For those who claim music is dying.....

Davesax1965 wrote: Music isn't dying. A lot of people claim it is, but a multi-instrumentalist CAN record an entire album nowdays, with relative ease. You can even co-operate over the internet. Someone on our first album was recording keyboard parts - I'm in the UK, he's in Finland.

No doubt this is great, but how do you capture the live feel and interplay between musicians that just happens when everyone is in the same room playing together?  Isn't that important?

Also, the idea of a band could be to have real experts at each position.  A player who can really expand on your idea and ad their own creative spin on it so the music takes on a new an exciting life that far transcends what just one person could do. 

Stevie Winwood did a lot of solo albums where he played all the instruments, but I keep listening to Blind Faith.  Stevie can play drums just fine, and guitar also, but he is not Ginger Baker or Eric Clapton either.

I guess it just depends upon what one is trying to do and achieve, or how high they set the bar. 

I love the interview with David Gilmore where he says "When we got to Dark Side, we decided to clean it up and really try to do something great".


Edited by Skullhead - December 18 2014 at 12:42

Music's not dying, it's just ended up hideously intertwined with business and is in a confused state where it's hard to differentiate the art from the commodity. In my more optimistic moods I think that in time it will separate out again and the mass-produced music will continue its trend into Spotification while people who live and breathe music for reasons other than acoustic wallpaper and fashion will begin to realise that they need to step outside the mainstream to find the stuff that really move them, and to value it and the artists who produce it.

I don't think we'll be seeing a return to the glory years where a musician with no eye on the commercial realities can make a good living any time soon, but we might at least re-enter a time when it's possible to find an audience and to go some way towards covering costs or maybe even funding the next album.


As for the multi-instrumentalist vs band thing: having recorded entirely solo for my current album and very much as a band with the previous one, and various versions of in between over the years, I'd say they all have merits and they produce a very different character of results. I'd hope that no matter happens to the music world, both remain possible if you're prepared to work at it.

Music is not dying.....it's progressing.

hahahaha!!!! Reading further post previous comments hahahaha!!! This makes me need to run now to the loo hahaha!!!! brb so funny!

jude111 wrote: I have a contrary view. Some of the best music being made today is made by producers rather than instrumentalists. All those years I spent learning to play the guitar... when what I should have been learning was how to use Apple computers  *sigh*

Ha! Controlling the computer is the easy bit ;) It's harnessing the muse and the other musicians that present the real challenge!

But joking aside, I think there's a lot of truth in the idea that a lot of great music is produced by single people with an idea that they want to get across rather than bands who write something together and then rock up to a studio and try to get someone else to capture that on a recording.

I'd rest easy on the years playing the guitar though. I don't think there is a better way to learn about how to produce music than by playing instruments.

SteveG wrote: Tapfret wrote: Kati wrote: Unfortunately rap artists are all united they will prosper no doubt while prog musicians have to deal with fellow snobs who have an urge critique   Why can't the prog community get along like the hip hop community? Its so sad to think about all the blood feuds that have resulted in prog artists getting gunned down in the street. Next sub genre: Gangsta Prog.

Yes, finally after three pages ,we get down to it:   the LISTENERS are dying.
.......
Blame it  on the audience of today. On Junior.

Junior of today is not Junior of the 60s. Today's junior is more stressed. His future is much darker than that of the children of the 60s. He is harder, scoffs at the gentle. The vatborn; the cockroach evolves to the point that it can even consume poison. 
He will grow up to live in his parent's basement. No purchasing a home for him.
The gentle family-run megabusinesses  are gone. The coldhearted corporate conglomerate just might let Junior in at some point ,but it will casually spit him out ,the time comes.
There is no permanence in this Junior's world. He will move from (non-insured) temp position to another. He is a low gypsy.(Possessions -tangibility -  kept at minimum to facilitate moving.)

There is no devotion towards Junior, so, in bitter return he gives society no devotion. Its an ouroborous perpetually feeding on its own tail.

In the same way, Junior of today has no reserves of devotion for music: gone is the idolizing of musicians, the fandom. He has moved his interests elsewhere - maybe to things which can make his resume look good. Music no longer measures-up to this new Junior. It is not as tangible as 70s kids SAVOURING slowly each new release; going to record stores chatfests and breaking down the recent lp release track by track.
This devotion is all meaningless to milk-brained, wet-behind-the-ears Junior. If he LOWERS himself at all to post on a music forum., its digs or one-liners.

Do you digest and focus proper when your fed Specific and at normal rate?...or when your flooded with nourishment?
The internet has devalued music.

Music access coming at Junior from all sides - its all too much. Junior flails his arms in anger. How can he focus? Much better/easier to just turn away completely ; to move on to something else altogether... something creamcheese and EASY : the "Lost" series on TV, idolizing politicians...Oprah...

To accomodate the higher milk-percent of this new Junior's brain, the music is further dumbed-down in dying attempt to catch his ever-faltering attention.
No message in the lyrics and God forbid any of that old folky-fogey protest/social concern lyric bollox!

In ever-swirling, ever-speeding-up vortex, the music becomes more and more dumbed-down ritual. The drum beat becomes more and more of the same as we progress from year to year. Soon we shall not even detect a pulse.The vibrations of interest will all converge, coalese  to a single Walmart wavelength same from mall to mall. It will be one long, numbing sleep-drone.


The music isnt dying.
Its the audience that is at fault.



Edited by jacksiedanny - February 11 2015 at 16:56

That was ... amusing.

Just a few random thoughts -