Music & Your Computer

(Personally, I do most of my listening either in the car, or at my computer).

I look at it with the typical cliched view that all media has been colliding into a weird grey area called "entertainment". Listening, reading, writing, watching all have been smashed together into one single experience. It is just another way to consume information. Complaining about digital audio is like complaining about sequencers not making real music and prerecorded audio being a sin because it is not live. Times change and the way we listen does as well. sit back and enjoy the ride.

I've mostly swapped over to MP3 now, because I have 20 gigs of tunes with me at all times in a device that fits into my coat pocket, and I don't have to worry that the song I want to listen to won't be on the drive quite so often. The big drawback now is, because I don't have the CD sitting there to remind me to play it, I often buy an album and then barely listen to it because I forget about it, especially if it's further down the library alphabetically speaking. (It makes me wonder if people who have jukebox-style MP3 players, when they're compiling their year-end lists, end up skewing more heavily to the beginning of the alphabet because they couldn't be arsed to scroll down to the Ps or Vs throughout most of the year.)

To me, it is only a problem because the interface is not as elegant or as ergonomic as it could/should be. My ideal environment would be some kind of pod that you could climb into that is acoustically separated from the outside environment. You would be able to lay down in it, it would have a large flat panel lcd screen for video, surround sound, and the user interface would be intuitive and arranged for maximum comfort. All media would be streamed in from an external server, or one located in your home. And all media would be about three clicks away.

Something like that will get here sometime. Digital audio is like a successful version of Quadraphonic stereos from the 70's. The idea is there and it works, it just is not as elegant as it should be. Still, it is a hell of a lot better than special ordering some obscure import because you heard it was cool, waiting for it to arrive, paying though the nose for it, and getting it home only to discover it is bullshit.

I like soulseek because I can check out music for no other reason than because I am curious about it. When I was younger and the internet and mp3's were non-existant, I missed out on a lot of music that I would have loved simply because I could not afford to take a lot of risks on records I had never heard. If I had to choose, I would never go back to the old way.

This presupposes that all digital audio is in quad, which is hardly the case.

I agree that this is happening, Mike, & I can accept it, but isn't is possible that something could is lost in the process?

One reason I like my vinyl records so much is that I only get to listen to them during optimal conditions -- when I'm sitting on my couch in my living room. I love the portability of CDs and all that shit -- I'm not decrying the new technology. I'm just saying that for me, personally, I don't have many musical epiphanies when I'm sitting in front of my computer surfing the web. (My computer is in a small office down the hall from my stereo which isn't terribly comfortable, so maybe that's part of the problem.)

One thing that bothers me a lot (and I must be the only one, because I don't hear anyone else complaining) is that making a mix CD-R is so much less fun than making a mixtape. Shuffling around files on my computer and burning tracks I can't even listen to during the process is not the same as sitting on the floor of my living room with a stack of records. I'm just bringing this up as an example of technology making something more convenient etc. but losing something else. I think this happens a lot, these trade-offs, but it's hard to bring up w/ out everyong thinking you're a nostalgic techno-phobe (which I ain't).

And I agree Mike that some of the proglem is the interface -- I just don't think the computer/monitor thing is cozy.

Interesting take on it. For me, it's a question of convenience. I'm rarely home and sadly don't often have the opportunity to flop out and only listen to music. Really the only opportunity I get to do that these days is when I'm in the car or travelling which makes my iPod even more essential than a phone.

(My computer is in a small office down the hall from my stereo which isn't terribly comfortable, so maybe that's part of the problem.)

That certainly would be an issue. I have everything on my laptop, so I just connect it to my stereo and turn the backlighting off so I'm not obliged to actually use the computer - it just becomes another stereo component.

This is true, but remember, because it's a lot easier to make mixtapes now, many more of them get made -- therefore, I am sending out music which might never have been heard by folks other than myself and my small circle of friends to people everywhere (via CDRs or even file-sharing programs).

Of course, there is always a tradeoff involved. Personally, I think the ultimate thing lost in all of this is not the musical experience, but the *time*. Computers and digital music make it very easy to obtain and listen to music quickly, but I argue it is out of necessity -- there is more music available now than ever before, and if people are sitting on plane with a laptop, or surfing the web at home while simultaneously listening to music, it may be because there aren't enough hours in the day to do both to the extent they want.

I think media saturation, which is part of what I'm getting out of the previous "one single experience", is one by-product of a loss of time, because in many cases, I really am forced to multi-task if I want to hear everything I'm interested in. Epiphanies, like the one you talk about, are probably rarer per hour of music I listen to now than they used to be -- but I'm not sure they're actually rarer in general.

I'm kind of disorganized at the moment, otherwise I'd try to say something else. :/

Having so much access to music through my PC does tend to encourage me to spend more time in front of it, so that's kind of a negative thing. I wouldn't say it really damages my relationship to music itself though. It seems to me I used to (pre-PC) often go through things (recordings) pretty quickly, make snap judgments a lot of the time, move on to something new (when I had the money to buy it), in addition to getting to know the same recording through repeated listens.

But yes, I do spend too much time in front of a PC, but that's feeling increasingly inevitable, like some science fiction species that evolves to be nothing but brains in some kind of vat of liquid.