Abstract

Music in particular and the arts in general put tasks in front of technology and technology puts opportunities in front of artists. Two technologies that are fairly old in helping music: dissemination (including broadcast and recording) and amplified live sound. The early short recordings that were made on 78 rpm disks must have been a challenge to classical performers used to a much more relaxed time frame. On the other hand live sound meant that performing live was much less taxing. Two branches of performance have evolved - one being live performance; the other being performance for electronic media, be it broadcast or recording. Electronic replacements for tanpura and tabla are commercially available for about two decades. The latest models produce sound quite similar to real acoustic instruments. But what do the original acoustic instruments offer in addition to sound to the artist and to listeners? Electronic instruments and tape recorders can play a significant role in education. We also examine the possible options for wider dissemination of Indian Classical Music.

Introduction

I must thank Mr. V Subramanian and the Fine Arts Society for giving me this opportunity to be here in front of you today. I think I should begin by explaining why I changed the title of my talk. It is true that there is exciting new technology available to musicians today. But the interacttion between music and technology has always influenced the development of both. It is by considering how technology has changed music through the 20^th century that we may better understand how it may continue to do so in the future. Therefore I thought I shall discuss this interplay with reference to many technologies, most of which are not very new. They say that those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it. So let me see if together we can reminisce here and if we can draw some lessons from the things that have been happening around us.

Music in particular and the arts in general put tasks before the developers of technology. The length of a CD was decided on the basis of a musical work the Chairman of Sony Corp. insisted must fit on a single CD. So the arts put tasks in front of technology and technology puts opportunities in front of artists. The opportunities are not always immediately grabbed upon. Similarly the tasks that artists put before technology (developers) are also addressed in their own sweet time. But the interplay of technology and art is unmistakable.

Let me start with an example which has nothing to do with arts. Take these three sums:

89 x 3/4; 58 x 3 1/2; 29 x 8. Just three arbitrary examples of sums which people about 20 years older than me could do verbally. Reason: they memorized extensive multiplication tables as part of school education. We don't do that any more, right? And there is no reason why we should do it today. This is just one example of how technology has affected the way in which we do arithmetic. Technology affects practically everything we do in life.

Broadcasting and Recording

Let us continue this thinking about how music and technology have influenced each other. Start with two technologies that are fairly old in helping music. One is broadcast - All India Radio in particular, and the technology of broadcasting behind it has helped carry music to every household, to every person on the street. And the other technology that has helped carry music to the man in the street is that of recording and reproduction of sound. Both these technologies pushed musical performance in a particular direction. The early recordings that were made on 78 rpm disks were exactly three minutes and twenty seconds long. You couldn't fit anything more than that. It must have compelled most of the classical musicians of that time to rethink their art and to ask themselves "how do they package their material into such a short time?" There were even some who simply refused to do it.

So it must have caused new thought processes, new questionning of the art for people to produce those records. And of course All India Radio was in a way applying a gentler push in the same direction. Because most of the slots All India Radio gave artists were between ten minutes and half an hour long. Mind you, it is not just a question of whether the time given is enough, but the demand that a performance begin exactly when told and fit within the specified time that is contrary to how music is performed live. So these various limits, various formats were forcing musicians to think in terms of shorter, more planned performances.

Sound Reinforcement

But there was another technology that was pushing performance in the totally opposite direction. And that was amplified sound. Now, I for example don't have scientifically very good voice production. So if I start speaking in a large hall like this without the benefit of a microphone my voice starts getting a little tired. Musicians were producing voice in ways very different from the way most of them produce voice today, because they had to reach audiences without the benefit of sound reinforcement. When sound reinforcement technology came, the energy that one has to spend on producing voice became much less. And therefore singers could think in terms of performing for longer periods. So we witness at least two generations till now of musicians who started making raga presentations that exceeded one hour now that the demand on their voice was lighter.

Being a musician in 2003

Very interesting things have happened because of these opposite pulls exerted by technology. People have developed a style of giving long performances in live situations, but at the same time you find the same artists giving very competent performances within the framework of recording for those limited intervals. So I will put it before this gathering that two branches of performance have evolved and slowly diverged from one another - one branch being live performance; the other being performance for electronic media, be it broadcast or recording. Fortunately today a large number of recordings of live performances are also available, so people can see for themselves if they notice a difference between recordings produced for recording and recordings produced as records of live performances. I find a very definite difference between the two.

So we really have two divergent art forms now, one of them is a performing art, the art of performing music live, and the other is perhaps closer to painting. Because you create the sound at leisure, and the time that you require to create the sound has no direct relationship with the amount of time it takes the listener to consume, if I may use that market word, the product. It may be a three-minute song, or it may be a twenty-second clip for an advertisement, and it might take you days to create it. There is no connection between the clock - wall clock when you are producing and the wall clock when you are

listening. So we have two art forms here - both we call music, and they are very different from each other. They require different kinds of preparation to perfect - they require different skill sets.

Music Industry and ICM

Well, where are we headed now? We must remember that there are styles of music far more popular than classical music, either Hindustani or Carnatic. So we must look at a typical popular song as the unit of music that technology must try to deal with. And in practically any popular genre of music, the typical item is very short - under ten minutes. And recording technology today makes (the) unit of packaging the CD which can go upto eighty minutes. So you have a marketing problem there - how do you sell ten-minute items via eighty-minute packages. People have found various solutions based on computers and the Internet. They are all at an exploratory stage right now. But should some of them become successful, classical musicians will find yet another technological challenge before them.

But perhaps Indian Classical Music will find another distribution system more convenient – the systems that are developing for the delivery of motion pictures! TV shows and feature films are 25 minutes to two hours in length (sometimes even longer!), and there is a huge market for them. Old revenue models exist and new ones continue to evolve for compensating the producers of these goods. Television, video libraries and whatever other channels of distribution emerge, rather than music stores, can become the sources to which a listener turns for his or her supply of prerecorded Indian Classical Music. Of course, both musicians and cinematographers/ videographers will have to evolve methods of capturing our music on film/ video which is appealing enough to sell.

Electronics in service of Music

Electronic replacements for tanpura and tabla have been commercially available for I think about two decades. The early models could be accepted only with a lot of understanding from the artist, but the latest models produce sound quite similar to the real things. Both are a great boon for the artist for riyaz purposes. Electronic tanpuras are already being used in concerts. It is not inconceivable that the next model of electronic tabla will play one of 100 preset or programmable tukdas at the push of a button. If that were to happen artists may very well induct such a model as a concert accompaniment.

But what do the original acoustic instruments offer in addition to sound? To the artist? To listeners? The process of tuning the tanpura is an important subject of observation. It offers the artist a few moments in which to draw within themselves, forget the world

outside, and concentrate just on the sound and nothing else. If artists discard the acoustic tanpura totally and become wholly dependent on the electronic variety, then perhaps they will have to learn some other form of meditation if their music is to retain the old contemplative character. And at a concert disciples of the performer should still get to sit on the stage where they learn to face audiences, even if the tanpuras no longer need players.

The case of the tabla is also very interesting. Even plain theka played by a human tabla player is very different from that of an electronic tabla. Because the human is listening to the melody performance he is accompanying, and responding to it by subtle variation of stress, volume and timing. Besides, it is perhaps next to impossible for a human player to play 100% “plain theka”! These apparently small differences bring “life” to his playing. This life should not be allowed to go out of our music just because electronic tablas are more convenient.

Technology and education

What role do all the technologies we discussed so far play in music education?. Tape recorders reduce the amount of repetition needed in teaching. Many teachers today encourage their students to record lessons and listen to them repeatedly to perfect their learning. However, they should be advised against hearing their own recorded voice/ sound too often, because that can reinforce the flaws in their technique. Listening critically to themselves on tape once to note all the flaws, on the other hand, is a good practice for self-improvement. Some teachers also advocate that a student practice with sound reinforcement early on, so as to get used to ones own amplified voice/ sound. That is a topic that would benefit from further scrutiny by thinkers.

Electronic instruments mentioned above have obvious uses in teaching and learning situations. In their case once again, there is need to examine closely what if anything is to be gained by an insistence that the acoustic originals be used at least for some percentage of time. Having neither an electronic tabla nor a human accompanist, many students of voice in the earlier times learned to keep theka on tabla (or just bayan) while they sang. Does that ability teach one something worth preserving? I think yes. But should teachers insist their students do it today? Or is there another, less painful way to gain those lost benefits which we can adopt?

We have to watch where technology is taking us and we have to be careful to go

in the direction that we want to go with the help of technology rather than be

dragged in the direction in which the market forces of technology are pushing.

Technology and audiences

Audiences a generation ago had good practice of listening quietly. I think that is slowly going out of practice. People don't become as quiet today as they became earlier. Because they know sound reinforcement is available. The person on the stage can always overpower their whispers. So they whisper freely. The moment the electricity goes, suppose the lights go off, we'll all become quieter. And you don't destroy quietude just by whispering. You destroy it by rustling paper, you destroy it by doing so many things that we are unconscious of. We don't realize that we are disturbing quietude. We make small noises without realizing that we are making small noises. Because the habit of being quiet has gone away.

It is perfectly fine. No problem with audiences becoming more free in listening to performances, more comfortably shifting in their seats, doing other little things that add to their comfort. But somewhere we have lost with the habit of becoming quiet we have also lost somewhere the habit of becoming attentive. And that I find is a disturbing development. People have lost the habit of applying their whole hundred percent attention to what is being said.

And perhaps these two are linked together, and we have to break the link. Because technology is here; we can't deny the technology, you can't say I'll sing or play only without microphone, because that is impractical; it is silly. But we as audiences have to learn to retain the good parts of the old practice of listening without carrying the burden of the useless parts of good listening with it.

A closer look at recorded sound

Producing music for recording is very different today from what it was in the early days of recording. Today you may have a song - this is especially true of light music genres - you may have a song in which twentyfive musicians have collaborated in producing the sound - and none of the twentyfive may have seen each others faces! Because it is possible to go into the studio one at a time and make the recording. Certainly the musicians don't know what the final product is going to look(sound) like - they are given specific directions by the composer - and perhaps even the composer has only a faint idea of how the final product is going to sound like. So performing for recording has really diverged now from performing live. Let me play for you some sounds I created all by myself, armed with an ordinary PC and a sound editing software. These examples show you some of the effects that can be created in the recording studio – much more is possible.

To hear the examples, go to http://www.it.iitb.ac.in/~hvs/technology_for_music_demos.html

With that let me conclude my presentation today. I hope I have given some of you some new ideas. I shall be happy to answer any questions.

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