Of course, technology has changed our relationship with art and music.
The camera, the movie camera, ebooks, computers, electronic instruments have influenced the world of cinema, painting, literature and music. From this union different or even new genres were born.
How Technology Has Changed Our Lives
Initially, the only way to see a play was to go to the theater, so to listen to a piece of music you must necessarily attend its performance in person.
Modern industry, however, has its roots in a very distant time. We are in the Middle Ages, more precisely in the 9th century in Baghdad where the three Banū Mūsā brothers invented the first mechanical organ. Using hydraulics, the three mathematicians were able to produce music through some interchangeable cylinders.
Other similar inventions followed over the centuries, however the first instruments were only able to reproduce mechanical sounds, not to record. At least until 1877 when Thomas Edison invents the first audio recording device. From then on, the path was long and crowded with ever more innovative inventions.
From Jukebox to Spotify
One of the inventions we all make use of is certainly music streaming. Today music has abandoned all media such as vinyl, magnetic tape or CD and travels in dematerialized form. We are faced with what is called “liquid music”, each of us has an almost infinite library of songs that can be accessed at any time and place, all you need is an Internet connection. Since then, more and more websites and applications have emerged that can offer competitive services.
Perhaps to those born in this period it seems natural, in reality the earlier generations can remember with pleasure, and a hint of nostalgia, the piles of CDs, audio cassettes or vinyls that decorated the libraries of their room. The vinyl or the jukebox were not just a means of playing music, they have become a symbol of their era. Even today there is a kind of attraction for these instruments, in fact, taking a tour on the main e-commerce sites it is not difficult to buy a vinyl or a turntable. Of course these too have undergone an evolution, for example it is possible to find turntables equipped with bluetooth.
Musical Instruments and Technology
It is not just the reproduction of music that has changed. Just as new digital writing and reading tools have taken over in literature, so too have innovations in other fields. We think of cinema, but also of the way of experiencing art in general. Frequently famous works by great artists are projected and reproduced in large, perhaps in motion and accompanied by musical pieces that make everything more suggestive. Music has also undergone changes, so traditional string or wind instruments have been joined by electronic instruments. For example, the electric guitar has helped to create new genres and decisively modify existing styles such as blues, jazz or folk music. The development of the synthesizer as well as of course the computer was also decisive. In fact, through computers it is not only possible to reproduce music but also to modify it, or rather manipulate it and even create it. One consequence of these innovations has been electronic music, a musical genre born after decades of research aimed at creating new instruments, sounds and ways of fruition. The success of bands like Prodigy, Chemical Brothers and Daft Punk testifies to the spread of electronic music also thanks to the mix with the pop genre, which allows it to reach a wider audience.
Technological development has made it possible to include extra-musical instruments as well, thus expanding the creative possibilities of artists.
Various software have also contributed, an example could be Auto-Tune a much discussed tool through which singers can correct intonation or mask small errors or imperfections of the voice. However, it is also often used as a means to achieve particular distortion effects and thus to modify and create.
Since the Middle Ages, technological innovations have made changes possible. Nowadays, the speed with which changes occur has strengthened, so soon new tools or new ways to reproduce and create sounds will be added.