Note the Tech

Carla McElhaney performing at a house concert by Revel. Revel, a chamber arts collective in Austin strives to make classical music more personal through house concerts like this. Photo courtesy of Carla McElhaney.

NOTE TECH THE

How have advances in music affected musicians?

Austin is called the Live Music Capital of the World and many Austinites are musicians themselves. Technologies have helped composers work and musicians learn faster.

Musicians often use online tools such as databases like IMSLP that offer free sheet music and recordings for performers to use, platforms such as YouTube that give performers and composers another way to expand their audience and make profit and software like Sibelius allow composers to create samples which can be used to pick out the problems.

For pianist and teacher, Carla McElhaney, technology was what introduced her to music.

“When I was very little, three, I was watching a children’s television program called Captain Kangaroo,” McElhaney said. “It’s a little before your time, but there was a puppet bunny rabbit, who was a regular character on the show.”

Although Mr. Bunny Rabbit’s time on the show was wordless, McElhaney said he was funny, witty, wise, and always playing jokes on the captain.

“One day they had a skit of him dressed up in a little tuxedo, playing the piano, and he was going up and

By Benjamin Cai

down the keyboard,” McElhaney said. “It was just glorious music, and I just thought I have to do that, so I started bugging my parents for lessons.”

McElhaney’s family wasn’t musical, but they immediately searched for a teacher and signed her up. She said TV shows and radio programs like Captain Kangaroo exponentially expanded music’s reach. “Another thing to consider is that when you add platforms like YouTube to the mix, suddenly technology is working to expand everyone’s cultural awareness,” McElhaney said. “We can watch performances from around the globe of every musical stripe, from world music, to jazz, to hip-hop, and from a variety of historical eras, too.” For Michael Mikulka, an Austin composer and composition professor at ACC, technologies like YouTube, Spotify, and iTunes are instrumental to the newer generations of composers.

“We’re the first generations to grow up in the age of YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, and all these places where we can go and hear all types of music, generally, for free, pretty much any genre, any area of the world, any style of music, whenever we want,” Mikulka said. “Even 20 years ago, that wasn’t a possibility at all; we would have had to go seek out CDs.”

Because of new technologies, music became more accessible to the general public. James Buhler, a music theory professor at the Butler School of Music, worries about the compensation of performers under recording and streaming technologies.

“Recording really has been a dicey thing in that respect, but streaming has really put more pressure onto performers needing to do live concerts to make money and actually be making money through things besides making music, like merchandising,” Buhler said. “The pay rate on streaming services just isn’t very good, compared to older methods of distribution, but even under those older methods of distribution, I can’t say that the artists were receiving most of the money that was through the system even under that.”

Recording performances has resulted in more music out in the world. Mikulka said because of this, rather than going to a concert, somebody can just search YouTube and find the perfect recording.

“There’s a bit more proving that we have to do about it as to, ‘Why should we be there in person when we can easily hear a recording of it?’” Mikulka said. “I think this is something that orchestras are struggling with where it’s like, ‘Why should I go in person to hear Beethoven five when I can go on YouTube and there are about 500 different versions of that played with precision?’”

McElhaney said there’s an energy exchange that’s lost between the performer and listener when a performer records something without a live audience. This is something that performers and listeners have to get used to. “There’s no feedback, there’s just the camera and it’s actually, from my many friends I’ve talked to about

that, it’s a very strange and unsettling experience and makes them a little bit sad because a large part of the joy of music making comes from that exchange of energy and the upliftment and understanding that comes from the idea that we’re all sharing many aspects of a human experience together,” McElhaney said. “Certain things touch us in certain ways, certain things affect us in certain ways, and that gets lost to the performer in a virtual situation.”

McElhaney said the same thing happens to the listener; the change may be subtle, but nonetheless it is there. These small changes result

“It [the recording] doesn’t have to be really clean, but… it really has to convey emotions, or whatever it is that you’re communicating with the composition as clearly as possible because they’re going to only be able to hear it once, it has to make an immediate impression.”

-Michael Mikulka, composer

Michael Mikulka performing mid-concerto. Mikulka is a composer, professor of music, as well as a French Horn player and teacher. Photo courtesy of Michael Mikulka.

in differences that the listener and performer have in virtual performances rather than live ones.

“Now, this is not the same thing, though, as recording a live performance where there are other people in the room, so I do think there is an increase in the level of intimacy and energy exchange, the less technological barriers there are,” McElhaney said. “There can be technological enhancements… for instance, creating a beautiful visual space with lighting that’s technology, or amplifying something that enhances the sound for a listener in a certain way; that’s using technology, but I think there are certain ways you can use it that create barriers.”

On the other hand, Mikulka said that a performer should not rely on the live performance for the recording. Instead, the goal should be to convey emotions.

“It doesn’t have to be really clean, but… it really has to convey emotions, or whatever it is that you’re communicating with the composition as clearly as possible, [and] because they’re going to only be able to hear it once, it has to make an immediate impression,” Mikulka said. “Simultaneously, that tends to make for bad recordings, because… something inevitably is going to go wrong somewhere.”

A live performance will never be as perfect as a recording. There will always be constraints and mistakes in the live performance that cause problems for the listener, according to Mikulka.

“Then when you’re listening to that in the recording environment, you’re not going to have the leisure of the live performance,” Mikulka said. “When something is happening live… there’s just a different energy.”

Technologies allowed performers to create more perfect performances. Buhler said technology has also given teachers an easier time. “The frictions of technology have really gone away,” Buhler said. “Now we can bring up any example we want at any time, so we have that side of things [where] we can hook in our computers and put things up on the slides and pictures up on the screen really easily.”

One of the newest technologies is online classes on Zoom. Buhler said his experience has been interesting and there are some quizzes that are much harder to give on Zoom.

“One of the things I like to do in my graduate form analysis class is just give short quizzes that help the students work on tempo,” Buhler said. “It’s something that’s hard for them to work on on their own because it’s really hard to obey a timer unless

someone else puts it there.”

In-person quizzes usually took 5 minutes to finish, and Buhler said the technological barriers of online quizzes, such as printing the quiz out or downloading it on their tablet, made the process too slow. In fact, it took around 30 minutes online vs 5 minutes in-person.

“It’s fascinating the way that technology, on one hand, [has had] lots of real improvements,” Buhler said. “On the other hand, doing something on Zoom and how difficult it has proved to be has opened my eyes in many respects.”

Zoom and other technologies can make education easier, but the opposite is also true. McElhaney said that one aspect of technology, integrated hybrid classes, which have some in-person and some virtual students are here to stay.

“I just started teaching piano in a place called Studio A in Austin, and I sat in on a masterclass for their advanced students,” McElhaney said. “There were 11 students in the room with a teacher, their parents, and two or three [students] visiting via Zoom, also taking part in the class.”

Masterclasses can expand a student’s understanding of a musical piece, and McElhaney said recording something, not just masterclasses, and posting it on a site like YouTube can allow more people to reach that performance. Meanwhile, Mikulka said technology has helped in education immensely. “In the music theory classes, when I want to play an example, there’s a computer in the room I’ll teach in and there’s a projector,” Mikulka said. “Instead of having to bring in slides, bring in audio files, and have a separate audio system, I could just plug in a cord to the computer and play something off of YouTube.” Mikulka said with advances in technology, he doesn’t have to worry so much about fast-forwarding or rewinding, rather he can pre-set it somewhere or just click. Overall, it’s just easier and simpler. “I remember, during my undergrad we were going to play Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, and I had to learn one of the French Horn parts for that in a really short period of time.” Mikulka said. “The conductor was like, go to the library and listen to different recordings of it so I had to go to the library, put on headphones, listen to each of these recordings of it, and it was a pain.” Mikulka said advances in YouTube and other streaming services have completely revolutionized how performers learn. Now it’s much easier to listen to other performer’s recordings in order to learn.

“People always had to go find scores from the library, now, if you want to learn about a composition like, how did Ravel do this thing?” Mikulka said. “Well, you go to IMSLP, you click on composition, [and] you can look at

each individual part if you want, you can look at the score, you can listen to like six or seven different recordings, and you can pinpoint everything.” Mikulka said new technologies like IMSLP or YouTube allow a performer to really focus on one section of the performance; they can slow it down and repeat it 10 times, in order to really figure out the message. This helps performers to learn pieces. “There’s so much more of an ability to be able to just narrow in on learning something, learning something specific,” Mikulka said. Buhler said usually he just fills the piano role when playing with composition rather than writing it all down. This is a lot easier for him and allows him to play more complicated music. “So you’ve got things like “The synthesizer is what the sound is, but Sibelius, you have things like Finale, you have things like Dorico which are basically increasingly synthesizer notation programs, they’re designed still to create scores samplers are really and then those scores are able to have parts and then to be taking the place of able to get players to play and so most of them are based strings.” around that workflow there,” Buhler said. “But increasingly, things like those notation -James Buhler, professor programs are starting to use samples for playback on that, and they’re actually even being used occasionally to create mockups.” Buhler said these samples are frequently used as production cues to be approved for recording. These samples are almost always trying to imitate acoustic sounds. “So it’s at least going through an approval process, so that’s really driving the sounds that are coming out of the computer that need to be at a higher and higher level, so I think what we’re seeing is just more and more focus on how can we produce

sounds out of a computer that sound like they’re performances that we want to listen to, at that level,” Buhler said. “I think what we’ve been seeing in the last 20 years really is that development towards making computers be able to do that.”

Buhler said synthesizers have reached the level of acoustic sounds if a composer writes for their samples. They still can’t replace an orchestra but they can sound close.

“There are people who want that particular sound, so take something like Dune right,” Buhler said. “There’s a lot of synthesized sound in that or maybe even more, something like Blade Runner either the original or the remake 2049, the synthesizer is what the sound is, but increasingly synthesizer samplers are really taking the place of strings.”

Mikulka said one of the biggest challenges in composing is getting stuff out there. Without a platform or good connections the goal is to have little streams where a musician just puts stuff out and hopes that something attracts attention. “Maybe somebody hears this who’s like a spectacular violinist and they’re like, ‘Oh, I want to play your music,’” Mikulka said. “Then because that spectacular violinist plays your music, and there’s an

amazing recording of it out there, then everybody hears it.”

Mikulka said it was difficult to attract attention as a composer without YouTube or SoundCloud. With these new technologies there’s a lot less gatekeeping so it becomes easier to put music out there.

“My most successful compositions in terms of sales, in terms of people buying them, in terms of people performing them, pretty much all of them just exploded on YouTube, one day, it’s gotten like 100.” Mikulka said. “Then I look back like two months later, and it has like 3000, then I look back, and it’s got like 10,000 views, I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know why it happens, but people saw it, and people recommended it to each other.”

Meanwhile, McElhaney said Revel, a chamber arts collective, found audiences online on top of in person.

“We had a beautiful website where people actually found us that were not on our mailing list, that didn’t have friends telling them about us that just happened upon us from doing a search,” McElhaney said. “We had visitors from out of town, I can remember at one concert, he said, ‘Oh, we just found it on the internet.’” Mikulka said nowadays people can get famous easier without the backing of some label. This means that more people can learn music and have a chance in a career of music. Mikulka said, “It’s still hard, it still requires a lot of luck in addition to putting out a built something with ability or with something that just captures people’s interest, but it’s much more possible now, because of these platforms, where basically everybody can see your music without anybody promoting other than people being like, ‘I like this, let me show something here, let me share this.’”

Because technology has expanded music’s appeal, more people are able to access this language. This results in more people listening and playing music.

“I think music is the most expansive, inclusive language, connecting language, connecting force that humans have at their disposal,” McElhaney said. “And I think it’s going to continue to open minds and hearts and bring people closer and closer together.” Buhler said in teaching, they’ve shifted their resources in

Revel performing at Blue Rock in Austin. Revel’s goal is to make classical music more personsonalized. Photo courtesy of Rodney Bursiel.

libraries towards streaming services. A disadvantage of this is that he has to check every semester to see if something is licensed or not. “My gut tells me that the future of the CD is not long, that it’s a dying technology, on the other hand, vinyl has made a comeback, and I think there is the remains, for a lot of people, a desire to have the material of object,” Buhler said. “I’m not particularly sentimental about either vinyl or CDs from that standpoint, but I do have a strong feeling about wanting to own the digital copy of it rather than the streaming copy of it because I’ve had too much experience with streaming stuff going away and not being available when I need it.” Buhler said orchestral repertoire has changed a lot and that in the future we will probably see more hybrid stuff. Historically the orchestra has always been an institution of

music.

“So I guess on the one hand, you look at the economic logic, you say, ‘There’s no way,’” Buhler said. “On the other hand you look at the history and say, ‘Well, we always seem to find a way.’”

Buhler said the music in concerts today reflects the current audiences and what they’ve grown up with. Orchestras nowadays are more likely to show film music or video game music in their repertoire.

“Increasingly now we’re starting to see video games, having that same type of thing, so it’s part of the way in which that institution remains viable is by tapping into these additional sources like film music,” Buhler said. “We’ve got film music fans, we’ll have film music at this concert to get those folks into the orchestra seats as well, that’s a way that we can perpetuate ourselves so we are seeing some evolution of the repertory along those lines.”

Mikulka said music is a reflection of society. The traditions of society, the location, the time period are all reflected in the music of that time.

“If you go to the classical era in Germany, you’re going to have a time where there’s a really strict

division of like upper class and lower class, and you have music being written exclusively for like the king and associated royals,” Mikulka said. “So music, the music’s being written in a way that’s going to reflect that, it’s going to be really balanced, it’s going to be really clear and sort of prestigious sounding and there’s not going to be a lot of unexpected things, it’s going to be lots of expectations being fulfilled and a lot of things that are full of stability and continuation.” Mikulka said Romantic era music also reflected this with increased individualism and emotion in music as sheet music and instruments became mass produced. There’s always a reflection of society in the music. “I think that’s one thing where society’s clearly gone these past 10, 20 years, is that everybody sort of is able to interact with each other more effectively for the first time where people from around the world are being exposed to each other for the first time,” Mikulka said. “I would expect that there’s going to be a lot more interconnection of music than there has been in the past which even though we’re already sort of there, I think that’s going to really intensify in the future.” Buhler said nowadays it’s the video games that can shine a light on what kind of a person somebody is. This differs from his own experience as a teen and young adult. “From my own standpoint, I remember when I was, say, in my teens and 20s, I could say to somebody show me your music collection, I’ll tell you who you are,” Buhler said. “The sticks of identity were that strong with music for most people that you could tell what person a person was by the music they chose to have and that they listened to, I don’t think that’s true anymore.”

As the world opens up and society opens up, music will also open up. This results in more genres of music available for performers.

“That’s one of my actual, like real predictions where I can feel somewhat confident because we’re also seeing a lot more musical styles from around the world being popularized in the US,” Mikulka said. “I would expect that a lot of that is going to sort of grow and find a place in the US in a larger and larger degree.”