Historical Overview

    Musical/Cultural Analysis

    Historical Overview

    Musical/Cultural Analysis

 

Production techniques within music are more often than not linked to specific pieces of technology. This paper intends to explore how specific technology or access to it defines musical genres and sub-cultures. Specifically the paper will focus on the lo-fi electronica movement and its use of out-dated, cheap or unconventional technology to create music. The research will explore the validity of such genres, in terms of audience accessibility in comparison to other experimental musical forms. It will also cover a historical overview and an ethnomusicological analysis of the various genres involved.

    This study will hopefully provide readers with an insight into electronic music counter cultures as well as some thoughts on experimental music and the nature of modern technological consumerism. The main genres examined are Chiptunes and Circuit Bent music.  Chiptunes is an ambiguous term that originally was used to describe the music made for early digital processors, therefore consisting of only simple waveforms (Wikipedia, 2006a). This definition has been broadened to incorporate music both made on the original processors, or on technology that attempts to emulate those processors. As Jakobsson (2005) wrote, “the most important element of Chiptunes…is the sound”(para.16), the sound being the familiar beeps and blips from early video and arcade games. Circuit Bending is in a similar vein, however instead of being interested in just old computer and video console sound chips, it involves physically changing a basic sound chip to create a new instrument. Reed Ghazala (2005) is the man that coined the phrase ‘circuit bending’ to describe the art of creating various alterations to a cheap circuit, generally electronic toys, to turn them into musical performance tools. Collins (2006) provides this definition,

 

Circuit Bending is freestyle sound design with a post-modern twang-the perfect escape for artists bored by the powerful and often stultifying rational, software tools that increasingly dominate music production, but still hooked on the digitally inspired cut and paste aesthetic of scavenging, sampling and reworking found material (pg.91).

    

    Both of these genres exemplify the main topic of the paper, which is technologies effect on defining musical cultures, they also provide a foundation to discuss the papers argument of whether these genres are valid artistic pursuits. In regards to the validity of these genres a methodology has been devised in which an ethnographic approach of qualitative research is used (Becker & Geer, 1960). This will provide credibility to the arguments presented, as well as revealing its flaws. Both points of view are presented from various forms of literature and then discussed from an informed viewpoint.

    Firstly the methodology and approach to research will be explained. Historical background and a musical and cultural discussion will be provided, examining both Chiptunes and Circuit Bending respectively. Finally the paper will discuss the validity and accessibility of these genres in relation to the results of the method and opinions from various literatures. The paper does not aim to find definitive answers, but provide insight into this field.

 

As previously mentioned the main aims of this paper are to reveal the phenomenon of technology forming musical cultures, and to examine whether these genres are valid art forms. The study of musical cultures is described as ethnomusicology, which is a field of ethnography. Research within this field generally requires a technique referred to as  ‘participant observation’, which involves becoming a part of a culture over a period of time and observing by taking part (Becker & Geer, 1960). In relation to ethnomusicology, Merriam’s (1964) ‘simple model’ describes cultural musical study to take place on three analytical levels “conceptualisation about music, behaviour about music and sound music itself” (pg.32). So ‘participant observation’ and Merriam’s ‘simple model’ can work in combination to provide a solid background for a methodology, however the cultures that are to be studied are far from traditional anthropological study.

    The essence of these counter-cultures, especially Chiptunes exist primarily on the Internet, so to conduct the research I must observe and participate in the cyber culture. This may seem bizarre, however many ethnomusicological studies have taken place through ‘participant observation’ on the Internet. Lysloff (2004), in the essay Musical life in softcity: an internet ethnography, explains some of the processes in internet field research and explains most of the doubts about this research is due to the lack of contact with physical beings, “I often asked myself whether what I was doing was actually fieldwork, since I never had to go anywhere physically” (pg. 25). This research involved collecting song files, participating in forums and collecting various texts, which are all forms of ethnographic research. Lange (2001) writes about the use of hypermedia, meaning any digital media source, within ethnomusicology and raises the issue of “comprehending live performance” (pg.132) within this research.

     In the case my paper, the study involved observing the cultures through a variety of digital mediums as well as participating via cyber space. To participate in the culture I decided to create a musical work parallel to the paper. My background is in the area of experimental electronic composition, so the work is approached from a purely artistic point of view. The piece to be created is a performance for Nintendo DS with Nanoloop 2.0, other video game samples and a Playstation controller for MIDI control. The piece is informed by my research and in turn I can personally reflect on the genre from a compositional view to inform my research. I also created songs to submit to online Chiptune databases. These elements of participation helped myself form an opinion on this topic and also become close to it, which has created a bias. Therefore within the observational material many different opinions are purposefully selected to attempt to counter any bias present.