For the last several days we’ve been discussing the amazing art of sampling that is making such huge contribution to the music industry and to the way music is made today. With a virtual sampled orchestra library, a composer/orchestrator no longer needs to hire an orchestra, but can now create an equivalent sound with his sampling software and a powerful computer.

For a composer, this is a tremendously enabling concept. It means that the huge amounts of money previously spent before are no longer necessary for the completion of one’s musical creativity.

“But what about the poor musicians who no longer can get that kind of work”, I’m sure someone’s bound to ask. Well, it’s a good question. And the immediate answer is not pretty.

It is true that a lot of musicians have suffered from the lack of work of late – especially the orchestral musicians like string players, woodwinds, and brass. Drummers too just don’t have the recording opportunities that they used to have. Here in NYC, the studio musician used to be king – and queen.

It used to be that hundreds of great musicians made the rounds of the great studios daily playing on records, T.V. and movie scores, commercials, and industrial projects. It’s true now that much of this work has dried up.

For me, personally, I’ve always said that if I had my druthers, I would always choose great live musicians over sample technology. If I can only afford or find good musicians for the project, I’ll take sampling.

Trouble is, the unions priced the great musicians out of most people’s budgets. All across the boards in the entire music industry, greed took over. Union scale became pretty scary if you were on a tight budget – and what budgets weren’t tight. Since the luxurious 80s, it seems that all budgets are tight. One began to avoid the unions whenever possible.

But then the best of the players, in their greed, or to be fair, in their necessity, started to charge double scale to show up – and sometimes triple and quadruple scale.  It got to be that drummers were an automatic double scale at the least.  Recording costs for musicians rose and rose. We, the producers, started to get nickel/dimed for all kinds of things like cartage – the payment for someone else to carry the musicians instrument to the session for him.  I could understand it for a drummer, but for a trumpet player?

It got to the point where great musicians were prohibitive unless the major record companies were footin’ the bill. Then the majors went under, and the party was over. Except that the great musicians who were used to such treatment did not adjust and pull exorbitant prices back down.  Meanwhile, out of necessity, sampling was born and perfected.

It’s the way of the world. In L.A. most of the big budget movies are still recorded with live orchestras, but more and more film composers are first scoring their films with virtual orchestras so that directors and producers can hear how they’ll sound before spending the huge bucks on the orchestral sessions.

But mark my word, pretty soon on a major movie, some wise producer will say, “Hey, I can’t tell the difference. Why should I spend a million bucks to do it over again live?” I’m sure it’s happened already.

Many of the great musicians are now the ones recording the samples. Certainly that’s what most studio drummers are doing nowadays. The loop samples that I buy are always recorded by the best studio drummers in the world.

It used to be that the studio musicians, the cream of the crop, were known as the A list. You went to the B list when you couldn’t afford the A list or were too unorganized to hire the A list players in time. The B list players, by the way, all solid, strong players themselves, tended to make their money playing in the Broadway pits or on the road with touring acts or shows.

Today, next time you’re at a Broadway show, walk down the aisle and look down into the orchestra pit. What do you see? All A list players. The Broadway show bands are all great bands today full of some of the best musicians in the world.

So did musicians shoot themselves in the foot?  To a certain extent, yes. Did technology just catch up and change the face of music and the way it’s made today? Absolutely. Did the whole music industry tank because of the greed of the major record labels and their inability to stay with the current advances in technology and the advent of the internet? Unfortunately, yes.

It’s now a new world. The old one is dead or dying. And it’s good. It really is! It’s a renaissance time, a time for new ideas, new changes in music, in production, in studios, in the way music is promoted and sold. It’s all new and it’s now all possible.

The greed that controlled the industry has been swallowed up in defeat for many. The strong and the talented survive and that’s the way it should be. Those who are not willing to change their old, tired, no longer effective ways will have to go back to waiting tables.

In order to survive today in the music business, you have to be willing to adapt to the new directions of music and technology. If you are not willing, you will get left behind and become a hobbyist.

So don’t feel sorry for the musicians. They’re just like anybody else out there. Automation comes to industry and men are cut from the conveyor lines and lose their jobs. Technology takes over and does it better and cheaper; otherwise companies would not do it. Those people have to be creative and find something better to do.

It’s happening in music.

For more inspirational music, thoughts and ideas from Peter Link,
please visit Watchfire Music.