5/15/2023:

"Is today's music dumbening?"

Transcript
Page 1. Ken holds an upside down dictionary. He says, "Is today's music dumbening? Wait, that's not how you spell 'dummening.'" Number 7: Dummening. 5/15/2023. CC By-Sa 2023 Ken Alleman. TheWorldOnAString.NeoCities.Org.

Page 2. Text reads, "The short answer: no! Music, musicians, and listeners aren't getting any less intelligent or less sophisticated. If they were, it should be easy to prove empirically, since scientists like to study this kind of stuff." Image of Ken as a scientist, depositing material from a dropper labeled "stupid" into a test tube labeled "music."

Page 3. Text reads, "Has anything changed? Yes! Our ability to digitally manipulate sound has skyrocketed in the last few decades. Often, songs are sculpted in post-production into whatever the label imagines to be a hit. Songs with simpler, more repetitious structures are easier to tweak and reorder." Image of a wave form in a digital audio workstation. Two idential sections of the wave form are labeled "copy" and "paste."

Page 4. Text reads, "Digital editing is not all bad! Amateur producers are creating the most unimaginable stuff with consumer technology. The new frontier in popular music may be textural, rather than compositional." Image of Ken wearing a Dick Van Dyke one man band contraption, labeled "artist's impression."

Page 5. Text reads, "Conventional song structure isn't the only way a piece of music can develop. Songs with repetitive structures can layer in, take away, or otherwise alter their instrumentation to create development. If that's not to your taste, that's fine! Not everything has to be." There is staff notation with an ostinato that repeats four times. Each repetition is labeled with a different set of building or reducing instrumentation.

Page 6. Text reads, "Where are people listening to the music? Why? And on what? A song on your record setup at home serves a different need than a song you hear at the dance club. Or in a video clip on your phone!" Image of a hand holding a cell phone, with a social media page open onscreen. The image on the page is Ken in the Dick Van Dyke getup from earlier.

Page 7. Text reads, "The music being pushed by the recording industry is becoming less reflective of what people like and how they listen to it. In fact, most of the time, labels no longer pay attention to artists who haven't already made a name for themselves. Kind of makes you wonder why labels still exist, doesn't it?" Ken is speaking this last bit, his arms crossed and his facial expression not amused.

Page 8. Ken has closed his dictionary. He says, "It's always tempting to believe the worst about the next generation. But it's a huge leap to conclude that music is getting dumber. Or any other variation of that opinion! Don't worry. The kids are alright."

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