Bear with me.
In the 80’s, the Yamaha DX 7 and the Prophet 5 (as well as several samplers) took over pop music. So did digital reverb and the stereo chorus. We heard that over the top synth brass and it sounded hot – it was brash, fresh, and new.
Aaaaand now almost ALL of that stuff is gone. A lot of those sounds were a fad, and when everyone got sick of them, they weren’t used any more. No more gated snare. No more orchestra hits.
It’s tempting to look at music through the realm of what is “popular,” but the reality for young people is that there’s a universe of sub-genres out there that the grownups don’t even know about. It’s wonderful.
Still, when trying to defend Logic Pro on a recent YouTube comment thread (when will I ever learn,) the comment was brought up that Logic couldn’t time-stretch audio as well as the competition. This is a big deal BECAUSE POPULAR MUSIC IS NOW 99% COMPUTERIZED. I’m a musician – I don’t time stretch stuff, I just record it again and play slower or faster. Ableton Live is the new DX 7 – that is my entire point here. There’s a huge amount of people writing songs on Ableton, which doesn’t just “encourage” electronic loop-based music, it was created specifically FOR it. It’s like EDM had a secret mandate to take over the music world and it’s seeping in everywhere. Just like the DX 7 and digital reverb did in the 80’s.
Don’t believe me? Actually, you probably do, but play along. Don’t believe me? Go listen to the top 20 songs in the USA right now. Write down which tracks use real drums, real guitars, real bass. Not samples of them, but real musicians. The era of the laptop has arrived. It’s a hell of a lot easier and faster and cheaper AND it’s apparently what the kids want to hear.
Many musicians look down on EDM artists. In concert, the EDM artists mostly just push “play” on their own recordings, push a few buttons, and dance as much as they can while keeping their hands on the knobs. They have more in common with DJ’s than musicians.
In the 60’s and 70’s, old people bought organs that could be used to duplicate the hits they heard on the Lawrence Welk show. Now we have Ableton Live and/or backing tracks to dispose of the other musicians. I use backing tracks myself. I don’t like them. I’d rather hire a band and pay them a retainer to be instantly available whenever I want them to play whatever I want. I don’t have that kind of money.
Live music is going to be huge when we’re done with Covid-19. ALL forms of live music. But here is what I’m wondering – is the laptop here to stay for pop music, or are people going to decide to get back into bands and use real musicians playing real instruments? I think it’s here to stay. I think the bands with real musicians will be a novelty, a cool thing. It’ll never go away. But maybe I’m wrong. I thought synth brass was here to stay, also. Will re-timed loops reign supreme from now on in pop? Stupid technology and the stupid Internet are ruining music!!!
Or is technology SAVING music? It used to be that you had a few radio stations to listen to. That was it. You took what you were fed. That’s laughable now. Into death metal polka? You can find it online. Want to find an artist that is writing new music that sounds like classic 70’s rock? Online. (His name is Phil X, by the way.) The Internet is the ultimate music platform because no one can limit your choices. I hear people pining for the old days of the gatekeepers. Yeah… how well did that work out for your original band in the 80’s? Sell millions of records? Did you even MAKE a record, or didn’t you have ten grand to invest in it?
I like some electronic music a lot. I was a big fan of Erasure and Yaz and Depeche Mode, and I like Dot and Astronautica. I keep blaming the laptop but it isn’t really that – you can record a real band on a laptop. I guess I’m not a fan of people relying too heavily on loops. But I’m old. Maybe that’s the real question I’m exploring here – is modern popular music always going to be loop-based moving forward? I don’t know. I guessed wrong about synth brass.
