| | Again, while I am not arguing against technology in music, the main argument is that certain types of tones and effects are not conducive to melodic composition. Many artificial tones are created with the vertical stacking method, where instead of changing pitch through scale divisions (whether they be Western or Oriental), they change pitch through the use of envelope filters and other effects. The shapes are like slides, up and down, or they seem to get fat and thin. The shape of the notes are "morphed" and the more this happens, the harder it becomes to write a melody.
My theory as to why this happens in ambient dance music is because merely holding a note over a repetitive pattern is...boring. Even for "tribal hippies." To repeat a pattern over and over across the same rhythm is simple repetition. But with the tone manipulation available, the monotony is broken up not by playing melodies based on scales, but by manipulating the tones, giving the mind the change it needs. Rand and Jourdain both remark, though, that no music has ever been written totally based on slides; at SOME point, there has to be a break. (Else it's like a rollercoaster ride!).
Notice that in the case of ambient, house, etc., the music is the modern equivalent of the 60's drug soundtrack. The equipment and drugs are different, and oil slides have been replaced with computer fractals, but the music's purpose is the same: to induce a trance-like state of mind. Certain melodic fragments may appear, but for the most part, the emphasis is on rhythm and texture. The difference is that in the 60's, the limited equipment meant more scale-based textures, and the original disco from the 70's was actually pretty tuneful, the new stuff is mostly beats with hints of tonality.
(This isn't new, either; religious dervishes and tribal music have used this technique to invoke visions and trances for centuries. The effect is to minimize left -brained thinking, which is supposedly what puts together melodies, to emphasize right brained thinking.)
So, of course, synths and stereo CAN and HAVE been employed for melodic development. As Rich wrote: "There is no death or de-emphasis of melody, harmony, etc. There is only widening." Potentially, yes. It's in the way that it's used, and the prominent use of it has been in techno and ambient/new age music (another variation on the religious trance.) This is where psychology and philosophy affect musical development. As Rich insightfully observes:
"If you think otherwise, you are leading with a purely Western ear, and are not being mindful of the existence of world musics, much of which does not work with the elements in the same hierarchical fashion."
This is the crux of the musical matter: NOT the technology, but the mind behind the tech. Example: In the capitalist high of Reagan's 80's, in the beginning of the computer boom, genres such as New Wave employed synths and even rock bands like Rush became techno-geeks. The minds needed to create this technology had to be focused and sharp, and this reflected in the music. The synths were employed melodically and songs had structure. In the 90's on, we start to see a remergence of the hippie esthetic, along with a renewed interest in Eastern culture that mirrored the 60's. ( I personally witnessed this change in high school; it seemed that in the space of 1 year, all the "preppy" kids came back from vacation wearing ponchos, long hair, and listening to the Greatful Dead.) The rise of raves and "Acid House" was a return to the "freak outs" of the sixties. (Instead of acid we had Exstasy...). Surely this was a rejection of the "Western" ear in favor of "non-heirarchal" fashion. Whether or not one agrees with the change on a moral level depends on one's philosophy, but this is the development we have.
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