The Virtuosic Mouse: Manual for the New World of PC Composers
The Virtuosic Mouse came about as the resulting brainstorm around an issue presented in a 2001 essay I wrote for the New York Times titled "Going the Way of the Victrola". Two more of my articles written as a series called "Tools of the Trade" in Relix magazine followed up on this topic, when the future seemed wide open and the clear blue sky was the limit.
I advocated then as well as now that composers start using the new technology of home computers and the Internet to bypass the now old methods and politics of expensive recording studios and their all-powerful, chic record labels. This logically also becomes a plea to music appreciators and consumers alike to look everywhere for music, not just the bins of commercial music stores.
Meanwhile, the infamous Napster and so-called "P2P" music sharing scare flooded the scene with accusations of music piracy and copyright infringement. Even though discouraging the new practice, those brave and defiant enough enjoyed a burgeoning era of pulling fragments of music out of one's memory, Googling what you could remember, finding a title, and soon be listening to it.
My opinions got me in Dutch with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which attacked me by name in its newsletter. If I was being blacklisted by a behemoth industry, the fight was well worth it.
Above all, my candid observations and projections blended with my teaching activities in music composition at Purchase College, where I served as adjunct professor. Most of my students used music processing programs such as Finale and Sibelius, cutting and pasting their ideas into a composition they could play back to me every week when I met with them. I encouraged them to read The Virtuosic Mouse and got some feedback from them. In this way, it became a practical manual for composers to encourage innovation while steering them clear of imitating old practices.
As then, the sky is still the limit. Today, all of us still bump heads against behemoth record labels and Hollywood films that want to control everything. Because current AI trends are scaring us to death, the behemoths remain in a quandary about what to do next. That's where the rest of us come in with a bright future of new freedoms.
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Smashwords Pub. ISBN 9780463737873
April 25, 2020