Page 76 - @ccess 3 Reader´s Book

Rob Menes
I am an ordained cantor with a master's degree in
sacred music
Answered Jan 13, 2014

I have wrestled with this and it is a serious question. We can
use the computer as an interface to produce any sound
we want, and we can get very close to the sound of a
Stradivarius or a Steinway Grand. But the human element
of playing an instrument changes with the mechanics.
At a very low level of proficiency, there is probably little
advantage to having the actual instrument rather than a
computer, but when a musician becomes one with the
instrument, when a saxophonist can feel the change in
the texture of the reed, when a violinist can hear the strings
respond to the temperature of the room, the music becomes
human. That cannot be duplicated by or through a computer.

Ethan Hein
Music technology and music education professor
Answered Jan 12, 2014

Computers are musical instruments.

Gregg Painter
Jan 13, 2014

Computers are not musical instruments in the
traditional sense, and by traditional, I mean
instruments as they have been used for musical
expression during 99.9% of our history as human
beings. Admittedly, I play a relatively new instrument,
the piano, a machine, but I also delight in playing
drums, harmonica, flutes, guitar and other
instruments with a longer evolutionary history.

Reader's Book 75