Yesterday, as I drove back from a gig in the sticks of central Wisconsin, my car radio suddenly shut itself off. With frustration, I attempted to turn it back on, hitting every button on the dashboard, until the lights flickered on and then off again. Either there was a serious electrical issue at hand, or Miles Davis’ Miles Smiles was the coup de grâce for yet another failing part of my college-mobile. Needless to say, I watched the road for deer for an hour and a half in silence in the dark of night.
I can’t say that it truly bothered me, however, because I often drive in silence already. In fact, I’m surprised with how often we, as a society, don’t embrace silence. As a musician, I am surprised by how much we don’t appreciate stepping away from music.
In many ways, technology has contributed to this issue. We all know the line “video killed the radio star” (or maybe not, I don’t really know what demographic I’m going for here). I truly believe that the modern obsession with constantly drowning ourselves in music has negatively affected how we perceive music and its purpose in our culture. Whether it could be attributed to the current societal infatuation with portable music players, or music recording entirely which great American composer John Philip Sousa warned would “be the demise of the musical amateur”, I won’t attempt to pin down in this article.
It could be argued that the liberation of music from the finite aspects of live performance has simultaneously destroyed much of the artistry of music, while making it accessible in a way like never before. There is a massive benefit to this, as the appreciation for music has grown as it has become more accessible. On the negative side, while always providing a specific service, music has never been a service industry until modern times. It is consumed in quantity rather than quality.
This change in the dynamic of the world of music is directly reflected in the music we hear. My article last week raised the question: If autotune is a studio normalcy, why do we practice singing in tune? Much like the unrealistically photoshopped models on the covers of magazines, the vast majority of popular music is, in simple terms, not real.
As a studio musician, I can attest to this. In a recent recording I did, I recorded a 3-minute long marimba piece. The catch was that each take was four measures, and there were 38 of these sections. After the gauntlet behind the instrument, we spent hours piece-mealing a Frankenstein of these different takes, which we then wiped up with a rhythmic quantizing program and dozens of volume adjustments. The reason for this was not that it was poorly performed (or at least I hope), but rather that it was the expected process.
I am disheartened by music as it is, because while listening to early recordings of Miles Davis and Charlie Byrd, one of my favorite things to hear is a cracked note. I love to hear the drummer push the tempo without realizing it when the energy shifts. Music is a living and breathing artform, and it is unique in that way. Unlike a painting, music was not made to be put on a wall in one form to be looked at from time to time.
Last month I watched my beautiful girlfriend perform with the Duluth-Superior Symphony Orchestra Chorus when they performed Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. The piece was made famous by its “O Fortuna” movements that open and close the production, with over an hour of material in between. It was, in the final moments of the performance I watched, that I felt the greatest realization that I have ever had with music. As the second to last movement, “Ave formosissima” built into the sonic explosion that is the O Fortuna reprise, I felt the strongest sympathetic response to music that I have ever felt. I say this as somebody who has cried to Cannonball Adderley’s “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” for no reason whatsoever, other than Joe Zawinul’s beautiful keyboard playing. In this moment, in Carmina Burana, I felt my entire body succumb to chills that shot aggressively down my spine. My head immediately began to hurt from me resisting the urge to audibly bawl. I began to shake and cry, while remaining in a state of awe from Orff’s musical statement. I have heard recordings of Carmina Burana many times, but never have I reacted like this to it, or anything for that matter.
It was in that moment that I realized that music, like many miracles in nature and life, is fleeting when it's real. It is not something that can be captured in an MP3 file, like the true magnitude of Niagara Falls cannot be contained on your aunt’s coffee mug, no matter how good that picture is. I will forever chase the high that I felt that night, and I will chase it into every concert hall and venue I find.
I can only hope that you chase it as well, and don’t chase it to YouTube.
