Blog entry #5: Will the digitalization of music lead to the eventual death of traditional musical performance (e.g. in concert) and physical musical i

In today’s digital age, computer technology is able to perfectly reproduce the sound of any musical instrument in the world.
Recorded sound can be transformed and saved as a digital code on your computer hard drive, these digital codes can then be used to replicate this sound and more importantly, recreate novel sounds. This creates a problem; it renders musical instruments obsolete. Music can be created without musical instruments; digital technology can replace them and out perform them. Technology can be used to ‘virtualize’ music, by producing new sounds through the manipulation of old sounds, without even physically playing a musical instrument. So, you could say, that the generic resources of the digital age; are beginning to blur the boundaries of the traditional, fixed genre of music. Computer technology enables the endless replication of ‘authentic instruments’ and the limitless production of new sounds. However, traditional, ‘real’ music and musicians will exist for a long time to come. Until, one day when computer technology becomes so advanced that it is able to replace the spontaneous and variable musical sounds which can presently only be created by living and breathing human musicians.
Adam May.