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That's actually a pretty good articulation of what I've seen within the musician community as well. It's a view that's slowly dying down with newer generations

That's actually a pretty good articulation of what I've seen within the musician community as well. It's a view that's slowly dying down with newer generations I feel like, but there does seem to be this sort of fear around technology devoiding them of 'humanity', and thus their creativity, which is the most treasured thing you can possibly have as an artist. I've seen similar resistance towards learning music theory and writing things down[1] within some musician circles as well, which tangentially stems from this. Makes artists seem paradoxically conservative in a way, but I think the logic makes sense even if I don't agree with it. [1] Jazz is a good example of this; usually they only have bare-bones lead sheets (musical skeletons/outlines of sorts) to go off of, due to the genre's unique improvisational nature. And in a different realm of music, Lil' Wayne never wrote down any of his lyrics during the prolific stages of his career either. So there something to be said about such things possibly helping creativity; and if something as simple as writing stuff down could be interpreted as 'hindering' creativity, then complex technology usage can surely be interpreted that way too. Sometimes the best way to squeeze out creativity is to impose some restraints on yourself, so it's not all that surprising.

_delirium 13y ago
Music really varies in my experience. Even in jazz, while there are many folks with no interest in technology, you've also got those like Sun Ra, who was keenly interested in incorporating new electronic stuff, to the extent of working directly with Robert Moog to get his hands on early synthesizers. And some musicians' careers are entirely based around technological experimentation and developing their own tech, whether it's bands like Einstürzende Neubauten or composers like Iannis Xenakis.
- oblique63 13y ago
  Totally. It all really seems to be about what value proposition the technology holds with regards to an artist's creativity. Some people see a synthesizer and view it as a tool to finally express some of the sounds they've been kicking around in their heads, while others might see it as diluting the craftsmanship of the instrumentation they already have. And like I said, some people see restraints as a bigger boost to creativity than others. It's interesting though, because adoption of technology doesn't seem to be much of a big deal at all on the recording side of things. Very few are the musicians that wouldn't be interested in learning how to use a complex DAW with tons of fancy plugins nowadays...

_delirium 13y ago

Music really varies in my experience. Even in jazz, while there are many folks with no interest in technology, you've also got those like Sun Ra, who was keenly interested in incorporating new electronic stuff, to the extent of working directly with Robert Moog to get his hands on early synthesizers. And some musicians' careers are entirely based around technological experimentation and developing their own tech, whether it's bands like Einstürzende Neubauten or composers like Iannis Xenakis.

oblique63 13y ago
Totally. It all really seems to be about what value proposition the technology holds with regards to an artist's creativity. Some people see a synthesizer and view it as a tool to finally express some of the sounds they've been kicking around in their heads, while others might see it as diluting the craftsmanship of the instrumentation they already have. And like I said, some people see restraints as a bigger boost to creativity than others. It's interesting though, because adoption of technology doesn't seem to be much of a big deal at all on the recording side of things. Very few are the musicians that wouldn't be interested in learning how to use a complex DAW with tons of fancy plugins nowadays...