Removing instruments fromk backing tracks - Crazy technical idea floating...

Frustrating, and inevitable. Which makes it even more frustrating.

Here is the economic truth of the situation: about 125 years ago the landscape of music changed when the first commercial recording was made. Recorded music started as a private good - that it to say it was excludable (you could choose not to sell it to someone) and rivalrous (two people could not own the same wax cylinder.) The creation of a new private good was a business opportunity - a way to make profit - so business moved in and started profiting from this opportunity - profiting from the public it sold the recordings to, profiting from musicians by keeping the lion's share for itself and so on. As coalport noted recently (I think on levnet. I forget.) money is responsible for a lot of things in music - I suspect he was largely referring to the time prior to this, when royal patronage largely funded the development of classical music - but during the era of recordings as a private good it led to the pop charts and the mass marketing of music, and a few people - mostly business men, but also a few musicians - made a lot of money from selling recordings.

And then in 1981 the first commercial CD was produced. Another marvellous business opportunity - cheaper and easier to produce than vinyl, and better quality too (arguably) - so they strong-armed CDs onto the market. But in doing so they laid the seeds of their own demise by selling recordings in a form which could be copied perfectly and exactly. Not apparently a problem at the time, but time, tide and technology wait for no man, and pretty soon after a large percentage of the population owned the technology to copy CDs. And then the Internet came along and the means of freely distributing these perfect copies was available to everyone.

What was once a private good became a public good - non-excludable and non-rivalrous, and non-profitable. Currently sales are buoyed up by a legal fiction - that music recordings are still a private good, and by ethical considerations by the music buying public. In a contest between ethics and the law on one side, and the economic imperative on the other, the vast majority of people will glance briefly at their moral compass, check behind them for a policeman and then stare glumly into their wallet and follow the economic imperative. :-(

The music business is fully aware of this: what is The X-Factor and its ilk other than an increasingly desperate clutching at straws by a drowning business?

In the long term I think these hundred and so years will be seen as a brief historical blip - a business golden era when there was money to be made from recorded music. It's rather sad to be here at the end of it. True that a great deal of terrible music was made on the back of it, but some good stuff too. Let's not forget that.

I suspect that we will return to a pre-recorded music situation, where patronage by the super-rich (not royalty any more, money has largely gone elsewhere these days) will fund exclusive, high-brow music, and the common folk will entertain themselves as they always did...

" the common folk will entertain themselves as they always did..."

A very informative set of posts/thread. I have now found the part that applies to me though!

Entertainingly and succinctly put, Gordon!

The up-side of all this as it relates to the theremin and to backing tracks (which was what started this whole thread) is that people may once again begin to learn to play musical instruments of accompaniment, which will enable them to make their own backing tracks.

If the music industry dies because it is no longer profitable and if, as a result of this, the common folk learn to entertain themselves, then we may well see the return of the parlor organ.....only this time around it will be the parlor synthesizer.

In 1929, RCA believed that the parlor organ would be replaced by the theremin. "A THEREMIN IN EVERY HOME" was the declared company goal. Perhaps they weren't that far off since the theremin is the grandfather of the modern synth.

Thereminists in the brave new musical world will know how to create their own backing tracks. Or better still, write, perform, record and distribute (through the internet) their own musical compositions.

BE WARNED, on the Ferengi home planet the death penalty is imposed upon anyone who is found guilty of engaging in an unprofitable enterprise.

Thereminists in the brave new musical world will know how to create their own backing tracks

and bust out some badass banging beats too!

http://youtu.be/BPV8c9rVQpg

"...the super-rich (not royalty any more, money has largely gone elsewhere these days)"  - GordonC

Our betters in a slightly different guise.  Meet the new boss, etc.

Perhaps soon recorded music for singer / songwriters, bands, and such will be more like promo material for their live performances, the more freely distributed the better.  They can't take your that away from you (yet).

"I suspect that we will return to a pre-recorded music situation.." - GordonC

"If the music industry dies because it is no longer profitable and if, as a result of this, the common folk learn to entertain themselves, then we may well see the return of the parlor organ.....only this time around it will be the parlor synthesizer.".. Coalport

" Meet the new boss, etc." - Dewster

I cannot see us returning to a "pre-recorded music situation" (not unless there is a catastrophic event which puts us back centuries and in which we lose the technology developed over the last century - which is not an impossibility..) - Recording technology is here, cheap media is here.. I do not see much chance of a return to the "good old days" where the common folk entertain themselves...

Two things are almost constants - 1.) The wish of a small percentage of the population to control the masses and 2.) The need (in order to maintain this control) for this small percentage to exploit the masses.

As Gordon explained so well, the technology 'backfired' with regard to copying music - The internet has further componded the problem for "the new boss" by making it far more difficult to control what influences the population can be exposed to - We have seen in the last couple of years, events brought about by publication of secrets by Wikileaks, which have triggered changes one could never have imagined a couple of years ago.

But, with all that, it looks like the common folk dont actually get any benefit - even with the power the internet theoretically gives them, new "bosses" with natures almost identical (sometimes worse) than the "old bosses" move in and control the masses almost before the dust has settled. One of the reasons I joined the ANC was after I witnessed how the Miners were treated when I had to install some electronics in a mine - Now I see ANC thugs shooting miners..

Perhaps the "small percentage" is right - Perhaps people are better off being controlled and exploited, perhaps its best that they (we) are not exposed to ideas which make us uncomfortable aware that we are being exploited - perhaps we will be happier if our brains are dulled from an early age with drugs and programming, such that we can truly enjoy the crap we are fed.

Fred.

Fred: One of the reasons I joined the ANC was after I witnessed how the Miners were treated when I had to install some electronics in a mine - Now I see ANC thugs shooting miners..

Enantiodromia (Greek: ἐνάντιος, enantios, opposite + δρόμος, dromos, running course) is a principle introduced by psychiatrist Carl Jung that the superabundance of any force inevitably produces its opposite. The tendency of movements, over time, to evolve into the very thing they were originally organized to combat. History is full of examples of the oppressed turning into the oppressor.

This is a particularly dangerous phenomenon whenever God is involved!

"then we may well see the return of the parlor organ.....only this time around it will be the parlor synthesizer." - coalport

(Hoping not to side-track and dumb down the conversation too much...)

These days, the meaning of the word "synthesizer" has become as generic and fuzzy as the meaning of the word "theremin".

Today's "parlor organ" for the common man are the inexpensive and ubiquitous electronic keyboards that play digital samples. (Many do in fact do a nice imitation of an organ.) The irony is, you can get a true vintage organ these days for less than these electronic keyboards or even for free.  For those with money to burn, one can purchase a "digital grand piano" (or organ) with essentially the same features. One might say this is analogous to how some see the Moog Etherwave theremin - not a "true" theremin.

Many much more expensive so-called synthesizers do the same and have no true synthesizing abilities.  However, like the theremin, there has been a resurgence of the true synthesizer, some going as far as to digitally "model" vintage analog synthesis.  However, the "common man" is not likely to pay the high price for these instruments, although the artists (and wannabe artists) will.

Completely off-topic:

"This is a particularly dangerous phenomenon whenever God is involved!" - Coalport

Yeah, I agree with that! - But it seems it can happen quite easily even if a god isnt involved. I do not understand what happens to people - Some of the present leaders of the ANC were good people once, they were laying their lives on the line in the struggle, and endured imprisonment and torture is some cases - It actually breaks my heart to see the way things have gone / are going in SA - The only voice from the days of the struggle who can still be heard loudly speaking about what our cause was, what we were fighting for, is Bishop Desmond Tutu.. He (his words, actions and life) is the only person who has ever given me cause to question whether there might be a just "good" god.

But my communist brothers seem to have rolled over in defeat as soon as a wad of dollars was waved in front of them - Oh, I gave up on communism years ago - but for different reasons. I just do not understand how these people can live with themselves - They have had friends and comrades die in their arms during the struggle - they actually have enough wealth now to eliminate the extreme poverty in the country (and therebye actually achieve one of the major objectives of the struggle) - but what are they doing? Shooting their brothers!

Sorry - I know the above is completely OT.

Fred.

 Added > " Enantiodromia " - Thanks for putting me "in contact" with that word, Peter.. Facinating and astounding hypotheses - going back well before Jung - Jung probably got it from Heraclitus (pre-Socrates)... I have just read several essays etc by Jung and others on the subject.

Must admit though, that its one of these ideas which is in that "grey" area - Lots of history seems to back the idea up - but nonetheless the hypothesis is untestable and as far as I can see has no underlying "principle" which could warrant its acceptance as "truth" (not saying it isnt "truth" - just saying I cannot see a "hard" reason why it "should" be truth).. It is a bit linked to the idea of fate or pre-determinism - but at least predeterminism has a principle on which it is founded - the principle of cause and effect, and that we have never seen anything contra-causal in the universe.. But, like enantiodromia, fate and determinism are hypotheses which cannot be tested.

Whatever - it served as a good distraction - I was feeling really low after watching the on-line news..

"These days, the meaning of the word "synthesizer" has become as generic and fuzzy as the meaning of the word "theremin". - Jeff S

Even fuzzier, I think - but then it is a bit of a "fuzzy" word anyway - My opinion is that the theremin is technically a "synthesiser".

"Today's "parlor organ" for the common man are the inexpensive and ubiquitous electronic keyboards that play digital samples"

And more - Rythm / accompniment modules were common in organs - and the new (or even not so new) "workstation" keyboards have extended this idea to include computer assisted backing generation and sequencers etc - some quite remarkable.. I bought an old Korg Karma for £200 some years ago, and although not the latest wonder keyboard, at times it provides incredible backing based on analysis of what I am playing - one can fiddle with the algorythms and adjust parameters (both for the algorythm and for the synthesis) in real-time by twiddling knobs... and its also nearly a "real" synthesiser (albeit digital) - it lacks the immediate access to parameters due to its menu system - but with my Behringer "B Controll" I can assign 24 knobs to control these parameters over MIDI..

I suppose (?) that I could almost be sure that any backing the Karma generates wont fall foul of any copyright..

Which begs the question - is this the future? Will (solo) musicians need to buy something akin to the Karma engine to provide backing, as this is the only assured way to avoid legal problems?

Fred.