Tik Tok Tac

I have never made a secret of the fact that I amiably detest not technology, but the whole world of social media with their annexes and connections, even if I use them limited to my work communications. The other day, for example, a couple of students asked me if I had a profile on TikTok. I replied that the best I can do is a CT scan.

But the question made me think. It was asked to me by teenagers, and I was more or less their age when I first set foot in a recording studio, a place that for those he was making music in those years (late '70s - early '80s) and was surrounded and permeated by an almost mystical and spiritual aura. Entering the studio made you feel like someone called up to play in a world cup final. We worked on tape recorders. The reels were sort of "pizzas" of various diameters, and the width of the tape was directly proportional to the technical caliber of the studio: the wider it was, the greater the number of tracks that could be recorded. To maintain its high performance, the tape had to turn as little as possible, so the first one had to be "good", at most the second or third.

If you made a mistake, you had to repeat sometimes even a minute or two of recording, because the minimum "cut" that the editor could make was certainly not comparable to those of today. Everything was exciting, except one thing. It was not an experience within everyone's reach. It was very expensive and you had to live up to it. Maybe you had to find someone who paid or tax yourself heavily.

When recording, the first thing the studio did was buy the tapes for your work. Even before you started you had already spent a lot of money. Then, to publish your music, you had to find a publisher, a record company, possibly willing to invest (an artist's communication was and still is the biggest expense item). The trip to the studio was a great satisfaction, an exciting fun, but it could become a great frustration if you had to settle for a so-so (or poor) result because you didn't have enough time (money) and your work remained there.

Today, at least in this, things have improved a lot. With a little money, easily recoverable by accumulating pocket money, birthdays or other things, a young person has the possibility of buying a computer, a sound card, a microphone, a pair of headphones or decent monitors and write, record and publish your own music, almost at no cost, without having to resort to specialized structures or personnel. Of course the home result is not the same, however it is almost always acceptable and decent. This is a great fortune, even for professionals like me.

The internet and its devices have allowed us to express ourselves and to circulate all of our productions freely. The downside is that with all the stuff that's around it's hard to find quality things, everyone has the right to speak (play, sing or whatever), you don't know if the news is true or false. It's up to us to choose whether to tell the truth, the false, the beautiful, the ugly. Everyone has the opportunity to use technology as they see fit, some Tik Tok, some Tac.


Mauro Tabasso
NP November 2023