[NewMusic] acoustic vs. electronic

[Chris Broderick]

--- Barry Threw <bthrew at gmail.com> wrote:

> Not a useful analogy.  These are useful for
> completely different purposes.

Just as electronic & acoustic instruments are useful
for different (but very similar) purposes.  One of the
virtues of acoustic instruments (like a bike) is that
they don't require energy from any source other than
the user.  I don't need to buy batteries for my
clarinet, or plug it in to recharge it.  I can play it
in ways that it was not engineered to be played (just
the mouthpiece, without a mouthpiece, just clacking
the keys, I could go on and on.)  One might imagine
that someone would make an electronic version of a
clarinet that can do all of those things, but why
bother when you can use the real thing?  And of course
one of the primary virtues of acoustic instruments is
that they have no software, and thus can't crash.  Of
course they can malfunction because of broken
hardware, but so can electronic instruments.

> I did not say that no instruments with acoustical or
> mechanical 
> functions will ever be produced after a certain
> point.  What I did say 
> is that all the instruments that we use now will be
> obsolete.  There 
> will come a time when it will be hard to find a
> widely used instrument 
> with no electronic components.  This is not to say
> that older 
> instruments will not function, and be used, but they
> will be a niche 
> fetish item...

Musical instruments in general (electronic or
acoustic) are a niche item these days.  Just because
something is obscure doesn't mean it is obsolete.

just like paper printed books are
> becoming a fetish item 
> today.

I guess that's why more books are being published
today than in any point in human history.  Reminds me
of the old fantasy that computers would create the
paperless office.  I was working for a high tech
company that did nothing but change databases from one
programming language to another, and we were called by
Ralph Nader to inform us that we created more paper
waste than any other business in San Francisco.

> I imagine everyone thought we would be using the
> steam engine for 
> everything at one point too.  

Now there is a false analogy.  A steam engine & a
combustion engine both have exactly the same functions
and produce exactly the same results (energy).  I
don't think that will hold true for most acoustic vs.
electric instruments for quite a while.  It's
certainly not even close to true today.

And I'm sorry for all
> you harpsichord 
> players out there.
> 

I feel worse for those chumps who play the psaltery. 
But I certainly wouldn't say that the harpsichord is
obsolete, just less commonly used.  One of the major
faults of contemporarily produced technologies is
planned obsolescence.  As a piece of technology, Ipods
are fancy things that do a lot of neat stuff.  But
they are manufactured cheaply, in the assumption that
they'll have a shelf life of about 2 years.  This was
part of the design.  Most digital technology works
with this principle in mind.  My clarinet, on the
other hand, is close to 50 years old, and though it
occasionally needs repairs, I won't be throwing it
away anytime soon.

-Chris



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