sounds of instruments all from the easy and cheaply available medium of the home computer. ... For years the last true instrument not to be affected by the digital technologies was the human voice but even in todays world of contemporary pop;digital rules. Pop stars can now have their voices altered and corrected to iron out any little flaws that they might posess and can be used live to ensure a perfect appearance on (all new digital) top of the pops.