I talked to danny about my idea of focusing on music hardware and swerving laptop music. He talked to me about how cinemas started using soundtracks instead of real orchestras with instruments. People petitioned and wanted the orchestras back. This is similar to my idea of wanting the proper aspect of audio to be recognised. The transition to pre-recorded music in cinemas was called 'canned music'. Below is information sourced from articles that reveal there was a campaign used to raise awareness of pre-recorded music and stop it from being used in theatre. The campaign used illustrations of a robot playing instruments, which help state the message of soulless machines destroying the emotion of music. One quote from the text depicts the view point of the technological advancement taken within cinemas and is somewhat relevant to my issue of laptop music.
"The ads pleaded with the public to demand humans play their music (be it in movie or stage theaters), rather than some cold, unseen machine."
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/musicians-wage-war-against-evil-robots-92702721/?no-ist
When synchronized sound ended the era of
silent films, live musicians were no longer hired to play in movie theaters.
They fought back with an ad campaign against soulless machines.
After the release of The Jazz Singer in
1927, all bets were off for live musicians who played in movie theaters. Thanks
to synchronized sound, the use of live musicians was unnecessary — and perhaps
a larger sin, old-fashioned. In 1930 the American Federation of Musicians
formed a new organization called the Music Defense League and launched a
scathing ad campaign to fight the advance of this terrible menace known as
recorded sound.
The evil face of that campaign was the
dastardly, maniacal robot. The Music Defense League spent over $500,000,
running ads in newspapers throughout the United States and Canada. The ads
pleaded with the public to demand humans play their music (be it in movie or
stage theaters), rather than some cold, unseen machine. A typical ad read like
this one from the September 2, 1930 Syracuse Herald in New York:
- Tho’ the Robot can make no music of himself, he can and does arrest the efforts of those who can.
- Manners mean nothing to this monstrous offspring of modern industrialism, as IT crowds Living Music out of the theatre spotlight.
- Though “music has charms to soothe the savage beast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak,” it has no power to appease the Robot of Canned Music. Only the theatre-going public can do that.
- Hence the swift growth of the Music Defense League, formed to demand Living Music in the theatre.
- Every lover of music should join in this rescue of Art from debasement. Sign and mail the coupon.
The robot of recorded or “canned” music had
many guises, all somehow destroying the best things in society. Here the robot
makes a lunge in its attempt to steer “musical culture” away from a decidedly
more pure course:
Another ad claimed that musicians were
being put out of work by Hollywood because recorded sound required just a few
hundred musicians in recording studios. The ad even uses scare quotes around
the word “music,” implying that recorded sound couldn’t even be considered as
such:
- 300 musicians in Hollywood supply all the “music” offered in thousands of theatres. Can such a tiny reservoir of talent nurture artistic progress?
Joseph N. Weber, the president of the
American Federation of Musicians, made it clear in the March, 1931 issue of
Modern Mechanix magazine that the very soul of art was at stake in this battle
against the machines:
- The time is coming fast when the only living thing around a motion picture house will be the person who sells you your ticket. Everything else will be mechanical. Canned drama, canned music, canned vaudeville. We think the public will tire of mechanical music and will want the real thing. We are not against scientific development of any kind, but it must not come at the expense of art. We are not opposing industrial progress. We are not even opposing mechanical music except where it is used as a profiteering instrument for artistic debasement.
That debasement came in the form of the
evil robot grinding up instruments in a meat grinder, like in this ad from the
November 3, 1930 Syracuse Herald.
The robot was even
shown as a new nurse ineffectively soothing a baby, which represented the
audience of the future.
You best hide your
daughters, because this ad from the August 24, 1931 Centralia Daily
Chronicle in Centralia, Washington shows an “unwelcome suitor” who has
been “wooing the muse for many dreary months without winning her favor.”
The robot was often shown as greedy in the
ads, caring nothing of people but only of profit, like in this ad from the
October 1, 1930 Portsmouth Herald (Portsmouth, New Hampshire).
Fundamentally, the ads were an effort to
make people believe what made music so special was the musician’s soul that was
somehow only reflected in a live performance. This ad from the August 17, 1930
Oelwein Daily Register (Oewlwein, Iowa) got to the heart of it — robots have no
soul.
"We've all
heard that the Internet is killing the music industry, just like home taping
was supposed to kill it before. As it turns out, accusations that technology
would destroy music go all the way back to the 1930s, when musicians claimed
tyrannical robots would churn out soulless music.
Synchronized sound may have been a wonder
to theater audiences who saw 1927’ The
Jazz Singer, but to some musicians, it signalled the death knell of live
performances. In 1930, the American Federation of Musicians formed the Music
Defense League, which launched a $500,000 ad campaign, asking the public to
petition for live musicians in lieu of “canned”
prerecorded music. The ads featured robots playing instruments, accompanied by
claims that soulless machines would destroy the emotional art of music.
Even films were not exempt from these
musical doomsayers, who believed that audiences would grow weary at the lack of
emotion in filmed performances. Said Joseph N. Weber, president of the American
Federation of Musicians:
After the release of The Jazz Singer in
1927, all bets were off for live musicians who played in movie theaters. Thanks
to synchronized sound, the use of live musicians was unnecessary — and perhaps
a larger sin, old-fashioned. In 1930 the American Federation of Musicians
formed a new organization called the Music Defense League and launched a
scathing ad campaign to fight the advance of this terrible menace known as
recorded sound.
The evil face of that campaign was the
dastardly, maniacal robot. The Music Defense League spent over $500,000,
running ads in newspapers throughout the United States and Canada. The ads
pleaded with the public to demand humans play their music (be it in movie or
stage theaters), rather than some cold, unseen machine. A typical ad read like
this one from the September 2, 1930 Syracuse Herald in New York:
Tho’ the Robot can make no music of
himself, he can and does arrest the efforts of those who can.
Manners mean nothing to this monstrous
offspring of modern industrialism, as IT crowds Living Music out of the theatre
spotlight.
Though “music has charms to soothe the
savage beast, to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak,” it has no power to
appease the Robot of Canned Music. Only the theatre-going public can do that.
Hence the swift growth of the Music Defense
League, formed to demand Living Music in the theatre.
Every lover of music should join in this
rescue of Art from debasement. Sign and mail the coupon.
The robot of recorded or “canned” music had
many guises, all somehow destroying the best things in society. Here the robot
makes a lunge in its attempt to steer “musical culture” away from a decidedly
more pure course:"
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