Musicians, New Age Tools and Music (New and Old)

Guest Blogger: Lloyd Randolph, Bass II

This season's "New Music for a New Age" concert on April 3 prompts these reflections about how humans interact -- with each other and machines -- in creating, delivering and enjoying music.

The human voice is mankind’s oldest music-making device. On April 3, in Gospel Cha-Cha, we sang of "the cry that became music."

But humans tend toward tool-creation, and in time (precisely when is debated), we developed tools to assist us in music-making. Some think the first dates back more than 50,000 years to a carved Slovenian bear bone capable of playing a diatonic scale.

In this new age, to create and consume music, we’re more inclined to use some form of computing device. These were quite evident in our preparation for our April 3 concert. In a dress rehearsal, composer Elena Ruehr revealed that she used the software Finale (and I suspect a personal computer) to create the score for Averno. Electronic files (in .mp3 format) of this never-before-performed work were created (presumably with this hardware and software). The files were made available to members of The Washington Chorus from a server connected to the internet. To familiarize ourselves with Averno, many chorus members downloaded these files with our computers and played them back with some sort of electronic gizmo. And in rehearsal, Julian relied on a tablet computer with a metronome app.

But our tools cannot replace or even fully replicate what singers convey. Julian reminds the Chorus of this truth when in rehearsal he sometimes instructs us not to create the merely precise but cold sound he calls -- wait for it -- "digital." In the talkback session after our April 3 concert, Elena made a similar point when asked whether, for Averno, the Chorus had generated the sound she intended. She acknowledged that her computer’s rendition of Averno influenced what she expected (and said that the Chorus had performed the work with a high degree of accuracy). But then she said that what the Chorus delivered so far transcended computer-generated sound that if forced to choose, she'd have to throw her computer away.

By this I understood her to mean that the human elements in any musical performance are irreplaceable. Random bleeps from a machine cannot match what musicians deliver to people. And tools, however sophisticated, may process, but cannot truly grasp, what humans perform. Rather, sentient beings convey meaning to the similarly conscious. Singers’ ability to do so is not unique (for example, a bugler conveys meaning to troops when he plays reveille or taps). But singers have greater capacity for conveying meaning with more specificity to a broader audience than musicians relying solely on tools to generate sound. The reason is simple: uniquely, singers use words. In this 50^th year of our organization devoted above all to the human voice, that reality provides cause to reflect – and to celebrate.

What electronic tools do you use in your music experiences?

Photo credit: Patrick Carlson