The Role of Computers in Prog

Do you feel that there is a loss of artistic integrity when the musicianship is "assisted" by computers?

Do you look down upon artists who create and manipulate their music on the computer screen?

Does a prog artist have to be able to perform his/her music live for you to be able to respect him/her? That is, do you feel disappointed when a live performance has some tracks computer generated instead of all coming from live performing musicians?

Do you think a Mozart and Beethoven or Debussy and Mahler or Coltrane and Hendrix would have gravitated to computerized composition, or computerized recording techiniques? 

A lot of very loaded questions but with the increasing prevalence of computer-enhanced music being generated today, I'm just searching for the insights and opinions of other music lovers with regards to this phenomenon. Obviously computers are here to stay, and computers have allowed a access to publication of one's musical ideas to a far larger segment of the population, but, overall, in your opinion, is this a good thing? Is the quality keeping up with the quantity? Is the conveyance of emotion as impactful as the studio recordings of the 60s and 70s? Is the spirit in music today as alluring and engaging as that of the "classic" period of prog?

  

well said man!

The significant change that computers have enabled in music is not in the professional studio, that's not to say they haven't affected a considerable change in a professional studio because they have, but where they have produced the most profound change is in the amateur studio. Here I am not just talking of the "bedroom musician" who creates music solely on PC or produces backing tracks to their guitar or keyboard accompaniment, but also the aspiring band who can now produce good quality demo recordings without using expensive professional studios.

Back in the day the purpose of a demo was to send to record labels in the hope of getting a recording contract. Bands would either record live, hire a professional studio, or record something themselves using a cassette-based home studio such as the Tascam Portastudio 414 or 424. 

(recorded in 1999 using a Portastudio 424) 

With the advent of cheap digital home recording everything went up several notches. With the Portastudio 788 TASCAM produced the first 8-track 24-bit digital recorder (Digital Audio Workstation) that could record 8 tracks directly to hard disc which could then be used by the amateur producer to record their band without using a professional studio. It could also interface to a PC optically so these tracks could be transferred to PC based software DAW, now the number of tracks available was essentially unlimited, as was the amount of post-processing that could be applied. Now the home-producer could produce a demo that was almost comparable to a professionally produced demo - generally it still required some professional mastering to make it into a saleable item but it was a game-changer.

This next track was recorded in 2005 using a 788 and initially mixed on a PC using very inexpensive software. The drum track was recorded in a professional studio (to give us a solid backing track to record to), but all the remaining instruments and vocals were recorded on the 788 in a disused cow shed and various band-member's homes. If I recall correctly this particular track is composed of 28 individually recorded tracks including 8 for Becki's vocals alone, something that was inconceivable in a home studio five years earlier. From this a demo was produced that secured the band a recording contract, the quality of the demo tracks (even the vocals that were recorded using a Sure SM58) were deemed to be good enough to release after remixing and mastering in a professional studio:

(personally I don't care for the drum sound on this version, my original drum mix had a more rounded, 70s-prog feel to it, that wasn't crisp enough for the drummer so it was changed. Later someone asked why we'd used a drum machine when we had such a good drummer... )

Now some 10 years later bands can achieve near-professional quality without the expense of using a professional studio, demos are no longer copy-of-a-copy-of-a-copy cassettes that are passed around at gigs, they are now good enough to be sold alongside 'proper' studio-albums to the extent that the term demo has all but disappeared, along with the notion of being an unsigned band. This can only ever be seen as "a good thing".

Computers have liberated music and ripped-open the world of music recording. While we should never ignore all the bad things that producers can do with computers, we should really concentrate on all the good they are capable of. I get tired of all the comments about manipulation and auto-tune, a computer is just a tool for doing a task, it is not what it can do that is important, but what you can do with it. I am proud of what we achieved using a computer and a cheap DAW, just as I am proud of all the "bedroom" music I have made using computers.

Prog On Dudes.