Music to your ears
Filed under: communication, entertainment, music, technology, thinking, trends
As I catch the bus to work I see more and more people with head phones in their ears. Often I think to myself, what are they listening to? If I asked do they say “mind your own business” or do they tell me. Me being the shy type I will never know. At times I ask myself, if someone was to ask me would judgment be made. Depending at the time of question I may be labeled as a “victim of the 80’s. OK that I am. Speaking of the 80’s, I remember during secondary school I would walk around with a boom box blasting music for all to hear, including public transport users. How annoying to all those around me. Thank goodness through the ages, technology has changed the way music is delivered and listened too, so this got me thinking, does music actually exist in the physical form?
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791), is one of the most recognized composers of classical and opera compositions. Most of his adult life was lived in Vienna and composed over 600 works. For the people of this era to enjoy his compositions they would travel far and wide to see the music being created.
The orchestra was the physical form of music.
Leaping forward just on 100 years technology was making it easier for the people to enjoy the creation of music by means of Phonograph Cylinders. Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as “records.” In their era of greatest popularity (c. 1888–1915), the cylinder was played on a mechanical phonograph. The competing disc-shaped gramophone record system triumphed in the market place to become the dominant commercial audio medium in the 1910s, however commercial mass production of phonograph cylinders ended in 1929. This allowed the music to come to the people in mass and through the-passing-of-time records became the physical form of music.
Albeit records were a great form of playing music however were bulky and not the most practical. This led the real to real/open real to be invented in the 1930’s. The real to real tape recording is a form of magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording medium is held on a reel, rather than being securely contained within a cassette.
The reel to reel was the physical form of music.
Late 1960’s The Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape was developed. Although originally designed for dictation, improvements led the Compact Cassette to supplant reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. In 1986, digital audio cassettes (DATs) were first introduced, and many believed that this technology would take the place of the traditional and ubiquitous analog audio cassette tape.
The cassette was the physical form of music.
By now you should be starting to see a pattern, music becoming smaller and less physical, from great Opera Halls in Europe to the humble cassette.
Now let’s go a little deeper.
In the 1980’s the Compact Disc (CD) an optical disc used to store digital data started to come to life. It was originally developed to store sound recordings exclusively, but later it also allowed the preservation of other types of data. Audio CDs have been commercially available since October 1982. In 2010, they remain the standard physical storage medium for audio. The CD and its extensions are very successful. This also incorporates the Digital Video Disc or DVD.
The CD was the physical form of music.
Come 1987 the MP3 was starting to be developed. MP3 stands for Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) Audio Layer III and is a standard for audio compression that makes any music file smaller with little or no loss of sound quality. In 1997, Advanced Multimedia Products invented the AMP MP3 Playback Engine, the first successful MP3 player. The History of MP3 I searched high and low for a picture of a MP3. Surprise, none to be found.
Now that we have gone through the 5 basic stages of how music has and is delivered to our ears, from great opera halls of Europe to now a simple click of a mouse and you receive the data.
Is music no longer physical and is the world a quieter place now that we listen to music through MP3 players?
It’s an interesting exercise looking at how music has been stored over the ages – though I disagree that in Mozart’s time that the Orchestra itself was the storage instrument (bad pun, I know).
Rather the written notation of musical notes on manuscript was the physical storage device for that era, and the Orchestra was the audio playback device which translated it for you. All the other formats you talk about were relatively portable, however you can’t easily take an Orchestra about – but a musical manuscript is a different story.
The quality of orchestra players is such (espcially in the time of the great composers) that taking a musical manuscript from city to city and putting in front of an orchestra was the equivilent of the other formats you’ve mentioned.
I do struggle with one part of the MP3 experience – and this is a gripe with iTunes in particular – and that is that once you’ve downloaded to one computer, you need to manage those files from there. Now unfortunately I had a PC blow up a year ago and lost a few albums that I had brought from iTunes – and alas I can’t get them back now. I realise that iTunes is trying to prevent breach of copyright, but all the same it keeps me determined to keep buying physical CDs.
Plus it’s very cool to have your CD collection on display at home, can’t do that with MP3s!
Totally agree with Gwynn re the orchestra and the written music, there is no way the orchestra would be the storage device, if that was the case that would mean that every human that heard music play could also be the storage medium, which of course is not true.
Though while I have sympathy for Gwynn re the loss of her iTunes MP3′s there is a lesson that should have been learnt, and that is that backups are important. Even iTunes advocate and recommend regular backups.
While CD’s are nice to display there will come a time when the hardware to play them disappears and/or is difficult to find, I am sure that is a long way off but it will happen and then those CD’s will be no more than just good looking drink coasters.
MP3′s however will be able to be converted if needed, move to and from different forms of data storage and will last a significantly longer time (if backups exist).
On another note of interest in that with this article being posted on a Telstra site, is to request for Telstra/Bigpond to enable the access with no metering of online radio stations, there are so many online stations that provide a multitude of different music options that it would be great to listen to them without using your data allowance. IiNet and Internode already do this very well so it is in no means difficult to do.
GW
Gwynn, thank-you for your thoughts. I find it interesting how you interperated this blog. You see it as how music is stored and with this I would agree sheet music was the storage in the Mozart period. I guess in that way music is still stored in this form. I was more aiming at how music was and is created for us to hear. Sheet music is the form of storage however its the orchestra that creates the actual sound, as was the record, tape and so on.
I think over time the way in which music has been created has allowed us to be able to enjoy music anywhere at anytime. It has been become easier to take music with us and add it to any given situation, on the train going to work, going for a run, taking your whole music collection to a friend’s house for a bbq etc… so I think it hasn’t become quieter but a little nosier.
Another thought, there is nothing sexy about a dj pushing buttons but spinning a vinyl record..now that can be pretty cool and sexy.
there is also mini disc which although was sony proprietary was one of my fav because unlike cd you could jog with it and it wouldn’t skip. this was of course before mpg players and before the ipod.Still prefer a cd stacker in the car.
I think the biggest change is that music has stopped being a social thing! It has become ‘personal content’ instead of a powerful shared experience. I hear stories about how back in the days of vinyl, you’d invite friends over to listen to a new album together. What percentage of the time you spend listening to music nowadays is shared? Why will a group of people happily set aside two hours to watch and appreciate a movie, but never imagine treating an album the same way? Can you imagine a future where movies are almost solely watched alone? Sadly, I don’t find that too difficult.
David, I couldn’t agree more. It was the case in the 80′s, we would get together and listen to new and old music together. I had not really looked at it being anti-social however I must admit, I’m often plugged into my head phones and I realise I miss out on hearing the lovely things. Birds singing, children playing, the list could go on. I guess in a way I have written about the evolution of music and technology. Now on the subject of technology and evolution.
If mankind is controling the evolution of technology, what is running the evolution of mankind?
You won’t believe it. Today I had a shop assistant ask me what I like to listen to? Mozart “Marriage Of Figaro” was playing. I wanted to tell the truth however I said, “oh just mixed stuff”. Why could I not say the truth?