Digital tech enables music without musicians

From Garrick Utley
CNN Correspondent

(CNN) -- How many ways do we hear and enjoy the magic created by people with instruments and talent? There are countless ways -- and now there is a new approach and a new instrument. It is music-making in the untraditional sense, but a method that is gaining popularity.

Zach Danziger is a highly talented drummer, but now he is spending most of his days and nights in front of his computer. As digital technology becomes cheaper, music composition is moving out of expensive recording studios and into places such as Danziger's crowded living room.

Today, like anyone else, he can buy CDs filled with musical notes, beats or words and compose (or program) them into new music -- music that no longer needs musicians.

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"I know a lot of successful musicians who have made so much money, who are all crying the same story, like 'what happened to the work?'" Danziger says.

And that work has historically required those who made music to know how to compose or perform it. But the new musical instrument -- the computer -- challenges the very idea of music created by real people, playing on real instruments, in real time.

What will happen to music if the years and dedication devoted to mastering an instrument become redundant?

Live performances diminished?

Danziger has had his performances recorded and manipulated by computer processing to a point where he listens to what he has done and doesn't even recognize that he played it.

And as the music becomes less real, what happens to performance? Perhaps a greater reliance on visual spectacle to distract from the live music that isn't there?

"Maybe Britney Spears gives some performances on some shows and there are a couple of guys (playing music) on stage, but a lot of it is being run off computer," says Danziger.

And so what does Zach Danziger the music performer think of Zach Danziger the computer programmer?

"It's hard because you know a lot of this is so contrived and so much like 'let me manipulate this and micro-produce everything.' A lot of that magic, for lack of a better word, sometimes disappears."

But there is also something gained, Danziger says.

"These are instruments, they are just being approached from a different aesthetic, a different head."

And so the beat will go on -- even if it comes from Danziger's computer rather than his drums.

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