The Medium is the Message

I’ve been thinking a little bit more about why the younger generations like “stagnant” music. Now, I haven’t listened to a great deal of older music where the volume varies greatly, so if I am wrong please correct me.

I think it has to do, at least in part, with the new additions the new music can add with the use of technology. In the car the other day, every song on the radio had some sort of non-instrumental addition. Like clapping, or the dubstep sound I can only describe as the “wub-wub.” Some had other vocalizations, but they were repeated in a way that was not likely to have come straight from a person. Are they called soundboards? Those things with the preprogrammed sounds for each button, and that way you can hit multiple buttons in a certain pattern to create an electronic song. Thus, every time you hit the button the sound goes off or starts over, so I think the voice additions might have been from a soundboard.

Therefore, I think the lack of volume change comes from the addition of other sounds that if the volume were to be changed as well might be overwhelming. Versus for old music, the volume had to change in order to make the song more dynamic, where as the younger music doesn’t need any more dynamic additions.

Let us look at the two examples given in class: Fireworks by Katy Perry and (while I don’t remember the exact example used in class) let’s say the 1920s singer Cliff Carlisle. While Cliff has multiple different instruments and volume variation, he does not have any sound effects relatively close to the firework popping. Also, in Fireworks there’s a clapping sound, that seems to cut unnaturally to give it a sharper edge. Now, I believe that older music had the opportunity to do this as well, but I think newer music definitely uses it more: layering of sounds. Older music had a few instruments that played a melody and harmony with the vocals while the newer music layers what sounds like four or five different bands together.

The sound change in newer music isn’t nearly as dynamic, but the additional use of technological advancements and just over-the-top showmanship seems to replace the need for this change.