Up until last night, I don't think I've picked up my guitar all week. Most evenings after work I've been busy honing my mixing skills on Robbie's CD decks - I'm actually starting to get better, beginning to understand how to really listen and beat match, then balance the mix as you filter in and out various elements, moving from one track into the next.
But sat in Dan's flat last night, watching youtube footage of old blues guitarists, I realised that the guitar can allow a musician to express something the DJ and their decks never truly can - human emotion. A guitarist can hold back notes and bend them into one another, carrying the listen on an intimate musical journey, the sound is a direct link to the guitarist soul. Can an electronic musician ever display that intimacy? Sure they can create soundtracks that evoke particular emotions, their music can paint pictures for us as we dance the night away, but can they ever really have that instant connection, that control over the inflections of their sound which makes great music what it is?
Last night, I felt myself siding with the 'real musicians' party. Death to all this new fangled, boom boom boom electro nonsense!
But then this morning, it dawned on me - Electronic music offers something that traditional rock and blues rarely does, perhaps is unable to.
When I write a piece of traditional music using a guitar and my vocal, I am seeking to create a particular emotion, to tell a story using the way I play and the words I sing. When I'm writing a piece of electronic music, I'm operating in a completely different space. I'm aiming to take the listener into another world using texture, creating a new sonic landscape for the listener to be absorbed into. It's about pushing forward, presenting people with sounds they've never experienced before, creating structures and timings that pull in other directions to traditional music. Electronic music is refreshing, it's exciting, it cuts through everything proceeding it like lightening.
That's what it's all about - FUTURE MUSIC.
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