The New Millennium’s Musical Melting Pot
February 2009

Hello, and thanks for popping in to read my blog.

It’s been my great pleasure to teach many young kids how to play the guitar over the last few years. Sitting with a young boy or girl teaching them some great guitar riffs, and watching them get excited as they start to play it well is a lovely feeling.

I always try to tailor the lessons to the musical taste of the student, and one of the most interesting aspects of the job is hearing what type of music they’d like to learn. What I have surmised from their responses is that the musical walls that divided us for so long in the playground, have come tumbling down.

When I was growing up, you either loved the Smiths or you hated them, and there was no middle ground. The spotty denim clad kids who loved Iron Maiden and AC/DC (guilty, your honour) wouldn’t have been caught dead listening to the Smiths, or vice versa. The same could be said for any pairings of bands or acts…could you like both Madonna and Metallica? Not on your life…..Simple Minds and Sinitta? no chance…U2 or So Solid Crew?…probably not.

Of course, as you got older this changed and you became less partisan and more open to other genres ( I love the Smiths now) but what strikes me is how much more open the young kids are than I remember me or my friends being. It seems that anything goes, not just with music, but also fashion. Now, as my fashion sense leaves very little to be desired or admired, let’s talk about the music.

It’s not remotely unusual now for one of my students to name a track by Coldplay, and follow it up with a request to learn a Kanye West song, or similar. There seems to be not only no sense of a clash in tastes here, but no realisation even that there could be one. It’s all music, and it’s all fair game.

My theory is that the accessibility, ease of use and cheapening of music has had a dramatic effect on how we approach the listening experience. Where once we would invest hours at a time exploring album sleeves as we tried hard to love every track on our favourite band’s new album, now people can, at the click of a button after a 30 second sample, move on to a another track, another artist. They can switch between rock, rap , pop , punk, house, heavy metal within seconds and soak up and buy - at very little expense – another perfectly made digital file for their iPods. In the 45 minutes or so it would take me to listen to a vinyl album, now the kids can surf maybe 90 different songs and a bewildering myriad of genres from all over the world. Before not long at all they have a fabulous library of music incorporating the classics from yesteryear, the coolest new bands and even the best unsigned stars of tomorrow. Age, style, or fashion don’t even come into it, they just like what they like and it’s all theirs at the click of a button.

This is not to say some of my students don’t still like buying CDs and investing that sort of time in the, but there is no doubt that the internet, YouTube, iTunes and scores of other music sites are so accessible and easy to use that the CD may well be dead in 10 years. Possibly 5.

One of the potential downsides to all this is that music is now made to sound great from a tiny pair of speakers on your PC desk or in your ear. It is, as a result, over compressed and tiring on the ear. Even Bono has said the next U2 album will be made with the ‘modern listening experience in mind’. He means they will make it to sound great on a tiny pair of headphones.

Well excuse me Bono, but I take enormous pleasure from the whole archaic listening experience. I love leafing through my vinyl, selecting an album, putting down the needle and hearing that faint crackle as another well loved song fills the room in all its acoustic glory. No binary codes, mp3s or WAV files needed here. But then I do use CDs and I do download. And I download anything that sounds good, regardless of genre.

And that’s the upshot of all this. Anything goes, be it vinyl, CD or mp3. Be it blues, classical, house or hip hop. It’s all music, and it’s all in the New Millennium’s Musical Melting Pot. Now there’s a name for a band. I wonder what type of music they would play….

thanks

Adam