The transformation of creative arts practice within the music industry of the digital epoch.

The genre that I will discuss in this paper is that of contemporary music, its significance as an art form in the changing attitude towards digital media as the instrument of choice and the distortion that the use of such technologies lends to the establishment of what is known as a recording “artist” within the genre.
Until recently, being a great artist was, according to 18th century author and poet Samuel Johnson, to be simply a “skilled manual worker” and that was enough. Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Mozart created works of fine art as a job, a means to pay the bills and although their works were highly valued, they did not have much social stature in a world dominated by the church and wealthy royal courtiers. Bart Rosier introduces his work What is art? with a description of this mentality:
In late Antiquity the arts consisted of the seven artes liberales, the liberal arts: Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Geometry, Arithmetic, Astronomy, and Music. Philosophy was the mother of them all. On a lower level stood the technical arts like architecture, agriculture, painting, sculpture and other crafts. "Art" as we conceive of it today was a mere craft. Art in the Middle Ages was "the ape of nature". And what is art today?
Bart Rosier. (July 2008) What is art? [online] Available: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/6831/whatsart.html [date accessed 29 Jan. 08]
The Romantic Movement of the early 19th century championed by such artists as Byron, Baudelaire and van Gogh, turned away from producing craft works to please the rest of society and focussed ever more intently on indulging their own whims and elevating themselves as heroic enlightened and unique individuals, striving constantly to produce perfection through their own talent and suffering.
Artists of any genre are often henceforth portrayed as solitary, reflective, lonely and even unhappy figures that are far too complicated and intelligent for a lay person to comprehend. This “romanticised” archetype is a product of the movement that has played on the psyche of society for some 200 years since.
As such the portrayal of recording artists as a singular talented, creative elite has dominated the music business as much, or even more so, than many other art forms. This, in no small terms, is due to the widespread publicity with which such musicians are paraded day after day.
Take, for example, John Lennon, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Each of these men are accomplished musicians and songwriters in their own right and although the messages that their works convey differ from artist to artist, they have all at some point been idolised for their single minded dedication to their work and their self sacrifices to the benefit of music as an art form and all who have practised it since.
The overriding factor that combines all of the above artists however, is the fact that they used their talent with music to earn large sums of money. Each man played their instruments and wrote their songs for money, as a job. As the title of the Beastie Boys 1992 single states they used their Skills to pay the bills. Thus they could be referred to as artisans of the musical art. This is a term that rests well with me as a way to define those that would use music as an art to win their earnings. This does not necessarily mean that they are not artists, but should probably referred to as such second to a term that informs one that they are paid for the work they produce.
As Rosier discusses in his work it is very difficult indeed to define what is art and as such the concept of an artist is also just as difficult. He quotes the art philosopher Richard Wollheim with reference to painting and those that practise it:
"So, there are house-painters: there are Sunday painters: there are world-politicians who paint for distraction, and distraught business-men who paint to relax. There are ... psychotic patients who enter art therapy, and madmen who set down their visions: there are little children of three, four, five, six, in art class, who produce work of explosive beauty: and then there are the innumerable painters ... who once, probably, were artists, but who now paint exclusively for money and the pleasure of others. None of them are artists, though they all fall short of being so to varying degrees, but they are all painters. And then there are painters who are artists. Where does the difference lie, and why? What does the one lot do which the other lot doesn't? When is painting an art, and why?"
Richard Wollheim. (1987):Painting as an art (ref: Rosier July 2008) What is art? [online] Available: http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Coffeehouse/6831/whatsart.html [date accessed 29 Jan. 08]

Perhaps the definition of art needs to be revisited.

The first commercial digital recordings were produced in the early 70’s and much experimentation began with this new technology. When an audio track is recorded it’s sound wave is converted to binary bits at a rate of 24 bits per word ( word representing the length of the audio waveform), the number of bits required was originally hotly debated, because each bit sampled is reconstructed by digital audio devices the less bits there are per word the harder it is to reconstruct the audio signal with enough fidelity, however the larger the number of bits per waveform the better the potential accuracy and the larger the size of sample on a disk / tape.

There had been electronic synthesizers before like the Moog synthesizer produced by Dr Robert Moog, however unlike its modern descendants the Moog required a series of magnetic tapes for artists to realize their works. The limitations of the devices components were such that often notes had to be recorded separately and reconstructed later, using the speed at which the tapes were run to produce the different pitch and then splicing with the master. An altogether lengthy and frustrating procedure.

In 1982 the advent of MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface), created by Adam Brooks Kinder was marked as the industry standard protocol for interface between electronic musical instruments, computers and other electronic musical equipment allowing the hardware / software of each device to be synchronized. It was widely adopted throughout the industry and remains today as the music synthesis standard for computers worldwide. Because MIDI does not store audio information in waveforms sounds can be constructed on a computer by sequences that, through sound output devices, may be played as music.

Many artists now found that with digital sample tapes and synthesizing keyboards they could produce entirely new sounds that could not have been achieved with the previous levels of technology employed in such devices as the Moogs. With the right hardware a recording artist could record directly from their instruments to a digital tape for immediate playback and review .

If music can thus be created without instruments, without the necessary skills needed to know why each chord works the way it does and with the use of pre – programmed or pre – recorded synthesized percussion is it really art? Yet many recording artists are producing works that have been synthesized by computer code that use background beats that have not been produced by their own hand and yet are receiving critical acclaim and large sums of money for their work. Does the responsibility for that work rest solely with the artist or is it prudent to theorize that the software developers that produced the synthesizing program gain some credit for their efforts towards the recording artist’s success? The fact of the matter is that other than a license fee or registration fee for the software many mainstream music software companies do not receive royalties for works produced with the programs that they have designed. CakeWalk is just one of such software companies that produce midi sequencers, but is widely thought to be the leader in the business.

Adversely one could look at the computer as an addition to the artist’s instrument complement. Does not the producer of a guitar or a drum kit receive kudos for their product by having it used by the recording artist in the production of their works? Not by way of royalties they don’t, but they do tend to piggyback marketing campaigns off the back of live performances, music videos and in fact any other visual media they can be shown to have their instruments used by famous artists. So guitar manufacturers label the head of their guitars with their name or logo, drum manufacturers place their stamp on cymbals or drum skins and so on. When there are no aesthetic or portable means of exhibiting the digital instrumentation used to make music will this practise change? I think not.

Similar to audio synthesis is the practise of audio sampling. Again the artist is using something they have not produced to add a track to their song that they could otherwise not do. Audio samples may be loops of percussion, many modern recordings are strings of drum beat samples tied together and looped to produce the backing percussion. They may also be samples of spoken words, entire recordings, or other more unconventional sounds.

Some audio samples are also taken without permission and the recording artist often finds themselves in a difficult situation with copyright lawsuits being thrust upon them from unexpected angles. One such artist to be stung by copyright infringement was the white hip hop rapper Vanilla Ice. Ice used a sample of the main guitar riff from the legendary rock collaboration Under Pressure by Queen and David Bowie in his signature track Ice Ice Baby from 1990. His defence rested on the addition of extra notes, which were in fact only further cutting and sampling, to the original riff. No lawsuit was filed in the end, but there is speculation that Ice agreed to pay the rockers if they agreed not to openly sue. Some artists, however simply allow or even advocate re – use of their music in sample form.

The most notorious piracy of a sampled beat is the Amen break, a 6 second long drum beat, or break beat that was originally produced by a funk and soul band called The Winstons in their song Amen Brother. This break beat was taken by sampler and is ingrained into the western subconscious through tracks such as Straight out of Compton by the rap pioneers NWA, Words of wisdom by New York duo Third Base, and King of the beats by Mantronics. The Amen break could also be cited as responsible for the advent and longevity of drum and bass, dance and hip hop as musical genres and many of the beats behind songs from the early nineties rave scene. The Amen break has been broken down into its constituent drum hits by artists to create new tracks ever since and is still being used in popular music, advertising campaigns and soundtracks to this day.

This does not imply that any of the aforementioned artists ever owned any part of the Amen break. What they did own though, were samplers, without which modern music would be very different indeed.

Now although I digress slightly from the point of the discussion, this is a necessary diversion to explain that the originality of many a recording artist’s works can be called into question once they start using pre – recorded samples and although this does not detract from the newer work being a work of art in its own right per se, it does call into question whether the recording artist should be vaunted for the work in its entirety or whether such a recording artist should now only be allowed to claim the merit for the assembly and mixing of their work’s consistent parts.

So now it is clear that the creative practice of musicians has changed in the last 30 years. A musician producing works pre synthesizer would be required to have a fair knowledge of music theory at the least to play and record their songs, they would need to be learned with many musical instruments, or employ other artists to play along with them and they would be required to complete a recording in a single take for distribution. Inevitably records produced before digital sampling would take far longer to record due to this requirement for the artist to play their song from start to finish over and over until they were happy with the results.

In this way digital recording has become a boon for recording artists across the board. Songs can be constructed modularly, a verse at a time, with the chorus only ever needing to be finally mastered once per version and the sample repeated. Thus allowing for those odd moments when one can hear an artist drawing out a long note or verse without needing to stop for breath and carrying on into the chorus without missing a beat, or the moments where the artist will record a harmony to their own lead and thus harmonize without being physically able to. This practice is also applied to musical instruments in some bands, where a singer will record their vocals over the finished track to allow them to participate in the more energetic instrument playing at the same time that would otherwise leave them out of breath. Whilst allowing the artist more freedom to produce works of notably higher quality to live performance, additionally this allows a song to be produced far quicker than could possibly done to the same standard previously.

Many critiques, I amongst them rate not only the studio recording of the artist, but the live performance of the song and I have come to the opinion that if I am impressed by the live performance as much or even more than their studio recording then they are a band worthy of inhabiting my music collection. Only a few have managed to surpass themselves and my expectations and they take pride of place. This does not mean that I only listen to live bands in fact it could not be farther from the truth. I enjoy a healthy mix of music, like many other eclectic types, that involves many technically brilliant musicians that I could only label as artists well worthy of the title and also includes songs that are simply impossible to reproduce exactly live.
One of the many musical genres that I foster a love – hate relationship with is drum and bass. Commonly abbreviated to d&b and also known as jungle, drum and base is a purely electronic dance music that uses fast break beats like the Amen break, generally up to 180 beats per minute, with very heavy bass lines. It began in the late 1980’s and was an offshoot of the early UK rave scene. D&b and to a similar extent today’s dance music is intended to be listened to live. Now that might sound a bit daft considering almost anything can be performed live, but d&b differs because it is designed to be played by a DJ (disk jockey) and constructed live, using a pair of record players otherwise known as decks a sampler and ever more frequently an i – book or laptop, from constituent parts usually referred to as dub plates in the case of new records. Each part of the song has intro and outro sections designed for the DJ to keep time and match the beats and could technically be played in any order across any number of different tracks. In this way the DJ becomes not only the author of each mix record (despite not necessarily being the source of the sounds) but a performance artist as well who mixes and samples live on stage. Thus it could be said that in d&b the art is not just in the crafting of the song but in the performance of the DJ as well as no two performances will ever be entirely the same.

DJs and MCs (master of ceremonies – pompous I know) often have strange and outlandish pseudonyms, often related to their stage performance and the sub – culture of the genre to which they belong. Whilst some are comic at best, other DJs with slightly better taste are seen with an almost godlike mysticism about them and receive as much accolade as any mega rock star. This attitude could be identified as the romanticism cropping up again where the lone DJ heroically mixes away striving to rock the spectator’s world.

Contrary to this mythical concept of the lone artist writing and producing every part of their artwork as a solitary edifice of introversion of their own volition, many recording artists are individuals who want to share their life experience with their audience through the medium of song and as such could be seen as very sociable characters. Bruce Springsteen can be regarded as a prime example of a man with a message to share, one that thankfully makes for a good rock song that people want to listen to. I could not put it in better words than this:
His most famous albums, Born to Run and Born in the U.S.A., epitomize his penchant for finding grandeur in the struggles of daily life.
Bruce Springsteen (1972-present) Springsteen: Wikipedia [online] Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springsteen [date accessed 29 Jan. 08]

As such Springsteen has become somewhat of an American everyman hero, a champion of the ideal that artists are people too.

The current era of mass digitization and cut and paste song craft does not come about without leaving a few casualties in its wake though. Large scale recording studios are swiftly becoming a thing of the past and the speed of their decline shows little sign of slowing down any time soon. Now that most of the functions that would be familiar to a sound engineer have been incorporated into software for the home computer there is little need for large and expensive establishments, unless you are scoring the next movie blockbuster with an orchestra of course. One studio that has sprung up amongst this change of face is The Doghouse in Brooklyn NYC. In their introduction to the article: Breaking the glass wall. They explain exactly what is happening to the old establishment:

The art of recording has changed dramatically. Mammoth recording spaces, giant glass walls, and mile long consoles have given way to smaller, more specialized rooms. As the decadent recording budgets of the last century dry up, small studios are cropping up even faster than the old behemoths fall silent.
The Doghouse NYC Recording Studio (May 2005) Breaking the Glass Wall:
Reinventing the Modern Recording Studio [online] Available: http://www.doghousenyc.com/articles/glass_wall.php [date accessed 28 Jan. 08]
So small studios and in – house production are becoming the accepted norm for recording artists both in the USA and here in the UK, perhaps Springsteen could have benefitted from such technology so close to home, but I’m not so sure his fans would have been so ready to accept him with an electronic dub beat.
The Doghouse also philosophises in its review of “single seater” studios, which may in fact hold as many as 8 to 10 musicians to one or two sound technicians that it’s not all about the technical gear:
The one - seater caters to the mindset that it is people who make recordings - not spaces or equipment.
The Doghouse NYC Recording Studio (May 2005) Breaking the Glass Wall:
Reinventing the Modern Recording Studio [online] Available: http://www.doghousenyc.com/articles/glass_wall.php [date accessed 28 Jan. 08]

This is rather a poignant reflection on their own practices that sometimes it’s good to remind people in a studio environment that the digital technology is not the most important aspect, but the people who use it to create their music are. This does not detract though from the truth that musicians that do not follow the trend in technological advances will eventually fall by the wayside as newer and better products will be released that will far outstrip theirs in quality and production value.

In conclusion I would have to say that I have gained the opinion that although a DJ or MC uses a computer, a set of decks, or a synthesizer / sampler to produce their work they have as much right to call what they produce an artwork as a folk guitarist or a flautist because it takes a considerable amount of skill and experience to produce and develop their work. The musicians of the digital age might not be classically trained, they might not know the difference between a fret and a bridge and they might not play the instruments that they use in their work, but they have the freedom of their imagination, a massive archive of information available and the talent to string a mash of beats, tunes and vocals together to create music the likes of which have never been seen before to such high qualities of sound that they could make Mozart weep with joy. In essence the concept of the “artist” has returned to more of a definition of a craftsman producing his wares and is in effect contradicting the neo – romantic view of all artists being somehow better than mortal man.
With new technologies such as digital sampling and editing software becoming more readily available to the consumer market it is not too difficult to comprehend music production again returning to a craft and a hobby to which standards ordinary people may begin to parallel big budget record producers and mainstream recording artists. With that in mind it pleases me to think that many new recording artists, producers and DJs will rise to fame who never would have otherwise had a chance, much in the same way that Daniel Beddingfield the popular singer / songwriter began his own career. A number 1 single created in his bedroom at home with a microphone and a cheap piece of music software.