> John A:
>> Yeah, I spent ten, fifteen years rabble-rousing with music--I can't
>> count how much cash money it cost me, let alone the opportunities I
>> passed up--and getting systematically smashed down by right-wing
>
> I spent much of my life in the company of unpublished writers and poets
> who blame their failure on "the system." It never occurred to them
> that
> their "art" sucked. The only advise I can offer in such circumstances
> is "get another job."
Perhaps I was unclear:
I specifically turned down opportunities to make money and move on up in order to maintain a measure of integrity. I have made no claims that I failed because of the system, nor am I under any illusions that any band I was ever in was likely to change the world. (I believed it at the time--when I quit believing, playing became much less important.)
> Ps. I see that in the new brave world of McMusic, a kid who can play
> three notes and push a few computer buttons is not a taylorised-down
> musical assembly line worker, while a classically trained musician with
> years of rigorous training and experience is.
First, your understanding of the processes of electronically composed and performed music is grossly deficient. You just aren't realistic when you say "play three notes and push a few computer buttons." Second, given how orchestras crank out the rather narrow canon of classical music, I think you've got a pretty good argument there. (I am so sick of Mozart I nearly turned down a free ticket to _Cosi Fan Tutti_, which I'm glad I didn't, because there's nothing like the spectacle of live opera, except popular music.) The current regime of KKKlassical music is death for the living composer and slavery for the performer.
I don't think anything will ever replace the desire of people to hear live music performed on acoustic and electric instruments, and I'm glad of that. Electronically performed music isn't going to kill that off, but it may put it in its place. I'm ambivalent about new tools that allow people to express themselves more fully without working through to technique. A lot of my learning came from struggles with the instrument, and so some people won't have that advantage. On the other hand, they'll presumably hit places where they'll have to struggle in some way--and if they don't, maybe we've overstated the difficulty of making music.
Really, what's wrong with people having more powerful tools with which to make their own music?
Or adapting tools not intended to make music into instruments? That's my understanding of how hip-hop evolved. Relatively poor people without the wherewithal to get instruments, practice spaces, and so on learned to make music with what they had at hand: Two turntables and a microphone...a very cheap microphone.