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by gogo B go Nia
from pata go NiaI recently asked techno DJ's and performing artists (PA's) to tell me their feelings about technology and performance. What they use, why, when and how. With techno music, the real members of the band are the samplers, synthesizers and drum machines (think of them posing as robots), and yet there is no artistic integrity lost. The key is what the artist does with the technology, thus it does not matter whether their music is live or pre-recorded. Anything that affects the audience is legitimate. If a DJ or PA entertains me and captures my attention, he has fulfilled his mandate.
Here's what they had to say:
Marshall Mcluhan said that the avant garde artist reflects the true environment in their art. Today the world is the content of the global telecommunication system of satellites and digital link-ups. The sound artist or musician brings us back to earth by reflecting this holistic electric age or information environment with sound, an experience of a 360-degree field of vibrations. Dancers, by creating their own personal relationship to sound, are engaged in a process of self-actualization, like some kind of anarchistic ritual dance. The tribalization that McLuhan saw produced by the generation gap (between book- formed arents and tv-formed kids) is a rebirth into holistic awareness of the pre-literate community. The new DJ is the return of the village shaman, who's trance rhythms signal the true groove.
With trance, the rush is paramount to a successful set of music. While a rush can be achieved by "live" musicians, music made through technology does it cleaner and more effectively and in fact is made for that very purpose. As I DJ I can feel the rush from the dancefloor. When the technology has the desired effect and the whole room rushes, it juices me to no end. A perfect set of music should sound like one long song, achieving peaks and valleys that create a series of emotions accentuated by the rush. It's more like a symphony than rock and roll-perhaps it's the effect of technology and using turntables to reproduce that technology and create something entirely new through mixing techniques.
I search for thee perfect frequency combination. Low end to shake the shit, highs to get the message across and a variety of mids for that personal touch. But my box only got bass and treble. Have no fear, you still control the shake and rattle of your tunes. Knobs/faders droppin faves. Are you really able to tweak and twist when you just got faders to play with? Dropping the bass, don't matter what you got it still disappears. "Where'd my bass go?" is interesting facial expression on some peoples faces. The people gotta have their bass.
The blessings technology has endowed upon the music that I love are too numerous to mention. Since the dawn of technology we have applied our new ideas to music, perhaps because technology is about communication, and music is one of our most primal forms of this. While our rapidly advancing systems constantly redefine the sounds and envelopes which fill music, it all still comes down to communication -- with yourself and those around you. Technology has allowed us to duplicate, synthesize, sequence and codify, it is the musicians responsibility to affect their own communication through whatever sounds they choose to manipulate. It is this juxtaposition between the immaculate and the improvised which gives texture and love to music.
Technology enables me to produce sounds and textures without any predetermined limits. I see it as a powerful tool to enhance your creativity, not a crutch to enhance your lack of creativity. Sometimes the technology can get a bit overwhelming, especially in live performance, but if you take the time to work with it and grow with it, you learn to respect it as if it were a part of you.
Technology may relieve us of the need to master an instrument, but in return we must learn to master the technology. When machines take the role of the performer the focus should then fall on the artist's ability to create something worth the duration of time in which the music exists.
DJs have always been at the leading edge of audio technology. As we head into the mid-1990s, the DJ is set to be at the forefront of the introduction of mass multimedia tools (both hardware and software). Already the innovative DJ of today is manipulating analog and digital prerecorded audio and video. The use of MIDI samplers and sound sources along with sequencing software is now also wide spread. Soon CD-ROM visuals will make their way into the club. As for the future? How long can it be before we see real-time Internet links with clubs around the world, DJs interacting with each other?
The thing about techno music is that it has no boundaries, there are literally thousands of sounds to choose from. By combining these sounds with sequencing computers, the doorway of possibilities is completely blown off it's hinges.
Technology is dangerous, it allows me to greatly expand and even clone my madness!
The latest sampling synthesizers give you the ability to take a sound from any source, change it, modulate it, warp it, add to it and come up with something nobody has heard before let alone dreamed of! Now how is this NOT creative?"
Music progresses with technology. Techno music incorporates as many new sounds as possible with each new technological advancement. The survival of techno music is dependent on technological progression. The problem with North America is that the music industry in general doesn't embrace new forms of music created largely by technology, [so] lack of exposure is caused by the inability of the music industry to accept the notion that music incorporating new forms of technology is the future. Instead, the industry feeds the masses with reguritated, prehistoric music.
Technology ...is just the means in which you manipulate the sound environment. In the age of techno, in the age of vocal-less and lyric-less music, technology is a universal language where people communicate through tonality rather than through language. The most profound way to look at mass-communication is in non-communication through technology by communicating in tones and frequencies.
For a technologically based artist or band, the invention of the DAT (or digital audio tape) was a major step in taking the art of bedroom circuitry or studio boffinhood to the great open spaces of the stage or at least a corner of a dimly lit warehouse. Apart from the fact that the DAT has an extremely high quality sound it also holds the claim of being one of the safest and cheapest forms of taking electronic music to a live setting. The use of the DAT for a live performance has really taken a beating over the past few years, most often by journalists (who generally know nothing about electronic music) or by some techno acts who claim they would never use DAT'S but just end up hiding them better than most. The next tme you hear some whining little techno twerp. or self righteous pseudo journalist slagging someone off over the use of another form of technology because he or she is able to afford better, or from plain ignorance to the process: use your own judgment to decide whether you enjoyed the show oblivious to the difference between a sequencer or a DAT.
The DJ is a live performer -- the audience is often watching them -- and the more interesting DJs realize this. Regardless of the "state of the art" sound and lighting, a party still flies or fails on "vibe", and the more advanced the technology, the greater the necessity of the DJ to push the buttons of the audience as well as the ones on the sound equipment.
Too many people think that computers and live musicians are mutually exclusive. Our music isn't an exploration of a musical genre such as house or hip hop so much as an experiment in how an arrangement can provide a basis for the players to push and pull the groove along. The live players learn how to improvise with rhythmic exact precision and myself and the soundman dub the rest.
In the end, all a DJ really does is post-produce a sound track for the evening/party/event. Remember though, it is live, with the DJ's human ability added to create energy and response, much like a live band. It is more than just a " job." What energy/skill/feelings you put into it, the crowd receives.
They is just machines, nothing magical about 'em. The key is to make the machine do what you see/hear in I mind, that's the magic.
PA Auracle Arthur Oskan
Some people think that technology combined with music narrows the music. Technology is another method to add a different face to the music. We're always changing in one way or another, why not use technology to adjust the way we compose music?
DJ's take what they think is the best music, order it, and put it together. The DJ is conducting the crowd with mixes, blends, tricks, fadeouts/ins, cutting in, backspins,and teasing the crowd.
The techno DJ is very much a performer, but not in the sense that a clown or an acrobat is a performer. I don't paint my face, put on a costume, or dance around the turntables. I leave that up to the ravers! If we think of a performer in the broadest sense, I would say the word refers to someone who does something in front of people that evokes an aesthetic response from them. The response can be cognitive, affective, or, as the DJ hopes, kinetic. A truly talented DJ evokes a response on all three levels. Another essential element of performance is the possibility of making a mistake, of something going wrong. That's part of the thrill of watching a performance -- the acrobat may fall off the highwire. As one DJ put it, "Give me two records and I'll make you a universe."
In a world where information and technology go hand-in-hand, the power of the DJ is in his or her ability to edit. This is achieved through merging different elements and forms of music into a structure that creates an alternative sonic reality. The DJ /artist is like a preacher, drawing the congregation into this new reality. The DJ takes a mundane piece of technology (the turntable) to a new level.
As a CD-only Jockey I bring the dance floor as close to the virtual-studio as possible. Playing music from a digital format means that the listener enjoys the closest possible experience to actually being in the studio at the instant when the original artist first realizes his vision -- a very special moment indeed. Then I take them one step farther. When I cut, paste, and manipulate this pure sound on pro CD players, I create my own studio environment. Maintaining everything in the digital realm until playback thus makes for a unique and complex metaphysical listening condition.
Someone once asked me if I felt like a pilot when I DJ and if everyone dancing [felt like] my passengers. "No," I said, "everybody dancing should be a pilot. I want to be the weather."
I don't know what to say about technology, it's been doing most of the talking.
It's all a matter of style... turntable/analogue DJ's use tactile hand to eye motor co-ordination. CD or digital DJ's base the performance on aesthetic computer animation juxtaposed with the music [to] create "eye-candy." This deflects the ego of the DJ and frees his mind to focus on arithmetic calculations of time and space, hence creating the ambience. Inspiration is a legitimate form of self expression, and taste is subjective conjecture!
The sweet seduction of technology. It allures and excites both performer and audience with it's gleaming finish and hypnotic suggestion. Mmmm ...technology tastes good, try some today! The performer feels satisfaction in exerting control over the machine, the audience is spellbound by its effects. Once upon a time, when musicians played instruments and painters used a brush and canvas, artists had a direct, physical, and corporeal relationship with the instruments of their art. Now the artist strokes the machine and the machine renders the art.
Technology is the new instrument. As intoxicating and fun as technology is, it should be remembered that it is a religion of death. The value-systems built into a technological society treat the earth as a dead inanimate object instead of respecting it as the living being it is, upholding Science as the golden calf of worship at the expense of Life. With each step down the techno-path we are removed a little further from our humanity until ultimately we are made machine.
Gotta gogo download myself into a computer.
Free the biorhythms!! Keep the tribal in Cybertribe.