A winder range
Particularly as a first portal into music, the prevalence of technical aids and devices is changing the whole basis of that language. One outcome of this is increasing automation in the melodies and harmonies of pop music and a greater reliance on predictive software.
It can't be denied there are huge commercial interests vested in this, nor that the nature of the music we listen to is being decided by large corporations and their technicians and engineers.
As music teachers we are involved in the training of the ears of young musicians. The ear has evolved into an incredibly sensitive organ, able to detect a whole range of tonal qualities, colours, harmonic subtleties leading even to the logic of extended forms. Why, therefore, do we routinely bombard it with the kind of bunker-busting decibels more suited to an artillery range? Answer: because in the 1980s certain pop bands (who were perhaps as high on stimulants as they were primitive in the arts of music) vied with each other to produce ever louder live-gigs and recorded material. The result was a gross distortion of the fabric of music, a nightmarish aberration which we have all thought was the norm ever since.
Returning to the above point, we as music teachers have a duty (very much against the odds) to make available to pupils some of the miracles of the symphonic tradition based as it is on the principles of natural and acoustic sound – a tradition which has always existed hand-in-hand with folk-music and obeyed the same fundamental laws of melody and harmony. The extent of that universe in the imagination, the poetry, the imagery, the telling of tales from Ovid to Shakespeare, from the metaphysical to the most down-to-earth folk-dance, we hope that such a resource will continue to have a central place in the education of young musicians.
Has overamplification ruined the way we listen to music?
- M. Lawrence
