Originally Posted by
KV
Scale, sorry, but in reference to what I’d written, neenga engyo poitgeenga saar! Let me try to explain again.
By electronic music, what I essentially mean is the big umbrella of ‘electronic pop’ and the various sub-genres that took birth under it. To me, electronic pop killed the musician and created the ‘music star’. Here’s why I think so. We’ll need to go back a long way to elaborately lay out what I have in mind, so here's the warning for a long post ahead.
The first logical classification of music would be vocal and instrumental where the latter can be split further into string (guitar, violin, piano, etc), wind (flute, saxophone, trumpet, etc) and percussion (drums, tabla, mrudangam, etc). Back in the days of pure acoustic music (not electric or electronic support whatsoever), every musician/performer had to know his music - to sing/to play his instrument – which was the primary and mandatory requisite. Then came electric amplification. This just helped in increasing the volume, quite literally, and offered little help otherwise to the musicians. The electric guitar, that was the next big thing, was in a way, another form of sound amplification, and the required music skills didn’t change. One fine day someone discovered that the sound emanating from the guitar could be distorted and that made way for guitar ‘effects’ - patches and distortion types that made the guitar sound different. But again, this was just another ‘output modulation’. You couldn’t stand with an electric guitar in hand, clad in tight leather outfit sporting a flowing hairdo and expect the guitar to do everything. Nothing would happen. You had to know to play it, else we’d have had a million Hendrix and half a million Claptons by now. Parallelly, the piano saw similar developments as it morphed from its strings avtar to electronic form. But the early electronic keyboards were similar to the electric guitar with effects, wherein you could play the same instrument and make it sound different. But the keyboard advancement wouldn’t just stop there (unlike the guitar in which the electric guitar is still the most ‘latest’ variety even after 3 or 4 decades of its invention). Science gave us the ‘synthesizer’, the thing that was to change the course and dynamics of music thereafter. For the first time musicality took a beating and ‘sounds’ (as opposed to musical notes) started gaining importance. We’re still talking of the 60s and 70s. Musicians began exploring ways of incorporating these new sounds with their music. Think Floyd and the sounds of animals and cash registers. But this was more or less used as an add-on feature in addition to the guitars and drums and other instruments which was still their ‘main’ music. Floyd, though they might be famous for popularizing this culture, had the best of guitarists in the form of Gilmour and a top notch drummer in Mason. Their songs wouldn’t probably have stood the test of time with just the ‘sounds’ had it not been for the brilliant guitaring and singing in them. The other forms of music were yet to fully embrace this technology and genres like classical, jazz, rock, heavy metal still stuck to their respective conventional styles - just raw musical capabilities, many a times, combined with showmanship.
Come the 90s and this new wave of electronic pop took up centerstage. Synthesizers advanced further. Tribal drums - button 1, disco beat - button 2: ‘ready to eat’ packages of this sort started evolving. You didn’t need any real musical talent to run a show. If you could kinda manage your singing, you could pass off as a popstar because the rest was all synthesized music mostly. The band didn’t even need to have a guitarist or a drummer. The type of instruments didn't really matter - wind/string/percussion, they were all the same, just another button. The trend then spread like wildfire from then on till date. Technology has made people lazy and creating music is no longer reserved only for the musically talented. This democracy, like in digital photography, is fine at one level, for it gives many people a sense of achievement and makes them happy. But popularity taking on talent’s mantle is tragic in every sense. How many artists currently in the popular music scene are capable singers or instrumentalists? Auto-tune, voice modulation, packaged instrumental bits, loops, the list of facilities are endless. One just has to know how to use (as opposed to play) them, which is why every tom dick and harry today is a music star. Where is real musical talent in this? On the other hand, there still are talented musicians who take the effort to learn music and believe in giving non-gimmicky performances. Thanks to this, genres like classical and jazz have managed to retain most of its charm.
Coming to film music, how many of our composers/musicians nowadays are really musically talented or knowledgeable? To gauge a musician or composer’s talent, an easy indicator is his ability to play or effectively utilize instruments (that require musical ability to play) – classical instruments live Violin or Veenai or acoustic instruments like guitar/flutes/trumpets or percussions like acoustic drums or Indian drums. Take the Coke Studio concept for example. Most of the musicians there are really talented and they make/play similar kind of popular music. This is what I want our film music to progress towards. Recording these instruments and then tweaking their sound electronically is what your referring to. This isn’t really an issue, rather, it’s the previous stage that I’m talking about.
When I say acoustic, let me list some songs that I have in mind – cry cry ithna cry (jhoota hi sahi), kannadi nee (mangaatha), Roshini (admissions open). The effect and ‘feel’ of live/acoustic instruments in these songs, in my books, are unmatched by any synth sounds. Encouraging such songs/technique will help in breeding a musically talented and good quality environment. Digitalization of all aspects of composing/music making has resulted in dismal quality of music and musicians in the recent years. It is in dire hopelessness of the continuing and growing popularity of this trend that makes me condemn digitalization of music making/composition. And I will stick by my stand - digitalization be damned.
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