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Re this from @jasonkoebler, two things:
First, as a pianist and composer who fights tooth and nail to keep his music alive through the maelstrom of life, despite zero (or negative) economic benefit, I’d just like my “fuck you, Mikey Shulman” on the record. Thanks.
Second, “enjoy” is the wrong word. Capitalist techbro just can’t imagine music having any purpose other than pleasure or consumption, to be maximized (obviously).
People create music/art because the creative process gives them life — even when that process is frustrating, laborious, maddening, or just •hard work•.
And people enjoy engaging deeply with music/art because of that sense that it has a creator and the creation process gave that person life, life they can now share in experiencing that art.
2/
My legendary mentor Don Betts said, “Music teaches us how to think and feel.”
Note: not •what• to think and feel. •How.•
Gen AI is probably just fine for pumping out endless office lobby music whose purpose is to be neutral and generic, to be ignored. But what Don said? No way. The mere output isn’t the point. You’ve got to live it.
3/
Music (and all forms of art) aren't just self-therapy — though they are that, to be sure. They’re instruction manual and mutual support and medicine and nourishment for being a thinking and feeling human being. Being a person is a •lot•! Music helps us be this messy, beautiful thing that we are.
And it’s something else, too.
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We live in a world of breathtaking beauty. That beauty is not just inhabited by life; it is •created• by life. It’s created by all these living organisms just being what they are, shaping the world by living in it.
Trees make forests. Coral makes reefs. Humans make art.
Other things too, yes. But all our creative work is surely one of the things at the center of what we bring to the universe — precious and valuable the way flowers or anthills are precious and valuable.
5/
If there’s any •purpose• to living things, if our existence is •for• anything, surely creating music is part of that purpose. Not just outputting music; living music, breathing music, struggling with and through music, experiencing music fully as both creator and listener. Our purpose.
And if this extractive capitalism of our current world is good for anything, it’s killing purpose, reducing everything to an empty husk. So to be clear, I’m not just saying “fuck you, Mikey Shulman, you cheapen my work as a musician;” I’m saying “fuck you, Mikey Shulman, you’re trying to destroy what gives our human existence meaning.” •That• kind of a fuck you.
/end
Yes. Both market economics and policing of artistic hierarchy make us forget that the point isn’t to be the •best• at it; the point is to •do• it.
People don’t always play music to win or to profit or to pass their juries. People play to •play•. That piano rep we quarantine in concert halls nowadays is supposed to be for the home — and primarily for the enjoyment of the player, whether perfecting it or just fumbling through it. (Somebody called the piano “the big-screen TV of the 19th century.”)
Keep playing, @jredlund.
Yes, @JetlagJen centers something I’d only alluded to: creation is connection; creation is community. That’s a crucial part of this too. A world where all art is automatically generated is an unimaginably lonely world.
@inthehands @JetlagJen sadly, creation is not community in the same sense that it once was. As the original author of a cross-platform digital audio workstation, I often feel regret about the extent to which contemporary computer-based msuic/audio tools allow people to work alone.
I believe it to be a real and genuine problem to which I contributed (not the worst problem I've contributed to, however).
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@PaulDavisTheFirst @JetlagJen
I’d say cut yourself some slack. I create a lot of my music using thoroughly pre-computer methods — pen and paper at the piano — and I can assure you that solitary creation has been an ingredient of music since forever. And that solitude can be beautiful.
I’d venture that the isolation artists feel is a product of social systems, not tools. In a functioning society, the solitary creator should still find paths to community.
@inthehands @JetlagJen that's not enough to justify slack :) Sure, if you want to write piano sonatas, you worked alone for the last few hundred years.
but if you were a piano player and needed drums, you used to have to find a drummer. now you just need a DAW and maybe a plugin or two.
which is both good and bad: you may live somewhere where there really is no drummer. but you may also be failing to connect with the drummer next door, so to speak.
Sure, there is •something• to that. But my love is solo piano music, and the primary way that repertoire has led to social connections throughout history is from people playing in the home or for small groups of friends — and also from learning and teaching it.
I see those same impulses at work in people sharing DAW tips and tricks with each other, getting together to listen to works in progress (which very much happens), etc. The instinct is there. The possibility is there. It’s social support structures — time and slack, first and foremost — that are missing.
There are always avenues for turning a completely solitary creation into a point of human connection in a well-functioning society.