OK, I admit it, I’m a nerd. A true-blue, dyed-in-the-wool, techno nerd. I don’t admit that to just everyone, so I must really like you. in fact, I like you so much I’m going to tell you a bit more about my love affair with technology.
It’s all consuming.
I first fell in love with IT when I was about 7 years old. It was while bored and frustrated, being told to sit quietly at a secretary’s unused desk after-hours in my parent’s office while they finished up working on some grown-up business, that I first discovered typing. Oh the joy of that discovery! Suddenly I could make my thoughts go onto paper without having to worry about my horrible handwriting. (This is still one of the reasons I love technology incidentally.) Instead, I could write stories using a typewriter. And make pictures too. A line of “x” followed by a line
of “=+=” followed by another line of “x” was a joy to create and a joy to behold. Younger readers may want to google “typewriter” to see pictures of one. However pictures, or even a really excellent wikipedia article, won’t help you understand the thrill of using an electric golfball typewriter. Oh, how I miss those pleasingly tactile keyboards and that incredibly satisfying ‘clunk-ker-chunk rat-a-tatta-tat’ as each letter was dropped neatly, and legibly, into the perfect spot on the page.
At the age of 7 I was also in love with the telex machine in my parent’s office. I’ll admit though, that this was not a love affair of the mind, this one was purely physical. I was not in love with the, then, wonderfully novel idea of having someone’s thoughts written down in Sydney being transmitted to suddenly appear on a strip of white tape in Darwin, a thousand miles to the north. Sadly, my 7 year old self just loved the large boxes of “free confetti” the machine produced as it punched it’s message out onto the tape. (I would now like to formally apologize to the cleaner’s who worked in that office at the time for the hideously large number of times they had to vacuum up confetti which had been spread around by a 7 year old drunk on the love of IT.)
Of course, we all know IT advances relentlessly, and so the typewriter gave way to a beautiful DOS screen wherein I could still type my neat and tidy thoughts and then see them glow like clever green thought-fairies. After that we had a nice white virtual-page, a little boring by comparison but from there I could desktop print those very thoughts and distribute them to anyone who wanted a copy. Or, more honestly, anyone who didn’t say no quickly enough to avoid having a copy gifted to them. Then we moved on to email, which made it even easier to gift my thoughts to others ”lucky” enough to deserve them. And now we have a glorious bounty of ways to spread our thoughts around the world. Blogs and vlogs, twitter and Facebook, and even this inestimable web site’s Welcome column.
The problem is, we just don’t seem to be having as many thoughts. Actually, scratch that, we have far more thoughts than we need, what we are missing is good, well thought out thoughts. It’s sad, but it seems that it is now so very easy to spread our thoughts around that we no longer have to bother taking the time to actually think them before we share them with others. As a result, some days I feel awash in other people’s stupidity. (And perhaps, today, you may feel awash in mine. I do hope not, but it’s a possibility I can recognize. I just don’t have time to do much about that right now)
I won’t be the first to make this comparison with the music industry either. It is so darn easy to share our musical thoughts with with the unsuspecting and ill-defended public at large these days. Even if we don’t actually have any musical talent, thoughts or opinions.
Want to learn guitar my friend? Drop in to any one of literally thousands of websites and they promise to have you up and playing that very day. That very day! Well, provided your first of 27 easy payments of just $19.99 goes through on time. Their claims seem a bit extravagant to me, but also too good to refuse. And after all, they are all “accredited Guitar Universities” of one kind or another, and an online Guitar-iversity wouldn’t lie to me about the likelihood that I have hidden talent now would they?
If it somehow does turns out that your untapped (and previously undreamed off) hidden talent plus “just 5 minutes a day and a good attitude” didn’t help you become the next Tony Rice, well there’s probably an app to help that. It’s easy to find an app to fix your timing, an app to fix your intonation, and even an app to fix you attitude. Then bingo, away you go giving old Tony a run for his money. What’s that? You can’t remember the words, or the notes, or the key, or the chords for that song you always do? Never mind, there’s an app for that too.
These days though, 5 minutes a day is a hefty time commitment, and if I’m going to really dedicate that much of my life to my Guitar-iversity work then I need to see some tangible rewards pretty quickly. Luckily, you guessed it, there’s an app for that too. These to me are the best apps. The culmination of all of that glorious technology being put to use. These apps are the ones that let you record your musical pearls.
Now, don’t worry if the final version you recorded was a little bit off. Everyone gets stressed and tightens up when the recording light goes on. We know you can play better when you’re not tense, don’t worry about it. We’ll just use these handy little apps to iron out a few of those issues with your recording. Auto-tune app, Auto-time app, Auto-intone app, we have them all, and if we have them, by gosh we’re going to use them! Heck, I bet we can even find an Auto-Tony app if we just looked through the app store one more time. There, that sounds great now, really professional quality. Give yourself a pat on the back and take an early break. You’ve been working hard for nearly 4.25 minutes and you deserve a bit of relaxation.
Of course, it would be a shame to have wasted all that cash (I wonder how I stop those monthly $19.99 payments? I can’t seem to find the link on their web site that let’s me easily cancel any time with no ongoing commitment, as promised. Oh well, maybe I’ll stay signed up and learn a few extra chords next month. Maybe even…..B-flat?… nah, probably just need an A minor or something, no reason to go crazy now.) and wasted all that effort, without sharing your results with someone. So it’s nice to know you don’t have to worry anymore. The very best of the recording apps even let you distribute those glorious recorded pearls of yours to the world wide, eagerly-listening, pearl-hungry public. From Guitar-iversity to my lounge room to your Facebook feed in under an hour. What could be better than that?!
Did I mention that I hate technology……….
