Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Music and technology have a lively history. Once men banged out a tune on an old rock in the corner of the cave and communicated over long distances by yelling at the top of their lungs. Now you can fill a dancefloor with a song made entirely on a computer, while long-distance communication is done over a network of satellites via a pocketable pebble.

Of course, there’s been much skipped in that nutshell story. Music has come via a path that saw increasingly complex instruments devised to create sonorous tones, and was nudged a bit further by the likes of Jimi Hendrix, who perfected the tone of his Marshall amp by sticking the headstock of his Fender Stratocaster through a 12-inch speaker.

That was a turning point. Before Hendrix, amplification was a means of making instruments louder.

But Jimi bent the existing rules. He turned up the gain so far that the sound distorted a trick that has been repeated ever since. Then came the effects - tape loop delay, electronically enforced overdrive, chorus and flange in a box.

Computers have made all of this much easier, though it should be noted that guitarists have maintained a healthy distrust of the things. Can you imagine Hendrix with a laptop?

There has been some needless breeding. Pure, a manufacturer of digital radios, took me last week to the Marshall factory (in glamorous Milton Keynes, England, no less) to announce their latest Marshall-branded units.

A gifted piece of kit it may be, but that doesn’t stop it being a gimmick the perfect gift for the guitarist who has everything.
A more interesting development comes in the shape of AmpliTube, an app for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

There are already around a zillionteen music apps in Apple’s famous App Store for tuning, for pretending you’re playing a teeny guitar, ukelele, piano or stylophone, for keeping time with a virtual metronome but AmpliTube goes further than that. See a rock god on stage wielding his axe like a primitive, yet absurdly dextrous, beast?

Behind him there’s a full rack unit of digital effects feeding sonic loveliness to his mercifully Strat-free Marshall stack. Now all of that is available as an app in the pocket of said beast’s Spandex unitard. It may not create a Spinal Tap-approved trouser bulge, but it does away with three of your roadies.

Can you imagine the late, great Hendrix having one in his flares?

Oddly, it’s exactly the sort of thing he would have loved. The world keeps on turning, and we get further away from the need for a rock and a shout. Turns out, the future of music lies in our pockets.