Tom O'Brien
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4/16/2010 8:53:13 PM
The story of music
So here's how it happened:
Our primitive ancestors were grunting and snorting and generally making monkey sounds and somebody realized they could control the pitch of their voice. This pleased them and singing began.
Then, while making stone tools, somebody else noticed that the regular pounding had a certain something that was kind of magical. Rhythm.
Then somebody heard the wind whistle through a hollow reed and pretty soon we were making instruments .
Jump forward a million years.
There was a time when music wasn't recorded on disc or tape or vinyl or even written on paper. You just had to make it. It was valuable then - certain people had the gift, and everybody loved them for it. It was magic.
Then we slowly invented writing and we could share our abstract musical ideas with others. It became less magical as you could store it on paper and bring it out whenever you felt like it. Even someone else who had never heard it could play it as long as they knew the code.
But then Thomas Edison came along and ruined everything. He made it so you didn't even have to have a musician present to make music. The musician could be long dead and you could still hear his music. This should have been a good thing. Right? Good for dead musicians anyway.
But it took a lot of the magic away for us live musicians. Now music became a product instead of an activity of performance and listening. You could listen to an entire orchestra performing while you brushed your teeth. Something was wrong here. And if you missed a note or a word or phrase because you had to spit, you could just listen to it again.
Sure, the recording became an art form in and of itself, but it was a thing to be bought and sold, like a stick of butter. "Pick me up a loaf of bread, a bottle of milk, and a Mahler symphony."
So, fine, we musicians would concentrate on making recordings and promote our records by performing live.
But then, music went digital. Now you barely even needed instruments, let alone musicians. Anyone could make music and it could be shared with anyone who had a computer or a hand-held player. It wasn't even a product that could be bought and sold anymore. People were not only giving it away for free, but it was forced upon us everywhere we went - elevators, stores, advertising. We are plagued with music that has none of that original magic. It has all the value now of a turnip. Maybe not as much.
So no wonder we musicians are in such dire straits. Our magic has been taken from us.
That's why there's nothing better than sitting around in someone's living room, listening to the song that they just wrote. There's still magic if you know where to find it.
I know that that magic still exists at IAC too, though sometimes you have to wade through a lot of very definitely unmagical music to get to it. Those of you who are magicians know what I'm talking about. The world may know all the parlor tricks of the making of music, but there's still a lot of actual sorcery going on. And that stuff is more than just illusion. I hope we all keep the magic alive and that the world begins, somehow, to find the value in it once more.
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Bryon Tosoff
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4/17/2010 11:52:51 AM
---- Updated 4/17/2010 11:54:02 AM
I dont think it happened like that Tom, really do you think we came from some slime and evolved into what we are now,,,,,geez are we something that came from a cesspool of hot waters and boiling volcanic ash and some extraterrestrial gods of sorts went and threw some meteorites and snot at earth then it magically was combined with bacterial components and viruses ......nah personally ...I think somebody was walking in the Garden of Eden stepped on a prickle and screamed blue bloody murder and that is how music really started as all the animals and birds squawked in unison with the poor soul
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