The increase in/proliferation of hardware and software in the music industry has led to improvements in production practises. Discuss.

The increase in/proliferation of hardware and software in the music industry has led to improvements in production practices. Discuss.

Since the dawn of the computer and the internet, the music industry has expanded at an unprecedented speed due to the ease of access to creation tools and how many people can avail of these tools. Naturally, the big labels still exist and are still pumping out tune after tune as fast as possible for maximum income. However, due to companies making their software and hardware commercially available and not just for the big wigs at the top, thousands of people have been able to become musicians and producers in their own right, with their own judgment of their success.

Back in the mid to late 1900s, the music industry was becoming more public domain. The hardware and software necessary to start creating music was becoming available to the ordinary mortals in the public, and people picked up on. While it was, and certainly still is, extortionately expensive, people still jumped at the opportunity to make their very own music from the comfort of their very own bedroom, or even their very own studio.

Once the hardware and software became more easily accessible, more and more people started creating, producing and releasing their own music. In the 1970s, the genre of electronic music was born with the introduction of synthesisers and sampling. The hardware for this music was still incredibly expensive and only top production studios could afford to have the equipment, such as the studios in the BBC. The equipment was implemented to create things such as the Doctor Who theme song, one of the most iconic themes ever made for a TV show. Things like vocoders and portable synthesisers, used by artists such as Bob Marley, Michael Jackson and Electric Light Orchestra, became very popular and soon other companies began to follow suit with their own portable synths, like the ARP Odyssey. Vocoders are still used, albeit not as widely, but the sound is still alive and well thanks to songs by Pink Floyd, Phil Collins, T-Pain and Daft Punk. As well as these new innovations and inventions, things like effects pedals for electric instruments, more often than not made for the guitar, began making their way into music, with Jimi Hendrix being the most notable user of it. Into the late 70s, things had progressed quite far as we saw the introduction of hardware like the Roland CR-78 drum machine.

However, synthesisers as we know them only came into existence with the conception of MIDI, or Musical Instrument Digital Interface; the new standard for digital equipment. MIDI became the way to connect your digital instruments to your computer to record your music into the computer. MIDI became standardised in 1983 and with it came a wave of new technology that made it easier than ever to create your own music. A few years after MIDI’s standardisation, new, more affordable PCs were released that people could actually get their hands on, the most notable few being the Atari ST, the Commodore Amiga and the Apple Macintosh Classic. All these systems required external hardware to be controlled over MIDI. However, all of this had to go into something.

That something was the DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation. It was the control centre for all the MIDI instruments and effects necessary to make electronic music. The early DAWs, such as Cubase which released in ’89 and worked only on the Atari ST, or OctaMED which released in the same year which worked only on the Commodore Amiga, had few features and were pretty basic in comparison to the modern DAWs that we know and use today. Despite this, it became the cutting edge of music creation technology and the essential tool for creating electronic music. It could take the input from any MIDI instrument and then process it and put it through any amount of effects and distortion and create the exact sound desired. As the technology advanced more complex sounds could be achieved but with a simpler interface. The technology got more advanced, but it became easier to make the music, making it yet more accessible. Many other DAWs followed suit; the likes of GarageBand and FL Studio became incredibly easy to use, however they sacrificed the functionality of their programs. The manufacturers of these programs made an attempt to democratise their programs in the hopes of attracting more people to make music themselves, however in their attempt they angered some of their audience. Many thought that they could not do what they were previously able to do in past versions and that the program had been somewhat dumbed down. While many welcomed the change, there was certainly a backlash. While the programs like GarageBand were good enough for some people to make an entire song or some used it simply to get ideas down quickly, it simply did not offer the high standard of music production that artists had come to expect from it. While FL Studio could still be considered a complex DAW, it has its limitations. Many people who use either FL or GarageBand would still stand mouth agape at the Ableton Live UI. The professional electronic artists would consider learning the UI of a program like Ableton to be a big boost in ability; being able to actually use Ableton would lead to a much wider variety in a newcomers music and allow them to make exactly the sound they are looking for.

However, to actually make these sounds, they need something to make them on. This is where the modern synthesiser comes in. A lot of musicians will have upwards of 10 synthesisers that can store presets and different sounds, all making a unique tone. A lot of the synthesisers these days will also come pre-packed with their own presets. Many electronic artists, such as Kuedo and Machinedrum, will make great use of these presets, either using them as a basis for a new song or building an idea off of them. As Kuedo says “Presets should define the sound of the synth, and they should be built for musicians to practically use.” As well as this, samples can be used to create sounds based off of recorded sounds. Matthew Herbert is a great example of this, as he used creative microphone placement to record different sounds of a pig from its birth to it’s not-so-peaceful death and used the sounds in his song. Samples work by allowing the user to record a small snippet of noise and then modify the pitch, length and other properties of the sound, essentially turning it into a note that the user can manipulate the way it would any other sound. Herbert used the sounds he recorded of the pig and used them as samples throughout an entire album, “One Pig”.

While there are a plethora of new, professional electronic artists popping up all over the scene, there is still a massive underground market of amature, up-and-coming artists, and even those who simply want to play around with the technology that is so easily available to them. Synthesisers are much cheaper and there are plenty of entry level products that are suited to those just starting out in a music career. Things like MIDI keyboards are popular among the newcomers that they can plug into their DAW of choice and manipulate the sound to whatever they want. DAWs are incredibly easy to obtain, with companies like Apple shipping their new iMacs, MacBooks and iDevices with their custom made DAW, Garageband. However, with this accessibility comes a downfall. These DAWs are being redesigned to make it simple and easy for people of any skill level to create music. There is always a danger of becoming too simple and limiting an artist's creativity, and software like Garageband is tiptoe-ing rather precariously along this boundary line.

There is an argument for this simplification of the software, however, and it isn't just Apple doing this, while one could argue that they are leading the charge. These programs are becoming increasingly more democratised and widely available to everyone. This has lead to a vast increase in the amount of women being involved in music production. During the mid to late 1900s, music was very much a man's world. Nowadays, the availability and ease of use of these new DAWs means that it's even easier for women to get into the business and present something, almost as a proof of concept, that can prove that women can make music just as well as any other man can. The music industry is becoming a lot more universal and you can definitely see the increase in female artists, especially electronic artists. The more advanced DAWs still exist, and these new simplified DAWs can be used as a stepping stone into making more complex music, and allowing those who want to get into the industry a chance to see if music creation really is what they want to persue. The ease of use of recent DAWs like Garageband or FL Studio added to the availability of good equipment for good prices means that the world of music production is opened up to everyone; all you have to do is jump in.

So, has there actually been an improvement in production practices? Well, the short answer is yes. The hardware and the software has advanced so far that it has become quick and easy for even the top level professionals to make their music. If we hark back to the 1970s again and think of Delia Derbyshire, one of the main people working on the Doctor Who soundtrack and many others, we think of long, hard, manual labour. The production process was tedious; making exactly the right noise and then recording it and then splice the tape at the exact right time and then sellotape the lengths of tape together to finally create the full song. Nowadays, we click a few buttons on our computer screens, maybe we hit a few keys on a MIDI keyboard or hit a few buttons on a drum machine, and our song is there. In a fraction of the time it would have taken Delia to make a small part of her song, we have a full, listenable tune that we could go on to sell. Overall, there most definitely has been an improvement in production practices, and we will most definitely continue to see an improvement.