It's official! The old formats, the old style of making music, the exploration of new sounds made possible from technological advances in electronic and computerized equipments is done, finished, kaput! The only things left to music artists are musicianship and the creation and manipulation of rhythm, melody, and groove. Music no longer requires collaborators or studios or record labels or even concert venues in order for artists to gain a following and, thereby, income. And, while loyalty to a known/set team of collaborators may still work, it is just as easy to A) create music on one's own (thanks to highly-advance computer software) or B) create music via cybernetic data sharing with other musicians (sharing files). Heck! Even the old concept of creating an album with the same core unit of collaborators (once called "a band") is outdated and obsolete. Now an artist can easily create and release (and realistically hope for sales) of single songs, live videos, "Zoom"-like video collages of "live" in the studio performances, or "albums" of lengths in which anything goes! ("New releases" get announced every day of songs or song collections that might be 3-minutes, 10-, 14-, 20-, 30-, 72-, or even more than 150 minutes [as well as "entire discographies"] through media sites like Bandcamp, YouTube, iTunes, AppleMusic, Reddit, Spotify, or the very few specific record labels that persist in existing.)
Gone are "live" in-the-studio recordings with their negotiated engineering dialogues/arguments and spontaneous instances of magical invention and whole-group entrainment grooves. Almost gone are the requirements of performing your own tracks on individual instruments (most of which have been rendered unto computers and/or synthesizers that are MIDI-tracked to the on-screen compositions that you've programmed) that are tried to be kept "in tune" (whatever that means) (thanks to Autotune) and that are lined up with the song's other individual tracks by the skill of the other participating artists' musicianship not though digitalized engineering controls. Yes, compositional knowledge and skill are as important as ever, but sound palettes are no longer dependent on instrumentally-replicable (or -treated) sounds but only on what sounds you can create with wave manipulation software on your computer(s). While it is exciting, the new sounds and structures one can create, as well as the fact that music-making, start to finish, has been democratically rendered into the hands of the individual, but I strongly fear the disappearance of the art of live collaboration (other than in pure, unstructured jam forms). Yes, there will always be a preponderance of dedicated artists who purposely replicate the music (and stage performances) of the old masters ("cover bands" and "tribute bands"), but I believe we are the end of the period of progressive rock music in which new music can and will be made that expands the lexicon of sound and style beyond anything that has already been created. Exploration and replication will continue but innovation and "pushing boundaries" will be relegated to production and engineering in lieu of style and spontaneous mental and physical dexterity.
I think that these feelings that I'm expressing are one of the reasons I'm being so drawn back into the music of the "Classic Era" of Progressive Rock and Jazz-Rock Fusion: these are the recorded samples of humans, exploring, creating, and playing together. You can feel the connections, the way the individual musicians feed off of the others. You can hear the creativity and moments of improvisational triumph, anguish, frustration, and failure! while at the same time also feel those moments of supra-human synchronization--that spirit-based phenomenon that all musicians know as "entrainment" (which athletes refer to as "The Zone")--a magical place in which your efforts and expression seem to be so "locked in" as to feel "out of body," transcendent of that which requires human thought or skill, where the music just plays itself and you find yourself more of a conduit for some Higher Power of creativity--one that unites, unifies, and empowers the individual with the confidence of a "Oneness of all things." (Yes, I have been blessed with experiencing this feeling of "entrainment"--on multiple occasions--the most of which have occurred while playing a musical instrument with other musicians. What a blessing!)
Maybe that's why I get so little enjoyment out of my listens to the music on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew--my attempts to feel/hear the genius and innovation of this music: it's not a presentation of pure live music captured on tape; it's the result of the tape manipulations of a risk-taking engineering genius by the name of Teo Macero. What the music of those sessions really sounds like, we will probably never know. The record we have, called Bitches Brew, is one man's fabricated, altered, highly-individualized expression of music that was recorded on August 19, 20, and 21 of 1969. The album wasn't released until March 30 of 1970--seven months after the music was rendered unto tape--which is no small indication of how much cutting and splicing Teo did before it was released as a "Mile Davis" album. This particular case is also a perfect reflection with some of my dissatisfaction with the "progressive rock" music being created and released in the last 20 years (in all of the subgenres but especially within the NeoProg, Rock Progressivo Italiano, Post Rock, and Symphonic Prog subs); its almost all cold, soul-less, computer-processed repetition of old (tired) forms, sound palettes, styles, and motifs. And even the often-brilliant RIO/Avant Garde, Tech/Metal, and stuff coming out is beginning to sound like repetitions of its older self. The only subgenres occasionally generating interesting, sometimes innovative, new music are the Crossover, Canterbury (rare), Progressive Electronic, and Experimental/Post Metal subs.
