Technology Shaping Music

1985

You stare at your sax, waiting for inspiration. You’ve tried about 15 different licks, 300

times in a million different orders over the past 3 days and nothing feels right. This is an

important solo, one of the judges is the composer who wrote the song you are soloing over, for

Christ’s sake. After half an hour of frowning at the changes, you decide to head to the record

store, maybe something there will give you ideas to work on. It takes you 4 and a half hours to

get to the store and pick out an album. You walk over and wait in line for a player to be open.

Fifteen minutes later an employee takes the album and sets it on the player. You sit down, put on

headphones, and listen. This was not the song you were looking for. After trying again with two

more albums, you finally find the right one and head over to the cashier to buy it. Damn, that was

expensive. You would not be buying anything else for a couple months. You walked out of the

store, grabbed a coffee from next door, and headed home. As soon as you got home you put the

album on the player in your room and sat down, going through the whole thing before listening

to a couple of the songs on repeat. You decided to tackle the solo again tomorrow, and go to bed.

Two days later, having listened to that album at least 40 times, you realize that it was not

going to help like you had hoped. You laid down on the bed, and hoped that you could get the

solo down before the competition in 3 weeks.

2022

You stare at your sax, waiting for inspiration. You hop on your computer and go to

youtube, searching up the song to hear, and see what other soloist’s have done with it. You find a

couple of ideas you like and play around with them, creating the beginnings of your solo.

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You set down your sax again and remember a song you had heard while driving around in your

friend's car the other day, he had been playing the music from a playlist he created on Spotify.

You text him. He can't figure out which song you’re talking about specifically, so he sends you

the link to the whole playlist. You skip through it, find the one you want, and listen to it a couple

times. You search up the artist online and listen to a few more of their songs. After 30 minutes

you find the perfect lick and try incorporating it in your solo. It was perfect. It was going to take

a week or so to get the solo two where you wanted it, but you’ve now got everything you need.

And if you need more, you can just search through more of the artist's music.

Over the past 30 years technology has boomed, changing the world and many things in it

from medicine, to entrepreneurship, to music and music education. It’s made music cheaper and

more accessible. How exactly has the recent expansion in technology changed music education?

Has it led to better musicians? Or has the newfound technology led to a larger amount of lazy

musicians with less motivation who don't try as hard because they don’t have to?

“Technology, in addition to its role as a tool to network and communicate, is being used

to enhance the development of technical and musical skills” (Williamon and Waddell).

Music-related technology has changed, improved, and expanded in almost unimaginable

amounts. Albums that used to cost around $15 in today’s money in the 80s can now be found for

free on a plethora of music sites. Tuning a drum used to mean having an in-tune piano next to

you, switching between hitting a note and fiddling around with your drum. Now you can tune

anywhere in the world as long as you have a phone with a tuning app on you. Now technology

enables musicians to record faster, in an almost painless way, as well as to spread their music

faster. It means that musicians have an easier time becoming successful without the help of a

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huge team behind their back. Now, when a mistake is made on a recording, whether it be in

pitch, time, or anything else, editors can simply fix it with a few clicks of a button. “Many areas

of music learning have been revolutionized by the computer–most profoundly, music

composition” (Colwell, and Rodriguez). There are now programs that allow composers to write

their compositions electronically. This means using less paper, having a permanent record of it,

and much more.

I sat down for an interview with trumpet player Michael Miller, or as some may call him,

“Mickle.” Miller started tutoring Northgate’s trumpet players in 2007, and hasn’t stopped since.

He’s worked with all kinds of musicians- from Aretha Franklin to Madonna. He’s a composer as

well as a trumpet player and has composed for many companies, including Disney. Miller

explains just how dramatically new software has changed the composition game. “What has

changed drastically is very few people write music by hand anymore. Music notation software

like Sibelius or Finale is what is used. Those pieces of software automatically generate the parts

which can be generated or sent to people’s Ipads. There, special music stands that have screens in

them now that music can be on. Because these programs all come with loaded in sounds, a

composer can write a score and hear it while they are writing it. In the olden days, you couldn't

do that. You just had to know,” says Miller.

Greg Brown, my former band teacher who retired after last year, explained in an

interview about how useful the technology has been to him as a musician and an educator. “I

used a computer for the first time in my third year of teaching. That would have been either late

1987 or early 1988. Currently I use apps to practice. I have an app for a metronome, I have an

app for a tuner, I have an app that plays chord changes by a rhythm section,” said Brown. Brown

may be retired from teaching, but he still plays in bands, and uses new technology in preference

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to paper, CDs, records, and much more. He uses it to record, warm up, play, memorize his music,

keep time, and just about everything else that a musician needs to do. Brown continues, “Then

there's the services like Pandora, and Spotify to store music. Before all that happened I had an

ipod. I bought Ipods for every member of the department at northgate.”

What some may consider the biggest impact of technology in music is its accessibility.

New musical accessibility has been provided in many ways in the last few years. Online

streaming services such as Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Youtube, etc. have made large

varieties and quantities of music cheaper and available across the globe. “Streaming media

services, such as Spotify, represent a significant share of wireless data used by consumers.

According to the company's usage and revenue statistics, there were 286 million monthly active

users during the first quarter of 2020, and of these, 130 million were paid subscribers of premium

services” (Hoyle). This allows musicians to do extensive research on their music in a way that

takes up infinitely less time, money, and travel. As Miller says, “It’s like ‘oh I wanna learn this

tune- oh I can listen to 40 people playing it different ways and I can decide which I like best.”

One of Northgate’s top jazzers, Matt Stark, is a prime example of just how much accessibility

has affected musicians. He has many playlists on Spotify and his largest, one that he continues to

add to everyday, had 865 hours worth of jazz songs as of the date April 22, 2022. He is known in

the band program for the fact that he seems to have watched nearly every jazz-concert You-Tube

video out there. Stark purposely listens to as much music as he can, because he knows that

listening to this music everyday is a key contributor to the amazing soloist he has become. It

influences every solo he plays, solos so great that at Folsom Jazz Festival he was picked out of

31 highschools-worth of jazz musicians to be awarded entrance and a full scholarship to

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Stanford’s summer jazz program. “Jazz is a language, and speaking a language is literally

impossible without hearing native speakers,” said Stark.

The ability to choose exactly what they listen to, and to skip over adverts, has led to these

streaming services taking precedence over previous music services like the radio for the younger

generations. “The corporation also said that for the first time it had found in the final quarter of

last year that 15- to 34-year-olds spent more time listening to streaming music services than all

of BBC radio: five hours versus four hours 30 minutes a week” (Sweney). Along with music

accessibility comes education accessibility. Musicians can now take online learning classes

through things such as Zoom, Skype, etc. They can also access learning tutorials online to teach

themselves with. “Music lessons are no longer restricted to physical classrooms. Students can

now extend their learning environment to their homes and other places by engaging with their

teachers through platforms such as skype.” (Murimi). Online access has not only made learning

easier, but given tools for teachers to use.

Technology has improved online games, giving teachers the ability to use them as

resources to teach their kids. “Musicians can work collaboratively from different parts of the

globe, watch online tutorials to learn how to use recording software, or play video games such as

Rocksmith that teach you how to play the guitar” (Reo). Miller commented on this during our

interview, explaining what kind of topics these programs have the ability to teach. “Yeah. And

education is a broad term. Education could be learning to improvise chords and all that. It's much

easier to learn stuff like that because there's so many programs and things that just do it really

well that teach you to do all of the things you used to have to pull out all kinds of books for.”

Two weeks after this interview I sat in the band room with a freshman and stared at her in

disbelief as she listed off terms, names, and information about music theory that I, three years

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older than her, could not make sense of. I then remembered watching her and another group of

freshmen playing an online game about music theory that our teacher, new to Northgate this year,

used to teach them. Our old teacher had used different methods of teaching when it came to

music theory, and it was obvious that this method had different results.

All of these research and learning tools have led to higher levels of musicianship earlier

in music careers. Miller goes into this extensively during our interview, using the Olympics as a

comparison. “The thing is, like at the Olympics someone will break the world record and, then

the next time someone breaks that one and you think you can’t get any better than this, but then

they do. It’s been that way with musicians forever but at a very much slower pace. Because, let’s

say in 1901 there’s this great player? And people hear him in a concert, or maybe they get a

lesson or something and they might get as good as that person or a little better.” Both music

educators Greg Brown and Micheal Miller commented on seeing this in person with their

students. In his Interview, Brown explains how all it takes is one extremely talented musician to

spark and inspire other fellow musicians to get to their level. Now technology acts like

lighter-fluid to this process, making it all flare up much faster. Miller continues, “It's nothing

compared to [now]. I have first hand knowledge of this, with Josh Shpack when he was the first

person at Northgate to make it into any of the national honors bands. We would do these

auditions, you know, for all the national bands and he would make it into them. I would post the

auditions on youtube and thousands of people like ‘oh my god listen to him listen to- I’m gonna

play like him i’m gonna play like him-’ and the level of playing goes up when there’s that broad

access to people- to hearing all kinds of people playing, players get better.”

Miller and Brown’s opinion is popular among teachers who have seen just how much

technology has changed music over the past 40 years. Jeremy Reynolds of the Classical Voice

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wrote this in his article Are Musicians Better Than They Were 30 Years Ago? “Depending on the

instrument, incoming students are undoubtedly getting better for a variety of reasons. The level

of pedagogy in neighborhoods and cities has undoubtedly risen thanks to a boom in educational

literature and, again, the overcrowding issue. And of course, the internet deserves the lion’s share

of the credit, as students’ access to master classes and techniques and different recordings has

been largely equalized.” Just like math, science, and everything else, musicians learn from each

other, using each other as resources, doing what others do and then making it better. Having such

a colossal amount of references at their fingertips now because of the internet, this process of

improvement has increased and will continue to increase in speed exponentially.

Technology has made communication quicker and easier than ever in schools. A case

study on how technology is used in musical education showed evidence on how students prefer

using technology in the classroom because it makes the experience less complicated for them.

“Teachers might use online instruction to teach a specific lesson or to communicate with other

teachers, students, or special guests through video or forms of written communication” ("Online

Learning Opportunities”). The tech allows teachers to communicate with each other as well, they

can share information, presentations, rubrics, sheet music, and much more with the press of a

button. “With email, the internet, discussion boards, and online agendas, communication

between educator and student has never been more synchronous. Not to mention the ability to

communicate and collaborate with peers is also at their fingertips” (Davis). Not only can teachers

communicate with each other and their students, but students can communicate amongst

themselves. They can text each other to set up sectionals, ask for playlists, get song

recommendations, and so much more that would have taken up extreme amounts of time in the

past. “Some educators rely on popular tablet computers to communicate with their students both

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inside and outside the classroom, while others use proprietary software, social media and email

to provide regular feedback, insight and instruction. Whatever the method, teachers across the

country have latched onto technology as a means to remain better connected with students after

classroom and office hours, or to more closely monitor students’ progress inside the classroom”

(Staff). All of this communication means a faster-paced education system, which may be

stressful at times, but it also means that improvement comes in faster rates and a greater variety

of ways.

One of these ways was described to me by Greg Brown. He taught through the pandemic,

and saw the boon of new technology that was created when demanded because of online school.

“A lot of teachers used something I didn’t use. Its a program where they have a lot of music in it

that is published for schools, so if you choose to play that music, then the kids can come in and

test and the program will evaluate them on certain criteria like their rhythm, and their time, and

their pitch and it will give them a score when the play their test. So the teacher will not have to

do the grading, because it’s done, right?” It makes it easier for the teachers so that they don’t

have to spend class time listening to musicians one-by-one, or later listening to recordings and

taking time out of class to grade their students. Brown recognizes that this program may be

helpful to some teachers, but also talks about the determinants that come with it, “but there's no

one-on-one evaluation. You just have that flat score.” He goes on to explain how when a student

has a one-on-one evaluation in a classroom, they gain more from the experience, even if it's not

as quick. In a class evaluation other students get to listen to them, hear their mistakes, and

incorporate the advice the teacher gives the student into their own playing.

The recent expansion of technology in music means easier ways to record music, more

accessibility to all types of music across the globe, the ability to teach in a larger variety of ways,

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an increase of musicianship and skill level of musicians, and more communication in and out of

the classroom for musicians. Technology allows musicians who want to improve, put in the

work, and have a lot of passion for the art to have a larger chance at meeting their goals. When it

comes down to it, despite some of the detriments that come with replacing old practices with

new technology, technology has helped musicians, improved their lives, and simply made it

easier to be a musician.

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 Works Cited

Brown, Gregory. Musician. Personal Interview. Gessner, Iona. 20 March 2022.

COLWELL, RICHARD, and CARLOS XAVIER RODRIGUEZ. "Music Education."

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Miller, Micheal. Musician. Personal Interview. Gessner, Iona. 25 February 2022.

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