Ask Slashdot: Will Technology Disrupt the Song?

An anonymous reader writes: The music industry has gone through dramatic changes over the past thirty years. Virtually everything is different except the structure of the songs we listen to. Distribution methods have long influenced songwriting habits, from records to CDs to radio airplay. So will streaming services, through their business models, incentivize a change to song form itself? Many pop music sensations are already manufactured carefully by the studios, and the shift to digital is providing them with ever more data about what people like to listen to. And don't forget that technology is a now a central part of how such music is created, from auto-tune and electronic beats to the massive amount of processing that goes into getting the exact sound a studio wants.

Comments

Re:Already has

[MrKaos]

A lot of post 1990 stuff is very hard to do live, if not impossible.

Later we got auto-tune. That lets people do ridiculous things with their voices, because they can hit notes effortlessly and it becomes more like playing an instrument than actually singing. Add the loudness war in and you get lots of distortion and ringing added into the vocal mix. Real time effects are standard too.

Some great points - which '90's music do you mean?

I'm the lead vocalist in a band and we just recorded an album. I can't stand auto tunas personally and forbid them in the studio - even for back-up singers. Everyone has to be physically fit and my mates tell me I can sing high enough to sound like a chick - if I want to. We have used technology to drive the recording process pretty hard to achieve dynamic range in the recordings for precisely the reasons you cite. I'm so happy people are starting to realize it!!!

Technology has changed the way we record songs because all of the restrictions you had are gone. Our song structure is completely free and we do anything from jazz an pop to blistering heavy metal simply because we can. Having said that we push musically to the creative limits because the technology is stable enough to perform reliably enough for us to take those risks and reproduce it live on instruments.

I don't know if that means if the song structure has changed because of technology or if it means we can finally do what we want musically because the technology can keep up with the structures we want to make. I think it's natural for music to change and now that there is enough CPU time to support it our plans become more ambitious.