Music by Numbers: The Impacts of Music Technologies on Pop

Abstract

This dissertation investigates issues surrounding music technologies and their use by performing artists and music producers. I discuss the accessibility of devices such as compositional softwares as invaluable tools, but I also endeavour to illuminate the problematic areas associated with these practises. The emerging artist today must negotiate a plethora of technical mediations and to this extent, the impact of technologies become apparent in terms of how artists adapt to this environment. Furthermore, this adaptation raises questions relating to musical code and the methods by which this is ascertained. By deconstructing the components of pop, value and meaning can be examined more closely by utilising construction methods that can be applied to these components. I argue that production values are essential parameters for understanding the inner workings of modern music creation with contemporary technology. I situate producers, and their associated skills, as integral components of this process. In this context, production standards act as score and this has ongoing implications for musicological study. Through closer inspection of several key aspects of what many consider to be complex interactive processes, the apparent lack of structural and harmonic content often associated with modern electronic music today can be redefined as a highly complex and skilled process.