Entretenimiento Pre-programado

I don’t know much about composing music but it doesn’t seem to be that different to other arts, its a matter of finding a source of inspiration and everything that follows just seems to go along with it, as if it all meant to be together, regardless if its takes in a movie or sounds in a song, to the ear of the composer it must be as if they were always meant to be put in that order.

Reading “..to hold discourse---at least---with a computer...” by Herbert Brum I was reminded of a movie I saw a couple of years ago about an orphan lost in New York who is in search for his parents, movie which in general sucked. However both of the parents and their lost child had the ability to compose music out of any source of inspiration, they had a gift.  What was interesting about this movie was how they represented music as something mundane and everyday-like. Music was created from situations in the streets and the kid had selective hearing to certain sounds to form a song in his head that could relate to the situation he was living. If he was happy he found his parents he would only hear sounds that would form a song about joy and hope, but, if he felt down the sounds he heard were low and created blues-like song.

The movie made a point, music is a mix between the author’s mind and it’s context, if the composer recently was broken up with and is sitting alone in his room, even if his song lacks lyrics the audience most likely will be able to sense these feelings from the song. Brum argues that music always carries a message and part of that message is the way that song came across the composer’s head. The audience can tell when a song has been “manufactured” with the sole purpose of entertaining to the public, which are generally songs composed by some technician sitting in a computer. A good example is listening by any song by the artists “Fergie” even if the lyrics of the song declare sadness and heartache you can tell whoever wrote that song wasn’t really feeling that when he/she wrote that song. The composer probably just looked for infinite synonyms of songs in the internet and words that rhyme, as Brum says “he attempted to compose music with the assistance of a computer” and you can tell.

Yes, there are a million programs for developing various arts automatically and these programs are very accurate when determining what keeps an audience entertained. Personally I don’t see this as a bad thing, everyone enjoys a full American movie where cars crash into each other and hot looking models star it, it’s ok to enjoy “arts” that are pre-programmed to entertain us as long as we are aware of the messages that are carried; NONE.

Catalina Lotero