Physical Preservation of Music

This is something I think about a lot.

If you aren't making physical copies of your music, I think you really should. Not just in burning CDs or whatever, but also in notation (and MIDI) so that the music can be re-created in the future if you lose the recordings.

It has been noted in the 21st Century, that future generations will likely have no photographs of us, because no one develops physical photographs anymore. Facebook and Instagram are already no longer the monolithic media platforms they once were, as "alternative" platforms like Gab, Bit Chute, etc. are seeing record growth. In short: Facebook and Instagram will probably not be around in the future.

But this is where, alongside SIM cards, where the bulk of the photos we take now are. What this means is that, in the future, your grandkids may not be able to find a single photo of you from your adult life. The SIM cards are long gone; the websites either offline or passwords to accounts long forgotten.

The same is true of a great deal of music written over the last 40 years, at least. It's all digital. Many, many songs that people have written (especially over the last 15 years) exist entirely in cyberspace. It only exists as "backups" on HDDs which can and will eventually fail, on Box or Mediafire accounts that won't be around eternally, and no physical transcriptions of it exist. 

What this also means for us is that, you could be this really great musician and composer, but in 60 years? Your descendants may be completely unable to hear anything you ever made, over the course of your entire life. As if you never existed at all.

Burn CDs, make cassettes, make sheet music, and many copies of it.

7 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

As if you never existed at all.

everything you say in this post, i agree with. yes, if we leave no trace of our music and no trace of anything else, then it will indeed be as if we never existed at all. but the awe inspiring frightful truth that will eventually be in store for us all is that the actual non-existence of all of us will be realized on that day when the sun explodes sending anyone remaining into oblivion. it will then anyway be as if we never existed at all and anything we left behind after our deaths will of course not be able to change that. at that time, will it be said or asked if we existed once? that question won't be asked then nor even be able to be asked as there will be no one there to ask it. so, is there a point in all of this music? yes, and that point is the NOW.

I write my sheet music with pencil, should I switch to pen or just photocopy them?

2 hours ago, Gyugcac said:

I write my sheet music with pencil, should I switch to pen or just photocopy them?

6 hours ago, Gyugcac said:

I write my sheet music with pencil, should I switch to pen or just photocopy them?

either way i think you will be (take it away, Freddie!):

I don't think that one should copy his music just to be remembered.

In fact, I don't think that one's music should be kept after his death at all.

I know that right now the copyrights last for about 70 years, but think about it-

the amount of actually different combinations of scale degrees and rhythms is VERY limited.

Chords are not copyrighted, neither is rhythm. What you can call "yours" is the melody.

But the amount of people on earth increases, and so does the accessibility of music making software.

Soon enough making actually fresh melodies would be nearly impossible- and that's where context comes in.

In post-modern days, I think, what should be thought of is the reference:
John Williams makes "sound-a-likes", Quentin Tarantino makes "homages", the entirety of meme culture...

It's not the original idea really, it's the reference you call and the tools you choose to use.

Thus, I think, keeping one's music on a paper will not be of much importance soon enough.

Yes, of course, I wouldn't like it if someone used my melody in a piece of his without mentioning the origin.

But is it really mine though or did my brain just combine lots of things it heard? Is music, or should I say, the art of muse, really about originality?

Nothing good can be built up if every generation lives as though they are the last.