Ableton Forum

It's a hefty read but Stefan Goldmann raises some very interesting points...

http://www.littlewhiteearbuds.com/featu ... ZlyH5iQ-Uk

The composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition.

By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism.

"Who Cares if You Listen?"

From 1958..

Seems that nothing has changed!

Very good article - I can relate to pretty much all of it...

Great article indeed...Thanks for sharing, I found it very informative & highly relatable

No problem

It's rare that i read something as interesting so was definitely worth a share

appreciate for your sharing, very good read indeed. valuable information

My take is that it has always been hard to make it in music.

Now it is just harder for everybody because of market saturation.

Rap/hip hop are having similar battles. 20 years ago very few people were striving to be musicians as compared to today. Now almost everyone you meet does music.

The cost factor which was a big deal in the 90s just to get into preproduction is no longer an issue compared to today.

Back then you needed to spend about $10000 in hardware to get for today you could get for about $1000 in software.

jlgrimes wrote:My take is that it has always been hard to make it in music.

Now it is just harder for everybody because of market saturation.

Rap/hip hop are having similar battles. 20 years ago very few people were striving to be musicians as compared to today. Now almost everyone you meet does music.

The cost factor which was a big deal in the 90s just to get into preproduction is no longer an issue compared to today.

Back then you needed to spend about $10000 in hardware to get for today you could get for about $1000 in software.

At the same time the quality has sunk. Also the art of sound has become more visual. When one goes to see Janet Jackson or Beyonce, you witness a dance production. When you went to see Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Rush, ect. you see a performance.

kitekrazy wrote:At the same time the quality has sunk. Also the art of sound has become more visual. When one goes to see Janet Jackson or Beyonce, you witness a dance production. When you went to see Boston, Foreigner, Kansas, Rush, ect. you see a performance.

thats a completely spurious generalization.

love this quote from the article:

" here comes the good news: exactly because everyone seemingly performs to the lowest still acceptable standards, all you have to do as an artist is to unleash disproportional waves of creativity. Since nothing promises secure success anymore, all considerations to what “works in the marketplace” can be freely dumped and forgotten. The more out there you get, the better. It’s the only way to stand out in a totally dull environment. The advantage is, put cynically, that the old channels are jammed. "

Actually, there is both good news and bad news.

The Good News: "The tools of production are at last in the hands of the workers."
The Bad News: "The tools of production are at last in the hands of the workers."

Bagatell wrote:

The composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute, and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media, with its very real possibility of complete elimination of the public and social aspects of musical composition.

By so doing, the separation between the domains would be defined beyond any possibility of confusion of categories, and the composer would be free to pursue a private life of professional achievement, as opposed to a public life of unprofessional compromise and exhibitionism.

"Who Cares if You Listen?"

From 1958..

Of course the difference here is that Babbitt was talking about the separation between "popular music" and "art music", and in particular the kinds of serial composition he and others were composing at the time that most of the public found inaccessible. He was saying that in the face of an unsympathetic public the art music composer should withdraw altogether. His original title for the article was "The Composer As Specialist" and the image conjured is of a composer in the studio alone or with a private audience listening to his own music. Ironically the musical democratization brought by technology that Goldmann talks about has made this a reality in some sense, although I'm pretty sure that a guy whose only musical experience has been sitting in his bedroom with a laptop making beats would probably not meet Babbitt's criteria for being called a "composer."

The Goldmann article is about "making it in electronic music", but it is really about "making it in popular electronic music." So truly not much has changed since Babbitt's tirade because not only is art music still marginalized it has been pushed (or voluntarily retreated) so far into the academy that even in an article like Goldmann's it is assumed as a given that "electronic music" = "popular electronic music."

"A digital download has no costs at all. " the fact that he wrote that demonstrates a clear lack of understanding whats involved in digital distribution.

And why is it that when things change and evolve its all about "the end of electronic music".

Well to be honest I feel that this article is right on the point that this is a time when more people listen to music more often, but less music is being bought, sold, or marketed (there is a strong music formatting going on).