Author: Dr. VIlágos
Last saved by: Andras Horvath

A collection of essays on digital music
- synopsis /

There were two major changes in the musical practice and thought of the 20th century. On the one hand, broad ranges of musical spectra became candidate tools for creation, in addition to the otherwise expanded boundaries, and, by the same token, the previous theory and practice that discredited certain aspects of sound, ceased. On the other hand, and organically interrelated with the former, new inventions helped in exploring new, innovative sounds. Brand new compositional methods arose that had their essence in the sampling techniques, in which processes existing artworks became raw materials for techniques underpinning a novel paradigm of music aesthetics.
	The formerly coherent, integrated concept of artwork has got into a new constellation, in which the former aesthetic norms lost their explanatory power, therefore, in the present state of art they substantiate re-consideration. The hermeneutic triad have broken up, since the question of both creation, creator, and of the beholder, as well as of reception have changed. Through sound recording, not only the concept of authentic musical space (e.g. a cconcert hall) became anachronistic since all space became a space for music and every sound segment became a musical segment, but the recipient-(performer)-creator distinction, too, due to the fact that creation itself became an apparently academic literature philological work. The creational methods of musical ‚text’ with adequate ‚audio signals’ and ‚syntax’  generated new and previously unknown layers of authors surpassing all entry-quota of instrumentalists, entailing serious copy-right problems on the other hand.
	The medial switch in fact led to a culture-theoretical switch, questioning the concept of the canonical musical content and principal critical distance as ceased, due to the sampling techniques. Mozart and Madonna, in the same time and at same place, became raw materials for a third author, became pure musical signals, replacing the formerly sound interpretational and significational system. The present situation, on the other hand,  raised serious problems not only to the creational methods, but even to the authentic language of thought on music, and to its technical terms. Especially, this is the point where descriptive analysis necessarily becomes academic scripture on acoustics, or merely literature, deploying a rich palette of language, that is, and it might be a most exciting question, becomes a permanent discursive action in which new musical structures and those seen in novel aspects are classified under new musical labels or constitute sub-systems of the former system of forms. So now begins a permanent canonisation and differentitation on every possible medial forum. In this way, every description broadens the vocabulary of thinking about tomorrow’s music and that is the reason and the worth of the frequent and multi-leveled examination of authors, labels, trends, and tendencies that take place or can take place on the palette of electronic music. 
	The concept of musical space, creation and artwork consequentially has changed and so allow novel, previously unknown distributional methods. The problem of p2p networks, video and sound sharing (e.g. youtube), net-radios and net-labels undermined the former system of music distribution and modified the well known forms of distribution. E-trading has re-drawn these market limits, as well. A re-alignment goes on on every continent adjusting the emergence of market mechanisms to the social and economic system of certain countries. 
	The medial switch substantiates a re-consideration of music and related fields. If digitalisation can flatten every medial content into one dimension, then the questioning of the tenability of a separation of media is worth its while, since all content on a hypertext get aligned to a de-centralised unity. What is the role of acoustic phenomenon in a visual culture that replaces the text-based one? And what is the role of vision in an acoustic culture replacing musical notation?
	Only a thorough analysis of the limits and problems can help us in developing a more complex and flexible concept of music for the future.