Dissertation on Recording Technology and the Rise of Lay Composers

Wowsers.  I just managed to login to this blog for the first time this year.  There is hope for a less dim future!
It is well-known:  when new technology or even just a new product arrives, it will quickly be exploited by some folks and, later, by some very professional folks, for financial gain.  This is something we can count on.  Nice.    It will probably have some use in the sex realm as well.  It's just the way it is.   I try to see how the new cool taxi service is "disruptive."  But not really.  It's just swell, sometimes.  But not really all that innovative.   Good exploitation of something is going on tho (people are making money, and tips)

"Anyone can make music now."  I give this a 9 as in 9 out of 10 people who can more or less operate a computer can yes make real music.  Music someone might want to listen to.

Old folks like me who have made music for a long time  --  the good old way (they have to keep their nails trimmed, or most of them)  -- often are fearful that their lifetime of experience and hard-fought gains in chops of various kinds (tricks and secrets too) has been all for naught.  And they will starve and no one will like them.    Nup.  They may be shunned and detested, but it won't be because they play the banjo, say.  Not any more.

Recording studios still have their flavors and odors and emotions.  Of course, the hopped-up-happy kids who get miked up and anticipate the thrill of the red light (red light?) bring a great deal more of all that with them.  My point is that I'm sad to have lost many of the big old studios, but my house (it's 79% a studio now) has some pretty nice odors.
Artists important to me and at least 45 other people have said "I love workin there."  (Don't check the syntax of that too carefully)
I'm not sure we're making real records here, but we're working at it.   And so are a few tens of thousands of other folks, old and young.   Some use "construction kits."  Know about these?  Just what the label says.   Pick drum thing from column drum loop, bass from bass lines (it's not spelled base by the way), etc.   Then close-mic your cranium and overdub yourself scratching your scalp (see earlier dandruff blog post), in no particular rhythm.  Feature your scratch in the mix, even if it sux --  maybe you can use it as the intro....

Source of the Fear (that technology renders us obsolete and we will starve):    A few people, a few thousand, have gotten very wealthy off ideas lately.   Those people!  They think they're so cool. And they have amazing houses and more than one.  Damn, I want to be them....   But yer not!   BUT you are somebody, and 9 out of 10 people can make music.  In their kitchen if they want!  (Not my fave place)

Today's big haunting question:  To what extent did Beethoven actually pick up a fiddle or bang on a piano as a way to compose?   Not much in his last couple years, that's for sure.
I suspect that the big difference between our modern "composers" and many of the old dead "masters" is that we new millennium guys generally play our pieces or have them played first.  Then we write 'em down.  If we even bother.   They are usually sound ONLY.   Watch out ears, here I  ------------->