The Americana and roots music authority

What's next after free streaming?

I have a good friend who writes about hip-hop for a living and we're always finding similarities between the rootsy "anything with a fiddle" stuff I focus on and the rappers about whom she writes. I sent her a link to my blog post the other day about free streaming music and she posted it on a hip-hop forum, where extensive discussion apparently ensued. The thrust of their discussion, I'm told, was that maybe now is the time for independent artists to get a leg up on how people will be getting their music next year or the year after that.

The idea that emerged, and I'm going to paraphrase here, was that songs will come embedded with meta tags so that listeners can do their own mash-ups. Keep in mind, this is a conversation in the hip-hop world where it's all about taking music and making it your own. Producers and DJs make musical collages, so it would only make sense for future tracks to make it easier for fans to make their own beats simply by uploading tracks into iTunes (or whatever we're using at that point) and pulling out pieces of songs based on those meta tags.

I don't entirely understand this, but I asked my friend, "So there would be a fiddle tag and, if you were working on a tune, you could call up anything with a fiddle tag and import it?" Yes. Still doesn't really make sense, but okay.

The consensus in the room when my friend and I were discussing this was that the meta tagging may fly in the hip-hop community, but most music fans listen to music because they don't make it. They don't necessarily want to be involved in the making of the song. Particularly in roots music, I found it hard to believe that roots music fans would be at all interested in cutting up tracks and re-ordering them to make something else. Am I wrong there?

Because my next thought was how we all love sitting around at festivals and jamming - whether we're any good or not. Being involved with the music, finding accessible music we can figure out on our own in a pinch, is a big part of this whole field. I suggested something rootsy folks might be more into is an interactive Guitar Hero sort of situation where we play along with the song and then have the option of hitting a pedal (who doesn't love guitar pedals?) that switches us from play-along mode to improv mode. Then we add our guitar solo (or, in my ideal Guitar Hero imagination, there are fiddles and banjos, etc.) which gets saved in a giant virtual sound bucket of sorts from which other users can download the new song with our added guitar part. In the future, your favorite song could be a collaboration between Wilco, some dude in Peoria with a Jug Band Hero jaw harp, and yours truly. How cool would that be?

I don't think there's any end in sight for the traditional model of making and listening to music. As a songwriter and a fan, I seriously hope that method hangs around forever. It works, it's stirring and purposeful. If it's not broke, don't try to fix it, right? At the same time, though, I appreciate the interactive direction our culture is going - something I think is fueled by the whole Web 2.0 (and 3.0 and 4.0) thing. Interaction within music, through music, because of music makes perfect sense. I think our hip-hop-loving neighbors over at 206proof made some good points with where they took that discussion. What do you folks think? It might be one way to turn music back into a profitable field. We know darn well people will still pay for video games and software.

Tags: 206proof, alt-country, americana, blog, free, games, guitar, hero, hip-hop, mashups, More…music, roots, streaming, video

Comment by fortm on March 21, 2009 at 11:32am: Kim, you should check out MixMatchMusic.com, which does some of the things you're suggesting. Read about them here...

http://www.thedeal.com/dealscape/technology/the-note/collaborative-music-site-mixma.php

Paul

Comment by Kim Ruehl on March 21, 2009 at 11:53am: Hey Paul - That link doesn't work, for some reason.

Comment by fortm on March 21, 2009 at 3:00pm: It should work now!

Comment by Bob Rose on March 21, 2009 at 4:08pm: Kim, I was very intrigued by this blog, especially a comment midway, where you noted,
"The consensus in the room when my friend and I were discussing this was that the meta tagging may fly in the hip-hop community, but most music fans listen to music because they don't make it. They don't necessarily want to be involved in the making of the song."

I think there is a market for what you described, but I also think that roots fan are a slightly different breed than the typical music fan, too. I come from a folk background, where my friends and I would buy recordings specifically to dissect what we heard, and make those songs our own. But Folk, like the rest of the Americana/Roots spectrum was always do-it-yourself music.

In most other mainstream popular music genres, it turns into "Leave music to the professionals." In a weird kind of way, this is reinforced weekly, on that abysmal "American Idol" show, where anyone who does not meet the judges criteria of good, is humiliated on national TV. And people watch. And sadly, seem to enjoy that humiliation.

To me the remarkable thing about the roots community is that is cuts through that malarky, and allows people to be creative and enjoy doing music for the love of music. And that's what makes it a different breed.

Comment by Brooklyn Benjestorf on March 21, 2009 at 4:14pm: Hey Kim, I think your version of Guitar Hero sounds super fun! Where do I sign up?

Comment by TwangNation.com on March 21, 2009 at 4:20pm: The fundamental difference between roots and hip hop is not cultural, it's technological. Banjos and fiddles on the one hand and turntables in the other. Hip hop was birthed from samples and derived beats. I'm not saying one is better (well, maybe I am) but I think that the use of one genre might just not be analogous to another. A turntable has no place in roots rock (ya hear me Steve Earle?!)The 360 degree music deal is still finding it's legs, and so far it's only the veterans that seem to be able to make the most out of it.

Since roots/country/alt.country etc. has it's bona fides in the humanness of the music then it's going to take more human and warm artifacts to carry the music to the masses. But I'm all for a world where a a soundtrack to Cohen brothers movie and a golden-mained rock god can open the nation's ears to roots music.

Comment by Kim Ruehl on March 21, 2009 at 4:59pm: You bring up a good point about the technological difference, although I'd have to argue that much of roots music (particularly when you get into the folkier stuff) is all derived melodies, lyrics, and rhythms. I mean, "This Land is Your Land" was not Woody Guthrie's melody, Bob Dylan has borrowed his fair share of lyrics and melodies...in fact the entirety of at least folk music is about borrowing from tradition and making it your own. So hip-hop biting off other artists and styles is basically the same thing with different instruments. What's more technologically accessible than making rhythm with your mouth while someone else tells a story that rhymes? It may not be my story, but neither is the one Woody told.

Comment by TwangNation.com on March 22, 2009 at 12:08am: @KIM : Agreed. I make no claim for authenticity, only approach and technique. Hank Williams is quoted as saying "You got to have smelt a lot of mule manure before you can sing like a hillbilly" and though authenticity is often overrated in music there's something to be said for living the words you sing, or rap, or scream.

To my ears the human synthesis of music, like Dylan, can result in much more interesting cultural "mashups" then sampling and matching beats. Yes there are some folks that use technology and achieve craftsmanship (Tricky, Richard James, Massive Attack, Portishead come to mind) , they are able to transcend the technology and give it a pulse. But my preference is always going to be the person who interprets music with nothing more that a guitar and the skin of his teeth.

Comment by Easy Ed on March 22, 2009 at 9:55pm: Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry. I think we all have the right to our own flavors. So if you're a roots fan who likes it natural, or a futurist who wants to cut, paste and mash it...so be it. I don't think that one is more authentic than the other.

That Hank Williams' quote looks great in print but it doesn't work for me. If every artist that comes along needs to hand us a resume of their pain and suffering, or their cultural and economic profile before we deem them authentic, we're in trouble. People make music, other people listen to it; some you like and some you don't. It's that simple.

But to the point that Kim raises here and in previous posts, I'm really enjoying how she is opening up her windows to look out at the future potential that technology can bring us. I personally am an analog guy trapped in a digital world, but I embrace reinvention as I do creation.

Another thing I need to mention is that I didn't take well to the previous remark about Steve Earle and his turntable. He can play with the Boston Pops and have the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing back up with the Beastie Boys providing beats and still be "root" as far as I'm concerned.

Comment by Bob Rose on March 23, 2009 at 12:40am: Easy Ed, I tend to agree. Once you define a style of music, you tend to limit it, and working beyond those limitations is how Hank Williams turned a Broadway showtune like "Lovesick Blues" into a Country standard, or how Ray Price saved the Country music industry in the '60's by incorporating strings into his songs. There will always be similar and diverse styles of music within a genre, and yet, the fact that musical genres exist at all is more of an invention by record company marketing execs looking for a demographic to pitch their wares too, than a natural outgrowth of the music itself. Purity and authenticity in any style of music doesn't exist, because everything is derivative of each other.

All in all, I subscribe to Tom T Hall's definition of Country music -or any kind of music, when he said: "Country is... what you make it..... country is....all in your mind." Whether than involves turntables, strings or Broadway showtunes.

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