Audio Poverty

Connected digitally. Music together alone.

What music is for us, it is through media. Listening, making, buying, selling, giving away, learning, understanding, criticizing, remembering, changing, using — all that occurs directly through media, or at least in front of the screen of experiencing media. Electronic and digital media have become more and more central in everyday and cultural life, a trend that has increased over the centuries. The impact of media is not a modern phenomenon. It has existed from the beginning of media development in music until today, from the first bone flute to the final howl of digital music tools.
The advantages that help a new medium to success are not usually described as reduction or concentration, but as growth, and for music in particular as the increase in musical complexity and precision. As with the introduction of notation, data cables, digital memory and audio software introduced an exponential rise in the structural and tonal complexity that can be reproducibly manufactured. They also extend material sources, i.e. communicative and cultural memory, and thereby the number of references that can be made to other people and products in music history. What is done with music once the manufacturing process is complete is also subject to the increase in choice and interactive possibilities. As early as the 1960s, Glenn Gould speculated that music listeners would soon be able to make their own versions of music pieces from modular elements, and perhaps the success of music tools such as the iPhone application RjDj are paving the way for this.
Does this mean that the media revolution signifies permanent enrichment, growth and prosperity for the possibilities of musical design and experience? Obvious problems include that quantity does not correlate with quality and an increase in possibilities thanks to a medium also means a loss of the very same. The new also blinds and disorients us, perhaps causes us to forget our own needs, such as that we expect more from music than organized noise, that we expect music to act as a compass in social life. This, too, gives cause for skepticism.
What can be said about the trend in music’s digital possibilities under these premises? Is the interconnectedness between music, listening and musicians still a shock, a boon, al-ready mundane again or inconsequential for music in other parts of the world? And if it is a boon, what was ceded in the exchange? Does the role of music as a tool in the forging of self and social orientation change? Is the 15 year-old bedroom producer swimming in musical riches, or is he badly off because he doesn’t leave the house anymore? Does interconnectedness enrich musicianship or limit its horizon? What stance does a digital ›Musica Povera‹, from hardware hacking to glitch and minimalist forms, take in the face of this multiplicity of media options?

Golo Föllmer

Misadventures in music blogging: dub journalism or amateur ranting?

I have been running my uncarved.org/blog since January 2003, which generally covers topics such as reggae soundsystems, the UK MC tradition (from fast chat to grime), life in the London Borough of Hackney and whatever is on my mind.

In this presentation I will trace the origins of his blogging style in the fanzine and mail art networks of the 1980s and 90s (and in a poem about a mouse he wrote at school which he is still slightly embarrassed about). I will contrast this with the established styles of formal music journalism and attempt to show the advantages and disadvantages of being a 39 year old balding white guy writing about reggae and grime.

The trajectory of a particular corner of the music blogosphere will also be examined.

Questions posed and answered will include:

What is there left to write about in an era of information overload?

Where is your audience?

Why is it that every time someone apologises for not updating their blog there’s a fairy someplace that falls down dead?

How is a well constructed sentence better than an mp3 file?

When is it time to give up?

Whilst doing this I will also unveil the occult secrets of good blogging and explain why bloggers have the power to save or destroy the music industry.

John Eden