Midi Composition via DAWs: perfect equilibrium between human and machines?
"We don’t play music, we play programming." (Marshall McLuhan)
"We should consider non-human forms of creativity, and not only cases where either humans or machines create art but also collaborations between humans and machines, which makes us reflect on human-technology relations" (Coeckelbergh, 2017, 285)
Interviews
Technical aspect: this piece is also in C major, at 105 BPM, and in 4/4 time. It consists of five MIDI, or “Software Instrument”, tracks: one for the flute, one for the piano, and three for the drums (hi-hat, snare, and kick drum). All five tracks were recorded using a MIDI keyboard (better understood as a MIDI “controller”) which was connected to my computer via USB. Essentially, the controller sends MIDI messages, such as note on, note off, note velocity (i.e. intensity), pitch bend, note sustain, etc., to the computer. Logic, which was configured to be “listening” to these messages, retrieves the information and uses it to generate sounds. The sounds included in this piece are all sample-based – i.e. the sound produced when a MIDI message is received is a pre-recorded sample that is sold with the software. It is important to note that the notes originally played on the MIDI controller were then quantized – i.e. the notes were modified so as to be perfectly in time. This is largely why the music feels and sounds so “robotic” or “square” – because there are no rhythmic errors whatsoever. This process is illustrated by Lagrandeur (2017, 8) when he argues that “there are actually two creative processes at work here: the artist’s and that of the assemblage of smart technology. The fact that they operate symbiotically as one creative entity is posthuman”. The composition I made is intentionally robotic, simple, and rather unpleasant but every piece of music to come out for the past 20 years use MIDI protocols in one way or another and a lot of them use virtual instruments as well, just very good ones. As with the first piece, compressors, EQ’s, and reverbs were added to the tracks, to give the piece a bit more cohesion.
Is the use of DAWs, and virtual studio technology, the real post-anthropocentric turn? Is it why it was so detested by all of my interviewees while it is the exact same melody as the ‘instrumental’ song? Does it constitute the “movement of the human to the posthuman, [the] cyborgian connection between performer and circuity” (Van Veen, 2002, 6) As Wilson (2017, 148) states, technology renders the sounds “neither familiarly human nor simply that of the nonhuman.” Pepperell further argues that “[Post-human] refers to the general convergence of biology and technology to the point where they are increasingly becoming indistinguishable” (Pepperell, 1995, IV). Indeed, for art to be considered post-human, there must be a collaboration between technology and biology (machines and humans). And as Kirby (2012) notes, musicians’ reliance on DAWs is a great place to raise the question of machine and human collaboration. Is the relationship between the human in front of his computer and his computer purely a master-slave relationship? I would argue, similarly to Kirby, that despite the relationship containing some elements of a master-slave relationship, as the human still has a more controlling input, “both the individual and the software are working together to create a piece of art.” Kirby takes Ableton Live as her example of a DAW, which is extremely similar to Logic in its functioning, and she argues that this software “can be seen as emblematic of post-human technology, as using such a program can be seen as a convergence of human and machine which results in a creative output.” The human alone would not be able to create this piece of art, and neither could the machine. On Ableton Live 8's website, we could read “If you’d rather be “making music” than just “using music software,” Ableton Live is for you”. As Kirby notes, the distinction between “making music” and “using music software” made it clear that the designers of the software set out to produce a program that went further than just allowing the user to produce music: ; “the software also contributes to the production of the piece, along with the individual using the program.” (Kirby further notes the egalitarian aspect of these kind of software: one can create musing using only a computer, with no need of buying actual instruments: this “revolution in music production can be attributed to advancing technology, which is essential to a post-human society.”) Kirby concludes that “Digital Audio Workstations could be seen as emblematic of a post-human society, as the technology involved will always rely on human/machine collaboration to produce a piece; Ableton Live [and Logic Pro] cannot produce a piece of music by itself.”
Neither can MAX/MSP: what are the defining features of the two? What do they share? When Lagrandeur (2018, 6) states: “today’s tools are much more complex than hammers and axes, and their design is such that it is often hard to tell where the tool ends and the human begins. The tool itself may be far from an inanimate thing; it might be a computer that makes decisions in conjunction with the artist or on his or her behalf”: here, we truly realize the potential of a collaborative approach between humans and machines, and we see the strong creative capabilities of some digital instruments.
As mentioned earlier, I believe Braidotti to be right to mention a techno-teratological aspect. But I think that the use of DAWs draws this ‘competitive’ angle away from the discussion of humans and machines – they can co-create. (Coeckelbergh, 2017, 297) Machines are no threat to human creativity anymore as they help us to be more creative than we would be without them.