DTMG by Pete Bulanow
Among the dire warnings in the world of music was the prediction that software like Apple’s Garage Band would allow anyone, even untrained musicians, to make music. This is because Garage Band allows anyone to drag in musical loops of sound, and transmogrify them into the key and tempo of the song*. People seriously thought this was the end of music as we know it [citation needed].
Turns out that’s not the way it works. Computers are like a bicycle for the mind. They don’t think for us, they allow us to think more efficiently. So what Garage Band really does, in essence, is to lower the threshold for music creation. What was missed by its detractors is that it doesn’t change the threshold for what good music is.
The part they got right is that Garage Band can allow untrained musicians to make music. Which technically means that you can be a musician without having technical training, or knowing how to play an instrument. But if you’re not a musician, if you don’t have “it”, you’re not going to make good music. You’re going to simply create a wall of sound, because in Garage Band, it’s easy to paint a track full of a certain loop. Turns out that “Garage Band” was aptly named.
The secret to making music, then, becomes knowing what to cut.
Suddenly, Michelangelo’s apocryphal story that to create David he simply “carved away everything that wasn’t the sculpture” shines in a new light.
I was reminded of this recently when my 4 year old daughter got a new Toca Boca app for the iPad called “Toca Band”. It’s basically Garage Band for kids, except it only has four bars of music that loop with no tempo or key change options, and then has about three variants of each loop, plus an opportunity to perform a solo instrument. It was easy for her to fill up all the slots with instruments, but I started pulling things out, showing her that it sounds better when you only have a few things going.
The trick to revealing the song, is knowing what isn’t in the song.
* Technically “Acid” by Sonic Foundry, did loops first