"If we can just find a way to get rid of these writers and directors, we'd really have something"
I am not sure if I ought to be horrified or amused by this article in the Times which takes up ever-dwindling space in the Arts section to discuss the creation of a song by a thoroughly untalented, untrained writer via some fantastic new looping software. Apparently it is, according to Nic Harcourt of Morning Becomes Eclectic, good that people flex their creative muscles, it tears down a barrier, and it is in line with the fact that people who don't have musical training write a lot of hit songs already.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: one can only blink. Just another example of the MySpace-ization of the Times, and another example of how easy putting of block A and block B next to one another passes for "creativity." Breaking down a barrier? How, from those talented mongrel hordes who keep all the art to themselves--let us who don't want to learn have a piece as well?
I do understand that there's a difference between writing a song for MySpace and making a good string quartet or opera. But soon, will there be a program for that as well?
I move for amatuers to take over Morning Becomes Eclectic. After all, those people with culture and purview who have spent time investigating their topics have hogged the mic long enough.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: one can only blink. Just another example of the MySpace-ization of the Times, and another example of how easy putting of block A and block B next to one another passes for "creativity." Breaking down a barrier? How, from those talented mongrel hordes who keep all the art to themselves--let us who don't want to learn have a piece as well?
I do understand that there's a difference between writing a song for MySpace and making a good string quartet or opera. But soon, will there be a program for that as well?
I move for amatuers to take over Morning Becomes Eclectic. After all, those people with culture and purview who have spent time investigating their topics have hogged the mic long enough.
posted by Daniel at 10:19 PM
2 Comments:
It is interesting to call punk rock, with its willful and famously vaunted inability to play an instrument, a school. I don't disagree with the personal empowerment of it all, nor do I disagree with the idea that from this occasionally someone rises out of the mire and becomes great. I really don't. What bothers me so tremendoulsy--and here is where I think i DO have to worry--is that the lack of musical understanding in our culture crossed with this new DIY at-home technology is going to make those of us with talent more of a pariah. Or will resign our years of work and toil to the dustbin of "that's what the gifted do," off in a corner, alone.
Or, push it there more than it is.
I suppose it would be akin to a program where a full screenplay could be authored in seconds, then the movie cobbled together in half an hour. It would be great fun, be responsible for a lot of very slick-looking bad movies, and give a lot of people a sense that they know what they are doing. Yes, from this lot we'd get another Greenaway or Scorsese or Antonioni or whatever, but not until a lot of the users pursued grants and schools and careers believing that what they were doing was good--and the art climate being what it is, there would be honors granted because, well, many people on panels or admissions committees would find personal resonance with the dilettante factor.
I am not saying this looping software is the end; I am saying it is just another thing against which we trained people will be compared. It gets people thinking "why are they all working so hard? It seems so easy." That's a little dangerous.
The cream always rises, and the advent of tools such as these can only, in the long run, serve to both broaden the audience, as well as engender real respect for those that can actually make something amazing and beautiful.
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