I spent this past weekend making some experimental hip hop with a very good, old friend.  Whenever we get together to make some tunes we invariably end up talking about music almost as much as making it.  We both are super passionate about the topic and have lots of thoughts about it.

We were talking about the various musical cultures around the world and sharing our thoughts on what we feel are the unique contributions of these cultures to music as a whole on this planet.  We both feel that western music has contributed a lot in terms of harmony and orchestration.  Places like India and Africa, among other things, have contributed a lot in terms of rhythm/percussion.  Western music is still in rhythmic kindergarten when compared with these cultures.

We both feel that electronic music has become an important component of the world’s musical pallet.  Where we were once limited to the sounds that could be made by instruments constructed out of wood, metal, bone, etc, a computer with the right software provides an absolutely endless organic salad bar of sounds and arrangements.  With the right computer and software combination you can do almost anything you can think of.

You can combine a hundred different human voices and make an instrument out of these that you can play on your keyboard.  You can record drops of water falling onto various surfaces and play an intricate percussive pattern with the sounds.  It’s endless.

Is music history being made?

- Oliver Giving