tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/electronic-music-8204/articles
Electronic music – The Conversation
2023-03-23T09:46:45Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/200937
2023-03-23T09:46:45Z
2023-03-23T09:46:45Z
Bowscapes review: album celebrates new traditions in South Africa’s ancient bow music
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514190/original/file-20230308-26-zg13m9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The late musician Madosini playing the umrhube mouthbow.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Oupa Bopape/Gallo Images via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="https://theconversation.com/new-practices-reinvent-traditions-in-bow-music-56095">Musical bows</a> are among the oldest instruments in southern Africa. Musicologists think the “ping” a bowstring makes when an arrow is released <a href="https://oxfordre.com/anthropology/display/10.1093/acrefore/9780190854584.001.0001/acrefore-9780190854584-e-561;jsessionid=89EDD8E587584910643F9A48478BD544?rskey=PoaaPK&result=101">inspired early hunters</a> (as far back as the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/khoisan">Khoi and San</a> nations) to use it for music-making in ritual and, later, other contexts.</p>
<p>The passing, in 2022, of South Africa’s bow virtuoso <a href="https://theconversation.com/madosini-a-south-african-national-treasure-whose-music-kept-a-rich-history-alive-197736">Latozi “Madosini” Mpahleni</a> reminded South Africans of traditional bow music’s significance in the region’s intangible cultural heritage.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514185/original/file-20230308-20-3e9k33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="An album cover with the words " src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514185/original/file-20230308-20-3e9k33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/514185/original/file-20230308-20-3e9k33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514185/original/file-20230308-20-3e9k33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514185/original/file-20230308-20-3e9k33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=593&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514185/original/file-20230308-20-3e9k33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514185/original/file-20230308-20-3e9k33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/514185/original/file-20230308-20-3e9k33.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=745&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Africa Open</span></span>
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<p>When you pluck, strike or stroke the string of a musical bow, you get not only one note but extra sounds (called overtones), created by the air vibrating around it. Using various techniques – such as adding a gourd resonator, or placing the end of the bow in their mouths – bow players can amplify and manipulate those sounds to shape complex music. </p>
<p>The work of veteran and younger bow musicians, scholars and audiences all keep these traditions alive and stimulate new repertoire. But the fascination bow music holds for the international New Music community (modern, innovative concert composers), and the options for using electronic composing techniques with bow sounds, have been less documented. </p>
<p>Now a new compilation CD, Bow Project 2: Bowscapes, brings that impact to the fore. Released by the <a href="https://aoinstitute.ac.za">Africa Open Institute</a> for Music Innovation and Research at Stellenbosch University, its 21 newly-composed electronic tracks illustrate how heritage and innovation can interact in “traditional” music. And how composers, whether inside or outside its communities of origin, should treat it. </p>
<h2>Tribute to Jürgen Bräuninger</h2>
<p>Bowscapes is a tribute to the late German-born, South African-based composer and music professor <a href="https://www.iol.co.za/dailynews/news/south-african-musical-composer-professor-juergen-braeuninger-dies-22832424">Jürgen Bräuninger</a>, who died in 2019. Bräuninger advocated innovation in composing and playing. When I interviewed some of the composers who had contributed tracks to the album for this review, it became clear how influential working with him had been.</p>
<p>South African composer <a href="https://www.njabulophungula.com">Njabulo Phungula</a>, a former student of Bräuninger, recalls:</p>
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<p>Jürgen would encourage me to be more ‘curious’ in my musical explorations … much of my recent music has to do with creating seemingly incompatible musical ideas and contexts in which they make sense, appealing to that curiosity.</p>
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<p>A longtime collaborator, Netherlands-based <a href="https://luchoutkamp.nl">Luc Houtcamp</a>, with musician and bow scholar <a href="https://soa.ukzn.ac.za/staff-profile/music/sazi-dlamini/">Sazi Dlamini</a> and poet <a href="https://www.thepresidency.gov.za/national-orders/recipient/prof-ari-sitas">Ari Sitas</a>, created their work because, says Sitas, “We owed it to Jürgen.”</p>
<p>South African composer <a href="http://www.michaelblake.co.za/biography">Michael Blake</a>, professor at Africa Open, co-ordinated the album as well as contributing a track. He had helmed the first <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2989/18121004.2016.1267950">Bow Project</a> album in 2010, a collection of mostly string quartet works honouring the musicianship of traditional bow master the late <a href="https://iamtranscriptions.org/performers/mrs-nofinishi-dywili/">NoFinishi Dywili</a>. To that, Bräuninger contributed the only electronic soundscape, Tsiki’s Got a Headache, which opens this new recording. Blake told me that after Bräuninger’s death he was looking for a way to honour him: </p>
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<p>I thought back to that ‘bowscape’, as he called it, and started imagining a whole CD … of new ones.</p>
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<p>Blake contacted composers across the world, sending South African bow samples on request. In the end, he had 21 short electronic pieces, half from South Africa and half from places as diverse as Mozambique, Nigeria, Mexico, Germany, Uruguay, the Faroe Islands and more. </p>
<h2>Bow music and struggle music</h2>
<p>On the CD, those two groups of composers sit on either side of an extended centrepiece: Walking Song by Dlamini, Houtcamp and Sitas. Its lyrics are based on verses from <a href="https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/anti-apartheid-struggle-south-africa-1912-1992/">struggle era</a> trade unionist and poet <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/alfred-temba-qabula">Alfred Temba Qabula</a>. </p>
<p>Walking Song pays homage to two traditions: bow music and <a href="https://theconversation.com/south-africas-struggle-songs-against-apartheid-come-from-a-long-tradition-of-resistance-192425">struggle music</a>. Diverse musicians, including accomplished bow players, used music as part of their activism against apartheid, as individuals or in trade union and political party choirs and theatre groups.</p>
<p>Sitas explains that the three were determined that:</p>
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<p>We were not going to use the bow as a decoration or quotation – we were going to compose with it.</p>
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<p>He sought permission from Qabula’s daughter to add contemporary allusions to the poem.</p>
<h2>Composing with bow</h2>
<p>Those processes indicate what went into making the album. Contributors acknowledged bow music as a legitimate compositional language, not an exotic ornament to be <a href="https://academic.oup.com/book/12471/chapter-abstract/162875150?redirectedFrom=fulltext">appropriated</a>. Conversations about who “owns” and has the right to work with traditional music have been an important part of the decolonisation debate. South African composer, performer and scholar <a href="https://www.neosong.net">Neo Muyanga</a>, who made the track uNontoUzavunywa, reflects that borrowing is unavoidable, because cultural workers have always drawn from older music to convey new and sometimes subversive messages. But “it’s important to announce our sources and pay homage to them in every way possible.” </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Bow Project.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Muyanga’s work flips the gender message of a song from another bow maestro, <a href="https://herri.org.za/1/michael-blake/">Mantombi Matotiyana</a>. He says that when she first came across that song, “all power and ownership were invariably presumed to vest in the man”.</p>
<p>Phungula’s track Montage layers and contrasts the isolation of studio electronic composing with “an element that contained a multitude of sounds” – a family wedding recording he had made some years earlier. It invokes the spirit of community music-making in which bow traditions are rooted. </p>
<p>In many such communities, women (such as Madosini, Dyiwili and Matotiyana) remain the leading composers and performers. Three women composers feature on the album: London-born <a href="https://www.galinajuritz.com">Galina Juritz</a>, <a href="https://www.christinaoorebeek.com">Christina Oorebeek</a> from the US and South African <a href="http://www.carastacey.com">Cara Stacey</a>. </p>
<h2>Experimentation</h2>
<p>Stacey, herself a bow player, here applies guitar effects to the instrument: “Bows were earlier; guitars came in and replaced them. I liked the idea of flipping that and replacing the guitar … with bows.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-practices-reinvent-traditions-in-bow-music-56095">New practices reinvent traditions in bow music</a>
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<p>But her cyclical track, Rounds, also interrogates the stereotype that “tradition” and its exponents are “static or fixed in any way. My experience from my research in Eswatini and with different bow players is that they’re keen to experiment. They already do experiment – and did in the past.”</p>
<p>Blake relishes the album’s diversity of approaches, languages and sounds. In the community of music-makers he’s drawn together, Bowscapes reflects both the community roots of bow music and the collaborative processes Bräuninger fostered. </p>
<p><em>The CD is available from <a href="https://aoinstitute.ac.za">Africa Open</a> and will soon be available as a download</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/200937/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gwen Ansell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Composers are keeping bow music alive through electronic music and other experiments.
Gwen Ansell, Associate of the Gordon Institute for Business Science, University of Pretoria
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/181191
2022-04-14T09:25:10Z
2022-04-14T09:25:10Z
Grammy star Black Coffee: winning the world, losing at home
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/457937/original/file-20220413-9145-6s453p.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African producer and DJ Black Coffee plays in New York in 2018.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo by Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I first saw Nkosinathi Maphumulo aka <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60996104">Black Coffee</a> perform at Amaros Night Club in Pretoria, South Africa during the late 2000s. Dressed in a casual T-shirt, no one would have guessed he was destined for global glory. Beneath strobe lights, bathed in throbbing house music, clashing voices and perspiration, he could have been just like any other struggling deejay on the make. But he seemed impervious to the spectral faces, shapes and vapours swirling across the ceiling, walls and floors. In the middle of the Pretoria club, Black Coffee manned his throne in a scene where everything hangs in the balance between absolute elation and dissolution.</p>
<p>Black Coffee isn’t very demonstrative behind the decks. He maintains a cool demeanour – but the entire dance floor is going nuts. At the 64th Grammy Awards, he lifted a golden statue for <a href="https://www.grammy.com/artists/Black-Coffee/37937">Best Dance/Electronic Album</a> for his sixth studio album <em><a href="https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/black-coffee-subconsciously/">Subconsciously</a></em> (2021). Black Coffee makes laid back house music; his touch is cool, restrained and unmistakeable. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/2022-grammys-what-fela-kuti-has-to-do-with-west-africas-growing-pop-fame-179899">2022 Grammys: what Fela Kuti has to do with West Africa's growing pop fame</a>
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<p>Over the years, he kept grinding but there was seldom anything sweaty or grunty about his music. His tracks were paired with a unique range of vocalists and musicians – from Drake to Thandiswa Mazwai. He steadily pursued sophisticated sounds and grooves as frenetic waves of house music sub-genres – <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/article/history-kwaito-music">kwaito</a>, <a href="https://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2017/02/gqom-hashtags-feature">gqom</a>, <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/amapiano-genre-house-south-africa-1191523/">amapiano</a> – swept in and out of vogue. </p>
<p>There is very little, for instance, that connects him with gqom, a genre associated with Durban, his adopted home city. Gqom has a predilection for raw, heavy drum beats and hectic, unhinged grooves. Just as little connects him to amapiano, a jazzy, bluesy, synth-laden house music sub-genre reputed to have been hatched in the townships of Pretoria (though quite different from <a href="https://www.amapiano.co/za/amapiano-vs-bacardi-full-comparison/">Bacardi</a>, an earlier house sub-genre also birthed in Pretoria). </p>
<p>Instead, Black Coffee’s label, <a href="https://soulisticmusic.com">Soulistic</a>, became a base for house music stars Culoe De Song, DJ Shimza, Bucie and others.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Arriving home after the Grammy win.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Ironically, Black Coffee peaked artistically more than a decade ago when he was the wave of the moment. While house music is still popular, he can no longer be regarded as the flavour of the season. Amapiano has got everyone hot, bothered and fleet-footed. But the Grammy selection committees are still too far behind to listen.</p>
<h2>A deejay’s deejay</h2>
<p>Since he became an established global name, Black Coffee always comes across as a deejay’s deejay; a knighted name for the art and craft of the deck. His music doesn’t drip with bodily emissions or call undue attention to itself other than daintily seeping with the moistness of dew into the most silent recesses of the soul. </p>
<p>This is precisely why he is largely an acquired taste in many parts of Africa. However, there is evidently a great deal of courage, consistency and conviction in his craft which has paid off handsomely. House music was welcomed by South African youth on the cusp of political liberation. Somehow it chimed with their longings for freedom, emotional release and creative experimentation. They had no existing rule book and dance music provided them with a powerful imaginative blueprint that supported their understandable optimism. </p>
<p>While South Africa and the rest of the continent were always a bit behind the curve in loving him, Coffee wooed large swathes of Europe, beginning with the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20190131-how-ibizas-party-really-started">Ibiza</a> party scene in Spain. And, of course, Diddy, Jay Z, Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Swizz Beats, David Guetta and other equally prominent international music A-listers respect and admire him.</p>
<h2>Turbulent masculinity</h2>
<p>Back in South Africa, Black Coffee has courted controversy. In a video that went viral in 2016 he is seen <a href="https://ewn.co.za/2016/09/26/Black-Coffee-apologises-to-fans-after-slapping-AKAs-manager">violently slapping</a> a fellow artist’s manager at a concert in Polokwane. He apologised. </p>
<p>A few years later came a very public and ugly break up of his marriage to actress and fashion designer Enhle Mbali Mlotshwa amid her <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/s-mag/2021-04-14-enhle-mbali-breaks-her-silence-on-gbv-allegations-against-black-coffee/">allegations</a> of physical abuse and infidelity. He <a href="https://www.sowetanlive.co.za/entertainment/2021-04-13-black-coffee-denies-assaulting-estranged-actress-wife/">denied</a> these. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Black Coffee performs a NPR Toy Desk Concert in 2021.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Issues have also arisen regarding the rights to certain songs that he samples on his tracks. There was some misunderstanding, for instance, regarding <a href="https://www.news24.com/Channel/simphiwe-dana-says-dj-black-coffee-beef-was-a-misunderstanding-20150418">his re-mix</a> of Simphiwe Dana’s <em>Ndiredi</em>. </p>
<p>To some South Africans, Black Coffee represents the misshapen heart of masculinity in contemporary South Africa; apparently violent and seemingly arrogant in the face of his ex-wife’s allegations. The country finds itself in the grip of a <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/11/24/south-africa-broken-promises-aid-gender-based-violence-survivors">scourge</a> of gender-based violence. It’s perhaps curious that such soothing sounds emanate from a figure who appears so turbulent. But for many others, Black Coffee has emerged almost as spotless as the white blazer he wore to the Grammy ceremony. </p>
<h2>Understated poise</h2>
<p>Even before the Grammy nod, he had been richly garlanded with awards and recognition internationally. Obviously, all of this was accomplished by finding an inner drumbeat and sticking to his own lane.</p>
<p>In times of incredible entertainment industry frenzy, tasteless egotism, self-aggrandisement and rife plagiarism, Black Coffee grasped his moments of victory with what seemed a casual understatedness. Within the public eye, he cuts a picture of refined style and poise.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-is-nigerian-music-star-wizkid-and-why-is-he-taking-over-the-world-179775">Who is Nigerian music star Wizkid -- and why is he taking over the world?</a>
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<p>Arguably, Black Coffee’s tunes are girded by a quest for sublimity. They seem to seek an essence of humanity that is hard to find or appreciate if you don’t cherish the meaning and uses of silence. This is what make his sounds so distinctive amid the congested gathering of current producers and beat-makers. Silence can be applied interchangeably with lightness, another intrinsic characteristic of his productions.</p>
<p>Yet, ultimately, there is a slight sense of disconnect in Black Coffee’s Grammy win; this is a graphic example of winning the world and losing the home; the amapiano wave is cascading crescendo by crescendo, beat by beat, country by country, and Black Coffee isn’t a part of it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/181191/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sanya Osha does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Despite controversy at home and a decade late, the Grammy win proves how much the world loves South Africa’s biggest house music star.
Sanya Osha, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Humanities in Africa, University of Cape Town
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/155830
2021-02-24T12:42:46Z
2021-02-24T12:42:46Z
Daft Punk: how the mystery music masterminds used their robot disguise to take over the world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385844/original/file-20210223-20-i1b8fm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=37%2C37%2C4912%2C3257&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rome-october-28-daft-punk-attend-190727495">Andrea Raffin/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>While Daft Punk’s break-up may have been unexpected, the enigmatic nature in how the public were notified was predictable. Announced via the electronic duo’s YouTube channel, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DuDX6wNfjqc">an upload</a> titled Epilogue turned out to be a scene lifted from their 2006 <a href="https://www.factmag.com/2021/02/23/daft-punk-split-up-electroma/">Electroma film</a>, alongside a vocal borrowed from a track on 2013’s Random Access Memories album. </p>
<p>The pivotal desert scene features a prolonged trek by the duo in their instantly recognisable helmets and culminates in one self-destructing while the other walks away. Continuing then what is the pair’s time-honoured preference for ambiguity, it indicates a finale while refraining from disclosing the explicit details. </p>
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<p>Over the past 28 years, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo (the men behind the helmets) developed a complex and counterintuitive communication strategy. It was an approach that saw the pair hiding behind their alter-egos but going on to conquer the world of electronic music at the same time.</p>
<p>As the more vocal of the two, Bangalter has indicated that this method was fundamental to Daft Punk’s self-preservation. “If you can stay protected and get noticed then it’s all good”, <a href="http://www.daftpunk-anthology.com/dpa/mag-articles/mixmag-2006-07">he told</a> journalist Suzanne Ely in 2006. What began with Bangalter and de Homem-Christo using various masks to hide their discomfort within photoshoots – obscuring rather than projecting a specific image – was eventually resolved when they reinvented themselves as androids. </p>
<h2>Robot rock</h2>
<p>Like the electronic group <a href="http://www.kraftwerk.com/">Kraftwerk</a> before them, these cyborgs further celebrated the electronic, automated characteristics of their music, while at the same time orchestrated a mythology in conjunction with technology’s all-pervasive influence. </p>
<p>Bangalter even presented an <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/wnyekw/daft-punk-birth-of-robots">origins story</a> in which he claimed that the duo’s appearance was the result of an accident. Specifically, that the explosion of an electronic music sampler in 1999 had transformed them into their robot alter egos. Yet alongside this superhero version, Daft Punk also cited the conversion as being their response to fame.</p>
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<img alt="Covers of CDs by Daft Punk" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/385845/original/file-20210223-19-18gqdeq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Better to burn out than fade away: Daft Punk announce retirement after nearly 30 years.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/rome-italy-july-29-2019-covers-1470103823">Shutterstock/Kraft74</a></span>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/florian-schneider-and-kraftwerk-helped-shape-the-sound-of-modern-music-138187">Florian Schneider and Kraftwerk helped shape the sound of modern music</a>
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<p>“We don’t believe in the star system,” Bangalter stated. “We want the focus to be on the music. If we have to create an image, it must be an artificial image. That combination hides our physicality and also shows our view of the star system. It is not a compromise.”</p>
<h2>Anti-celebrity superstars</h2>
<p>In this sense, I believe Daft Punk have become an example of an “<a href="http://usir.salford.ac.uk/id/eprint/50761/">anti-celebrity celebrity</a>”. Yet despite what they might have claimed, with arena tours and cameos in Disney movies, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo were far from being “anonymous”.</p>
<p>Theirs was a stance fraught with contradiction – and one maybe familiar to many working in arts and culture who find their rejection of consumer culture operating within the same <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGJy822geAg">market-driven constraints</a>. In Daft Punk’s case, it resulted in often uneasy relationships such as the robots’ involvement in <a href="http://soundidentity.com/the-neverending-story-between-daft-punk-and-tv-commercials/?lang=en">global advertising campaigns</a>, and many Daft Punk interviews issued by media outlets that repeatedly assured us that they <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/doublej/music-reads/features/daft-punk-feature/13182412">rarely give interviews</a>. </p>
<p>The pair’s press engagement has been particularly cultivated to maintain this “media reluctance” narrative. And it became a mutually beneficial arrangement, perpetuating Daft Punk’s anti-stardom position while also enabling publications to claim they had an exclusive. </p>
<h2>Got lucky?</h2>
<p>For an audience that may similarly be suspicious of media saturation – and what it can indicate in terms of “selling out” – this notion of Daft Punk’s interaction being rare, intimate and indifferent to the supposed demands of industry may also have been attractive. </p>
<p>Perhaps French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu had it right when he said that profits can be derived from “<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23266041?seq=1">disinterestedness</a>”. Indeed Daft Punk’s marketing succeeded because of its highlighted rejection of the most obvious, unromantic mechanisms of commerce.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5NV6Rdv1a3I?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>The Epilogue video message is then a fitting end, highlighting remoteness and attachment, anonymity and familiarity, and all delivered by a self-destructing robot with no accompanying press release. It aptly concludes Daft Punk’s legacy of technology-assisted public engagement. Over and out.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/155830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Cookney does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Daft Punk’s anonymity was really a stroke of genius.
Daniel Cookney, Lecturer in Graphic Design, University of Salford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/138187
2020-05-08T09:35:16Z
2020-05-08T09:35:16Z
Florian Schneider and Kraftwerk helped shape the sound of modern music
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333654/original/file-20200508-49573-1jkyt4r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=26%2C35%2C5964%2C3332&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter: pioneering use of synthesizers in pop music.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Kraft74 via Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are few bands whose influence was such that it can unequivocally be said that modern music would sound different without them. Kraftwerk, co-founded by <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-52564281">Florian Schneider</a>, whose recent death at the age of 73 was announced on May 6, was one such act. The band left an indelible imprint on the sound of popular music by bringing synthesised instruments to the forefront and electronics into the mainstream.</p>
<p>Schneider trained as a flautist <a href="https://thequietus.com/articles/11542-karl-bartos-interview-kraftwerk">at the Dusseldorf Conservatory</a>, which might seem an odd background for a musician whose work did so much to shape the synth-pop and electronic dance music of the 1980s and beyond. But he and band-mate Ralf Hütter – an alumnus of the same music school – exemplified an exploratory approach to music making that traverses musical fields. </p>
<p>Emerging initially from an experimental milieu, their early albums were free-form improvisations that mixed electronic and traditional instruments. Alongside other German electronic acts, including Can and Neu!, they came to represent “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2010/mar/30/elektronische-musik-krautrock">krautrock</a>” (as English critics dubbed it) or “Kosmische Musik” (‘cosmic music’, a term used by the German muscians).</p>
<p>The big breakthrough for Kraftwerk (the name means “power plant”) came with the release in 1974 of their fourth album Autobahn. The <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-G28iyPtz0">title track</a> was a sonic depiction of the modernity of long-distance highway travel in their native Germany. Imbued with the sound effects of cars and horns, you could find distant echoes in the lyrics of the driving songs of Beach Boys and Chuck Berry. The album was a Top 10 hit, in Germany, the US and the UK, with a radio edit of the title track – 21 minutes long on the album – confounding expectations by <a href="https://www.officialcharts.com/artist/23701/kraftwerk/">charting as a single</a> in the UK, US, Australia and the Netherlands.</p>
<p>Although some acoustic instruments could still be heard, Autobahn saw the band’s line-up stabilise around Schneider, Hütter and percussionists <a href="https://electronicsound.co.uk/news/review-wolfgang-flur-london/">Wolfgang Flür</a> and <a href="http://www.karlbartos.com/biography/karl.html">Karl Bartos</a>. Its sound crystallised into something precise, evocative, human and yet simultaneously uncanny, laid over rhythmic grooves created with customised electronic instruments.</p>
<h2>Influencing the influencers</h2>
<p>While subsequent albums, including Radioactivity, Trans-Europe Express and The Man Machine, performed respectably – if not earth-shatteringly – in the commercial realm, Kraftwerk’s true impact was not so much about blazing a trail through the charts as expanding the parameters of popular music and opening up the ears of a generation of innovators to new possibilities. David Bowie’s late 1970s albums recorded in Berlin were <a href="https://www.davidbowie.com/blog/2020/5/6/bowie-on-kraftwerk-and-his-florian-tribute">heavily indebted to Kraftwerk</a>, and he name-checked its co-founder on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miiV8WFcdwg">V-2 Schneider</a> from Heroes.</p>
<p>Electronically synthesized instruments weren’t new, but had often been regarded as the preserve of experimenters on the commercial fringe, of the soundtrack artists in the more rarefied environs of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/39f0d457-37ba-43b9-b0a9-05214bae5d97">BBC Radiophonic Workshop</a>, or as a kind of novelty. Their presence in rock music was tolerated, but rarely celebrated or centralised until Kraftwerk.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333651/original/file-20200508-49558-19xtrzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/333651/original/file-20200508-49558-19xtrzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333651/original/file-20200508-49558-19xtrzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333651/original/file-20200508-49558-19xtrzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=447&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333651/original/file-20200508-49558-19xtrzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333651/original/file-20200508-49558-19xtrzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/333651/original/file-20200508-49558-19xtrzr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=562&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">I’m the operator: Florian Schneider in Ferrara, Italy in 2005.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Daniele Dalledonne via Wikimedia Commons</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Schneider and Hütter paved the way for pop that used electronics as a foundation, rather than a garnish, and cleared the way for the likes of Gary Numan, Depeche Mode and the Human League in the 1980s.</p>
<p>But their shadow was cast much wider than the straight line of synth-driven pop. The exactitude of their tracks, and sonic distinctiveness, made them ideal fodder for the sampling that was emerging as a recording practice. Their songs Numbers and Trans-Europe Express served as the lynchpin of Afrika Bambaata’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rlUQsC8ECk">Planet Rock</a> at the roots oft the roots of hip-hop. Likewise, techno pioneer Derrick May <a href="https://www.redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures/derrick-may-it-is-what-it-isnt">has been explicit</a> about their extensive influence on the formation of the genre. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9t3r3makyc4">He would recall their popularity</a> with the originators of techno in Detroit: “They were doing this thing that was from another planet … everybody latched onto Kraftwerk.”</p>
<h2>Enriching pop’s sonic vocabulary</h2>
<p>Key to their impact, and their work, was that they operated at a tangent to the pop world, as they had with the world of classical music. Their robotic stage act allowed them to eschew the celebrity game and the band, Schneider in particular, tended to be reticent about giving interviews in later years. Running their own studio: Kling Klang – their “electronic garden” as they called it – along with control of their business affairs allowed them to exercise aesthetic autonomy. <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ZVDVrWyAk2YC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Kraftwerk+%E2%80%93+Music+Non-Stop&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUrJ_jxKLpAhXRoXEKHVXgB2AQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=cola&f=false">As they told biographer Pascal Bussy in 2004</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We have invested in our machines, we have enough money to live, that’s it. We can do what we want, we are independent, we don’t do cola adverts, even if we might have been flattered by such proposals, we never accepted.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Their emphasis was on constructing sounds, first and foremost, with an omnivorous approach to source materials and subject matter. “We make compositions from everything,” <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/twentieth-century-music/article/vox-electronica-nostalgia-irony-and-cyborgian-vocalities-in-kraftwerks-radioaktivitat-and-autobahn/1C00E976FAEF6C9ADF45DBA5AA6C71AA">Hütter told journalst Sylvain Gire</a>. “All is permitted, there is no working principle, there is no system.” Mass appeal, it turned out, was a byproduct.</p>
<p>There’s a degree of irony in a band so tangentially concerned with pop so definitively reshaping it. Their singular approach has yet to be replicated, even as its echoes resound across pop, rock and dance music. </p>
<p>What makes them distinctive is that they didn’t just stand at a crossroads between different generic approaches, but uncovered those pathways, growing popular music’s sonic vocabulary and revealing its boundless capacity for incorporating new ideas.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/138187/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Behr has received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council </span></em></p>
A classically trained musician, Schneider influenced a generation of musicians from David Bowie to hip hop.
Adam Behr, Lecturer in Popular and Contemporary Music, Newcastle University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/107378
2018-12-14T15:59:04Z
2018-12-14T15:59:04Z
Why we should be cheered by the rise in illegal raves
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249981/original/file-20181211-76956-16wntm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Matthew Smith</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Police chiefs recently warned that illegal raves are once again on the rise. A Sky News investigation <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/police-warn-of-growing-illegal-rave-problem-as-numbers-soar-11496151">found that</a> more than 680 reports of unlicensed music events were recorded in 2017, up 9% on the previous year. Many media outlets have connected this rise to the number of <a href="https://mixmag.net/read/the-number-of-illegal-raves-in-the-uk-rose-by-9-per-cent-last-year-says-new-report-news">nightclubs closing</a> around the country.</p>
<p>Chief constable Ben-Julian Harrington told Sky News: “It is clear that unlicensed music events are a growing problem and they pose a real challenge to communities and police forces”. An opposition is created here between “us” and “them”. According to Harrington, communities have to be protected, and this can be achieved by creating “watch areas” to gather intelligence about people attempting to set up illegal parties and the ravers that attend them. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250427/original/file-20181213-178579-god3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/250427/original/file-20181213-178579-god3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250427/original/file-20181213-178579-god3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250427/original/file-20181213-178579-god3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250427/original/file-20181213-178579-god3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250427/original/file-20181213-178579-god3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/250427/original/file-20181213-178579-god3kd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A free party in a temporarily repurposed empty Bristol bingo hall, 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Matthew Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Earlier this year, for example, ITV released a news report in collaboration with the Welsh police that listed a <a href="https://www.itv.com/news/wales/2018-05-01/police-crack-down-on-illegal-raves/">series of signs</a> that might help locals spot an illegal rave. Electronic music culture is being presented as a deviant culture that is breaking the law and needs reining in.</p>
<p>All this might sound familiar to anyone over the age of 30. When <a href="https://www.facebook.com/existtoresistuk/">rave culture</a> first became popular, the moral panic that swept the country demonised it because it was seen as a drug culture. Ecstasy and raves were understood to go hand in hand – and in order to prevent “our children” from becoming drug addicts or potentially dying, rave culture was criminalised. The <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1994/33/contents">1994 Criminal Justice and Public Act</a> made raves illegal – more on that later.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249983/original/file-20181211-76980-19qsdfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249983/original/file-20181211-76980-19qsdfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249983/original/file-20181211-76980-19qsdfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249983/original/file-20181211-76980-19qsdfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=406&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249983/original/file-20181211-76980-19qsdfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249983/original/file-20181211-76980-19qsdfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249983/original/file-20181211-76980-19qsdfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=510&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A free party in Sunnyside, 1995.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Matthew Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Rave culture, of course, did not disappear. It evolved into the commercial nightclub culture so common today. And criminalising raves has not stopped young people taking drugs. In fact, drug use among young adults in general has become <a href="https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100408164751/http://www.crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk/drugsalcohol/drugsalcohol34.htm">normalised</a>, and the highly commercial enterprises that are nightclubs appear to <a href="https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/2577">facilitate drug taking</a> as much as raves used to. </p>
<p>So it makes sense that the concern about the rise in unlicensed events is no longer explicitly about young people’s drug use, but rather about the specific risks that unlicensed events supposedly pose to both ravers and communities. Noise pollution, litter and lack of medical support or security are all cause for concern, <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/police-warn-of-growing-illegal-rave-problem-as-numbers-soar-11496151">according to the police</a>. But many ravers think that health and safety risks are sometimes used <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/article/qb5dgq/free-party-petition-interview">as an excuse</a> to close down non-commercial events.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249984/original/file-20181211-76983-2ilnzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249984/original/file-20181211-76983-2ilnzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249984/original/file-20181211-76983-2ilnzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249984/original/file-20181211-76983-2ilnzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249984/original/file-20181211-76983-2ilnzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249984/original/file-20181211-76983-2ilnzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249984/original/file-20181211-76983-2ilnzv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">One World Festival, Frome, 1997.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Matthew Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Another club culture</h2>
<p>Links have been made between the rise of illegal raves and the closure of nightclubs <a href="https://www.nesta.org.uk/blog/the-clubbing-map-what-has-happened-to-london-nightlife/">all over the country</a>, but especially in London (where clubs have fallen prey to rising property prices and the restrictive processes of modern licensing controls). This suggests two things. First, people will continue to engage with electronic music culture. Second, they are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/11/clubs-closing-nightlife-uk">not too concerned</a> about the kind of space in which they do this.</p>
<p>But I think there’s more to it than this. Some young people are getting tired of a music culture that is highly commercialised. In an era in which our brains are constantly overstimulated – and social media dictates our pace of life – it has become far harder to make the time to fully immerse ourselves in an experience. This is not helped by a selfie culture in which some UK punters choose their nightclubs according to the <a href="http://www.mintel.com/press-centre/leisure/last-orders-for-nightclubs-uk-nightclub-attendance-drops-by-34-million-in-5-years">best light for selfies</a>.</p>
<p>The demands of people’s social calendars, meanwhile, see them rush from one event to another, leading to saturation and exhaustion. As a result, events are fighting for attention by promising to be bigger, brighter, better, louder. In the search for unique, meaningful experiences, nightclubs have become <a href="http://www.mintel.com/press-centre/leisure/last-orders-for-nightclubs-uk-nightclub-attendance-drops-by-34-million-in-5-years">too similar to one another</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BqFxZ6pHDev/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<p>Clubs in the UK often have relatively high door and drinks prices and are packed out with crowds of people: the dance floor reduced to a heaving mass that is nigh on impossible to navigate. Young people are also sick of excessive health and safety and overbearing surveillance. Commercial nightclubs in the UK these days are full of bouncers telling you where you can and can’t go.</p>
<p>Compare this to club cultures in other parts of the world, such as Berlin, where overbearing security is minimal (once you’ve got past the door), there tends to be space to move around the dance floor, and club-goers are often forbidden from taking pictures or videos. I would argue that the UK rise in illegal raves is in part a response to this commercialised club culture.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="InstagramEmbed" data-react-props="{"url":"https://www.instagram.com/p/BYDf0-ijm00/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link","accessToken":"127105130696839|b4b75090c9688d81dfd245afe6052f20"}"></div></p>
<h2>Back to roots</h2>
<p>So what exactly it is that clubbers are demanding, if not venues with excellent health and safety measures, great sound systems and lineups of superstar DJs? In an attempt to answer this question, it might be worth looking at the photographer Matthew Smith’s book <a href="http://www.mattkoarchive.com/store/exist-to-resist">Exist to Resist</a>, which is being reissued next year, and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/mattkosnaps/?hl=en">whose photographs</a> illustrate this article.</p>
<p>This collection of often stunning and emotive photographs tracks rave culture between 1989 and 1997. Smith captures the mood of the time by juxtaposing images of dancers and pictures of police intervention, the latter increasing as rave cultures became more politicised. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249985/original/file-20181211-76974-13tbdqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249985/original/file-20181211-76974-13tbdqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249985/original/file-20181211-76974-13tbdqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249985/original/file-20181211-76974-13tbdqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=388&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249985/original/file-20181211-76974-13tbdqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249985/original/file-20181211-76974-13tbdqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249985/original/file-20181211-76974-13tbdqk.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=488&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A man stands in front of a line of riot police while protesting the Criminal Justice Act, 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Matthew Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In the accompanying text, Smith situates rave culture’s roots in the hippy and traveller subcultures of the 1960s and 1970s, framing its development as the result of an alternative lifestyle with a particular set of values and beliefs. The communities depicted are not interested in owning a house or running successful businesses (in a monetary sense). Their choice of lifestyle challenges accepted land and property ownership practices. Instead, they live in communities of vans and buses, share their food, and make music together.</p>
<p>Smith’s book starts off with images of Glastonbury in 1989, which are in stark contrast to contemporary images you might see of the festival (in 2019 tickets cost £248, compared to <a href="https://www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk/history/history-1989/">£28 in 1989</a>). All his rave images of this period, whether a paid festival or a free party, seem of the same ilk. But as the years go on, images of police brutality get more and more common. It was the free festival on <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hereford-worcester-39960232">Castlemorton Common</a> in 1992 that finally ended the era. Planned as a low-key free festival organised by the traveller community, the event spiralled out of control when the underground rave scene took over with full force: 20,000 people turned up. Castlemorton made big news – and the authorities weren’t happy.</p>
<p>There was strong opposition to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act (CJA), as shown by Smith’s impressive photographs of the demonstrations against it – but the rift that had been created between a young and deviant youth and the morally superior public had become insurmountable.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249780/original/file-20181210-76971-lykw7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249780/original/file-20181210-76971-lykw7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249780/original/file-20181210-76971-lykw7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249780/original/file-20181210-76971-lykw7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=408&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249780/original/file-20181210-76971-lykw7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249780/original/file-20181210-76971-lykw7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249780/original/file-20181210-76971-lykw7h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=513&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protesting against the Criminal Justice Act, 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Matthew Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Raving for well-being</h2>
<p>In the aftermath of 1994, rave culture went mainstream – and, in 2018, clubbing is simply one of many competing leisure activities at night. And yet, there seems to be <a href="https://www.redbull.com/gb-en/why-uk-free-party-scene-thriving">an increasing appetite</a> for events that are egalitarian, inclusive, and focus on the music itself.</p>
<p>Social media makes it possible to be informed of illegal raves <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-west-wales-44299396">very quickly</a> (although it also makes such events very easy to bust because social media is under heavy surveillance). Attending such events is not necessarily a sign of an alternative lifestyle. Many might say that doing so is far from political.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249987/original/file-20181211-76980-xee5rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249987/original/file-20181211-76980-xee5rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249987/original/file-20181211-76980-xee5rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249987/original/file-20181211-76980-xee5rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249987/original/file-20181211-76980-xee5rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249987/original/file-20181211-76980-xee5rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249987/original/file-20181211-76980-xee5rc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Girls dancing, Ashton Court free festival, 1995.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Matthew Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And yet, there is a form of resistance forming that is hard to define. It is not a political opposition, nor is it a rejection of the capitalist system. The reason why it is so hard to detect is because it operates within existing capitalist structures, but embraces different values. Illegal raves in 2018 feel socialist. In a search for unique experiences, young people are going back to the roots: grimy locations, no state-of-the-art light shows, stickers on phone cameras to prevent you from taking selfies, a lack of drink promotions, and reasonable admission (if any).</p>
<p>So perhaps we are experiencing a return to some of the values of old travellers and hippies. It’s possible – if this movement gathers ground – that the connections that partygoers make with other people on a night out and the feeling of being part of a community may become more important than their next selfie. And surely this is something to be celebrated, not policed?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249973/original/file-20181211-76983-ydpm32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/249973/original/file-20181211-76983-ydpm32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249973/original/file-20181211-76983-ydpm32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249973/original/file-20181211-76983-ydpm32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249973/original/file-20181211-76983-ydpm32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249973/original/file-20181211-76983-ydpm32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/249973/original/file-20181211-76983-ydpm32.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A free party in 1995.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Matthew Smith</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Older ravers seems to think that being part of an inclusive community is what rave culture <a href="https://www2.mmu.ac.uk/news-and-events/news/story/8959/">was about</a>. The <a href="https://www.mdmarchive.co.uk/map/the-lapsed-clubber-audio-map">Lapsed Clubber Audio Map</a>, for example, is a project that I started in order to give members of the old rave community a voice. You can leave an anonymous audio memory about rave culture in your life. It gives people who were stigmatised for most of their youth because of their love for electronic music the opportunity to tell a different story. One that does not focus on drug consumption as a pathology, but that, instead, foregrounds the love for music, friendships and communication through dance. </p>
<p>In times of <a href="https://theconversation.com/1-in-5-college-students-have-anxiety-or-depression-heres-why-90440">impaired social interaction</a> and perfected virtual lives it is perhaps time to de-stigmatise rave culture and learn from older ravers. They can tell us how to prioritise community over competition. They can remind us of the ethos that the travelling community pursued: not leaving a trace when you move on. </p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/301175355" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>If all unlicensed events internalised this ethos, as many do, perhaps local communities would have one reason less to complain. Leaving rubbish for others to clear up is never nice. Tidying up together will show others how raves are not just hedonistic ventures, but meaningful events that have never really gone away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107378/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beate Peter receives funding from Heritage Lottery Fund. </span></em></p>
Unlicensed music events are on the rise again – and the free parties of the 1980s and 90s show they’re not all bad.
Beate Peter, Senior Lecturer, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/84705
2017-10-05T19:04:53Z
2017-10-05T19:04:53Z
Underground in Brisvegas: can an electronic dance music artist thrive outside the city?
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/188903/original/file-20171005-21985-3e3n9z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Heidi Mellington, performing here with Anthony Smith in Dizzygothica in 2007, has spoken about the importance of a supportive local music scene for emerging artists. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/felix42/526232463/in/photolist-HfJ9h-NshbF-NrQAS-Nv5zv-Nsgta-Hkwe8">Rachel Cobcroft/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Electronic dance music (EDM) is an increasingly popular music genre. Electronic music can be defined as a sound dominated by electronic instruments and digitally generated sounds and also by digital samples of vocals and conventional instruments. </p>
<p>Despite the emergence of new communication technologies for music production and dissemination, it is still essential for EDM artists to be part of a local music scene. </p>
<p>Emerging artists typically depend heavily on the contacts and resources that they can find in their local city. The nature and scale of the truly global music industry appear not to have changed this relationship between EDM artists and their local music scene. </p>
<p>And the global electronic music industry is big. According to the latest <a href="http://www.internationalmusicsummit.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/IMS-Business-Report-2017-vFinal3.pdf">IMS business report</a>, the industry’s annual value has reached US$7.4 billion. <a href="http://www.nme.com/news/music/various-artists-3149-1256022">NME reports</a> that the three wealthiest DJs are <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ti%C3%ABsto">Tiesto</a> (Netherlands), <a href="https://pitchfork.com/features/cover-story/reader/daft-punk/">Daft Punk</a> (France) and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Oakenfold">Paul Okenfoald</a> (England). </p>
<p>DJ Tiesto is asking for US$250,000 per DJ set. Daft Punk, the duo who pioneered French house in the 1990s, are worth US$120 million in licensing deals, royalties, music sales and merchandise. Their value increased after the success of their fourth album, Random Memories, which has sold more than 3.2 million copies worldwide. </p>
<p>EDM artists, unlike the most famous DJs, belong to local alternative scenes as is the case in Brisbane. Those scenes can be labelled as underground. According to the semi-structured interviews performed for my research, the electronic scene in Brisbane started as a DIY alternative scene.</p>
<p>In Brisbane, the rock and punk scenes have been documented in books like <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/pig-city-revisited-brisbane-writer-andrew-stafford-updates-tome-on-music-and-politics-20140731-zvozq.html">Pig City</a>. In contrast, the electronic scene in Brisbane is rather unknown, yet it gathered more than 200 artists between 1979 and 2014. This has been documented in <a href="https://transcomblog.wordpress.com/bne-project/">BNE: The Definitive Archive</a>, released by Dennis Bremmer, founder of independent music label <a href="https://transcomblog.wordpress.com/">Trans:Com</a>. </p>
<h2>If music is global, why does local still matter?</h2>
<p>Emerging artists need to engage with the technology and to have access to mentoring and technical advice. It’s a point made by Heidi Mellington, who joined the scene in the early 2000s: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Being in a city gives you access to mentors that have been trained and know how to use the latest sofwares.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>She was part of <a href="https://www.facebook.com/ladyelectronicamusic/">Lady Electronica</a>, a collective of female artists, and of darkwave electronica duo <a href="https://www.facebook.com/Dizzygotheca-36820469496/">Dizzygotheca</a> <a href="https://myspace.com/dizzygotheca">with Anthony Smith</a> (2005-2010). </p>
<p>Most musicians interviewed for my research were interested in creating experimental edgy music. The aim was not necessarily to become successful, but to remain underground. </p>
<p>Brisbane’s electronic sound can be labelled as “electronic fusion”. It’s a blend of hip-hop, funk, drum and bass and sometimes goth music, according to <a href="https://www.facebook.com/porl.deville">Porl Deville</a>, who was part of successful acts such as <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pg/My-Ninja-Lover-191960194216271/about/?ref=page_internal">My Ninja Lover</a>, who opened for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Harper">Ben Harper</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamiroquai">Jamiroquai</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moby">Moby</a> in the mid-1990s. </p>
<p>Local radio stations such 4ZZZ or Triple J helped artists to have their electronic dance music tracks played. In Brisbane, venues like <a href="http://thezoo.com.au/">The Zoo</a>, <a href="http://ricsbar.com.au/">Ric’s Cafe Bar</a> and The Lofly Hangar – a meeting place for the independent music community; it <a href="http://messandnoise.com/features/4165093">no longer exists</a> – welcomed EDM artists. </p>
<p>These artists still need to be engaged in the economic and social networks that are found in metropolitan areas. This helps them to access technical advice, mentoring and grants (to fund music videos). </p>
<p>Even if Facebook and Soundcloud are fantastic tools for self-promotion, location is important. It remains an asset for a young EDM artist to be located in a city. It’s there that they have access to the best equipment and can learn about software tricks and production, mixing and mastering tips from experienced mentors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84705/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sebastien Darchen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Depite new technologies for music dissimination, EDM artists located in cities have access to resources not available in non-metropolitan areas.
Sebastien Darchen, Lecturer in Planning, The University of Queensland
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/78138
2017-06-01T10:50:25Z
2017-06-01T10:50:25Z
See them to believe it: why Kraftwerk is the world’s most influential band
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/171783/original/file-20170601-25673-x61vgq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andriy Makukha</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Are Kraftwerk more influential than the Beatles? It’s a difficult question to decide – for obvious reasons. The Beatles were brilliant, groundbreaking and influential. But after a mere seven years of glory and genius, the band was spent – and they split. Kraftwerk, on the other hand, are still going strong in their 47th year of existence. And they have a new record out now – or actually eight new records, as well as their first UK tour in 14 years.</p>
<p>Rewind to 1974. Late November of that year, saw the release of Kraftwerk’s fourth album, Autobahn. The entire A-side was taken up by the title track, a 22-minute electronic composition about driving on the German motorway. While the album was largely met with disinterest in their native country at the time, as we now know, Autobahn would end up forever <a href="https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2015/01/kraftwerk-did-more-to-shape-modern-music-than-anyone-since-the-beatles/">changing the course of 20th century popular music</a>. </p>
<p>After Elvis’s move, as a white man, to sing the songs of black America, Kraftwerk initiated the second paradigm shift in popular music: to do away with drums and guitars by replacing them with synthesizers and music machines.</p>
<p>For a long time, <a href="http://www.uncut.co.uk/features/kraftwerk-autobahn-new-era-electronic-music-like-artificial-joke-91136">it was believed</a> that Autobahn was the first bona-fide piece of purely electronic pop music. But that wasn’t quite true – founder member Florian Schneider plays his flute on the track and, if you listen carefully, you can also hear a bit of guitar playing. Still, the Germans from Düsseldorf opened a new pathway to a future dominated by electronic pop music. The very future, that has become so much a hallmark of music’s here and now.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iukUMRlaBBE?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>Man machine</h2>
<p>When a radio friendly three-minute version of Autobahn began to climb up the US charts, the band embarked on their blazing tour of the US and used a very curious poster to advertise their concert dates – dominated by a retro-futuristic image of an urban cityscape, it was strongly reminiscent of Fritz Lang’s expressionist <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/mar/15/metropolis-fritz-lang-philip-french-classic-dvd">film classic Metropolis</a>. It proudly introduced the band, in German, as “Kraftwerk – Die Mensch Maschine” (Man Machine). </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=850&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170332/original/file-20170522-25020-msicyd.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1069&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Man Machine’ neatly sums up Kraftwerk’s ethos.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What at first glance only seems to anticipate their 1978 album title Mensch-Maschine (released as Man Machine for English-speaking territories) is also proof that from the moment Kraftwerk reinvented themselves as pioneers of electronic pop music, they also devised an overarching, all-encompassing aesthetic, based on the artistic concept of the man-machine. Step by step, album by album Kraftwerk would construct what is called a <a href="http://www.interlude.hk/front/richard-wagners-concept-of-the-gesamtkunstwerk/">“Gesamtkunstwerk”</a> in German: a total work of art as first devised by Richard Wagner in an attempt to combine all aspects of the arts into a new fusion.</p>
<p>A century after Wagner, Kraftwerk set out to do the same thing – as founding member Ralf Hütter <a href="http://edmontonjournal.com/entertainment/music/preview-the-man-behind-kraftwerks-machines">explained to an interviewer</a> in 2015: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>We come from the late ‘60s, from the art scene in Düsseldorf, and we have always been a combination of visual arts, music, sound, poetry […] Our music has always been a living performance. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>How Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk panned out artistically can be seen at the annual festival performances of the Ring des Nibelungen opera cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. The vision which inspired Kraftwerk’s futuristic take on an immersive “living performance” may be experienced at leading museums, opera houses and symphony halls across the globe, including the MoMA in New York, London’s Tate Modern, the Neue Nationalgallerie Berlin or the Burgtheater in Vienna.</p>
<h2>Look back in 3D</h2>
<p>Following the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2009/jan/06/florian-schneider-quits-kraftwerk">departure of Florian Schneider in 2009</a>, Hütter has taken Kraftwerk on a seemingly neverending tour to stage retrospectives of their catalogue of albums since Autobahn.</p>
<p>Each evening is devoted to one of their eight albums, and the shows are breathtaking and spectacular. The music, delivered by a 40-channel cutting-edge sound system based on wave field synthesis technology (which creates virtual sound sources that can move freely through the auditorium) is loud and crisp, while the latest 3D technology is used for the visuals that are closely synchronised with the music.</p>
<p>Audience members will experience, among other things, musical notes emanating out of a car radio during Autobahn which seemingly fly right into one’s face, or hear the Trans Europe Express rattling around the concert venue. During Tour de France, cyclists seem to whizz by right and left through the auditorium.</p>
<figure>
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<p>On stage, meanwhile, 70-year-old Hütter and his three bandmates in their uniform outfits stand mostly motionless behind their four uniform consoles like laboratory operators – making it hard for the audience to discern who is playing what on which piece of electronic equipment. Contrary to persistent rumours, Kraftwerk do indeed play live as the occasional, all-too-human mistakes prove. </p>
<p>Kraftwerk delivers a famously minimalist stage show, although there is an appearance by four robot dummies – identical to the band members on stage – for the song The Robots. This overwhelming fusion of sound and vision as experienced by the audience is the fully-developed embodiment of the man-machine concept introduced in the mid-1970s. </p>
<p>Tickets for the UK and Ireland tour, which begins on June 2 in Dublin, were sold out within minutes. But for those without tickets there is the box set, which was released on May 26. This comprises the band’s major albums from Autobahn to their most recent studio offering, 2004’s Tour de France – in live versions recorded from 2012 to 2016.</p>
<p>Challenging the very notion of “original album version”, these live re-recordings enable us to listen to their groundbreaking tracks in the way they were always meant to sound: as contemporary music of the future. The new box set also acts as an apt reminder that while other bands, such as the Beatles or Rolling Stones, were undoubtedly huge in terms of sales, they were just doing better what everyone else was doing at the time. </p>
<p>Kraftwerk, on the other hand, established an entirely new way to think about how popular music should sound to make it a dominant art form for the 21st century. But make no mistake – you have to see (and hear) Kraftwerk on stage to believe that they are the greatest sounding band on earth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78138/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Uwe Schütte does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The German band laid the foundations for the electronic pop revolution which continues today.
Uwe Schütte, Reader in German, Aston University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/74935
2017-03-24T16:36:24Z
2017-03-24T16:36:24Z
The sound of SID: 35 years of chiptune’s influence on electronic music
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162070/original/image-20170322-31187-qso1wa.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=16%2C21%2C783%2C622&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The MOS 6581 or SID to his friends.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">C64wiki</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It can be hard to write about the music of videogames while we are bathed in the projected glory of today’s high-definition, 4K, 60-frames-per-second photorealistic graphics. And given that in the roots of videogaming we find an often eerily quiet world, perhaps it’s not surprising that we sometimes forget that there’s an audio in audio-visual. </p>
<p>The earliest videogames, such as <a href="http://museum.mit.edu/150/25">Spacewar!</a>, created at MIT in 1962, had no sound at all. While this might be seen as a ruthless dedication to authenticity (after all, in space no one can hear you scream) in reality, it was due to technical limitations. A decade later, things were not much different: the first home console, the <a href="http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1302004">Magnavox Odyssey</a>, introduced a generation to the thrills of electronic gameplay without so much as a beep. This was a quiet revolution. Even the phenomenally successful <a href="http://oldcomputers.net/atari-vcs.html">Atari VCS/2600</a> put graphics before sound and sound before music. It did a good line in raucous engine noises and explosions but was <a href="http://www.tagg.org/xpdfs/kcflat2.pdf">not especially musician-friendly</a>, nor particularly listener-friendly.</p>
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<p>Quoted in <a href="http://www.ipgbook.com/commodore-products-9780986832260.php?page_id=32&pid=VAR">Brian Bagnall’s history of Commodore</a> electronics engineer Rob Yannes summed up the situation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I thought the sound chips on the market, including those in the Atari computers, were primitive and obviously had been designed by people who knew nothing about music.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Fortunately, Yannes did know something about music, as well as semiconductors and designing chips. And so in 1981 he began work on what would arguably become the most important milestone in videogame music and one whose influence still resonates to this day: the MOS Technology 6581, also known as the Sound Interface Device, but much better known as the SID. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162040/original/image-20170322-31203-c2ogtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162040/original/image-20170322-31203-c2ogtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162040/original/image-20170322-31203-c2ogtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162040/original/image-20170322-31203-c2ogtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162040/original/image-20170322-31203-c2ogtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=380&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162040/original/image-20170322-31203-c2ogtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162040/original/image-20170322-31203-c2ogtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162040/original/image-20170322-31203-c2ogtp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=477&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The C64 home computer was, in the right hands, a powerful synthesizer.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Commodore64.jpg">Bill Bertram</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the sound chip in the <a href="http://oldcomputers.net/c64.html">Commodore 64</a> – <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/gaming.gadgets/05/09/commodore.64.reborn/">the best-selling home computer and games machine of all time</a> – the SID was remarkably sophisticated: a well-specified synthesizer with features more usually found on cutting-edge electronic keyboards of the time such as the <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/moog/moog.php">Mini Moog</a> and <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/jup8.php">Roland Jupiter 8</a>. Although it was designed to be part of a home computer, the SID chip was above all a musical instrument – but at US$595 for a C64 compared to US$5,195 for a Jupiter 8, it came at a fraction of the price.</p>
<p>Technically the SID is a three-voice synthesizer module – it can play three sounds simultaneously. They can each be one different note, played together as a three-note chord. Or they can be three different sounds, such as a bass, a melody and a harmony. But three voices, and only three – that is until a glitch in the chip was discovered that allowed <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfYsDQqzhk8">a fourth voice to play sampled drums or speech</a>. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162042/original/image-20170322-31190-1lvaupu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162042/original/image-20170322-31190-1lvaupu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/162042/original/image-20170322-31190-1lvaupu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162042/original/image-20170322-31190-1lvaupu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162042/original/image-20170322-31190-1lvaupu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=431&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162042/original/image-20170322-31190-1lvaupu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162042/original/image-20170322-31190-1lvaupu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/162042/original/image-20170322-31190-1lvaupu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=542&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The MOS 6851 chip, or SID.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MOS6581_chtaube061229.jpg">Christian Taube</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Each of those voices can generate a sawtooth, variable pulsewidth, triangle or noise waveform, or an intriguing, unique and not well-documented combination of them. Various modulation effects can be applied to these voices to give bell-like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrQuR1LHAVI/">or other metallic effects</a>, or voices may be “hard-synced” together to create a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc91S1lrU1I">characteristic rasping sound</a> common in early electronic music solos. </p>
<p>The sound of the voices can be further contoured using an envelope generator capable of altering the sound’s attack (how quickly the sound grows once the note is played), decay (how quickly it tails off from peak to sustain level), sustain (the level while the note is held), and release (how quickly it tails off to nil), or through various filters (which due to manufacturing tolerances vary immensely in sound between different versions of the SID).</p>
<p>While the same “subtractive” synthesis techniques are used today, for anybody who has used even entry-level music production software such as Apple’s <a href="http://www.apple.com/mac/garageband/">Garageband</a>, with its huge library of acoustic and electronic instruments, drums and loops, the SID probably looks horribly limited. </p>
<h2>Musicianship vs limitations</h2>
<p>To surmount its limitations, one of the simplest strategy was to rapidly switch between sounds to simulate the effect of a larger palette of instruments. Listen to a piece like Rob Hubbard’s <a href="https://archive.org/details/C64GVA250-MontyOnTheRun">Monty on the Run</a>, for instance, and you’ll hear numerous short passages of just a few bars, shifting between different sounds which share the main melody. It’s as though members of a big band take turns to stand up and riff around the solo. </p>
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<p>Or composers could dig deeper into the SID’s synthesis capabilities, adding movement and interest by modulating the pulsewidth of a sound over time, creating a thicker, more dynamic effect. Composer Martin Galway was a master of this technique, which can be heard in tunes such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JScqpJ3XWw">Parallax</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRksQbrDprA">Wizball</a>, and his seminal <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3COzhLzfKoc">Ocean Loader music</a> that made waiting for a game to load from cassette a pleasure rather than a chore.</p>
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<p>More than any other technique, though, the use of arpeggiation was the SID chip’s – and by extension videogame music’s – most evocative and enduring sonic fingerprint. If you don’t recognise the term <a href="https://www.musictheoryacademy.com/understanding-music/arpeggios/">arpeggio</a>, you’ll recognise the effect: an often rapid sequence of rising and falling notes. From contemporary music a good example is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d020hcWA_Wg">Clocks by Coldplay</a>, but on the SID and other sound chips from home computers of the era, it’s the warbling sound of two or more <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLp8ErRj8s0">extremely rapidly alternating notes</a>. Rather than play the C, E, and G of a C-major chord and use up all three of SID’s previous voices, composers rapidly triggered each note in turn far faster than even the most nimble-fingered of musicians could perform. And thus, a three-note chord plays from just one voice.</p>
<h2>Musicianship vs programming</h2>
<p>If that seems straightforward remember that the SID wasn’t a synthesizer with a piano keyboard, but merely a chip inside the C64. There was no audio workstation software like <a href="https://www.steinberg.net/en/products/cubase/start.html">Cubase</a> or even a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9zmLQGBTIw">Tracker</a> to sequence the SID’s sounds. Although <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at_W5kjEKaU">consumer programs and add-on devices would come later</a>, these were too inefficient for composers eking out every drop of the C64’s performance and embedding their music into games. For early C64 composers there were, in fact, no libraries, no middleware, no tools at all. The only way to make SID sing was through programming. </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Tracker software sequencer playing Harold Faltermeyer’s Axel-F.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If you wanted to be a videogame musician in the early 1980s, having a fantastic tune and even a Royal College of Music diploma meant nothing without some lateral thinking and a <a href="http://www.1xn.org/text/C64/rob_hubbards_music.txt">significant amount of programming skills</a>, because the SID chip <a href="http://www.ffd2.com/fridge/chacking/c=hacking5.txt">needed special software routines</a> to turn its potential into sound. You had to know how to compose both melodies and machine code.</p>
<p>Given these achievements, it’s no wonder that C64 musicians were well-known and well-respected. Alongside features on programmers such as Jeff Minter or Andrew Braybrook, SID composers such as Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway and Ben Daglish would grace the pages of magazines like <a href="http://www.zzap64.co.uk/">Zzap!64</a>, satisfying gamers’ interest in the technical prowess of their musical heroes.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>Each composer had their own unique and identifiable style that exploited different aspects of the SID chip and brought different musical sensibilities. Where Hubbard was the master of percussion with an ability to tease out complex rhythms, Galway’s deceptively simple, melodic compositions revealed the softer, more mellow side of the SID chip. So revered were their compositions that many players would buy games just for the music. In the world of 1980s computer gaming, these musicians were superstars.</p>
<figure>
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<h2>A musical legacy Bob and SID would be proud of</h2>
<p>And they still are. The chiptune culture of music made with SID and other computer sound chips is alive and well. In fact, it’s probably stronger today than ever. The original themes are rearranged by their original composers and others and <a href="https://c64audio.com/collections/live-events/back-in-time-live">played live at concerts</a>, even with <a href="http://www.gameconcerts.com/en/welcome/">symphony orchestras</a>. The <a href="http://www.hvsc.c64.org/">High Voltage SID Collection</a> has collected nearly 50,000 SID tunes, which can be replayed with <a href="http://www.hvsc.c64.org/#players">emulators made for modern computer and mobile platforms</a>.</p>
<figure>
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</figure>
<p>This isn’t just nostalgia. New SID tunes are being written by composers re-discovering the chip’s distinctive sonic quality. Chiptunes’ influence can be identified across electronic music through direct sampling, such as <a href="http://www.whosampled.com/sample/1032/Zombie-Nation-Kernkraft-400-David-Whittaker-Stardust/">Zombie Nation’s</a> use of <a href="http://www.c64.com/interviews/whittaker.html">David Whittaker’s</a> tune from the C64 game Lazy Jones, producer Timbaland’s sampling of a <a href="https://casetext.com/case/kernal-records-oy-v-timbaland">SID tune by Finnish musician Janne Suni</a> for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Asy6Cpbtwfs">Do It by Nelly Furtado</a>, or <a href="http://drownedinsound.com/news/3491735-glitch-thieves--crystal-castles-admit-8-bit-theft">Crystal Castles’ pillaging of 8-bit chiptune sounds</a>. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/7IEqsHHbKkw?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>But more so, the hyperactive sounds of the SID have become part of the lexicon of electronic music-making. Sample libraries for modern music software <a href="https://puremagnetik.com/products/eight-bit-sid-commodore-ableton-live-pack-kontakt-instrument-apple-logic-samples">include SID and chiptune sounds</a> alongside other archetypes of modern electronic music such as the classic sounds of the <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/303.php">Roland TB-303</a> bass station and <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/808.php">TR-808</a> and <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/roland/909.php">TR-909</a> drum machines. In fact, such is the popularity of the SID sound that you can buy <a href="http://twisted-electrons.com/therapsid/">hardware devices that include genuine SID chips</a> pulled from vintage C64s that can be integrated into <a href="http://busycircuits.com/alm012/">modular synthesizer</a> and studio setups, or <a href="http://www.plogue.com/products/chipsounds/">software emulations</a> that allow the gloriously lo-fi, 8-bit, ultra-fast arpeggios and barely intelligible digitised speech to be <a href="https://www.native-instruments.com/en/reaktor-community/reaktor-user-library/entry/show/8572/">reproduced with pristine fidelity</a>.</p>
<p>And as for Bob Yannes, father of SID, he was far from done. After Commodore he co-founded music technology company Ensoniq, which would go on to make an enormous impact on music-making again with the release of the <a href="http://www.vintagesynth.com/ensoniq/ens_mirage.php">Mirage sampler</a>. The Mirage was the first affordable digital sampler – one that musicians would use to capture and mash-up snippets of C64 tunes, ensuring that SID would never be silenced.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>James Newman will be hosting <a href="http://www.ludomusicology.org/past-events/ludo-2017/">Ludo2017, the Sixth Easter Conference on Video Game Music and Sound</a>, April 20–22 at Bath Spa University, UK.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74935/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Newman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
From niche player to chart hit, the characteristic sound of videogames has had a considerable influence on music.
James Newman, Professor of Media, The Digital Academy, Bath Spa University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/68615
2016-12-19T14:13:14Z
2016-12-19T14:13:14Z
Imperfect soundtracks from 2016 for people who wish for a different world
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149946/original/image-20161213-1625-1g1mbz8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Detail from Jenny Hval's album Blood Bitch.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Supplied</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em><strong>Review 2016:</strong> This has been a year most of humanity would like to forget with war, disasters, racism, sexism and, especially in arts and culture, the deaths of revered icons. But it is also in the arts and culture where people look for and find hope.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation Africa has asked a number of our contributors to give us five books, records, buildings, works of art and so on in their field that made a difference to them in 2016. Here is popular music lecturer, record label boss and musician John Harries’ year in review.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>A year all in music from me, since it’s where I live most of the time.</p>
<p>Much of my 2016 has been given over to releases on my tiny London record label <a href="https://thelumenlake.bandcamp.com/">The Lumen Lake</a>. It doesn’t appear here because its importance to me is self-evident and I guess I wouldn’t want my enthusiasm for the work of my friends to seem like self-interest or promotion. </p>
<p>Elsewhere in my musical world, the following have been important in the last 12 months – important for saying something about the world as it changes around us, and for offering solace …</p>
<h2>1. Jenny Hval – Blood Bitch (album, Sacred Bones Records)</h2>
<p>In 2015, Hval’s album <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/jun/04/jenny-hval-apocalypse-girl-review-provocative-compelling-art-pop">Apocalypse, Girl</a> dropped into my life without much warning, and instantly became essential to me. </p>
<p>This year, <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/music/blood-bitch/jenny-hval">Blood Bitch</a> added vivid reds to that album’s greys and pinks, deftly wove pungent images of vampirism and menstruation amongst the warp threads of Hval’s world-weary but resolutely defiant personal narrative in song to date. </p>
<p>As Hval struggles with the idea of romance in an increasingly sad and frightening world (Conceptual Romance), her repeated exhortation, “I’m working on it”, strikes a peculiar chord. I don’t quite know why it’s so affecting, except that for all of us who would wish for a different world, to keep trying is what we’ve got … </p>
<figure>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Female Vampire, a track from Jenny Hval’s latest album Blood Bitch.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>2. Gaika – Security (mixtape, Mixpak Records)</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149951/original/image-20161213-1615-10x7en3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149951/original/image-20161213-1615-10x7en3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149951/original/image-20161213-1615-10x7en3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149951/original/image-20161213-1615-10x7en3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149951/original/image-20161213-1615-10x7en3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149951/original/image-20161213-1615-10x7en3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149951/original/image-20161213-1615-10x7en3.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of Gaika’s mixtape Security.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The last six years of Conservative government in the UK have produced a visible <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jan/01/london-rough-sleepers-double-in-five-years">increase in the number</a> of rough sleepers on the streets of London. There are more difficult housing conditions, fewer welfare safeguards and a lower standard of living for many thousands. This city, which is my home, is getting tougher and colder.</p>
<p>The best music coming out of London in recent years has taken a long, hard look at the cruelty and ugliness of the city, and held it close, mingled with the excitement and the beauty –- anger and sadness and love all together, inextricable. </p>
<p>It’s all there in the first three lines of dancehall-inspired electronic musician <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/mar/11/how-gaika-is-transforming-black-music">Gaika</a>’s magnificent <a href="http://www.mixpakrecords.com/blog/2016/04/download-gaika-security-mixtape/">Security</a> mixtape: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I stand here but it’s not the frontline / I can see Mayfair and smell Chinatown and cats want brown and white / Kit-kat walks up and down Shaftesbury and takes pennies from tourists to show them a good time / but they will never see a good time like us …</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>3. Fatima Al Qadiri – Brute (album, Hyperdub Records)</h2>
<p>A record about protest. Josh Kline’s brilliant cover (derived from his installation work <a href="http://portlandartmuseum.org/exhibitions/josh-kline/">Freedom</a>, 2015) for <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/music/brute/fatima-al-qadiri">Brute</a> sets the tone. </p>
<p>Eclectic <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/grime">grime</a> producer Qadiri’s music is often bleak and strangely directionless considering its pointed political framing.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149957/original/image-20161213-1605-12xknur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149957/original/image-20161213-1605-12xknur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149957/original/image-20161213-1605-12xknur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149957/original/image-20161213-1605-12xknur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149957/original/image-20161213-1605-12xknur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149957/original/image-20161213-1605-12xknur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149957/original/image-20161213-1605-12xknur.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The cover of Fatima Al Qadiri’s Brute, designed by Josh Kline.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Beats come on with intent, but then cycle away to nothingness. Bass and synth sounds are tough in themselves, but somehow they don’t quite fit together, the whole remains resolutely the sum of its disjointed parts. But if this record feels messy and imperfect, that’s because its subject is conflict … </p>
<p>I wrote the above in the afternoon on Tuesday, November 8, then ground to a halt. Now I’m continuing on the morning of Wednesday the 9th, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/2016-us-presidential-election-23653">US presidential election</a> having fallen inbetween. A sense of disconnect, of unresolvable conflict is everywhere today. </p>
<p>When they build <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37243269">the wall</a> on the Mexican border, perhaps it will be policed by those sad-eyed <a href="http://www.teletubbies.com/">Teletubbies</a> in riot gear gracing Qadiri’s <a href="http://pitchfork.com/news/63051-fatima-al-qadiri-readies-brute-shares-battery/">album cover</a>.</p>
<h2>4. Rie Nakajima – performance at Silver Road, Lewisham, UK</h2>
<p>There’s hope in a refocusing of our perspective from the global to the local, to the immediacy of real human interaction, to spaces where we understand one another intuitively. </p>
<p>Fittingly, then, some of the most extraordinary musical experiences of my year have been in the form of live performances, and particularly those performances that seemed to speak to a sense of intimacy, of domesticity. </p>
<p>In the summer of 2015 I saw <a href="http://www.rienakajima.com/">Rie Nakajima</a> perform for the first time, at Supernormal Festival in Oxfordshire. She is a Japanese artist working with sounding objects in installation and performance. At <a href="http://louderthanwar.com/supernormal-2015-lineup-details-so-far-for-uks-foremost-forward-thinking-festival/">Supernormal</a> she played with singer <a href="http://www.rienakajima.com/_work/_collaborationsetc/OYAMAO.html">Keiko Yamamoto</a> in the centre of a big, old barn – her mechanical soundmakers rattling, chirping and chiming, and Yamamoto’s unamplified voice; small sounds in a large space, the singing of birds and insects in the wide open spaces of summer.</p>
<p>In November 2016, I had the opportunity to see Nakajima again, this time close to home in the extraordinary space at <a href="http://www.silver-road.uk/">Silver Road</a>, Lewisham in London. This venue is a disused and drained steel water tank, a great resonating, reverberating cylinder. </p>
<p>Here, Nakajima collaborated with Belgian musician and sound artist <a href="http://soccos.eu/artists/detail/pierre-berthet">Pierre Berthet</a>. The two set about sounding the space itself, objects clattering against the walls, voices of humans and mechanisms exploiting the natural resonances of this big drum. </p>
<p>The sense was of being completely enveloped and consumed by the music, being inside of it and listening to the firing of its neurons and nerve endings, the coursing of its blood and the flutter of its pulse. An unforgettable and heartening experience.</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/155230401" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">A sound installation by Pierre Berthet and Rie Nakajima.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>5. Turtle Yama – Performances at Supernormal Festival, Oxfordshire, UK</h2>
<p><a href="http://www.supernormalfestival.co.uk/performances/turtle-yama/">Turtle Yama</a> is a duo of performance artist and guitarist Yuku Kureyama, and keyboard player and electronic musician Nahoko Kamei, based in Osaka, Japan. </p>
<p>This past Northern Hemisphere summer they visited the UK for the first time, and at Supernormal Festival, amid a good deal of music that was darker, louder but also more familiar, played two sets that were so fresh, thoughtful, fun and exciting as to rather rewire my head.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149959/original/image-20161213-1594-1jjrqt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/149959/original/image-20161213-1594-1jjrqt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149959/original/image-20161213-1594-1jjrqt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149959/original/image-20161213-1594-1jjrqt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149959/original/image-20161213-1594-1jjrqt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149959/original/image-20161213-1594-1jjrqt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/149959/original/image-20161213-1594-1jjrqt7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Japanese performers Turtle Yama.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>They achieved that most difficult feat of playing real pop music while questioning its frameworks, creating a deconstructed, genuinely improvisatory version of something familiar and comforting. And in their approach they combined inclusivity and humility with an uncompromising exploratory zeal and a clear and total intellectual authority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68615/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Harries does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
In a world seemingly spinning out of control, music has important roles to play – either to reflect or interpret the state of affairs, or simply to provide solace.
John Harries, Lecturer in Popular Music, Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65612
2016-09-19T14:59:33Z
2016-09-19T14:59:33Z
How Cold War anxieties still shape our world today
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138290/original/image-20160919-11127-3yprg7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Unlike Dr Strangelove, few people learned to love the bomb – but it changed society nonetheless.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/3941702700/in/album-72157622015478740/">Columbia Pictures</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">CC BY-NC-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>World War II led to the massive mobilisation of all the people and resources nations could bring to bear. This was total war on a global scale, producing a new sense among nations that their fates were interconnected. New technologies of war, such as heavy bombers and long-range missiles like the V-2 rocket, reduced distances of time and space. In recognition of this new state of affairs, in 1942 the US Army chief of staff, George Marshall, <a href="https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/churchill/interactive/_html/wc0001.html">sent identical 50-inch, 750-pound globes</a> to British prime minister Winston Churchill and US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt as Christmas presents. </p>
<p>The sheer scale of the war and the complex administrative and strategic systems required to manage these global operations led to, during the Cold War that followed, a growing interdependency of a network of institutions, attitudes and ways of working.</p>
<p>Fuelled by the development of satellites and intercontinental nuclear missiles that further shrank the size of the planet, the Cold War redrew geopolitical notions of time, space and scale. Huge nuclear arsenals made it necessary to consider both the instantaneous and the endless: the decisive moment when <a href="http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/cold-war/strategy/strategy-mutual-assured-destruction.htm">mutually assured destruction</a> is potentially set in motion, the frozen stalemate of the superpower stand-off, and the long catastrophe of a post-nuclear future.</p>
<p>The power of an individual decision was now outrageously amplified – the finger on the nuclear button – yet, at the same time, radically diminished in the face of unfathomable forces, in which human agency seemed to have been ceded to computers and weapons systems. The world had become too complex and too dangerous: systems were at once the threat and the solution. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138293/original/image-20160919-11117-1lzjk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138293/original/image-20160919-11117-1lzjk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138293/original/image-20160919-11117-1lzjk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138293/original/image-20160919-11117-1lzjk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138293/original/image-20160919-11117-1lzjk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=446&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138293/original/image-20160919-11117-1lzjk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138293/original/image-20160919-11117-1lzjk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138293/original/image-20160919-11117-1lzjk8e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=561&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It’s all about planning.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/3882775649/in/album-72157622015478740/">x-ray_delta_one</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The response</h2>
<p>During the second half of the 20th century, many fields of enquiry from anthropology, political theory and analytical philosophy to art, music and literature were influenced by the explosion in interdisciplinary thinking that emerged from developments in cybernetics and its relationship with Cold War military research and development. </p>
<p>The practice of engaging with the connections and interactions between disparate elements of a problem or entity conceived as a system, and between such systems, is now commonplace in areas such as corporate strategy, town planning and environmental policy. </p>
<p>The pervasiveness of a systems approach also influenced the arts. The so-called <a href="http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/the-systems-novel-new-and-on-the-way-out/article627338/">systems novel</a>, associated with writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace, attempts to grasp the complex interconnectedness of society, and often the effects of technology and progress upon it. Through the 1960s and 1970s, in the radical architecture and design of the likes of <a href="https://bfi.org/about-fuller/biography">Buckminster Fuller</a> or the <a href="http://archigram.westminster.ac.uk/">Archigram</a> group, through minimalist and electronic music, and in conceptual art and emergent electronic media, the possibilities and implications of an increasingly computerised, information-driven society began to determine the form and content of cultural work. </p>
<p>Systems thinking offered a means of conceptualising and understanding a world that had grown hugely more complex and dangerous. Nuclear weapons demanded radical new ways of thinking about time, scale, power, death, responsibility and, most of all, control – control of technology, people, information and ideas. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/6677Eppc-sk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<h2>The present</h2>
<p>We are now accustomed to thinking about the current moment in global terms – globalisation, global warming, global communications, global security. Mobile phones and laptops connect us to a vast global network so we can upload and download data – data that promises to broaden our connections even as it flattens our identity into a trickle of binary code to be <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-web-has-become-a-hall-of-mirrors-filled-only-with-reflections-of-our-data-46969">tracked, traded, sorted and stored</a>. </p>
<p>Everyday life is firewalled and password-protected. We move under a canopy of invisible cameras and sensors, where our personal details and likenesses, our associations, preferences and transactions lie waiting to be called upon – by friends, strangers, employers or snoops. And so what? We all do it – we are already conscripted. We have already become agents, checking up on people by <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-inevitable-that-the-internet-changes-how-we-relate-what-matters-is-how-48449">rifling through social media accounts</a> or poking around on Street View. </p>
<p>Faced with the unfathomable complexity of world events, or climate science, or the effects of the technology that delivers updates on such matters to us in an instant, information is both the source of our dilemma and a refuge from it. </p>
<p>This is a world produced by the Cold War, by the anxieties and energies that found expression in the laboratories, boardrooms, government offices, think-tanks and universities tasked with managing a permanent state of emergency. The geopolitics may be different, but the technology, infrastructure, and worldview that built up and hardened during the Cold War era are still with us, embodied in the everyday devices we take for granted, and the precarious identities they suggest.</p>
<p>Normalised surveillance, generalised anxiety, an obsession with security, nationalised identities, pervasive suspicion and secrecy, spectacular military technology and proxy wars, spies, whistleblowers, and the enemy within. Francis Fukuyama famously claimed in 1989 that the end of the Cold War marked the “<a href="http://www.ou.edu/uschina/gries/articles/IntPol/Fukuyama%20End%20of%20History.pdf">end of history</a>” – the great ideological struggles were over and Western liberal democracy had won, according to his thesis. However wrong he was in his assessment of the post-Cold War world, Fukuyama’s argument did indicate how easy it can be to kick recent history into the long grass. History, though, did not turn out to be over, and we are still in it. The world we are in is, in many ways, the world the Cold War made for us.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65612/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Beck does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Think the Cold War is over? It may be, but its effects still cast a long shadow over society.
John Beck, Professor in English, University of Westminster
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/65382
2016-09-19T14:18:19Z
2016-09-19T14:18:19Z
London sees nightclubs as drug dens – Berlin considers them high culture
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138265/original/image-20160919-11120-jezmbo.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/patricksavalle/17231167002/in/photolist-sfEeCf-riP2JE-rYeGkC-rj1ejR-rYeABJ-sfE5do-sfLcdc-sfNQVM-ivapWL-fg3VAW-nHnQXC-sfL6KZ-d9NbsB-d9NaYd-d9NWUN-d9NYxb-d9NY3u-ce5Bkm-sfLgFk-rYdKeU-rYmGxr-rj1kQr-cdZuFQ-sfLiXe-rj1yYR-iMiZLW-rYeSnS-sfPfuv-riNJ2q-rj1zfn-bWCa1e-fTzMQ6-sdw3gj-riNVmj-sfEmBW-rYdB1j-sfL91k-rj1vsc-dD7VYB-rYmXVR-rj1vLZ-rYmKsK-rWtPdB-k7Ax76-rYdXn1-riNEDy-riNRBf-sfL5Fe-riNSaQ-o8bLNN">patricksavalle/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Nightclubs across London recently turned off their music and observed a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37378138/the-night-the-clubs-fell-silent-for-a-minute">moment of silence</a> in protest against club closures. Since the the legendary London club Fabric closed earlier this month after having <a href="https://theconversation.com/loss-of-fabric-nightclub-is-latest-blow-to-londons-cultural-capital-65065">its licence revoked</a>, concerns about the future of London’s nightlife are rife. On the very same day, a German court ruled that Berlin nightclub Berghain, infamous for its techno, is to pay a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/12/berlins-berghain-nightclub-classed-as-culturally-significant-venue">lower tax rate</a>. The reason: what goes on in the former power plant is considered high culture. </p>
<p>How is it that these two cities have a nightlife policy that is so polarised?</p>
<p>Fabric’s licence was revoked because Islington Council felt that not enough was done by the club to prevent drug taking. For anybody who followed the the council’s hearing from the balcony or via live tweets, it was remarkable to see that the “culture of drugs” was almost exclusively cited as a reason to revoke the licence. It appears that nightclubs are held responsible for drug-related deaths in the UK, regardless of whether people are intoxicating themselves before they go out (which is evidenced by a <a href="https://mmu.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/lapsed-clubber-online-survey">recent study</a> I conducted on club culture in Manchester) or not. One is reminded of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HTpt1nFPkc%E2%80%8Bhttp://example.com/">moral panics of the early 90s</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138260/original/image-20160919-11134-l5wx3r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138260/original/image-20160919-11134-l5wx3r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138260/original/image-20160919-11134-l5wx3r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138260/original/image-20160919-11134-l5wx3r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138260/original/image-20160919-11134-l5wx3r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138260/original/image-20160919-11134-l5wx3r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138260/original/image-20160919-11134-l5wx3r.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Flowers outside Fabric.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josephine Lethbridge</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Switch over to a court hearing in Germany, and the focus is a bit different. Back in 2008, Berlin’s finance ministry ruled that nightclubs should be taxed regularly (they had previously received the same tax breaks as other cultural institutions). Berghain appealed, and its defence lawyer, Peter Raue, succeeded in convincing a fiscal court that the events at the club could indeed be compared to classical concerts or plays.</p>
<p>Raue <a href="https://raue.com/en/2016/09/13/raue-llp-secures-victory-for-berghain-before-fiscal-court/">argued</a> that what happens at Berghain can be classed as high culture. Raue also spoke about intoxication, but of a different sort, comparing the intoxicating effect a DJ set could have to that of people immersing themselves in a performance of a Mahler symphony. Raue did not deny that many in attendance consume drinks and drugs in order to immerse themselves in music – far from it. His elision of drug or drink-fuelled intoxication with intoxication by performance was certainly intended. </p>
<p>The focus of discussion in Berlin was not centred on drug consumption, but the production of culture – be it high or low – while acknowledging that intoxication may have a part to play in this. Drugs or no, Berghain is seen to enrich Berlin’s cultural life, and is therefore something to be supported rather than fought. Fabric, on the other hand, is apparently considered a danger to London’s cultural life – due to drugs. In order to understand how these two infamous clubs have gone such separate ways, it is worth looking at the cultural differences between German and British society.</p>
<h2>Culture – or drug culture?</h2>
<p>There are poor people and rich people in Germany. And there are some people in the middle. Not so different from Britain, you’d say? Indeed, social classes exist in both countries. But the obsession with class in Britain is second to none. Neighbourhoods, schools, jobs, accents, or education are predominantly viewed through the lens of social class. And all too often, culture is also seen through this lens. This very clear distinction has led to club culture and electronic dance music culture being identified as low culture (essentially made for the working classes) or popular culture. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/12/berlins-berghain-nightclub-classed-as-culturally-significant-venue">British headlines</a> about Berghain’s new lower tax rate refer to that perceived contradiction of a techno nightclub providing high culture. And indeed, by allowing Berghain to pay a lower tax rate, the German court put the performances at Berghain on par with plays at theatres, or symphonies played in concert halls. But Berliners simply do not see this as a contradiction at all. And what’s more, Berliners know that Berghain has long become a versatile venue, hosting exhibitions, book readings, fashion shows and much more. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138261/original/image-20160919-11134-1mi2wx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/138261/original/image-20160919-11134-1mi2wx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138261/original/image-20160919-11134-1mi2wx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138261/original/image-20160919-11134-1mi2wx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138261/original/image-20160919-11134-1mi2wx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138261/original/image-20160919-11134-1mi2wx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/138261/original/image-20160919-11134-1mi2wx0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Berghain at night.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/mlaiacker/145505359/in/photolist-FBNyC-iUqNae-dRKF6-88x8up-81qwTZ-4E6sMT-4VVVGn-4VVVQt-7t9ZKo-5inhMT-cWyfLY-6FZ4vF-2Rqdav-dkh5m1-3PQNUx-4TZwci-8JA5VH-8ZBgyg-j64b1X-4VVVUH-69hFoD-7Ho8oF-4qaE3N-6SqNMU-7GqN9f-FBNz5-abvnpV-4co9rL-4cjaxZ-6igqfa-kRZrc-af8iLr-5wQXf4-boc51i-6dYECX-FuLH3s-7gZH9P-EF3qhD-fihoC3-tHXnev-4co9Hs-4A5k7W-dLEDqB-4cjaN8-fi384n-4mBCKo-fi38m2-hHe2kt-fihnLs-74JTS1">mlaiacker/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Left to the market</h2>
<p>Gentrification is increasingly blamed for London’s changing club culture, particularly in the wake of Fabric’s closure. Many have accused Islington Council of sacrificing the club in order to benefit from the amped up real estate value of the Farringdon property. Another famous London club, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/passing-clouds-made-dalston-culturally-rich-and-now-it-s-being-forced-to-close-for-property-a7312021.html">Passing Clouds</a>, also recently fell foul of increasing Dalston rents in east London.</p>
<p>But gentrification is changing neighbourhoods in Berlin too. And not all venues survive the process that results in increased rents or leases. The original <a href="https://www.residentadvisor.net/news.aspx?id=6176">Tresor</a> nightclub and the art squat <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/sep/05/closure-tacheles-berlin-sad-alternative-art">Tacheles</a>, in Berlin’s Mitte district, fell victim to this process. But as a city, Berlin is doing more than London to counteract the cultural effects of gentrification. </p>
<p>The Senate of Berlin – the executive body governing the city – is regularly involved in negotiations about rental costs with developers and artists as a result of gentrification. For example, the senate had planned to build on the land that was previously Tempelhof Airport. But as a result <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/mar/05/how-berliners-refused-to-give-tempelhof-airport-over-to-developers">of a referendum</a>, it decided to turn the field into free space that can be used by all people. The Postgebaeude in the Friedrichshain dictrict is another case where the senate stepped in to mediate between artists and developers. And <a href="http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/germany-law-restricting-airbnb-and-other-vacation-rentals-takes-effect-in-berlin/">a new law</a> restricts vacation rentals in Berlin, aiming to slow down gentrification and the related explosion of rental prices. </p>
<p>These examples show that the city of Berlin appears to be supportive of mainstream and fringe culture, and the success of Berghain’s appeal demonstrates above all else that the city treasures subcultures of all kinds. The city has become a haven for artists, and its cultural life is rich and diverse. London, in contrast, is much more prepared to have venues closed either if they do not fit the developers’ ideas or because of worries about drug taking.</p>
<p>London prides itself on being Europe’s financial centre. Berlin, on the other hand is bankrupt – financially. But it is very solvent culturally. And in the years to come, we shall see which is more important – I know where my money is.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/65382/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beate Peter does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
On the same day that London’s legendary Fabric closed permanently, Berlin’s infamous techno club Berghain was granted a tax break.
Beate Peter, Lecturer in German, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/61726
2016-07-19T18:37:57Z
2016-07-19T18:37:57Z
Reggae pioneer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s lessons in good music as good magic
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/130568/original/image-20160714-23365-10a41ve.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Balazs Mohai/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As electronic music shape-shifts its way through the early years of the 21st century, the influence of dub – reggae’s stripped-down mutant version – on contemporary production is becoming more apparent. In “<a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781780231990">Remixology</a>”, Paul Sullivan <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=4deKAwAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&dq=remixology&pg=PT6#v=onepage&q&f=false">captures the fluidity</a> and complexity of dub as a diasporic form:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Ethereal, mystical, conceptual, fluid, avant-garde, raw, unstable, provocative, transparent, postmodern, disruptive, heavyweight, political, enigmatic … dub is way more than “a riddim and a bassline”, even if it is that too. Dub is a genre and a process, a “virus” and a “vortex”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The work of <a href="http://www.upsetter.net/scratch/">Lee “Scratch” Perry</a>, who turned 80 in March 2016, is central to the way we perceive dub today. His influence is audible in the liquid electronica of <a href="http://pitchfork.com/artists/30594-arca/">Arca</a> and <a href="http://pitchfork.com/artists/30936-twigs/">FKA twigs</a>; the Afrocentric spiritualism and vivid sound collaging of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/flying-lotus-mn0000717419">Flying Lotus</a>; the sonic murk and vast reverberant spaces of <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/burial-mn0000643682">Burial</a>, <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/laurel-halo-mn0002613655">Laurel Halo</a> and <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/artist/actress-mn0001399533">Actress</a>; and the work of countless other cutting-edge producers. </p>
<p>Seen in this light, Scratch is a cornerstone of modern electronic popular music. But his work is so richly allusive, his persona so layered, that it’s possible to frame his contribution any number of ways.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tqMBMXJ9R8M?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">‘Magic Music’ by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Good music is good magic</h2>
<p>Interviews with Scratch amount to a hall of mirrors for anyone searching for simple answers or posing simple questions. <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=KQ2WFvz6GXUC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA128#v=onepage&q&f=false">John Corbett notes</a> that “[Scratch’s] is a discursive kingdom, a creative world of hidden connections and secret pacts exposed in language.”</p>
<p>Common strands do emerge in Scratch’s elaborate discourse though, ideas that recur and so seem central to his worldview and musical philosophy. I’ve <a href="https://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/dancecult/article/view/681">written previously</a> about outer space, cyborg, natural/ecological and religious imagery in Scratch’s work. Another concept that recurs as frequently is that of magic. </p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/mar/21/lee-scratch-perry-at-80-birthday-reggae-interview">interview</a> with the <em>Guardian</em>, a newly octogenarian Scratch was uncharacteristically direct on the subject: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Music is magic. If you have good music you have good magic. If you have good magic you will be followed by good people. Then they can be blessed by the one God. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>It’s obvious to identify Scratch as a practitioner of magic in relation to his use of language, his virtuosity with spoken and written words. Maybe it’s missing the point, though. By restlessly repurposing language, Scratch pushes it towards an adequate secondary expression of the complex, layered reality he expresses so effortlessly in sound. </p>
<p>What’s exciting here is not that we might think of Scratch as a maker of magic because of what he tells us. Rather, it is that we might calmly and with a sense of intellectual or academic rigour acknowledge the magic in his art.</p>
<h2>Production as the practice of magic</h2>
<p>Positioning Scratch’s work as attaining the qualities of magic is not the same as essentialising the image of the man himself, making him a caricature musical mystic or shaman. Similarly, I’m not looking to reduce the work to a set of instinctual, unintellectual functions either. On the contrary, the proposition is to properly acknowledge Scratch’s work as irreducibly complex, deeply layered, subtle and nuanced. </p>
<p>Reggae historian <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Bass-Culture-When-Reggae-King/dp/0140237631">Lloyd Bradley</a> has touched upon this quality of his work. Bradley attests to “an intrigue and multidimensionality too seldom even attempted in reggae”, and to musical ideas taken “way past the point at which logic would tell most people to stop, into a place where the instrumentation took on ethereal qualities”. </p>
<p>Filmmaker and author <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=KQ2WFvz6GXUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false">John Corbett</a> similarly observes that the producer pushed his rudimentary four-track <a href="http://www.soundonsound.com/people/lee-scratch-perry-daniel-boyle-recording-back-controls">Black Ark studio</a> in Kingston, Jamaica, “way past conceivable limits”.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/L33rURGohwI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Bob Marley with ‘Natural Mystic’, as produced by Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry in the latter’s Black Ark studio.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It seems pressing now to reassert the status of record production – in the hands of a master of the art like Scratch – as the practice of magic, because from an educational perspective it’s increasingly difficult to do so.</p>
<p>It may have always been the case that to teach production as a creative discipline one has first to overcome some preconceptions: that it is primarily a technical activity; that there are right and wrong ways to do things; and that the success of a production can be assessed objectively. </p>
<p>For me, this means that while we need to be aware of the dangers of an uninterrogated mystical/mythical perspective on an artist like Scratch, the opposite danger of a reductive position that assumes his work can be understood simply, technically, that all of its qualities are tangible and replicable, is equally significant.</p>
<p>Auteurs like Scratch provide direct and convincing counterarguments to all of the above. We can analyse and deconstruct a production like <em>Bird in Hand</em> (from his album “<a href="http://www.allmusic.com/album/return-of-the-super-ape-mw0000174624">Return of the Super Ape</a>”, 1978). We can identify the tools and techniques used, and even demonstrate and replicate them with the nearest equivalent technologies available. But in doing so we still don’t really provide a template for remaking the particular sound of that mono-mix.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/vZ7aVyMbZyg?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s ‘Bird in Hand’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We certainly don’t get close to the strange magic that resides in a near infinite number of contributing factors, including myriad tiny decisions made by Scratch and the <a href="https://thenewperfectcollection.com/2016/03/27/74-the-upsetters-the-return-of-the-super-ape-1978/">Upsetters</a> live to tape in his <a href="https://www.discogs.com/label/273585-The-Black-Ark">Black Ark</a> studio.</p>
<p>These include nuances of performance and recording; the needle pushing into the red as the kick drum hits, the character of the resultant distortion dependent on the reel of tape used that day; the temperature in the room; dust and dirt on the tape heads; the same factors affecting each layer of echo provided by a tape delay unit, the variation of the speed of the motor inside that unit; hands on faders and filters; the physical circuitry of the studio, then near the end of its life. As soon as we look closely, the character, the sound of the mix, reveals itself to be fantastically complex, ultimately impossible to unravel. </p>
<p>In some ways, this is clear and simple. It’s easy to assert in the face of a reductive approach that art just doesn’t work that way. But changing educational climates make the alternative position – that the art of production can’t be delivered and measured so simply – more difficult to defend.</p>
<h2>Beyond reductionism</h2>
<p>A neoliberal educational context requires that the learning product sold by universities is neatly delineated, the success of the enterprise easily assessed. This model of “knowledge transfer” founders if the thing to be known is in part intangible, too complex to communicate in the course of, say, a two-hour lecture, and is itself born of experience.</p>
<p>If the question is how do we fit the magic of artists like Lee “Scratch” Perry into this framework, I’d propose the answer is that we cannot – and we should not seek to do so. </p>
<p>In “<a href="http://www.worldcat.org/title/teaching-art-in-the-neoliberal-realm-realism-versus-cynicism/oclc/795528575">Teaching Art in the Neoliberal Realm</a>”, Stefan Hertmans grapples with what art might mean as a subject to be taught:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Perhaps art “works”, simply and incomprehensibly at the same time, precisely because we do not know what it is and cannot predict it. Because artists create art, they can afford to sidestep the question about its essence: it is clear from what they do. They embody its essence in their practice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I don’t think this goes quite far enough. To observe that there are elements in any work of art that are essential but cannot be easily explained in a technically reductive sense is not to “sidestep the question about its essence”. It is to provide the most substantial, nuanced and truthful answer to that question.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/g9PcNQxM_cQ?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">One of Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry’s best known songs, ‘Disco Devil’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Seeking an example of record production as the practice of magic, we could wish for none better than the extraordinary work of Lee “Scratch” Perry. As an educator, if I’m obliged to ignore that aspect of Scratch’s work, I’m dismissing much of what it can teach.</p>
<p>To argue for the magic in this music is to argue for its status as art – sophisticated, compelling and profound. When <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/musicblog/2016/mar/21/lee-scratch-perry-at-80-birthday-reggae-interview">Scratch tells us</a> that “the breath of live God” can manifest in his work as “perfect magic, perfect logic, perfect science”, he’s emphasising not a plurality of expression, but a one-ness. Magic, science and logic here are intertwined, inextricable and indistinguishable.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/61726/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Harries does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
One of popular music’s most influential artists, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry, turned 80 this year. It is a good time to acknowledge his work as irreducibly complex, deeply layered, subtle and nuanced.
John Harries, Lecturer in Popular Music, Goldsmiths, University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/60381
2016-06-26T19:58:45Z
2016-06-26T19:58:45Z
How Australia played the world’s first music on a computer
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127681/original/image-20160622-19752-1h52mfq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Geoff Hill and Trevor Pearcey in 1952 with the CSIR Mk1, the world's first computer to make music.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://gallery.eng.unimelb.edu.au/computing-history/">University of Melbourne/MSE-CIS Heritage Collection</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>We don’t think twice about playing music via a computer – we have them in our pockets, and in our homes and offices, with music on tap. But playing music on a computer was once an almost unthinkable leap of the imagination and the most devilishly difficult programming challenge.</p>
<p>The world’s fourth digital computer was designed and built in Australia by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR, the precursor of the CSIRO). It started life as a dream in 1947, ran its first test program in 1949 and played music in 1950 or 1951.</p>
<p>Initially known as the CSIR Mark 1 – later renamed <a href="https://csiropedia.csiro.au/csirac-australias-first-computer/">CSIRAC</a> (the CSIR Automatic Computer) – it was built at the CSIR’s radiophysics division in Sydney.</p>
<p>CSIRAC was a very primitive computer by today’s standards. It was very slow (1,000 cycles per second); it did not have very much memory (about 2KB of RAM and 3KB of disk memory); it filled a room and; it had no display like a modern computer.</p>
<h2>Out of the hooter</h2>
<p>Most output from CSIRAC was via punched paper tape that was later converted to text on another machine. The only familiar output device was a speaker (called the hooter), and it was used to track the progress of a program. </p>
<p>Programmers would place a sound at the end of their program so they knew it had ended (this was known as a blurt), or they would program progress-indicator blurts into a program.</p>
<p>Despite being primitive, CSIRAC performed groundbreaking work, including running the calculations to find the centre of our galaxy in 1953, and for the engineering of our first skyscraper building.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125052/original/image-20160602-23298-191m4ol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125052/original/image-20160602-23298-191m4ol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125052/original/image-20160602-23298-191m4ol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125052/original/image-20160602-23298-191m4ol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125052/original/image-20160602-23298-191m4ol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125052/original/image-20160602-23298-191m4ol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125052/original/image-20160602-23298-191m4ol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125052/original/image-20160602-23298-191m4ol.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">CSIRAC before it was put on display at Museum Victoria.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Doornbusch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>CSIRAC was a serial computer, it passed digital bits around one at a time unlike the 32 or 64 bits passed around in parallel in modern computers. </p>
<p>The memory on the CSIRAC was mercury acoustic delay lines. That means a pulse would be put into the memory tube, it would travel to the other end of the tube and be recycled back to the front. In this way, many bits and digital words could be stored in one tube of mercury. There were about 20 memory tubes functional at any time. </p>
<p>A consequence of using mercury acoustic delay time memory was that each memory access took a different time. This would prove problematic for any time-critical application, such as playing music in real time.</p>
<h2>The music maker</h2>
<p>The first software engineer or programmer was the mathematician <a href="https://csiropedia.csiro.au/hill-geoffrey/">Geoff Hill</a>, who is something of an unsung hero of Australian computing. </p>
<p>Hill came from a very musical family; his mother was a music teacher, his sister a performer and he had perfect pitch. This is crucial, as the way CSIRAC created sounds was by sending raw pulses from the computer data bus to the speaker.</p>
<p>If casually programmed, these pulses would arrive at the speaker at somewhat random times, resulting in the blurting type of sound used by programmers to indicate points in the program’s execution. </p>
<p>Hill would have quickly realised that if he could get the pulses to arrive at a regular time, then he would get a steady pitch. Then, perhaps he could program the notes of a musical scale. </p>
<p>This was an exceedingly difficult task because each memory access took a different time, and the overall clock frequency was only 1,000 cycles a second. </p>
<p>But Hill managed this, and his musical knowledge was invaluable, although on at least one occasion he telephoned his mother late at night and asked her if some notes were in tune while holding the telephone receiver to the computer speaker.</p>
<p>Her response on the first occasion was to scold Hill for playing silly buggers with a comb and a piece of paper and annoying her late and night when his dinner was in the oven! She didn’t understand what was going on.</p>
<h2>A simple tune</h2>
<p>Hill programmed CSIRAC to play various popular tunes of the day, such as Colonel Bogey, Girl with Flaxen Hair and so on. This was natural as the programmers were not musical specialists and were not interested in what using a computer meant for the potential composition and performance of music. </p>
<p>The music was one of CSIRAC’s parlour tricks. <a href="http://csiropedia.csiro.au/McGee-Richard-Xavier/">Dick McGee</a> remembers it playing music when he started at the CSIRO in April 1951. At Australia’s first computing conference, on August 7-9, 1951, everyone was talking about it afterwards and it caused quite a stir.</p>
<p>The late <a href="https://csiropedia.csiro.au/pearcey-trevor/">Trevor Pearcey</a> led the team that created CSIRAC and he remembers its musical performances well, as recalls in the video interview from 1996, a couple of years before he died.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/slr75sLhOCs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>CSIRAC was thus the first computer in the world to play music. Sadly, none of the music it played was ever recorded. </p>
<h2>Change of plan at CSIRO</h2>
<p>There was some internal refocusing within the CSIRO and it was decided to concentrate on weather science and primary production rather than computation, leaving that to others and the commercial sector.</p>
<p>So it is not surprising that the CSIRO resisted the music being recorded at the time. However, it has now been faithfully reconstructed and can be heard again.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127991/original/image-20160624-30259-eft8as.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127991/original/image-20160624-30259-eft8as.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/127991/original/image-20160624-30259-eft8as.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127991/original/image-20160624-30259-eft8as.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127991/original/image-20160624-30259-eft8as.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=302&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127991/original/image-20160624-30259-eft8as.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127991/original/image-20160624-30259-eft8as.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/127991/original/image-20160624-30259-eft8as.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=379&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A reconstructed valve amplifier built to the original CSIRAC design to generate the correct pulse shapes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Doornbusch</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>A team at The University of Melbourne, led by myself, built (valve) hardware to faithfully reconstruct CSIRAC’s pulse shapes, and software to be able to run the old programs. </p>
<p>After hand reading and entering the data from the old punched-paper program tapes, the programs were run with the reconstructed pulses and the music regenerated accurately. </p>
<p>The team even went to the trouble of sourcing a new speaker made within a few weeks of the original to play the music through. Museum Victoria very kindly let us put the speaker in the old cabinets to record the music being played so that it is as authentic as possible.</p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="7" data-image="" data-title="CSIRAC plays a music scale" data-size="118410" data-source="Paul Doornbusch" data-source-url="http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/mp3/01-Sydney-Scale.mp3" data-license="Author provided" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/432/01-sydney-scale.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
CSIRAC plays a music scale.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/mp3/01-Sydney-Scale.mp3">Paul Doornbusch</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span><span class="download"><span>116 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/432/01-sydney-scale.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="17" data-image="" data-title="CSIRAC plays Colonel Bogey" data-size="275981" data-source="Paul Doornbusch" data-source-url="http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/mp3/02-Colonel-Bogey.mp3" data-license="Author provided" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/430/02-colonel-bogey.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
CSIRAC plays Colonel Bogey.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/mp3/02-Colonel-Bogey.mp3">Paul Doornbusch</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span><span class="download"><span>270 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/430/02-colonel-bogey.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="18" data-image="" data-title="CSIRAC plays The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" data-size="296043" data-source="Paul Doornbusch" data-source-url="http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/mp3/03-Bonnie-Banks.mp3" data-license="Author provided" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/433/03-bonnie-banks.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
CSIRAC plays The Bonnie Banks o’ Loch Lomond.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/mp3/03-Bonnie-Banks.mp3">Paul Doornbusch</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span><span class="download"><span>289 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/433/03-bonnie-banks.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p><audio preload="metadata" controls="controls" data-duration="18" data-image="" data-title="CSIRAC plays Auld Lang Syne" data-size="294371" data-source="Paul Doornbusch" data-source-url="http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/mp3/05-Auld-Lang-Syne.mp3" data-license="Author provided" data-license-url="">
<source src="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/434/05-auld-lang-syne.mp3" type="audio/mpeg">
</audio>
<div class="audio-player-caption">
CSIRAC plays Auld Lang Syne.
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.doornbusch.net/CSIRAC/mp3/05-Auld-Lang-Syne.mp3">Paul Doornbusch</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span><span class="download"><span>287 KB</span> <a target="_blank" href="https://cdn.theconversation.com/audio/434/05-auld-lang-syne.mp3">(download)</a></span></span>
</div></p>
<p>Shortly after CSIRAC first played music, in 1951 the BBC recorded a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/ahistoryoftheworld/objects/K5T55FzeRAWtpJ9LuHiF0A">Ferranti Mark 1</a> computer <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7458479.stm">playing music</a> in Manchester, England. That is the oldest recording of a computer playing music.</p>
<p>When CSIRAC moved to the University of Melbourne in 1956, it continued to play music. The university’s mathematics professor <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cherry-sir-thomas-macfarland-9737">Tom Cherry</a> wrote a program so that anyone could punch a “score” or “pianola” tape for the computer to play without the intricacies of knowing how to program the hooter. </p>
<p>Professor Cherry’s instructions on how to use the music program still exist.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125056/original/image-20160603-23261-bl0ddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125056/original/image-20160603-23261-bl0ddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125056/original/image-20160603-23261-bl0ddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125056/original/image-20160603-23261-bl0ddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125056/original/image-20160603-23261-bl0ddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=980&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125056/original/image-20160603-23261-bl0ddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125056/original/image-20160603-23261-bl0ddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/125056/original/image-20160603-23261-bl0ddb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1231&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">CSIRAC music instructions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Paul Doornbusch</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A lost opportunity</h2>
<p>The most significant early developments in computer music and digital audio happened in the United States from the late 1950s at Bell Labs. </p>
<p>In 1957, the <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/computer-graphics-music-and-art/15/222">acoustic researcher Max Mathews</a> had the foresight to see the potential of this technology. He wrote a program that allowed an IBM 704 mainframe computer to play a 17-second composition.</p>
<p>Despite the earlier musical work with CSIRAC in Sydney, it is Matthews who is often referred to as <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/24/arts/music/max-mathews-father-of-computer-music-dies-at-84.html">the father of computer music</a>.</p>
<p>But the developments started in the 1950s have led to the most exciting musical adventure we have ever embarked on – the application of digital technology to the creation, making, listening and distribution of music.</p>
<p>When discussing the CSIRAC music reconstruction project with the original engineers who had worked on CSIRAC in Melbourne, I lamented that the then Melbourne-based composer <a href="http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/grainger-george-percy-6448">Percy Grainger</a> had not been introduced to CSIRAC.</p>
<p><a href="https://museumvictoria.com.au/csirac/programming/pthorne.aspx">Peter Thorne</a>, a former CSIRAC computer technician, told me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We used to see him walk past the computation laboratory, we’d say, ‘There goes Percy Grainger’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I sighed. Grainger was Australia’s most adventurous composer of the day was a few metres away from a machine that could have realised some of his musical dreams. If he had met CSIRAC, some of the remarkable developments of combining computers and music could have been another Australian first.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60381/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Doornbusch occasionally receives funding from the Australia Council for the Arts for projects. He is author of the book The Music of CSIRAC: Australia's First Computer Music.</span></em></p>
It might not sound like the best music in the world, but Australia was the first by a matter of months at playing a tune on a computer.
Paul Doornbusch, Adjunct professor of computer science at The University of Melbourne and Associate Dean, Australian College of the Arts., The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/46414
2015-09-11T14:03:51Z
2015-09-11T14:03:51Z
Why Ibiza club music at a classical concert is a clash we should embrace
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94488/original/image-20150911-1578-130v7rn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/amnesiaibiza/8003201529/in/photolist-dcduZg-da5Ftp-dcdwac-cN6Hcb-8DuUDH-8DxY1j-nV3pWp-dcdtSz-da5EeT-da5Ede-dcdurt-da5FAY-dcdwdN-da5FpT-d9RKeH-d9RKbe-d9RKh2-cN6K4h-cN6LUb-cN6oFN-ocrRZQ-ocdHcK-56ptmu-dcdqDX-dcdrjj-eKX7MM-95KvVs-9dAv8F-h7tDo-h6NbM-h6JCa-h7vPT-h7sT3-h7tMP-9dDwGb-dgCp52-dbSEbY-h7vvx-h8fK4-h6JNt-h7uvm-h7uzu-h6Jxa-h7vg8-h7v58-h7udK-h7txk-h7vbL-d9RPob-d9RPes">Amnesia Ibiza</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>London’s Royal Albert Hall has seen a lot this summer: a performance of Beethoven’s Sixth <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e648gw">from memory</a>, a concert reflecting the supposed tastes of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/egnrzc#b065wxfg">Sherlock Holmes</a>, a concert telling the “<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e3fgwh#b067g1ls">Story of Swing</a>” and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/e5q5v2#b068tsj1">Jarvis Cocker</a> leading an “underwater dream” with music ranging from Echo & The Bunnymen to Debussy. </p>
<p>But it was the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b063s4gx">Ibiza Prom</a> that drew the most attention in the wider media. Produced by DJ Pete Tong, this was always going to be a convenient target for the sort of criticism which, like the festival itself, seems to have become an annual event. </p>
<p>As 2015 BBC Proms season draws to a close with the customary <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/events/ehnrzc">Last Night</a> celebrations, it seems a good moment to revisit the criticisms that the festival has been “dumbed down”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94494/original/image-20150911-1551-1884m14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94494/original/image-20150911-1551-1884m14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94494/original/image-20150911-1551-1884m14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94494/original/image-20150911-1551-1884m14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94494/original/image-20150911-1551-1884m14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94494/original/image-20150911-1551-1884m14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94494/original/image-20150911-1551-1884m14.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The more traditional view.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pahudson/7762082490/in/photolist-cPUGGs-58fVAR-8nVN8c-8nVNjB-5gPtvN-8nVMEZ-8nYXEm-8nVMSH-8nYXVy-8nVNTK-d8UQRE-d8UTwb-6ThL4j-6SYBLG-6SYzJE-6SUAeR-6SYEjm-6SUB2K-6V7TU7-6SUCzv-6SYxxQ-6SUyEk-6SYFJS-6SYwPW-fMnhMV-xXi1Yr-adRUaB-6SYvqq-6SUwwc-xFjCMN-xFqtjP-bvhQmA-a4CBu3-cTXvnu-cTXeBU-cTXffC-cTX8ew-cTX7MC-cTXgE5-cTXsgE-cTXed9-adRScg-adUE4C-adRRkZ-adRTvX-7suget-adUGoS-a4CjJS-a4zv8X-xFjJQG">pahudson/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Classical vs pop</h2>
<p>Of course, the supposed opposition between what might be conveniently termed classical and popular music makes for a great story. But it’s a tired one. Back in 1938, jazz clarinettist Benny Goodman’s <a href="http://blog.oup.com/2012/10/big-band-swing-music-recordings/">appearance</a> in Carnegie Hall was accompanied by extensive commentaries on the novelty of swing – then the predominant style of popular music – being performed in a venue usually associated with classical music. </p>
<p>In fact, there had already been plenty of precedents for popular music in such venerated surroundings, including Carnegie Hall itself. Musical “cross-overs” – for example, of the waltz from the ballroom to the concert hall – were hardly new. But this had little bearing on the reporting of the Goodman event as a culture clash.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94497/original/image-20150911-1578-1wci8jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94497/original/image-20150911-1578-1wci8jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94497/original/image-20150911-1578-1wci8jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94497/original/image-20150911-1578-1wci8jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=752&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94497/original/image-20150911-1578-1wci8jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94497/original/image-20150911-1578-1wci8jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94497/original/image-20150911-1578-1wci8jx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=945&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Benny Goodman c. 1970.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Goodman’s concert had minimal impact at the time and only really became an integral part of jazz history when a recording of the event was released more than 20 years later. The history of jazz, in common with many styles of popular music, is contingent on recordings. Jazz relies heavily on the individual contributions of particular musicians in the moment of performance, often through improvisation. These are not usually written down and are most readily captured on record.</p>
<p>Although symphonies and operas appear to be fixed by their notation, performance is a key component of classical music, too. Scores provide a way of representing music which only really exists when it is performed, and then in <a href="https://theconversation.com/were-playing-classical-music-all-wrong-composers-wanted-us-to-improvise-36090">innumerable different ways</a>. Although modern technology allows easy access to a plethora of recorded interpretations of classical works, it’s no surprise that there is still a demand for live performances in this genre too.</p>
<h2>Electronic performance</h2>
<p>Electronic dance music, the broad genre which embraces the music of the Ibiza club scene, presents a different situation again. Here a track may use pre-existing recordings, specially-made ones and other electronic sounds. Through processing and editing techniques, these resources can be manipulated and combined together into something which sounds entirely new. </p>
<p>But the final step is for tracks to be “performed” in a club setting by a DJ, a musician who is able to create an interlinked but continually changing sequence of music by mixing individual tracks and elements from them. This not really so different from the various dances in a Baroque suite by Handel or Bach, or, indeed, a set of numbers performed by a swing band.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94499/original/image-20150911-1575-d878ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94499/original/image-20150911-1575-d878ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94499/original/image-20150911-1575-d878ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94499/original/image-20150911-1575-d878ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=414&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94499/original/image-20150911-1575-d878ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94499/original/image-20150911-1575-d878ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94499/original/image-20150911-1575-d878ox.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=520&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">More than pressing play.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Maxim Blinkov/Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There is inherent value in attempting to perform music which exists primarily in recorded form, just as there remains a point to performing the symphonies of Beethoven and Mozart. But, just as with the recreation of older music from historical documentation, straightforward replication of recorded music isn’t usually either possible or desirable, so there’s a need for more creative approaches to be employed. </p>
<p>The Story of Swing Prom featured two bands, alluding to the (usually) friendly rivalry and camaraderie between musicians of the swing era, conveying something of the spirit of those times as well as the sound of the music. In the Ibiza Prom, the Heritage Orchestra intriguingly wove performances of successive tracks together with cleverly composed passages akin to the live mixing of a club DJ.</p>
<h2>Dumbing down the dance</h2>
<p>So I don’t think there’s any sense in which these concerts have dumbed down the Proms. But it is worth asking whether the Proms took something away from these popular genres. Although both concerts featured superlative performances and excellent arrangements, one might question what is lost when music usually intended for dancing in particular times and places is brought into a concert situation.</p>
<p>Think of the effects of the sound system on your entire body, or the spontaneity of a DJ working the crowd through track selection and mixing. Or jazz musicians responding to the ever more acrobatic manoeuvres of jitterbugs, or each others musicianship, in their improvisations. However, off-air recordings of Goodman’s live radio broadcasts also show how he had to adapt his band’s performances and repertoire to fit the format – bringing the music to new audiences as a result. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94498/original/image-20150911-1547-opzy86.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/94498/original/image-20150911-1547-opzy86.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94498/original/image-20150911-1547-opzy86.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94498/original/image-20150911-1547-opzy86.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=462&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94498/original/image-20150911-1547-opzy86.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94498/original/image-20150911-1547-opzy86.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/94498/original/image-20150911-1547-opzy86.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=581&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crowd at a Benny Goodman Band concert in Oakland, April 26 1940.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ultimately any compromises are outweighed by the opportunity to encounter music in a new context. Like viewing a familiar painting in a new position on the wall, in a new light, and with different juxtapositions, a different style of performance can open up a genre. Live performance connects musicians and audiences alike with the physicality of music production and reception – from a musician’s bow stroke, exhalation of air or strike of stick to the vibration of the listener’s eardrum. Bringing this awareness to our encounters with recorded music can only enhance our listening experiences.</p>
<p>Recent criticisms of the Proms have questioned whether Sir Henry Wood’s original remit has been expanded “<a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/letters/article4503369.ece">beyond all recognition</a>”. The inclusion of pop is not really surprising, given the new overarching “BBC Music” brand, but also begins to align the Proms with the broad mix of musical styles evident at contemporary music festivals. More than a century on from the Proms’ foundation, this can surely be the only way the festival can continue to be a celebration of live music that provides unique opportunities for us to be surprised and educated. This even extends to the traditional Last Night, which this year includes everything from a world premiere to a video montage of budding singers, all under the baton of a female conductor for only the second time ever. It’s time for us all to open our minds – and our ears.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/46414/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Tackley receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.</span></em></p>
This year’s Ibiza Prom was a convenient target for those unhappy with the expanded remit of the Proms – but an unfounded one.
Catherine Tackley, Senior Lecturer in Music, The Open University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41624
2015-05-12T05:19:40Z
2015-05-12T05:19:40Z
How we discovered the three revolutions of American pop
<p>Our recent <a href="http://rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/2/5/150081">scientific analysis</a> of the “fossil record” of the Billboard charts prompted widespread attention, particularly the findings about the three musical “revolutions” that shaped the musical landscape of the second half of the 20th century.</p>
<p>The journey that got me here started in 1992, when I was a sheltered 12-year-old boy, growing up in a small town in Germany. But I had just discovered a window to the world: every Sunday, Radio Luxembourg transmitted the original US Top 40, in English, and I was addicted. So much so that when we absolutely had to go and visit grandma, I set the timer to record the show on compact cassette. Listening back one night I heard the marvellous sound of a man singing “Mama, ooh”, in a song so unusual, so exuberantly creative I had to re-listen over and over – it became the musical love of my life.</p>
<p>It was, of course, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJ9rUzIMcZQ&t=87">Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody</a>, which resurfaced in the charts after the song’s appearance in the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105793/">Wayne’s World</a>. I had stumbled across a gem from the 1970s in a sea of 1990s music. Little did I know then that I would grow up to analyse the difference between 70s and 90s pop, and much more. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/70QfHtKdh_0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Revolution #1.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2011, nearly 20 years and a couple of amateur bands later, I found myself in London, with an engineering PhD in music information retrieval in my pocket, and in my head a new passion: Darwinian evolution. An eccentric mixture, granted, but London wouldn’t be London if one couldn’t find another eccentric with complementary passions. I found <a href="http://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/a.leroi">Armand Leroi</a>, an evolutionary biologist with a love for music, and culture in general.</p>
<p>We’d already studied the evolution of musical loops produced by genetic algorithms, Bob MacCallum’s <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/109/30/12081.abstract">DarwinTunes</a>, but it was clear that eventually we would have to transition to real human music, and what is more indicative of human musical taste than the charts? Conveniently, while waiting for my next academic job, I was working at the music recommendation service <a href="http://www.last.fm/">Last.fm</a> with its large collection of audio recordings. Last.fm were happy for me do research on the music, and to carry away some of the data as well, so by the time I started my new job at Queen Mary’s we had a rich dataset of original recordings from the Billboard charts – more than 17,000.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/fVkN0VhOuZ0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Revolution #2.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>So rich was the dataset that it took us a long time to work out what to do with it. Long discussions ensued, evenings spent in intense arguments in front of our computers. In the end we decided to look at two properties: harmony and timbre, or tone colour. Our ambition was to show what would happen if we measured these on a great number of songs in ways that traditional, manual musicology couldn’t achieve.</p>
<p>And so we set out to data-mine 50 years of Billboard charts in ways that music enthusiasts and musicologists alike could relate to. What’s more, Armand was adamant to explore what evolutionary biologists would explore in the fossil records of organisms: diversity and bursts of fast evolution.</p>
<p>What did we find? Personally, I love to observe the evolution of chords. Tracing the decline of jazz and blues chords, however sad, was as fascinating as the surge in the use of more funky, disco-y chords in the 70s. Our timbral topics also turned out to show very clear trends in instrumentation: the double hump pattern of loud guitar sounds (around 1970 and the late 1980s), the beautiful wave of declining orchestral sounds, and the awesome rise of percussive sounds in the 1980s.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rc9LkE0vpvk?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Revolution #3.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What has captured public attention most are the revolutions, perhaps because the press exaggerated our findings to suggest that hip hop was better or <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/ap/article-3069994/Scientific-study-shows-3-major-pop-movements-1964.html">more influential</a> than the Beatles. What we did find is that the charts changed most rapidly around three distinct periods: 1964 when the charts turned to guitar rock; 1983, when technologies like synths and drum machines altered production, and hence timbre, forever; and 1991, when rap and hip hop finally made it into the charts big time. </p>
<p>The change in 1991 appeared most significant because – unlike all other genres – hip hop put so much emphasis on speech and beats that harmony was pushed into the background, or omitted completely. Also, we found that in terms of the features we measured, the US charts were most uniform in the mid-1980s, a result that resonates with my perception.</p>
<p>What this all shows is that we can relate human perception of music to patterns in recordings, which in turn allows us to understand the mystery of music, how it comes about, and how it changes. Many people I’ve talked to are fascinated with this new way of looking at music – some are <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/may/06/beatles-did-not-revolutionise-music-study-claims">horrified</a>. Yes, it will take time to get used to, but ultimately I believe that our increased understanding will add to the enjoyment of and fascination with music, just like the stars in the sky are beautified by our growing knowledge of the universe.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41624/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthias Mauch receives funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering. </span></em></p>
A lot happens when computer science and pop music collide.
Matthias Mauch, Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow, Queen Mary University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/37842
2015-03-16T05:31:03Z
2015-03-16T05:31:03Z
Unsound Adelaide 2015 played it safe on experimental music
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74896/original/image-20150316-7039-cx7kyv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Experimental electronic music took centre stage during the Unsound component of the Adelaide Festival program.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Piotr Jakubowicz, Adelaide Festival of Arts</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><a href="http://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2015/music/unsound_adelaide_saturday">Unsound Adelaide </a> was arguably the loudest event at this year’s Adelaide Festival of the Arts. An offshoot of the annual Polish <a href="http://www.unsound.pl/">Unsound Festival</a>, this three-night event last weekend showcased 12 acts ranging from experimental noise and ambient sounds through to electronic club music. </p>
<p>The event is now in its third year at the Adelaide Festival, and was co-curated by Adelaide Festival Artistic Director David Sefton and the Australian-born director of the Unsound Festival Mat Schulz.</p>
<p>The first night on Thurs March 12 began with Australian sound artist <a href="http://lawrenceenglish.com/">Lawrence English</a>, whose sometimes ethereal, sometimes blustery sounds revealed the influence of his visit to Antarctica in 2010. His suggestion to the audience to sit or lie on the floor in the centre of the hall enhanced the immersive nature of his set, and emphasised the subtle changes in texture and frequencies. </p>
<p>British musician <a href="http://www.gazelletwin.com/">Gazelle Twin</a> followed, and her impressive vocal range, both in pitch and colour, was used to full effect.</p>
<p>Japanese experimental rock band <a href="http://www.forcedexposure.com/artists/fushitsusha.html">Fushitsusha</a> was the most intriguing act of the first night. Fushitsusha’s asymmetrical, fragmented rhythms, screaming vocals, and dissonant, distorted harmonies were disorienting, as good experimental music often is. </p>
<p>While lead singer and guitarist Keiji Haino’s use of a slinky dragged across his guitar was not as aurally satisfying as one might have hoped, it was certainly visually engrossing. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/U4VY0YZKT3A?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Fushitsusha live.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The highlight of the event was Double Vision on Friday night, which was jointly commissioned by Unsound and the Adelaide Festival. This work was a collaboration between Australian audio-visual artist <a href="http://robinfox.com.au/">Robin Fox</a> and <a href="http://www.atom-tm.com/">AtomTM</a>, who, according to his website, is considered to be father of electrolatino, electrogospel and aciton music. </p>
<p>AtomTM’s geometric, mostly grey-scale visuals complemented Fox’s stunning red, green and blue laser display, and Fox’s interest in synaesthesia was evident in the correlations between the lasers, and the texture and frequencies of sounds used. </p>
<p>The first two nights of Unsound Adelaide felt skewed towards dub and club rather than experimental and exploratory – even though the first night was pitched as the most experimental of the three.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74899/original/image-20150316-7064-1vfvyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74899/original/image-20150316-7064-1vfvyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74899/original/image-20150316-7064-1vfvyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74899/original/image-20150316-7064-1vfvyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74899/original/image-20150316-7064-1vfvyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74899/original/image-20150316-7064-1vfvyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74899/original/image-20150316-7064-1vfvyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74899/original/image-20150316-7064-1vfvyug.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Mika Vainio.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Josephine Michel, Adelaide Festival of Arts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Saturday night, which was originally intended to be focused on electronic club music, ended up being the most eclectic, due to the late inclusion of HTRK and King Midas Sound System.</p>
<p>Local outfit <a href="http://www.yourcomicbookfantasy.com/">HTRK</a> (pronounced Hate Rock) seemed out of place in the program, with their languorous post-punk sound marking a significant shift away from the upbeat energy of Dopplereffekt and the ambient, industrial noise of Mika Vainio. Their set was also unfortunately marred by technical issues. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/728FuDswrcI?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Dopplereffekt.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="http://www.discogs.com/artist/1220-Dopplereffekt">Dopplereffekt</a> brought an element of fun to the night, with their melding of the aesthetics of 80s synth pop, 70s disco rhythms, and minimalism. Kevin Martin’s solo set as King Midas Sound System, a last minute addition to the line-up, turned out to be a great choice to end the event. </p>
<p>His non-stop one-hour long set morphed seamlessly from ambient sounds to industrial noise to intense dubstep.</p>
<p>One of the most common criticisms of electronic music performance since its inception is the lack of connection between performer and audience, with computer musicians neglecting the performative aspects of their presentation. I have been to a number of performances by laptop musicians that left me wondering whether the performer even noticed that the audience was there. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74901/original/image-20150316-7064-itqqpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/74901/original/image-20150316-7064-itqqpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74901/original/image-20150316-7064-itqqpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74901/original/image-20150316-7064-itqqpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74901/original/image-20150316-7064-itqqpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74901/original/image-20150316-7064-itqqpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/74901/original/image-20150316-7064-itqqpv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gazelle Twin.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tash Tung, Adelaide Festival of Arts</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That was not the case with most of the laptop performers in this year’s Unsound Adelaide, with Lawrence English’s stage presence being particularly convincing. The visual aspects of the performances was one of the most compelling aspects, with some excellent lighting design, and interesting visuals by Dopplereffekt and Forest Swords, as well as the spectacular presentation of Double Vision mentioned above. </p>
<p>It is relevant and important that major arts festivals include the genres of music represented by Unsound – and it would be absurd for a festival of the scale of Adelaide Festival of the Arts not to engage with the electronic and the experimental in 2015.</p>
<p>But one of the difficulties in curating a broad, genre-crossing event like Unsound Adelaide is getting the balance right in terms of artistic risk-taking, and this year’s program was quite safe, and not nearly as exploratory as I would have liked. </p>
<p>The festival period is the one time of the year in Adelaide when audiences are particularly receptive to challenging art, and this felt like a missed opportunity to take artistic risks. </p>
<p><br>
<em>Unsound Adelaide took place on March 12-14. Details <a href="http://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/2015/music/unsound_adelaide_saturday">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37842/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Melanie Walters does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Unsound Adelaide brought genre-crossing electronic music to the Adelaide Festival for the third year in a row– but this year’s program could’ve been much more adventurous.
Melanie Walters, PhD candidate in music, University of Adelaide
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/33841
2014-11-07T00:06:00Z
2014-11-07T00:06:00Z
The Berlin Wall’s fall saw the rise of techno tourism
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63840/original/3f6xbp4c-1415249107.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 'EasyJet set' get on inexpensive flights each weekend for some techno tourism.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Michael Hanschke</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Some 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – on November 9 1989 – Berlin is a utopia for many people. </p>
<p>In otherwise precarious and uncertain lives, Berlin holds out the hope of pursuing creative work in an affordable, liberal and connected urban centre with significant public spaces and endless cultural events, plus a long history of political activism and philosophical thought.</p>
<p>In Berlin, many things seem possible that conditions elsewhere make impossible.
That’s especially true for musicians. </p>
<p>Berlin is, of course, a world-renowned hub of electronic music, and that’s an increasingly large part of the capital city’s otherwise flagging economy: the city is “poor but sexy”, in its mayor’s notorious words. </p>
<p>A stint in Berlin is a rite of passage for many, as scores of graduates and artists can attest.</p>
<p>Although the history of novel musical forms in Berlin stretches back over a century, German re-unification around 1990 was an exceptionally productive moment. </p>
<h2>Love and hope</h2>
<p>Around the time of the fall of the Berlin Wall, electronic music took on a new role in the lives of many eastern and western Germans. The 1970s and 80s had seen a range of innovative electronic music productions, not least from Germany – and this rapidly developing form gathered increased pace just as the Berlin Wall fell. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, this music subculture became a feature of mainstream culture. By 1997, the annual <a href="http://www.berlinloveparade.com/">Berlin Love Parade</a> saw a million people dancing in the city’s Tiergarten.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63890/original/sz8r5ny5-1415312312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63890/original/sz8r5ny5-1415312312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63890/original/sz8r5ny5-1415312312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63890/original/sz8r5ny5-1415312312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63890/original/sz8r5ny5-1415312312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=405&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63890/original/sz8r5ny5-1415312312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63890/original/sz8r5ny5-1415312312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63890/original/sz8r5ny5-1415312312.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=509&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Berlin Love Parade, 1997.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hope for the future was ecstatically enacted in a city energised by an open future. My recent research has noticed how often positive affect (ecstasy) was prevalent in re-unification narratives – take all those famous scenes of Germans embracing as the Berlin Wall was opened – while also being repeated in histories of clubs across Berlin and Brandenburg.</p>
<p>Consider the blurb for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1686792/">SubBerlin - Underground United</a>, a 2008 documentary film about Tresor, a renowned techno club set-up in an abandoned department store bunker in 1990s Berlin: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fall of the Berlin Wall was something no-one had ever expected to be happening so quick and with such intensity, leaving Germany in a state of euphoria, upheaval and confusion … The years that followed were marked by new-found freedom, chaos, change, and a rush of collective ecstasy. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The author’s invocations of openness, joy, exploration and elation represent a common narrative of life in Berlin’s clubs across the time of the Wall’s fall, the <em><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Wende">Wende</a></em> (or turnaround period of 1990) and re-unification. In clubs and at the Wall, subjects reported elation so great the self momentarily dissolved in the crowd. </p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/95724516" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>This elated outpouring has had lasting effects: the city’s once annual Love Parade was a Summer draw-card for hundreds of thousands of Europeans for over a decade; eastern Germans are overrepresented in the ranks of acclaimed DJs and producers, their identities forged in the rush of collective ecstasy in clubs around 1990. </p>
<p>Many international connections were also forged after 1989, linking up eastern and western Germans with producers from Detroit, Chicago, London, Bristol, elsewhere in Europe and the Caribbean. Some of those connections are documented in <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3245206/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Paris/Berlin: 20 Years of Underground Techno</a> (2012).</p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/23252955" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, many informal cultural spaces founded after 1989 in the “gaps” left by the Cold War – the abandoned buildings, the bombed-out ruins and the underpopulated city centre – have been formalised in the past decade and are now marketed by the city as a tourist attraction. </p>
<p>Thousands of people – “<a href="http://www.suhrkamp.de/buecher/lost_and_sound-tobias_rapp_46044.html?d_view=english">the EasyJet set</a>” – get on inexpensive flights each weekend for some “techno tourism”.</p>
<p>The city government’s website <a href="http://www.visitberlin.de/en/keyword/techno-electronic-music-scene">announces</a> “Berlin is the clubbing capital of the world”. </p>
<p>Estimates suggest around 10,000 people are employed in the city’s clubbing sector. A proposed rise in 2012 to royalty collections that would have affected all clubs saw 6,000 people protest (and 300,000 sign <a href="https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/gegen-die-tarifreform-2013-gema-verliert-augenmass">an online petition</a>), claiming 100,000 jobs could be lost in Berlin when tourism was tallied into the equation.</p>
<h2>Battle for Berlin</h2>
<p>More broadly, the removal of the inner-German border after the fall of the Wall ushered in a new set of international relations – the end of the Cold War remade relationships within and across nation-states. </p>
<p>A period of intensified globalisation and financialisation followed as eastern Europe was opened up to the market economy, and efforts were increased to establish a European Union across national territories.</p>
<p>These political changes – the end of the socialist alternative and the rise of the trans-national liberal EU – had significant cultural and social effects. </p>
<p>Indeed, nowhere are the tensions and complexities of this new problematic more apparent than in Berlin, the site of brutal and joyous historical events throughout the 20th century.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63845/original/8szmpkpt-1415250319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63845/original/8szmpkpt-1415250319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/63845/original/8szmpkpt-1415250319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63845/original/8szmpkpt-1415250319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63845/original/8szmpkpt-1415250319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=417&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63845/original/8szmpkpt-1415250319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63845/original/8szmpkpt-1415250319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/63845/original/8szmpkpt-1415250319.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=524&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This photo, dated 09 November 1989, shows Berlin residents at a border crossing after the fall of the Berlin Wall.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/STR</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The symbolic “battle for Berlin” continues between long-standing residents (including post-war “guest workers” from Turkey) and new arrivals. </p>
<p>The battle has various fronts, including an influx of international capital into the housing market, which has raised rents, and in anti-gentrification activism, such as torching up-market cars, graffiti on shop windows and so on. </p>
<p>Unemployment is high and an increasingly pernicious welfare system, brought in by the social democrats a decade ago, makes life difficult in a city whose global desirability is increasing the local cost of living.</p>
<p>Here, capitalism’s global flows become material as residents face thoroughgoing change. </p>
<p>This goes to the heart of how to sustain the culture of the city without setting it in aspic. How to retain the openness and potential for novelty that created the celebrated spaces. For the first time in decades, Berlin’s population is rising rather than falling, thereby bucking the national trend of a shrinking population. </p>
<p>Even as a city with horrific historical episodes, Berlin remains a place for new beginnings and inventions. </p>
<p>Many new dreams were forged in November 1989. Disappointingly, few of them have come to pass in any lasting way as Berlin too is slowly remade in the image of global capitals. </p>
<p>The clubs offered – and still sometimes do – a respite from the cultural, political and economic battles outside. </p>
<p>But as property developers circle the city, even the places that recall the ecstatic happiness of November 9 will soon face a fight to stay open.</p>
<p><br>
<em><a href="http://www.suhrkamp.de/buecher/the_sound_of_family-felix_denk_46320.html?d_view=english">Der Klang der Familie</a> (The Sound of Family) (2012), chronicling the rise of the Berlin techno scene and its connection to the Fall of the Wall, will be launched in English translation on Saturday November 8 at <a href="http://www.berghain.de/">Berghain</a>, Berlin.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/33841/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ben Gook does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Some 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall – on November 9 1989 – Berlin is a utopia for many people. In otherwise precarious and uncertain lives, Berlin holds out the hope of pursuing creative work…
Ben Gook, Sessional lecturer and tutor, The University of Melbourne
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/26460
2014-05-19T20:23:48Z
2014-05-19T20:23:48Z
Sublime design: the Moog synthesiser
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48587/original/jtyv58bp-1400133508.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Moog, 2014 Model Sub 37 – producer of squelchy bass lines and distorted expressive solos.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The classic sound many of us imagine when the word synthesiser is mentioned is the sound of the Moog – the warm, solid propulsive groove of its bass sound and the distinctive sweep of its patented <a href="http://www.moogmusic.com/products/moogerfoogers/mf-101-lowpass-filter">lowpass filter</a> closing down or opening up. </p>
<p>If you’d like to be reminded, here is a famous synth-pop example from Gary Numan in 1979:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qXEu1odjKZM?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Gary Numan, Cars, 1979.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>American engineer <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Moog">Robert Moog</a> (pronounced to rhyme with vogue), who founded <a href="http://www.moogmusic.com/">Moog Music</a> in 1953, didn’t invent the synthesiser but he did standardise, popularise and importantly make portable what were once <a href="http://createdigitalmusic.com/2014/04/moog-really-recreating-keith-emersons-modular-biggest-analog-relaunch-ever/">wall-sized units</a> that cost as much as a house. </p>
<p>Moog began by producing large hand-built modular synthesisers for well-heeled clients that included Wendy Carlos of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi5-WRgA5GI">Switched On Bach</a> fame, and they can be heard also on The Beatles’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kjfeXv4Zmg">Abbey Road</a>, but the turning point came when he designed and released the <a href="http://www.moogmusic.com/products/minimoog-voyagers">Minimoog</a> in 1971. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48125/original/y63kwjsk-1399607103.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48125/original/y63kwjsk-1399607103.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48125/original/y63kwjsk-1399607103.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48125/original/y63kwjsk-1399607103.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=401&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48125/original/y63kwjsk-1399607103.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48125/original/y63kwjsk-1399607103.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48125/original/y63kwjsk-1399607103.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=504&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Minimoog Model D Synthesiser.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Canada Science and Technology Museum</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor">transistors</a> rather than vacuum tubes, the relatively petite Minimoog (pictured above) used a fixed synthesis architecture. In contrast to modular systems in which “patches” where produced by patching cables in a bewildering variety of combinations to produce sound. </p>
<p>The fixed synthesis method of the Minimoog closed down sonic possiblities but also made the process much less daunting for musicians. The way this was laid out on the Minimoog has become the default design workflow for synthesisers both in hardware and software.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48152/original/2cpr5hpn-1399618191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48152/original/2cpr5hpn-1399618191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48152/original/2cpr5hpn-1399618191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=153&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48152/original/2cpr5hpn-1399618191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=153&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48152/original/2cpr5hpn-1399618191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=153&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48152/original/2cpr5hpn-1399618191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=193&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48152/original/2cpr5hpn-1399618191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=193&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48152/original/2cpr5hpn-1399618191.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=193&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Minimoog control panel.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Reading left to right across the panel (see image above) there are two, sometimes three, sound source voltage controlled oscillators. These are modulated (pitch and loudness are changed) by low-frequency oscillators that usually produce no sound but exist to effect the sound sources. </p>
<p>The effected sound is then fed to a filter that can sweep through a range of frequencies that give Moog synths a recognisable sound. Lastly, the signal goes through some shaping envelopes that control the attack, decay, sustain and release (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthesizer#ADSR_envelope">ADSR</a>) of a note and how it interacts with the filter (see graphic below). All of this is classic “subtractive” synthesis – meaning sounds are sculpted by removing frequencies from the original raw sound of the oscillators.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48466/original/qjy256jw-1400047904.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/48466/original/qjy256jw-1400047904.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48466/original/qjy256jw-1400047904.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48466/original/qjy256jw-1400047904.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48466/original/qjy256jw-1400047904.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48466/original/qjy256jw-1400047904.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/48466/original/qjy256jw-1400047904.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons=</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At first, the appeal of the sound was all about novelty and many Moog-heavy albums were released, such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYTu__hhMws">Music to Moog By</a> (1969) by German American composer Gershon Kingsley, which took three years to score a worldwide number one when the track Popcorn was covered by the band Hot Butter in 1972:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/KX_lnmb1Moo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Like many synthesisers of the period, the Minimoog could only produce one note at a time and this led to styles of playing and composition that worked within this monophonic restriction. </p>
<p>Let’s consider six key tracks that represent the evolution of this new kind of sound.</p>
<h2>1) Chameleon, Herbie Hancock, 1973</h2>
<p>There was an adoption of the instrument by funk and jazz musicians as a producer of squelchy bass lines and expressive often distorted lead solos. American keyboardist and composer Bernie Worrell of Parliament-Funkadelic was a key proponent but it was also popularised by jazz players such as pianist Herbie Hancock. Listen to the bassline that opens the first track of his 1973 album, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPdPK_rIseY">Head Hunters</a>:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/FPdPK_rIseY?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2>2) Autobahn, Kraftwerk, 1974</h2>
<p>The Minimoog was used in developing the technique of simple, almost naïve, melodic lines that became a feature of synth-pop in the late 70s and early 80s, based heavily on the example of the German electronic music band Kraftwerk. You can hear this approach, with the addition of the Moog <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrcmEaetliw">step sequencer</a> firing notes in a relentlessly repeating order to drive the bass, in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gChOifUJZMc">Autobahn</a> from 1974:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/gChOifUJZMc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2>3) Ricochet, Tangerine Dream, 1975</h2>
<p>The step sequencer, with its robotic repetition of interlocking one-note-at-a-time layers, made possible a trance-like electronic style that still echoes through contemporary electronic dance music. In the first shot of German electronic music group Tangerine Dream <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w8pbGz7E8c">performing live in 1975</a>, the step sequencer on the Moog modular centre-stage cycles its lights through a note sequence that comes in on the bass at 1:30:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4w8pbGz7E8c?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2>4) Jive Talkin’, Bee Gees, 1975</h2>
<p>Meanwhile the funk technique moved into what became disco. The Moog bass at the centre of the 1975 Bee Gees track, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBw25CrUS-o">Jive Talkin’</a>, is mimed on a bass guitar:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/XBw25CrUS-o?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2>5) I Feel Love, Donna Summer, 1977</h2>
<p>Then, famously in 1977 American singer-songwriter Donna Summer and Italian producer Georgio Moroder brought the funk and step sequencer techniques together in a track that wrote the sequenced Moog bass sound into the DNA of dance pop, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7r83-y3j2A">I Feel Love</a>:</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/iX8n6o-MH4Y?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<h2>6) Blue Monday, New Order, 1983</h2>
<p>I Feel Love was enormously influential in demonstrating to a generation of post-punk musicians just how the synth could be used in a form that had previously been shaped by the guitar. Enter English rock band New Order with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVkq8IEO4tc">Blue Monday</a> in 1983: </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/SVkq8IEO4tc?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p><br></p>
<p>In 2002, after going out of business as a company and out of fashion as a sound, superseded by samplers and digital synths, Moog came back from the dead to begin a new series of machines that began with a <a href="http://www.moogmusic.com/products/minimoog-voyagers">recreation of the Minimoog</a>. </p>
<p>As part of a widespread return to hardware analog synths, that sees more hardware synths <a href="http://www.junodownload.com/plus/best-analogue-synths/">released</a> each year by manufacturers than during the 70s, the Moog is again central to the idea of the synthesiser. Even the modular synth has been reborn as <a href="http://electronicmusic.wikia.com/wiki/Eurorack">Eurorack</a>, albeit in a smaller form, though still with core concepts based around many of the design decisions that stem from the Moog modular. </p>
<p>Many electronic musicians are <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNNFLHV6j1I">now re-embracing</a> the visceral appeal of electronic instrument designs that borrow from the classic elements of analog synth voice design, as documented in this chat with Trent Reznor and Alessandro Cortini from Nine Inch Nails featured in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNNFLHV6j1I">I Dream of Wires</a> in 2013. </p>
<p>Occasionally, in the history of modern pop music, an instrument is so influential that it not only goes on to define genres but also sets the template for instruments that follow in its wake. </p>
<p>Such is the story of the Moog synth in all its variations across the last 45 years.</p>
<p><br>
<em><a href="https://theconversation.com/topics/sublime-design">Read more articles in the Sublime Design series</a>.</em>
<br></p>
<p><strong><em>Are you an academic or researcher? Have you got a design classic – industrial, graphic, urban, architectural, interior or landscape – you would like to write about? Contact the <a href="mailto:paul.dalgarno@theconversation.edu.au">Arts + Culture editor</a>.</em></strong></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/26460/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Caines does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
The classic sound many of us imagine when the word synthesiser is mentioned is the sound of the Moog – the warm, solid propulsive groove of its bass sound and the distinctive sweep of its patented lowpass…
Chris Caines, Senior Lecturer, Media Arts & Production / Sound & Music Design Program, University of Technology Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/24415
2014-03-17T03:36:17Z
2014-03-17T03:36:17Z
Studio-quality digital music? It’s only as good as your set-up
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44059/original/mvc9dsc7-1395025050.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Neil Young has big plans to improve the sound of digital audio – but how realistic are they?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/34547181@N00/4301351732/sizes/o/">Phillipe Put</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There’s <a href="http://www.rukkusroom.com/Fun.html">a diagram</a> that does the rounds online that neatly sums up the difference between the quality of equipment used in the studio to produce music, and the quality of the listening equipment used by the consumer. </p>
<p>It shows a vintage <a href="https://www.neumann.com/">Neumann</a> microphone (which you might be able to buy for around A$12,000), plugged into a vintage <a href="http://www.ams-neve.com/">Neve</a> mixing console, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The signal is then recorded onto a well-maintained vintage tape machine, before being transferred into the digital domain using top of the line analogue to digital (AD) converters – and finally mixed in an acoustically-treated environment through accurate, full-range speakers. </p>
<p>After all this time, money, care and attention has been spent on the production, the final playback system is an MP3 file being played through an iPod using A$10 ear-bud headphones.</p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44060/original/npz4rdn3-1395025210.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44060/original/npz4rdn3-1395025210.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44060/original/npz4rdn3-1395025210.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44060/original/npz4rdn3-1395025210.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44060/original/npz4rdn3-1395025210.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44060/original/npz4rdn3-1395025210.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44060/original/npz4rdn3-1395025210.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44060/original/npz4rdn3-1395025210.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">CamillaLindskoug</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As someone who records, produces and mixes music for a living, the quality of the playback systems used to listen to my work is a constant source of frustration. </p>
<p>I know I’m not alone here, and in a contracting industry with ever-shrinking budgets, it’s getting harder to justify the investment in good quality studio equipment when the end result is a low-resolution MP3 file that’s going to be played through laptop speakers. </p>
<p>Any attempt to improve the quality of average domestic playback systems seems like a good idea to me, so when Neil Young announced a new competitor to the ubiquitous iPod/iPhone, the <a href="http://www.ponomusic.com/">PonoMusic player</a>, complete with high-resolution file playback and better quality components, I was curious. </p>
<p>Considering Young’s attendant <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003614822/ponomusic-where-your-soul-rediscovers-music">Kickstarter campaign</a> met its goal after just one day and <a href="http://themusic.com.au/news/all/2014/03/13/neil-young-raised-$2-million-a-day-after-this-advertorial/">the standing ovation</a> he scored when he presented his concept at the music and tech festival SXSW last week, there are clearly plenty of interested music lovers keen on an improved format as well.</p>
<p>In audio circles and online production forums, the debate between the pros and cons of analogue vs digital sound never goes away. Neil Young himself has been an outspoken critic of the sound of digital audio over the years and his criticisms of digital audio were also aired in the recent doco <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2306745/">Sound City</a>.</p>
<h2>Decoding file types</h2>
<p>With the announcement of PonoMusic, the debate has widened and now consumers are expected to make informed decisions about the differences between all kinds of files: MP3s, AACs, CD quality 44.1kHz /16 bit and “Ultra high-resolution 192kHz/24bit” FLAC audio. They’re also expected to be acquainted with the benefits of these higher-resolution files.</p>
<p>What do these numbers and letters actually mean? </p>
<p>Mp3s and AACs are data compressed: that means a “lossy” <a href="http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ict/services/e-learning/staff/additionalsupport/managingfilesandmedia/compressioncodecs">compression codec</a> has been used to reduce the file size – meaning easier downloads and more songs on your iPod. Whenever you purchase music on iTunes (or purchase a license to listen to that music, you don’t actually own the recordings – this belongs in another discussion about why we need alternate models to iTunes), you’re downloading AAC files, not full CD quality.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44055/original/j5qwmn97-1395024272.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44055/original/j5qwmn97-1395024272.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44055/original/j5qwmn97-1395024272.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44055/original/j5qwmn97-1395024272.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44055/original/j5qwmn97-1395024272.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44055/original/j5qwmn97-1395024272.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44055/original/j5qwmn97-1395024272.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1130&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">attila acs</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The trade-off? A reduction in the quality of the sound. How much quality has actually been lost is a matter of great conjecture, though there is general consensus that low bit-rate MP3s (such as 128kbps) are audibly inferior to CD-quality files. </p>
<p>CD audio and the high-definition formats are either uncompressed or use a “lossless” compression code, such as FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec). The numbers in 44.1kHz/16bit and 192kHz/24bit relate to the sampling rate (high frequency resolution) and dynamic range (the degree of amplitude variation possible between the loudest and softest passages). </p>
<p>CD quality audio is 44.1kHz/16bit. Sampling rates and bit depths higher than CD-quality, known as high-definition audio, seem to most commonly be either 96kHz/24bit or 192kHz/24bit.</p>
<p>It’s well beyond the scope of this article to delve into how digital audio really works, so instead I would recommend this <a href="http://people.xiph.org/%7Exiphmont/demo/neil-young.html">paper</a> from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Montgomery">audio engineer and programmer Christopher Montgomery</a>, or his <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM">video</a> on digital audio. </p>
<p>After watching an engineer explaining the digitisation of sound, Neil Young’s underwater analogy, in which he claims that listening to CD quality audio is like listening to sound about 200 feet under water (7 minutes into the PonoMusic <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003614822/ponomusic-where-your-soul-rediscovers-music">introduction video</a>) seems murky at best. </p>
<p>To sum it up, CD-quality audio is fine and the higher resolution files are pretty much pointless.</p>
<h2>The weakest link</h2>
<p>Turning to higher resolution digital audio is a bit like TV manufacturers advertising new screens that can reproduce colours well above the spectrum that humans can actually see. Unless every part of your listening environment and audio path is completely optimised, there is really no benefit to any higher-definition audio than CD quality – and even then the jury is still out on how defined those benefits really are.</p>
<p>An audio signal chain is only as strong as its weakest link. In a portable music player, once you reach a certain level of fidelity, the weakest link is not the file resolution but the digital to analogue, or DA, converters (the electronic components responsible for turning the digital file back into an analogue audio signal), amplifiers and the speakers or headphones that are being used to listen to the music. </p>
<p>I spend around 40 hours a week with my head stuck between an expensive pair of speakers listening to music being played through expensive DA converters. After I finish mixes, clients frequently check them through the speakers on their smart phones or laptops. </p>
<p>As a mixer I know how important it is for my work to translate across many different systems – but couldn’t we set the bar just a little higher? </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44057/original/bm6pt52t-1395024719.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44057/original/bm6pt52t-1395024719.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/44057/original/bm6pt52t-1395024719.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44057/original/bm6pt52t-1395024719.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44057/original/bm6pt52t-1395024719.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=440&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44057/original/bm6pt52t-1395024719.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44057/original/bm6pt52t-1395024719.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/44057/original/bm6pt52t-1395024719.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=553&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Neil Young’s Pono system.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stratageme.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Well, PonoMusic is setting the bar a little bit higher, and I think that’s a good thing. Having Neil Young as the voice of PonoMusic brings a certain degree of legitimacy to the project, and from what I know of Young, he’ll be doing this because he really wants to see a big improvement in how we listen to music, not simply a big paycheck. </p>
<p>But we also need to ask how improvements in the conversion and amplification stage will raise the quality of the listening experience – not just the ultra high-res files being used. <a href="http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195">Research</a> consistently shows that any perceived benefits to higher bit depth/ sample rate recordings are anecdotal and almost impossible to quantify.</p>
<p>Hopefully when the PonoMusic player is released, someone will set up a properly run blind test to tell if people can actually hear the difference between the “ultra high-res” files compared to the plain old “high-res” files. I’d be happy to give it a shot. </p>
<p>I’ll be surprised if anyone can tell the difference between a CD quality file and the PonoMusic ultra high-res file under blind testing – but I won’t be surprised if the device sounds better than its competitors due to the improved components used in the manufacturing and design.</p>
<p><br>
<em>Are you an academic or researcher working in sound production? Contact the <a href="mailto:paul.dalgarno@theconversaton.edu.au">Arts + Culture editor</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/24415/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Yanto Browning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
There’s a diagram that does the rounds online that neatly sums up the difference between the quality of equipment used in the studio to produce music, and the quality of the listening equipment used by…
Yanto Browning, Associate lecturer in Music and Sound, Queensland University of Technology
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/12660
2013-03-07T02:55:16Z
2013-03-07T02:55:16Z
How the internet is changing music, featuring Amanda Palmer on vocals
<p>Sometimes I think I can hear the internet as it relentlessly changes everything. This week’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/going-tabloid-one-way-out-of-the-red-top-for-fairfax-12642">tabloidisation of Fairfax</a> is merely a symptom of the way the net has already changed the news media. So, too, is the <a href="http://blogs.crikey.com.au/croakey/2013/02/24/from-the-perfect-job-to-an-endangered-species-the-demise-of-science-journalism-and-why-it-matters/?wpmp_tp=1">pending extinction of science journalism</a>. And the withering of <a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/11/10/book_publishing_crisis_capitalism_kills_culture/">book publishing</a>.</p>
<p>But the sound of the internet changing everything grows most audible in and around the music industry. Mostly howls of impotent rage from large record companies and some of the more histrionic artists. </p>
<p>Music profits have never been as big as they were in the late 20th Century. I recently binge-read Howling at the Moon, the memoirs of <a href="http://carlindustries.com/interview-outtakes-nice-jewish-boy-walter-yetnikoff-converts-to-the-church-of-england-sort-of/">Walter Yetnikoff</a>, the notorious former CBS boss who presided over CBS from the mid-seventies until 1990. His accounts of the cocaine-sodden, sex-soaked excesses among record industry executives overshadow those permeating the ghost-written biographies of most rock stars. And I don’t think that is entirely due to a difference in candour.</p>
<p>Thirty years ago, people who wanted to listen to Michael Jackson’s <em>Beat It</em> had to buy the <em>Thriller</em> album. And that put a lot of money into CBS’s account and Yetnikoff’s entertainment fund. Last year’s equally vacant cross-national nerve toucher, <em>Gangnam Style</em> has enjoyed over 1.3 billion YouTube views. I embed the video below, not as endorsement, but because I am allowed to do so for free. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/9bZkp7q19f0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Psy’s rather esoteric <em>Gangnam Style</em> an internet-driven phenomenon.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>And now, to offset that sin, and because I would rather promote something in which you have probably not yet marinated, I embed an equally cross-lingual video from the “fresher than Zef” Jack Parow.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZEwRxInP0Is?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Jack Parow featuring Francois van Coke - Hard Partytjie Hou.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h1>We resume normal programming</h1>
<p>Sure, radio play and purchased downloads, plus a suicidal schedule of talk-show appearances and one-song gigs made Psy and his record company a lot of money. But not in the same order of financial magnitude as the profits that propelled Jackson’s shopaholic mania and Yetnikoff’s cocaine binges.</p>
<p>Free access to music videos on YouTube is, of course, a symptom of the fact that the net enables the copying and dissemination of music on a scale never before seen. Or as the record companies call it: “music piracy”. While some money still flows to artists from legal music purchases and the sale of rights to use music, artists don’t make the same living from royalty cheques. </p>
<p>And so many embrace the unprecedented reach of the internet, using it to build their fan base by making their videos available on YouTube for free.</p>
<p>The question that most taxes the music industry is now: “how do we make listeners pay?”. One way is for bands to tour more, and fans to pay to experience music live. And that completely inverts the way technology changed music in the 20th Century.</p>
<h1>Music changes lives</h1>
<p>As technology changes, irreversibly altering the ways in which people experience and enjoy music, it also alters the economics of how music is made, distributed and sold. And that changes the incentives for artists, the livings musicians can lead, and even their prospects for living a long an healthy life. </p>
<p>Readers of <a href="http://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/isbn/9781742231600.htm">Sex, Genes & Rock ‘n’ Roll</a> will have encountered my thinking on how recording, radio and television changed music in the first six decades of last century and how that led to the musical eruption of rock ‘n’ roll. </p>
<p>It also made music a dangerous place to be, especially for musicians. That, I argue, is because technology made it possible for the emergence of megastars. Until the end of the 19th Century, people played music themselves or listened to music played by musicians. Some profits could be made by composers and retailers of sheet music, but large numbers of professional musicians could make a respectable living playing six nights a week.</p>
<p>The gramophone, radio, television, Hi-Fi, boom-box and CD player each helped the same few artists to be heard in every corner of the globe. Artists in the right place at the right time - such as Elvis, The Beatles and the ‘Stones - grew phenomenally wealthy, whereas the journeyman musician found it much harder to eke out a living.</p>
<p>Steep incentives, in which a few profit mightily and the majority struggle, create fierce competition. Musicians that don’t work themselves to death imperil themselves with the reckless embrace of drugs and dangerous living. And, <a href="https://theconversation.com/get-laid-or-die-trying-how-rock-stars-get-their-kicks-in-1784">as I have written before</a>, that means rock stars suffered from appalling mortality.</p>
<p>So, has the internet dampened or exacerbated the steep incentives in music? The way new artists seem to embrace the idea of giving their music away and even encourage file sharing in order to attract a following, you might think the net has eroded inequality in music.</p>
<p>But <a href="https://twitter.com/RobWaterhouse">a reader</a> recently sent me <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167624512000030">a paper</a> with the blunt title Music piracy: A case of “The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Poorer”. Turns out it’s a mathematical model, but to my eye the argument looks plausible. </p>
<p>Stars <em>do</em> lose more sales through piracy than do smaller artists. But the more a song or album sells, the easier it is to copy and disseminate. So copying boosts the recognition of the big-selling artists. </p>
<p>When musicians have a second income stream, such as touring or merchandise, the increased recognition from music piracy and sharing can build and maintain such a strong following that the second income stream more than offsets the losses in royalties. But struggling and starting artists who cannot command large concert crowds suffer more from the loss of royalties than they gain from the building of audience support. </p>
<p>If this model holds, then the incentives acting on musicians should be getting steeper. And that means most people will find it even harder to make a living playing music. And I predict those who try will strive more frantically and both those who succeed and those who fail will suffer greater risks and worse health. </p>
<p>But I am bouyed this week by a touchingly humane <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMj_P_6H69g">TED talk</a> by the musician <a href="http://www.amandapalmer.net/">Amanda Palmer</a>. Her talk orbits the shared dignity of giving and of asking. It’s a wonderful video that makes some simple but often obscured points about human contact, intimacy and dignity. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xMj_P_6H69g?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Amanda Palmer talks about the dignity of asking and of giving.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Palmer exposes the ways in which she uses the internet to connect and build intimacy with her audience. And about the vulnerability that involves.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>My music career has been spent trying to encounter people on the internet the way I could on the box, so blogging and tweeting not just about my tour dates and my new video but about our work and our art and our fears and our hangovers, our mistakes, and we see each other. And I think when we really see each other, we want to help each other.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>And she explains her position on her recent crowd-funding pitch which raised far more than her target, but also drew heavy criticism:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I think people have been obsessed with the wrong question, which is, “How do we <em>make</em> people pay for music?” What if we started asking, “How do we <em>let</em> people pay for music?”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This talk bouyed me because it evoked a return to the intimacy in which more artists made music for modest, local audiences. This is the way in which our ancestors made music. And with help from the internet Palmer has given it a 21st Century twist.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>For most of human history, musicians, artists, they’ve been part of the community, connectors and openers, not untouchable stars. Celebrity is about a lot of people loving you from a distance, but the internet and the content that we’re freely able to share on it are taking us back.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>While I would never argue in favour of what my colleage Marlene Zuk pithily calls a <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Paleofantasy-Evolution-Really-Tells-ebook/dp/B007Q6XM1A">palaeofantasy</a>, let alone one set to music, I think the changes Amanda Palmer evokes could rejuvenate music and benefit musicians.</p>
<p>Her talk also bouyed me because for a brief moment this non-business model that Palmer has pioneered seems utopically free of the parasitism for which record label executives and marketing arms are so often derided. </p>
<p>I’m not starry-eyed enough to think Palmer’s approach won’t be monetised and corporatised by the MBA-wielding crowd. But for now it is refreshing enough to see the failing current model subverted.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/12660/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
Sometimes I think I can hear the internet as it relentlessly changes everything. This week’s tabloidisation of Fairfax is merely a symptom of the way the net has already changed the news media. So, too…
Rob Brooks, Scientia Professor of Evolutionary Ecology; Academic Lead of UNSW's Grand Challenges Program; Director, Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, UNSW Sydney
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.