‘Live or Memorex?’
For
musicians, producers and sound-recordists the shift from analogue to digital
cultures has been a slow and incremental process. Early industry innovations
and the availability of relatively cheap music and recording technology have meant
that musicians can be seen as early adopters (adaptors) in the digital
revolution. While purists remain most in the world of sound have taken a
pragmatic stance on the use of digital technology in the live and recording
arenas. It may be argued that how audio is captured, manipulated and presented
in a digital context has offered a fundamental shift in our perception of
sound. If this is the case has there been a consequential loss of past
processes, skills and understandings of the pre-digital?
In
consideration of this it is perhaps these key players, who happily co-exist in this
binary audio world, can offer valued judgments on the implications of the shift
to a predominantly digital ecology. This chapter builds on interviews with a
number of musicians and sound-recordists to assess what it means to stay
analogue or be digital.
Stephen
Mallinder PhD
Faculty
of Arts, University of Brighton
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