Believe in the Beat

I remember sitting in the car with my mom a few summers back when Jason Derulo’s “Whatcha Say” came on the radio. I put up with the offensive lyrics about a guy begging his girlfriends to come back after he cheated on her, because I enjoy the Imogen Heap song “Hide and Seek” that it covers. Derulo was singing, “Cause when the roof caved in and the truth came out I just didn't know what to do,” when my mom turned to me and asked, “What does this song have to do with a tooth coming out?”

I sat for a minute, trying to control my laugher and figure out the best way to correct her error. “No, Mom, he said truth not tooth.” Clearly there is a disconnect between her musical preferences and mine. Not to say that my taste is better or more valuable than hers because I can understand the lyrics of rap songs (fun fact: I can remember the lyrics to almost any song after listening to it two to three times). Jaron Lanier, author of “I am not a Gadget,” would probably argue that my music taste is actually inferior because it was founded in a world dominated by synthesized beats and auto-tuning.

It’s not my fault though. Lanier traces the digital music world, or even broader – all digital sounds, to the Music Instrument Digital Interface or MIDI. MIDI translates notes produces by instruments to translate into a digital language that can be understood by and shared between electronic devices. The problem with MIDI is it is over-simplified, and captures sounds as data instructions rather than sound waves, therefore reproducing flat tones. Basically instead of the emotional pull of a violin or the resonating trill of a flute the MIDI user’s music is one-dimensional. MIDI was designed over a decade ago with the keyboard in minds, however, the programs spread to accommodate all sorts of instruments, some it was not designed for, and was adapted to a variety of programs. The digital music world got “locked-in” to MIDI, and since it is everywhere users are forced to accept a less than adequate system that is too integrated to replace.

“How can a musician cherish the broader, less-defined concept of a note that precedes MIDI, while using MIDI all day long and interacting with other musicians through the filter of MIDI? Is it even worth trying? Should a digital artist just give in to lock-in and accept the infinitely explicit, finite idea of a MIDI note?” (Lanier 10).

Lanier says hip hop is the best example of a genre growing up in the digital era. While it was introduced before the domination of the web, it was defined by it. Hip hop uses the convenience of technology to mass produce songs. There is less need for creativity or even talent when music is produced mostly by computers rather than human beings.

So, basically anyone born into the cyber age is musically stunted. Our minds are tainted by booty shaking beats and thumping basses. We just don’t have the capacity to appreciate the subtle genius of a well-preformed concerto or intricately organize symphony. The one redeeming quality of rap, Lanier said, is its ability to express anger or lust though volume and explicit lyrics. According to Lanier, “Hip hop is imprisoned within digital tools like the rest of us. But at least it bangs fiercely against the walls of its confinement” (Lanier 135).

Another product of the digital age of music is the mash-up. Artists, who are essentially glorified disk jockeys, weave songs together to create a new song. Dozens of songs can go into a single mash-up track. There are a lot of legal ambiguities associated with this: are they stealing? Is it original? Can they put their name on it or must the credit the hundreds or artists who contributed? Do they need the artists’ permission before using pieces of songs?

Mash-ups are a direct product of the tools of technology, and while some are offended by the results, others see it as a unique form of expression requiring as much or more creativity than creating a work from scratch.

Is there a middle ground? Can the generation defined by mashing-up other people’s music into one collective mess of sounds still be creative? I think so (we may not make money from it, but creativity is far from extinct).

Let me introduce you to Peter Lee Johnson, a student at the University of Southern California, who is fusing popular music with classical techniques. He has played the violin since the age of four. He has made a name for himself in the online community, as well as the television and film communities by composing scores and playing accompaniments. Johnson’s covers of billboard hits from Kanye West’s, “Birthday Sex” with an introduction of Beethoven to Edward Maya and Vika Jigulina’s “Stereo Love” mixed with MGMT’s “kids” have gone viral on YouTube.
What makes Johnson so special, and gives hope to our generation, is that he is essentially reversing the limitations of music created digitally. Johnson takes the electronically defined songs and strips them down to the melodies that define them as musical and plays them on a violin, one of the most classically defined instruments.

Johnson is proving that we are not gadgets, well at least not yet.