Has all this technology changed for the better?

[Jay Pace]

Has it changed for the better?

Depends on your positioning really.

If 20 years on we were still all making tracks exclusively using 303s and 909s the sound would get tired. People would get bored and the crowds and fans would dwindle.

Dance music has always attracted a young crowd, and has a burden of innovation attached to it. If you want to fill the clubs with pretty 20 somethings you need to be doing something new, trendy, cutting edge etc. Techno seperates itself from dance pop by trying to do something new - cutting a trail that mainstream music follows. Its music that belongs in clubs, that drives people to dance. It has a role to play.

I don't think techno is ever going to be a genre thats fixed in one particular sound. I think it represents an attitude more than an objective musical categorisation. Folk music will be probably be identifiable as folk music in 100 years, as it was 100 years previous. Techno 10 years back, loopy aggressive chuga-chuga doesn't have that much in common with a lot of the more melodic, slower stipped down stuff being made today.

But to me its innovation driving change - with technology sometimes prompting innovation.

Worth bearing in mind that the greatest musical leaps of faith were all done
still using classical instruments. Music technology barely moved an inch to accommodate blues, jazz or rock and roll.

People these days get too caught up in instrument worship and forget that they're just tools. Its the artists who change the music.

[TechMouse]

If 20 years on we were still all making tracks exclusively using 303s and 909s the sound would get tired. People would get bored and the crowds and fans would dwindle.

Really?

The guitar / bass / drums combo has been around for for the best part of a century and there are still people pushing boundaries. Rock music may not be your cup of tea, but there is loads of great stuff about.

The impact of your ideas far surpasses the impact of your technology. At the end of the day it's just an enabler. Computers will get faster, technology will get "better", and along with it the scope of what you do will broaden exponentially. But someone with talent will still coax something belting out of ReBirth given a few hours and the right inspiration.

[Jay Pace]

Really?

Yes. The role techno plays requires that it changes and progresses. Use of technology is intrinsic to the sound, and makes techno what it is.

If technology froze and all techno used the same sounds forever it wouldn't really be techno anymore.

Well, not to me at any rate.