CONVERGENCE - THE END OF MUSIC
By Roger Born
And now the purple dusk of twilight time
Steals across the meadows of my heart
High up in the sky the little stars climb
Always reminding me that we're apart
You wander down the lane and far away
Leaving me a song that will not die
Love is now the stardust of yesterday
The music of the years gone by
THE HISTORY OF MUSIC AND ITS MEDIA
Between the Renaissance of the 1500s and up until the late 1800s, the performance of orchestrated and chamber music required an afternoon to hear it completely in all its complexity. Most pieces written then were merely exercises in style and formula. Notes were played because they could be. IOW, they were boring-to-tears. Among all the drek were a few shining stars of transcendent music that survive today. -Much like the music of any age, in fact.
Before Records, in the late 1800s, sheet music of popular songs was available for playing on the piano. Most affluent homes had at least an upright piano. People made their own media, using the sheet music of the popular tunes of that day, which were mostly Broadway Hits. Even the Player Piano played the popular, instantly recognizable tunes of its day. Those songs lasted less than half an hour, following complete scripts of stage plays. If you were too poor to own a piano, there was always Vaudeville.
Then came the Record Player. This caused a temporary division of the listening population, which was divided between the wealthy and the rest of us.
In 1905, if you were rich, the Classics on 78 RPM records is what you listened to. When you were not at the Opera or the Symphony, that is. This music was called popular music, being the ONLY music available in that media. There were less than a hundred titles available then, and the those players cost more than a new Ford Model T. This early music on the Victrola lasted an average of seventeen minutes, or the length of time for a 78 RPM record to play. Why Classical music? Only the big Metropolitan Orchestras had the clout and bucks to get recorded. Edison invented this media, but others soon owned it.
I have a friend down the street who has a 1929 RCA electric motor driven 78 RPM Record Console, with a top that is held open with gas filled struts. All his surviving 78s are Classics, except two, which are black Jazz. This player cost more than a Rolls Royce when it was new. The sound is horrendous, but the media is very luxurious and cool to look at and to touch.
For the rest of us, there were short music pieces in the 1920s that lasted about six or seven minutes. These were played by hopping bands and crooners, who made such memorable hits as "Flapper Girl," and "Coo Coo Ca Choo." Most of these never made it to the 78 format because ordinary people did not have access to 78s. However, the Movies were getting popular at that time, and this popular music was recorded there. Radio was getting even bigger, and the new music flooded the airwaves. Interestingly, there were few commercials in that day. It was RCA, who was so busy buying out all competitors, who paid for much of the air time and programming on the radio back then. The new radio was an invention which almost anyone could afford, again thanks to RCA.
Then the music converged again. When the Big Band era came along in the Thirties and Forties, that music lasted an average of twelve minutes per piece. "Moonlight Serenade," and "Begin the Beguine." are examples. This music had elements of the Classics and popular music. It was much more technically sophisticated and superior to all the music that came before. Music of that generation has never been matched in complexity, in style, or in beauty, IMHO. This was the zenith of the music of Man. (Debate, anyone?)
Dorsey and Goodman were the kings then. There were also Jazz performers coming into their own at this time, developing the modern style of Jazz out of New Orleans Blues and Black Soul music. Interestingly, their music followed the same time format of the popular music. The new record format at the end of this era was the Long Playing Record, the 33s, which could contain a selection of six or seven complete songs of a about a dozen minutes each. Movie tunes also fit this format, having been cut to match the supposed attention span of the movie audiences of that day.
Enter the Fifties. First came the advent of the little 45 RPM record, with a big hole in the middle (the first purposely designed incompatible format), containing a single song per side, and incidentally causing the sale of hundreds of thousands of those cheap RCA record players which could only play that format. This record player was another RCA invention, bought or stolen from some audio engineers, which had the innovative three tube circuit.
Second came the new and cheap transistor radios, and new radio stations which only played the new Rock in its new format. All the songs were under three minutes. More could be packed into an hour on the radio this way, and so could more of the brand new commercials, which had just been introduced. With the Commercials, these new radio stations were independent from the big Affiliates, such as NBC and ABC. (Did RCA have its hand in the new record companies that were born out of this format?)
THE ADVENT OF POP
Who put the bomp
In the bomp bah bomp bah bomp?
Who put the ram
In the rama lama ding dong?
Who put the bop
In the bop shoo bop shoo bop?
Who put the dip
In the dip da dip da dip?
Who was that man?
I'd like to shake his hand
He made my baby
Fall in love with me
It was in the Fifties that music was first referred to as POP.
POP is the first of its kind as a media, to define us as a culture because it was made to fit in the two and a half minute time frame of the 45 RPM record format, developed by RCA.
The music, of course, were the popular songs of a new teenage generation called the Baby Boomers, who embraced this new media completely. There was also a new kind of music on the charts called ROCK AND ROLL. Rock dominated the POP music charts.
Overnight new performers became idols, usually on the strength of a couple of hit tunes. There were still instrumentals and ballads, but Rock was it. New record companies were formed by a few individuals, producing the country's first instant millionairs.
Magazines sprang up to feed the need of the teenagers. Television also catered to them, as well as Madison Avenue, the Mecca of Commercialism. These all discovered that teens had money to spend, and buying power. So went the milieu.
There were, I am sure, other forms of music that were desirable and that could have been popular. But few ever heard from them. It was the choice of a few men in key places that determined what was to be popular, and therefore a commercial success. The rest, both good and bad was lost to history.
THE MODERN AGE OF MAN
To every thing, turn, turn, turn
There is a season, turn, turn, turn
And a time to every purpose under heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
Soon everything was following this 2 1/2 minute format, from shorter newspaper articles to the songs sung in church, (which ruined forever the single verse forty minute format of ecstatic worship). Television commercials and even news stories soon followed this new time format by fitting their media to it. Today, there is not much in our culture that is not affected by this time frame, from fast food, to the stop at a 7-11, to the average phone call.
This is where POP came from, and it changed more than the music or the media of a generation. It changed how we perceive time, and it changed the attention span of every generation that followed the Boomers.
If you want to reach the majority of a culture today, you have to make your message short. Of course there are sub cultures such as our little group who like longer things to fill their time, but by and large, our culture will not hear you if you can't keep the delivery of your message to under two minutes or less!
THE COST OF THE MEDIA
If you choose to you can live your life alone
Some people choose the city
Some others choose the good old family home
I like living easy without family ties
Till the whippoorwill of freedom zapped me
Right between the eyes
Let's shift gears here a moment. The cost of the media is another interesting thing, which has steadily dropped in price from something only the very rich could own, down to where it is today, which is next to nothing on the Web.
I believe this is a byproduct of technology, because everything that has to do with technology has followed this pattern.
Remember the very first electronic calculators with their red LED displays? How about the first digital watches? They used to cost hundreds of dollars. You can buy the same thing today at the check out line for a dollar or less.
The same is true of the first radios and record players. Every other form of media took the same path. CD players, computers, anything that is mass produced. Even the automobile, regardless of the rise in price, still costs about 20% of a working persons income.
This of course means that your new Mac will eventually only cost $1.98! (That is Apple's cost. What they charge YOU will be a different matter.)
There is another cost to the media of music we haven't mentioned in all this, which is the cost of a SONG to an individual. Most amazing is the fact that this cost per song has not changed over the generations. From the cost of attending a symphony to buying sheet music, to purchasing a 45 down at the music store - it all is about the same amount of pocket change it has always been, based on your income.
However, the cost of a song today has changed in two respects. Either it is free or it is outrageous! With all the music on the Web that is available for easy downloading, the cost of music is free. At the same time, the cost of buying commercial CDs have skyrocketed. Never before has the music itself cost so much to own. No wonder record companies and recording artists are upset with all the free music on the Web! It IS their monopoly, after all.
Like you, I wonder where this new trend will lead us all. It will have repercussions to everyone on the Web. That is about the only fact we can be sure of. Will we still have freedom on the web a decade from now? Will music forever be held hostage to the Syndicate of the record companies? Will there be a revolution over this? Interesting times you and I live in today!
WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE
So let it out and let it in
hey Jude begin your waiting
for someone to perform with
And dont you know that its just you
hey jude you'll do
The movement you need is on your shoulders
Da da da da da da da da da
These last 500 years have been a wild ride in the development of music, but the POP tunes of the Fifties, among many other things, changed our perception of time forever. Is this the fault of RCA who supplied the form factor? I believe so. Or can we say it was RCA only following the dictates of the Post War Era culture of the Baby Boomers? Which defined which? You decide.
RCA was the Microsoft of its day, having stolen the technology of radio transmission from one inventor, and the technology of building cheap radios and record players from two others. The company was also ruthless in driving out all other competition. When the dust cleared, it was the only company around with its hands in every part of the media of broadcasting. It was run in its heyday by General Sarnoff. This guy wore an Military General's uniform to work, as a reminder of his war time service, and had to be saluted by everyone. Read RCA's history sometime. This is great stuff!
The happy thing about RCA's history and its parallels to Microsoft is that we can all have the hope that one day Microsoft will also be a marginalized company owned by the French.
THE FINAL TREND IS CHAOS
If the world should stop revolving
Slowly spinning down to die
I'd spend the end with you
And when the world was through
Then one - by one - the stars - would all go out
And you - and I - would simply fly away
You probably have noticed that I have not covered the newest music. There is a reason. It does not follow the previous trend in the shorter and shorter length of time of the music.
This is great news. Otherwise, all our hit songs today would only last fifteen seconds!
Why did the trend stop? The length of the music now is all over the place, From "In-a-god-a-veda" and "Stairway to Heaven," to "Color my world" and "If."
I believe music has changed for two reasons.
One, our American culture has exploded. We were pretty insular for a long time. Even ethnic influences in this country had little direct impact on our music. Elvis, for instance, might have brought some great elements of Black Jazz into our musical culture, but those black innovators could not have played it in the media of that day. Our culture needed changing, and we got that needed change beginning in the Sixties.
It is still changing, isn't it? Please notice that the Web has only accelerated this process.
Therefore, any person's music today can come from any cultural background, and even be a complex combination of many musical histories and traditions. Music is converging too, from Country/Rock to Jazz/Rap. This convergence will only continue, fueled of course by the Web.
Two. The reason music has no longer any particular length, is that the Music Industry itself is driving this. They are not looking for diversity, however. They are looking for the "Next Big Thing." That search is becoming more and more desperate.
Why? They are running out of music.
THE END OF MUSIC
And people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they'd made
And the sand flashed it's warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said,
`the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls,
and tenement halls
And whisper in the sounds of silence'
The time, the style, and the cultural background of music does not matter anymore. Convergence no longer matters. We are reaching a Critical Mass within all of music everywhere. Just too many people in the world who are living, making music, and getting connected on the Web. (In fact all other Trends are beginning to converge in the same fashion such as Art, Literature, Economics, Technology, Ideologies, Cultures, etc.)
Someone once wrote that when all the notes are played in all their possible styles and combinations, whatever comes after is no longer new. Perhaps this is why your music is beginning to sound all the same.
Imagine not being able to write a lyric or the words to a song without violating someones copyrighted piece! What will happen when there are no new sounds, or melodies, or styles to play?
Is this why much of the music today is so degrading? Artists, and Publishers of music are growing aware of this phenomenon. The continually are searching far and wide for something new, but they are finding less and less that is fresh, interesting or musical. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel. The Web will only accelerate this process.
To the masses of people who are never without a background score playing, there already is no music left. It has all been played. In fact, it has been played and played over and over ad nauseam.
People runnin' everywhere
Don't know the way to go
Don't know where I am
Can't see past the next step
Don't have to think past the last mile
Have no time to look around
Just run around, run around and think why
Does anybody really know what time it is
Does anybody really care
If so I can't imagine why
We've all got time enough to cry.
No one wants to hear it anymore. People more and more are seeking solitude. When they go somewhere, their music does not follow. (Yeah, it does follow them, because it is in everything around us, from the elevator to the street to the office to the restaurant. Good luck getting away from it all. Bring ear plugs.
We are like the Emperor Mozart performed his music for. Mazart's music was sublime, and perfect. Yet to ear of the busy and distracted Emperor, there were "too many notes!"
So you see, it won't be Napster that ends the music of the world, as some people fear. Nor will it be the paranoid Record Industry. This little turf war is just a blip on the surface of history. When it is over, it will not matter who won or lost. Which format survives will not matter. In a few decades there will be no more new music.
Wow! What will happen to the world when there is no more new music to be played?
Why, the world will end, of course. The world as we know it will quickly and violently crumble, a very long dark ages will ensue, new civilizations will rise and technology will advance, and then it will happen all over again!
- or not.
It is all up to you. Are you going to be the one who finds a new path to a shining future for all of us? Will there be anything new to find? Read on.
IT IS ALL ABOUT CONVERGENCE
Let's bring it all together now.
It is all about convergence. I am simply stating the facts. Music, like anything else in life, is a very large but finite thing. The shortening of the length of the music, the cost of the media, and the cost of a song are all parts of an historical trend, a convergence.
Once all of its perameters have been filled, they are filled. If you know something about statistics, this is not a bell curve we are seeing here, but rather a climbing curve, where it climbs gradually for a long time, and then suddenly goes straight up. We are living at the far right side of this curve just where it is beginning to climb vertically.
Never before has any culture had so much music to choose from. Now every culture is being crowded out with its own music and everyone else's. Our world shrinks, cultures clash, merge, cross over; each bringing its excess baggage of Music, Art, Literature, and everything else, with it.
Convergence has a lot to do with population. Previous centuries had their Da Vinci and Mozart. Problem is, half the people who ever lived are alive today. We now have hundreds of new Da Vincis and Mozarts among us, as well as many new Einsteins, Jeffersons, Picassos, Hemingways, etc. We are all being flooded with their excellent work in Art, in Music, in Literature, etc.
The Web only hastens this effect.
How many really good musical artists with all their music can you find at Napster and other music sites today? There are thousands. We do not have enough years in our lives to listen to them all. More of them are pouring in every day. Much of their work is very good, -innovative even. Yet how much of their music is the same? How many of their lyrics?
This is the convergence I am talking about. In essence we are drowning in the multitude of style, technique and form of the Music, the Art, and the Literature spiraling around us.
I did not set out to write a negative article, but I honestly left it open-ended because I do not have the answers. Others might read this and supply a number of solutions. I hope they do.
Convergence is scary, I know. But you don't want to water it down. Critical thought sometimes leads us down these paths. Once a resolving of the crisis occurs, there is release. Therfore, this is good news for us all.
It means that rather than only facing the end of Music, we are on the cusp of something completely new!
Convergence also implies that Music as we know it will be radically different somehow in the near future. It will begin a new curve. This is how mathematical convergence curves work. This is also how History works.
The same will hopefully be true for Art, Literature, Technology, Philosophy, Economics, and all else, for they are all on parallel curves and face the same convergencies, which are beginning in this generation to happen all around us.
Business people call this living in Chaos. They teach Chaos Management, and they have it wrong. We do not live in Chaos, What we live in is both definable and converging. Think about it. This means we will not only likely survive, we will witness a whole new world as it forms around us.
The death of Music means the rebirth of Music in some form or fashion we do not yet see. So it will go with the death of Art, of Literature, and anything else on the curve of convergence. Life goes on.
0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1
POINTS OF DEPARTURE
It seems we stood and talked like this before
We looked at each other in the same way then
But I can't remember where or when
Some things that happened for the first time
Seem to be happening again
I got the connection about the timing of the music by doing research on old media such as records and wax cylinders of popular music, so that I could compare it to today's media. It helped that much of that media, in all its forms, is what I grew up with. Studying that, I began to notice the trend.
Somehow this is all part of our Age of Technology. It may be that things like the time elements of music and media are an inevitable part of technology and scientific advancement, which are on their own convergence curves. From that perspective, I also noticed that almost everything else in our world is following a similar convergence curve. Others have seen this. If you have too, contact me. Let me know what you have discovered.
I place the concept of convergence in the same category as what happened with Einstein's Theory of Relativity in the 20th century. His Relativity did more than change Physics and Science. In the public perception of Relativity, his concept impacted every other facet of that age, from morality and ethics, to philosophy and Art. Relativity is the defining term of the whole of the Twentieth Century.
Therefore, it is important for us to recognize and be aware of the convergence of the important elements of our civilization in the 21st century. There is a reason things are like they are. convergence seems to be the one concept that helps to explain the way things are now, and where they are going tomorrow.
RESOURCES AND LINKS
I met a girl who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news;
but she just smiled and turned away.
I went down to the sacred store,
where I'd heard the music years before.
But the man there said the music wouldn't play.
And in the streets the children screamed;
the lovers cried, and the poets dreamed.
But not a word was spoken;
the church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most...
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost;
they caught the last train for the coast;
The day the music died.
When I mention some songs, it is because I have personally experienced that part of Music in my life. If this strikes a note of identity with you, it is because you also have experienced a similar part of Music. Music has become part of our culture and who we are. We allow it to define us. Music is such an intensely personal thing. Therefore, share the words to your songs with me too, for my own experience with the Music is limited.
The next question we ask should be: What is the next generation of music going to be, and where will it come from?
I have not talked about the hot news of today, about downloading music and copying music off the web. I am certain however, that the current copyright laws are being misunderstood and wrongly interpreted to protect those whom it was not wholly intended to protect.
For a great read on this subject, (in fact, the best there is) go here:
Courtney Love in Salon
theatlantic.com
abacus
maccave
I am not a big fan of new music. I ''matriculated' out of music after Simon and Garfunkle, Neil Diamond, Carly Simon, Bread, Billy Joel, Seals and Croft, Chicago, and all the artists of that generation. This would probably embarrass some of my friends if they found out. It is like the Music died for me with John Lennon.
Yeah, there is some new stuff I love, but that is because it fits the old music - Kenny G, Enya, Henryk Gorecki, Richard Burmer's "Across the View", and such - (maybe a little Kraftwerks). If you have some new stuff, that hasn't been heard before, let me know. If it is good, I will help you let others know.
And in the naked light I saw,
Ten thousand people maybe more
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share, No one dare, disturb the sounds of silence
Roger Born
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