The Grim Professional Future

[andrewducker]

I was at a party a few years ago where the people split into two groups - the ones who were happily singing around a piano and the ones who were hiding in the kitchen, aghast that people would sing, in public, for fun.  The split was clearly generational in nature - the older folks had clearly grown up singing together, the younger ones considered singing to be something that was done by musicians.

And despite theoretically belonging to the second group I've generally felt that this was a bad thing.  My parents used to sing on long car journeys, entertaining us when we were little, and it always seemed like a lot of fun.  I can trace the point where I lost any interest in it to my first choir lesson in school, where we all lined up in rows and sang through something vaguely religious - and then afterwards the choirmaster told me that I should just mime along.  This would have been twenty six years ago, but the memory still sticks with me. 

The idea that a pupil who wasn't good at something should be told to just _stop_ is something that shocks me in retrospect - it's a massive failure on the behalf of any teacher.  And the idea that singing is something that should be done only by the trained - rather than a natural expression of our humanity is also something that bothers me deeply.

There does seem to have been a resurgence recently - things like YouTube and Singstar/Rock Band seem to have encouraged people to put their own voice out there in the same way that blogs encouraged people to write.  But I doubt very much that we're going to end up back at the point where sing-songs around the piano are common place again.

Mind you - a lot of this is probably down to the fact that playing Grand Theft Auto is a more distracting and, dare I say it, fun way of spending the evening :->

All of this triggered by a quote here in an article on the long history of articles decrying technical progress in the "content industry" - starting with Sousa (the composer) worrying about the player piano and the gramophone:

"Under such conditions, the tide of amateurism cannot but recede until there will be left only the mechanical device and the professional executant.

Comments

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

I suspect the only part of the Rock Band style games that can actually teach you anything even close to a real instrument is the drumming. If you've never drummed before it will get you up and running with the hand/foot co-ordination and a basic 4/4 beat. The rest is, it seems to me, just pushing buttons to play a game. Fun for some I'm sure, but it all leaves me cold.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I think GH has lost its way (it's now too easy to score points for playing something that bears no resemblance to the right notes at the right time), but the earlier GH games and Rock Band can teach you quite a lot for any instrument about rhythm and precision, and about 'keeping going after you make a mistake', a major difficulty for most learners. My main 'proper instrument' is melodeon (button accordion), and it's a lot like Guitar Hero guitar really (also like typing).

It would be wonderful if we could find a way for real instruments to give you the same sense of achievement as a beginner that the starter levels of rhythm bands do.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

Agreed, actually - I've played piano accordion, and I agree that the left hand is about as close to playing GH as any instrument.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

it's now too easy to score points for playing something that bears no resemblance to the right notes at the right time

How so? I've noticed that the difficulty levels vary slightly between incarnations, but you still don't get points if you don't hit the right notes, surely?

I haven't played the later ones at the lower difficulty levels so I'm interested in how that works.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

In all of the Guitar Hero games it's possible to 5 star a song while turning in an incredibly ropey performance. But in GH3, I really noticed that I'd be massively mistiming the solos, and the music would play anyway. I just think they relaxed what you had to do to score a note as 'correct' to the point where my disbelief suspenders snapped.

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

Oh yes,leaves me cold too - I am not a games fan at all.

hmm, drummers seem to disagree :-)

In case of any doubt, I wasn't suggesting RB etc were any good at getting skills for a real instrument(indeed quite the opposite),but that it took as much time to get good at as getting passable at an instrument does.

But I spent my childhood singing and playing instruments - I suppose those who played games might well find the opposite.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

The only reason I mentioned the drums is I know a couple of folk who had never drummed before and can now sit behind a kit and play a basic boom-smack 4/4 beat

[marrog.livejournal.com]

hmm, drummers seem to disagree :-)

My drummer, who is nothing short of brilliant at what he does, couldn't pass songs at easy or medium, but once on expert, on a track he knew he just played the beat he knew as a drummer, without watching the screen, and aced it.