The Slothfulness of Technology

Fortunate I have been the last week to resuscitate a formerly dormant part of my brain.  MIDI.  Musical Instrument Digital Interface.  MIDI was groundbreaking in music technology with its inception and implementation during the l980's.  I own the first MIDI instrument, a Sequential Circuits Prophet 600.  It was not until I arrived in Columbia, South Carolina and befriended a local jazz scholar that I would find the true potential of MIDI.  Jane Olds may have been the first in this region who understood this musical capability and invested well enough to fund her own start up.  After selling a musical spot to what I believe was public television, she purchased a Kurzweil 250 keyboard, a sampler, and with the software program One Step and its cooperative Jam Box interface began programming music on the computer emulating live ensemble performance.  I became friends with Ms. Olds and was privy to gain entry to her modest home studio.  In the living room was the Kurzweil 250, a mammoth black keyboard with multiple tiers.  On top of it sat what I believe was a Mac Classic running the computer program One Step.  With this primitive sequencer Jane successfully sampled live instruments and sequenced notes on the computer which emulated a musician playing them.  It was uncanny what was possible.  A drum set being played via the keyboard?  A trumpet being played via the keyboard?  Today no one much cares about music.  Jazz and classical music are the most unpopular of musical styles in America.  A trumpet you say?  What's that?  Music is dead in popular culture.  One only has to turn on the tube to see the millennial version of what used to be music.  It's not much, and it's not meant to be.  It is meant to submit, and it does.  This millennial version of music will not maintain the test of time.  It will do nothing.  In the midst of this negative reinforcement ,which incidentally surrounds us daily without our active choice I am trying my best to remember what a viable vocation of commercial music is.  In my circumstance it incorporates MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface.  Wow, that was difficult to hash out that brief history, and I am glad it is done.  One reason why I have been having difficulty remembering is because the music industry drastically has changed in the lat decade.  It is a shadow of what it once was.  The overt realization I had was today's technology is making us lazy.  It is doing all of the things for us once we had to do ourselves and enjoyed.  The process was it.  A man is what he does, not what he says.  Today the trend is to let software developers do it.  What do we do?  Not much, just as millennial music does not do much.  That is because a large part of the work or the creative process is being done by software developers.  It is unusual today to see a band on stage today without a laptop around somewhere.  I for one as a seasoned musical performer never would risk having a computer involved in my live music-making process.  Having studied composition at the doctoral level fully I understand the mediums of music that do use computers.  I embrace them and the founding fathers of both IRCAM and music concrete, Pierre Henry and Pierre Schaeffer.  Computers do have their place in music creation but not being a crutch for live musical performance.  When we watch the Super Bowl halftime show this Sunday, try to see who if performing live. Upon reflection I do not feel MIDI and this crutch are related.  By the time millennials got their greedy claws in the music industry, MIDI all ready was dead.  Software plugins were the rage, and the necessity of the PC was sealed.  This is our stunted culture today.  We rely and pay software developers to do our work for us.  They singlehandedly have stunted American pop culture just as corporate monopolies have drained our pockets.  What could be more successful......for them?  We no longer need Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, or Calculus, because we no longer need to think on a creative level.  Self-driving cars?  I will ask the question again.  What are we going to be doing while the car is driving us?  The answer is something selfish.  (having sex, texting, drinking coffee, putting on makeup, or other inane meaningless tasks)  The need for us to DRIVE, to see, to think, to react are being sedated.  Is this what we want, to be drugged? It used to be about the process.  Through this process we achieved self-awareness.  We became human.  Millennials are not human in a traditional sense.  I choose now at the ripe age of fifty-three to say, "That's the younger generation.  That's they way they do it.  Don't judge them."  As an educator no longer can I adopt this philosophy.  The world is headed down the wrong path, and Congress has failed.  The common good no longer is of concern.  It is, "Get what you can, can it, and sit on the can."  This is what Capitalism has bred, slothfulness and ignorance among the common people.  If the pursuit of the dollar makes us ignorant, how can we look in the mirror every day?