Blastanova

In my part one of this post, I took a look at how digital video and audio recorders and portable devices have changed the way I consume and perceive media.  What I’m most interested in is music – and I discussed that because of the ability to hold all of my music library in one place and the ability to get music from many sources free on demand, I’ve started listening to music on a very superficial level, and don’t give albums concurrent repeated listens.

If I have this problem – others probably do to, and may even be perfectly happy to be oblivious to this.

This is also a problem for musicians.  If people give music only superficial listens, and are just as happy to move onto the next song by a different artist, why would a musician have fans that bother coming to shows, buy t-shirts, or buy follow-up works by that musician?  Isn’t it easier just to turn on an internet stream and listen on shuffle than to seek out and buy an album or see who’s playing in your town on Friday night?  It’s as though being a fan is becoming a lot less fanatical.

My concern over this is that music will be written to appreciate on a superficial level – will only make you nod your head to a beat.  Of course it’s already been happening in pop music for years.  Musicians will only get their “radio friendly” hit song played wide-spread.  But many times, this radio-friendly song will be the gateway drug that leads you into the album, and get you to repeatedly listen to all songs by the artist.  Other songs on the album could provide deeper enjoyment.

Whether this problem is new and exasperated by our digital devices, or an old problem but just becoming apparent to me as I change my listening habits, I have to wonder what we can do to change these habits and produce ways to make people want to listen over and over again and come to a deeper appreciation for the music and the artist.  Listening to music over and over again can even make things more memorable.  How many times have listening to a song for the first time in years bring you back to old times when you were listening to that song constantly.  It can be very nostalgic.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about music and video games (as you can infer from my blog posts).  I think that games like Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, Rock Band, etc do go quite a way in invoking repeated listening habits in music.  Pressing buttons in time to a beat, however, is just one direction to take this – I would call this a music creation game (even though you aren’t actually creating the music, there’s the illusion that you are).  I’m quite interested in exploring  a game where music is creating the game play environment that you’re in.

Another way to put this is I’d like to explore what games can be to music as what music videos are to music.  The best music videos, in my mind, produce another world where people break into singing and dance.  A mailbox will spring to life on the street and dance with Bjork.  Christopher Walken will dance his way down an escalator and fly through the air in grand choreographed moves.  Weezer will give a show to screaming members of the Happy Days cast.  You get my escapist point (and my Spike Jonz fixation).  I’m not a musical theater fan, though Gilbert and Sullivan have a lot of experience with this too, and they go a little farther back than MTV.  From what I understand, even the ancient Greeks had musical theater.

Bringing it back to games – a lot of great work has been put into cinematic gaming soundtracks, but to my knowledge, they are just soundtracks and don’t really change what happens in the game.  A change in tempo doesn’t make more bad guys come out to hurt you, a minor chord struck doesn’t usually signify coming doom.  I shouldn’t say never.  I’m not an avid gamer – I just hadn’t ever heard of this attention to music detail.  In fact – it’s quite the opposite – more bad guys coming out will change the tempo of the music – and coming doom, will change  the music to a minor key.  Game composers will typically write tiny segments that can be switched depending on what happens in the gameplay.

So, how can we produce a truly musical game?  One that gives a level of escapism straight from Broadway and MTV, gives music a forum to be listened to again and again, and is fun?  One where the music isn’t changed for it’s gameplay, but where gameplay revolves around the music?

(Yah, I’ll answer that question next, or at least try to)

Tivo and iPods (or more generally a digital audio players and a digital video recorders)  have changed the way we consume media.  It’s a pretty obvious statement I know – but hear me out.   I want to talk about music, but let me first say something about tv/film.

I was a late comer to both Battlestar Galactica and 24.   I didn’t start watching either one until a couple seasons in.  I recorded a bunch of 24′s with my DVR, and bought a few seasons of Battlestar Galactica on DVD.  Either way, I wound up watching entire seasons of a show in a week or two in contrast to the six or nine months it usually takes to watch a season of a show.

Watching habits were changed from when the network demanded it to whenever I wanted to see it.  In this, you could almost argue that the story itself behind the show has changed.    There’s no more downtime between episodes to think and ponder, and be on the edge of your seat about what happens next.

In fact, my DVR, Netflix, and DVD collection have changed my attention span on shows when I do have to wait to access them.  When I was watching my 24 marathon, I was really into it.  Then, when I had to wait a week to see what happened, I was less into it.  And now, I’m not even sure how much I care about 24 now that its been a whole year.

This is stark contrast to how we used to watch TV.  Either we were chained to our sets when our favorite shows were on, or our favorite shows just happened to be those that we had the specific nights free for.

The point is that having constant, on demand access to TV and film can ultimately change the story as we percieve it.  Watching TV can become more like reading a book.  You can rewatch/reread, read/watch when you want, and you don’t have to read/watch the whole chapter/episode in a sitting, or you can finish the entire thing in one sitting.  This is especially true as we can watch video on our mobile devices now.

Music can be a little more complex.  In addition to being short form, where consumption of a song can take only 3 or 5 minutes, there’s not usually a cliff-hanger or a compelling reason to listen to the next song on the same album for most people.

This became apparent when your single disc CD player became a 5 disc CD changer back in the 90′s.  I found it was easier to put my 5 discs on shuffle to get a little variety in each music listening session.

My car was a major place that I’d listen to music, and it was especially great to have my music on long rides.  My car, however, had just a single disc CD player.  That means when I put a CD in, it would stay in.  And because I was driving it, was a bit complicated to remove and change it unless there was a break in traffic.  I also only had a limited selection to choose from, as I’d usually only take the last 5 or 6 CD’s I bought with me on a normal car trip.

This means when I bought new music, I’d get very familiar with it.  I’d listen to it over and over again.

I suspect that most people’s music habits had the same limiting factors.  Either you listened to what the technology at the time allowed you to hear, or what the radio allowed you to hear – and each of these things led to the same thing, you’d listen to a song over and over again.

Of course with digital audio players with lots of storage this has all changed.  I have a Microsoft Zune with 120 Gigabytes of storage capacity.  This means that I can put my wife’s music collection and my music collection (probably 500-600 CD’s) on my Zune in its entirety 3 or 4 times over.  Many music players have at least 1 Gigabyte of memory allowing 10-15 albums at a time.

Suddenly, it becomes more convenient just to put every song you own on shuffle than to find the last albums you bought to listen over and over again – and given people’s tendency towards variety, a big shuffled list sounds more appealing when it comes time to listen to music.

So, listening habits have changed – and so has how we percieve music as a result.

Have you ever listened to an album or song, and didn’t really like it at first, but maybe after listening to it for the 5th time or the 10th time it’s one of your favorites?  It used to happen to me all the time.  But it really doesn’t happen to me much anymore.  Music listening has become sort of superficial to me.  I’d buy some new music, listen to it once, and then it appears on shuffle sometimes as I’m buying newer music.

It’s somewhat of a personal goal to give my new music a better listen from now one, despite the fact that my entire collection fits in the palm of my hand.

So as things are getting long, I’m going to continue things in a second post where I think about how people can listen to music on a less superficial level despite the technology we have.