Devachan Music - Mark Simos

Music, Computers, Computer Music, Musical Computers

Prior to my midlife career change in 2001, I worked for about twenty years in the software field, as a technical writer, programmer, researcher, consultant, and entrepreneur among other things. I've also spent more than three decades deeply involved in many different streams of traditional music, also wearing many hats including songwriter and tunewriter, fiddler, guitar and piano accompanist, teacher and student.

The Familiar Three Questions

Over the years I had similar reactions from people about these two careers. From musicians: "Oh, so the computer thing is just your day job." Well, it was always supposed to have been more than that — I've always seen them as two parallel creative fields. There's analytical work to be done in music, and deep intuitive work to be done in the computer field; both fields of endeavor have suffered from my attentions when I have approached them with less than my whole human self. (In fact the connections are stronger: over the years, I have spoken to many software project managers who consistently hired musicians when they could, because they generally showed great aptitude for programming.)

From software people: "Oh, so the music thing is your Hobby. It's good to have other interests or this business will really make you crazy." Well, even at the height of my involvement in the technology world, music was never (just?) a Hobby for me. Hobby usually means doing what you love and can't make money at. My songwriting royalties have pulled me through a couple of lean entrepreneurial years in the recent past. When the bottom falls out of the computer industry, thank God I'll always have music to fall back on! And in the longer view, I've had ample time to consider the respective value of writing a great song vs. writing a great piece of software.

The third question I used to get a lot goes something like this: "Hey, if you are into music and computers, you must be into computer music, right?" For many years, I thought I should be into computer music. I tried, really. Problem is, I just like scratchy old fiddlers better than the wheezing, popping and Space Age Farfisa organ treacle that sometimes passes for music in the computer music field (where there is also, as in all genres of course, much world-class music to be heard). You chooses your noises. So I missed my chance to be the enfant terrible of synthesized fiddle music (although never say never ).

Musical Computer Technology

In fact, over the years what has interested me more than applying computer technology to music has been making computer technology work more like music: something we might call musical computer technology.

As a musician, I know what a great Instrument feels like in my hands, and the way that it supports both intuitive and thoughtful flow of creative ideas and soul from a musician. There is no reason that the experience of working with computers, with software languages and tools, should not feel the same. But although there are a few master programmers who experience this flow in this way, for most people the computer is not such a tool today. Unfortunately, this impoverishment does not affect just the "players." The unmusicality of the technological life affects everyone who must interact with that technology downstream from the original creator.

There are other connections to be explored. In the rave Bluegrass and Technology I claim that certain musical traditions, bluegrass music in particular, can be seen as a very direct response of traditional culture to the onset of technology as a driver of social change. Bluegrass, from its inception, was both made possible by, and offered an artistic response to, advances in technology. Rich musical traditions, such as those of bluegrass music, not only are their own gifts to us-they also have many lessons to teach about how people can shape technology instead of being shaped by it.

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This page last updated 9/4/03.