Jacquie Piasta Shares Her Personal History With Music Technology
June 16th, 2010 by admin
In 1992, my father gave me his old cassette tape recorder.
I was amazed that the device could perform five different functions: play, stop, record, fast-forward, and rewind. Compared to current technological standards, the cassette player is completely outdated and limited. However, limitations can offer interesting possibilities.
I spent hours experimenting with the recorder. I learned how to record sounds on its tiny embedded microphone. You could even rewind to the middle of a track and record over it; a very simple form of analog mixing. I used to intentionally pull the cassette’s brown film out, cut it apart, and tape it back together to hear new sounds.
This was my first audio device and one that I was completely comfortable with. When I wasn’t messing around with sound, I would play Wilson Phillips and Paula Abdul tapes. I covered the tape recorder with Carebears stickers and gave it an honorary spot on my bedside table, out of reach of my cats. They liked to knock it over and get cat fur in the speaker.
When my family bought a CD-cassette combination boom box, I was both intimidated and intrigued. CDs boasted high storage and long lifespan, but were disappointingly fragile. Dropping a cassette on the floor usually meant a quick rewind of any tape knocked loose. Scratches on a CD rendered it basically useless and more expensive to replace than a broken cassette.
However, cassettes and CDs had a happy harmony. It was easy to record songs from a CD onto a cassette tape. It was much faster to select different songs and fast forward tracks on a CD than on a cassette. I dedicated a summer to making mix tapes from blank cassettes and a small collection of CDs.
My family later bought a computer. It came with a better microphone than my old cassette tape recorder and a very basic sound recording program. It was a lot of fun to record voices on it.
Then, my world was completely changed when my friend Ronald introduced me to mp3s. I watched in amazement as the internet exploded with songs from musicians, unsigned and independent alike. It was easy to discover new music and styles. Both my mind and music collection expanded together. I spent many happy nights staying up until sunrise, making mixed CDs I was proud of.
It’s easy to reminisce about earlier, out-dated forms of technology; especially if you associate any emotional attachment to an old device. Baby boomers and Generation X’ers generally recall records, eight-track tapes, and cassettes. The younger folks will most likely start their musical memories with CDs and mp3s.
Technology is fast-changing, pulling culture along with it. Slowly but surely, I’ve watched mp3s and mp3 players take over CDs’ territory. However, new technology doesn’t necessarily guarantee perfection. Analog and digital forms mixed together offer endless possibilities in sound making and experimentation.
For now, let’s wonder what the next technological advancement in music will be…
