Ergonomics and the Use of Technology
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Section Headings:
1. Ergonomics of Recording Technology
2. Production Technology as a Consumer Product
3. Creative Abuse
4. Technology and the Conceptualization of Music
5. Seeing Sound
Ergonomics of Recording Technology
Several scholars have approached the question of how the ergonomics of new technological developments have shaped changing professional and creative practice. Zak has described the way in which multitrack recording techniques have changed the creative process for many musicians. Paul Simon’s Graceland album (1986) was partly written by recording extended ‘loops’ of basic sketches played by African musicians and then using the ‘feel’ to suggest structural editing and rewriting. It has also become common practice for writers to use sounds as the basis of an idea. Peter Gabriel’s creative process involves recording any experimentation that occurs in the studio and utilizing it as a springboard for the development of ideas, or storing it away for future use. These techniques evolved from changes in the technology rather than the technology being developed because there was a desire to make changes to the compositional process.
Carlo Nardi's 2005 paper on the ergonomics of recording technology and practice
Nick Prior's 2006 paper on the ergonomics of computer interfaces
Production Technology as a Consumer Product
Paul Théberge has taken a somewhat different approach to this question. He charts the way in which keyboard manufacturers in the 1980s and 90s helped to alter the way that musicians viewed their instruments. The continued changes in the technology, and other factors to do with marketing, fostered the view that a keyboard was a consumable object that should be regularly upgraded. This can be identified as part of a more general trend whose effect is creeping into recording practice too. The market for plug-in effects and processors for the desktop sound-recording market has seen a similar move towards offering a large number of preset options (such as ‘rock hi-hat EQ’, ‘techno hi-hat EQ’ and so forth) rather than simply providing a variety of adjustable parameters. This is encouraging changes in working practice: rather than continually monitoring and tweaking the parameters of an effect or processor to fit the changing sound of a mix, an option is selected and maintained until it grates enough to be replaced by another.
Creative Abuse
Andy Keep and Timothy Taylor
Lateral thinking, problem solving and trashing the hotel room – the rock and roll notion of rebellion and non-conformity applied to technology: Joe Meek
Mark Irwin's 2005 paper on the aesthetics of compression and distortion
Andy Keep's 2005 paper on creative abuse
Technology and the Conceptualization of Music
The move from linear, tape-based recording practice to non-linear, hard-disk systems has also had a powerful effect not just on recording practice but also on the way that artists and producers conceptualize a piece and envisage the creative process. Many of the historical developments that Zak mentions in The Poetics of Rock can be seen as creating music through what might be described as ‘organic development’ (in terms of progressive growth), whereas the ‘cut-and-paste’ methods of desktop systems has encouraged composers to work in a modular fashion. It is becoming less common for any musician to play their part from beginning to end during the recording process. Non-linear practice often involves the producer or engineer aiming to record a ‘good chorus’ and a ‘good verse’ which is then copied and pasted to create the arrangement structure. This change in working practice has led to many composer-producers conceptualizing session musicians in the same way as they might envisage a sampler: as a sound source that generates modular units to be assembled and manipulated in the creative process. Sampling has to some extent altered the idea of composing to include collage and assemblage in ways that were previously perceived to be the domain of the DJ (the editor, the selector, and the impresario), driving changes in the way that non-linear recording is used. Indeed, the most successful software packages in this field have evolved out of MIDI sequencing software, thus further reinforcing the idea that non-linear recordings should be manipulated in the same way as MIDI sequences. This requires constant timing and playing with a click track to facilitate the editing process. Judging by the continued popularity of commercial music from the 1960s and 70s, it would seem that the rigid tempos imposed by click tracks are in many cases chosen for pragmatic rather than aesthetic reasons.
Ted Fletcher's 2005 paper on the psychoacoustics of compression and monitoring
Tellef Kvifte's 2006 paper on the broader meaning of 'analogue' and 'digital'
Seeing Sound
This brings us neatly to another way in which the ergonomics of music production technology have influenced creative practice. Contemporary non-linear recording software has added the visual dimension to editing sound in a way that simply wasn’t present in tape-based formats. Even during that period it was not unknown for engineers and producers to cover the VU meters on the mixing console with tape because they felt that they should make their judgements of sound quality purely from an aural perspective, without any visual influences. Recordists now have a graphic representation of every recorded sound wave available to them on screen, as well as a visual representation of the arrangement in the form of a block diagram showing which instruments have been recorded (or copied) at which points in the song. There is a potential rich vein of research in the study of how this (relatively) new visual aspect to the recording process has impacted on creative practice in the production process. This continuing process of atomizing the act of composition and record production and exposing every aspect of performance to closer and closer scrutiny has resulted in a clinical quest for technical perfection that often comes at the expense of aesthetic considerations. As soon as the technology to fix blemishes exists – through the use of compression to even out dynamics, for instance, or of the autotune to correct pitch inaccuracies – the pressure to utilize it is brought to bear; before long, since technical criticism is generally a lot easier than aesthetic criticism, its use will often become unquestioned standard practice. This pressure can also be applied if something looks ‘wrong’ on screen, even if the ‘flaw’ hasn’t actually been heard.
Elio Bates' 2008 paper on mixing 'by sight' in Turkish Arabesk recording
