The Flattening of the Aural Image and Why Many People of My Generation Have Never Truly Heard a Room

All electric guitarists become giddy when they play with a loop pedal. Suddenly, without any other musicians, you can create a huge wash of sound quickly and easily. There are many cliche approaches to these devices, but I stand by the fact that they are very useful. But lets not equate many looped guitar textures (or any musical instrument for that matter) with a large ensemble.

In order for anything to be useful, one must know the limitations. As far as I see it, the electronic devices that have become so prevalent in music making, especially music making for mass consumption, will never replace "traditional" techniques, though they will (and already have) draw attention away from traditional practices and simultaneously create completely new traditions, which we're already seeing. I think it is pretty typical of practitioners of electronic music to sell their medium as an all encompassing musical world with infinite possibilities–every variable of the soundscape can be controlled and manipulated at any moment. No longer is music held down by the strictures of instrumentation, space, the rigor of standard notation methods. Well...yes and no.

(as a side note: Many improvisors try to place their medium within a similar light–they are convinced of a sort of godliness inherent in the practice. I think Derek Bailey's Improvisation makes some similar claims.

In a large part, I disagree, though I still love the practice of improvisation.)

I hate to bring us back to the established western pedagogy, but it serves as an easy enough example. If you listen to an orchestra in a world class concert hall, there are a host of uncontrollable variables that add up to one's listening experience–resulting from the musicians performing and the characteristics of the space. Acousticians have worked to create many different metrics that can act as indicators to gauge good and bad acoustics. Of course these metrics vary greatly for the different acoustical environments that are ideal for a range of musical practices.

The experience of orchestral music within an ideal space (as it exists today) is the sum of centuries of listening to music making where certain variables of sound were held somewhat constant, whether by choice or not. This seems true of all traditional musical practices.

Some limitations posed by choice: tonalities, tuning systems. Some limitations posed by circumstance: the directional characteristics of a violin, different performance spaces acoustical characteristics that were available (something that was somewhat of a crapshoot in the past). With these variables set into their confines, composers then varied other systems: dynamics, harmony, available instrumentation. Each controllable element at a composer's fingertips was really a packet of linked variables. For example, a cello has a particular timbre (spectral content), directionality, and pitch range. All of these specific to just choosing an instrument.

For the most part, you could not greatly vary a particular acoustical characteristic (the spectral content of a sound for example) without affecting other parameters. Because, of course, the easiest way for a composer to change the spectrum of a note was to change the instrument it was played on, which, as mentioned above, changes many other elements.

Now the advent of electronic music, particularly noting the standard interface (the laptop) and its seemingly infinite possibilities. Variables are no longer strictly linked, unless done so by a practitioners choosing. But this infinite availability, in itself, has limitations, which mainly stem from, from what I can tell, how fast people can interact with the new interfaces and from the complexity of the sound sources, which are typically loudspeakers. The proposition that computer music can make any sound experience possible is perhaps–in an ideal world–true, but for the most part there are just completely different limits to be concerned with such as spaces programming this work, equipment availability, the usability of one's interface.

Mind you that I am in no way an accomplished "laptop artist" (for lack of a better term), let alone very familiar with this music other than from general listening.

My whole point here is not to diminish the artistic integrity of electronic music. I just want to point out that, as with any medium, there are limitations. And for every attempt to move past these there will be new ones, however minute they may seem. Electronic music is just different from the easily referenced western pedagogy of art music. Different is good.

Back to the flattening. I'm a guitarist. The historical invention of the amplifier has forever changed the possibilities and traditions of this instrument. A technology that was meant to allow the guitar to be loud enough in ensembles, such as big bands, has morphed into its own realm of practices and possibilities.

So the amplifier in its typical usage today acts not just as a sonic boost, but as the entire source of sound–allowing guitarists to no longer have to worry about being lost in the band, something I'm sure many musicians' neighbors and other instrumentalists could do without.

Now that the amplifier is the primary source, the origin of sound has been removed from the location of the musician entirely. AND the directional characteristics of the guitar (or any amplified instrument for that matter) are now that of a loudspeaker, not of the instrument.

This is a very important point. It has shaped much of the music made since the mid-20th century and how listeners relate to a performance. The first live concerts most of my generation heard were most likely amplified. The only spatial characteristics you heard from a room in these situations were completely unwanted (we are not talking about sound art here).

So someone makes sound (someway or another) with amplification. (S)he uses loops to create textures. Amazing sounds can be made this way. Walls of sound are erected. Here is where the limitation lies. If they are running out of a single amplifier, all of these magnificent sounds (lets assume they're a great musician) have been condensed into one location. The spatial aspect of an ensemble has been sucked into a black hole. Increased dynamic range and controllability of musical textures have been gained at the cost of spatial information.

(Now of course mutli-channel systems can be made to allow a single instrumentalist to move beyond this limitation. Issue Project Room, the venue in Brooklyn, made a 15 channel overhead speaker system. I heard Okkyung Lee perform some amazing music with this system.)

This became about a lot more than just the flattening of the aural image. But my point here is that the proliferation of amplification and the methods that have become standard practice in its applications have drastically changed how we listen, and what, as listeners, we know to be possible. There are certainly people that are completely open-minded and are aware of all of the beauties inherent in many different practices of music. And I hope that somehow more people are exposed to such things.

Music has been transformed in many ways over time, but let us continue to listen to all of the possibilities and not forget the greatness that came before us as we move it forward continue to add to the pile.