Music Made of Plastic
As asserted in the article America and the ‘Fun’ Generation, in the last 200 years, the word "achievement" trumped “excellence” and “fun” trumped “pleasure” by a factor of four.
This is a perfect example of the shift in American culture to engage in activities for fun and achievement primarily, and to pursue pleasure and excellence only secondarily. We have settled for plastic.
Rock Band Plastics
When we play music as a game using alternate instruments or controllers, how does it affect how we think about music in general? Is it done for achievement and fun as the word study suggests, or will it be the gateway drug to the more 'noble' attributes of pleasure and excellence, played on instruments made of wood? If you play a plastic toy, does it also make the music 'plastic' or disposable?
Perhaps it is not only the words that we live by but also the quality of the materials that we surround ourselves with. Plastic instruments may affect how we think about music and the characteristics that musical instruments should have. We can perhaps call it the 'Stradivarius' effect (or its polar opposite) in which the notion of holding something with an inherently special quality, affords a special empathy (or the opposite, apathy) as the case may be. But this isn't necessarily true: Affinities for materials and objects are highly subjective. Synths have always been made of plastic.
I happen to love cheap instruments. They can very often be better than instruments that are much more expensive. Expensive materials have a tendency to be coddled, protected, polished, and only taken out on sunny Sundays, cheap instruments are special for their lack of specialness and can be kicked around more.
The whole idea of cheap plastic objects (musical or otherwise) has a democratizing effect of giving us the sense that skill is within reach, and doesn't require wealth or knowledge or intelligence in order to pursue it. Plastic used conceptually, can be also arty and avant-garde. Ornette Coleman played a plastic sax as a way to fold in the idea of something that is intentionally cheap and 'broken'. Unfortunately, such archness has worked against him. Here is a comment by a Coleman fan on his use of the plastic sax:
"Your contribution to music history has been invaluable and this cannot be overestimated, but please do not use your plastic sax again. Your new album "Sound Grammar" is praised to the sky by the press, and admittedly, the music is excellent, but less adventurous than we are used to. The sound of your sax is awful, however. Or was this your plastic sax? Whatever it was, please change it."
In an age of "fun" and "achievement", we have to be careful of how we use our plastics. Ornette used plastic meretriciously and people railed against the sound, the intended effect I think.
Is anything more unserious than a plastic instrument? No, because it's supposed to be fun--nothing more.
