My senior project - discussing how the technology used to make and listen to music changed the music itself - is easily my most comprehensive writing piece yet. This includes technologies such as the microphone allowing for deeper, more dulcet tones to be recorded – letting people like Bing Crosby make music in the first place – and how transistor radios, with the portability and sound quality they provided, gave rock and roll its rise to prominence. The project touches on multiple musical eras and the technology used/music they produced, coming all the way up to modern day and the rise of streaming.

While not exemplified through a lot of my coursework, music is something I’m very interested in both personally and professionally. Just about everything I do always has a soundtrack behind it, and if time and willpower allowed, I would love to be engrossed in the musical profession myself. However, from a mass media standpoint, I find it curious towards the development of music, the cultural power it has, and the development of that culture over time. There’s such an interesting reciprocity between the culture of the time and the music it produces, but my project brings up the question – if implicitly – as to whether or not the culture is entirely to blame for the music, or if there’s technology similarly guiding those experiences. I mention it in the piece, but it’s something of a Marshall McLuhan-esque conclusion – does the musical medium determine the musical message? How and where will new technologies guide what we listen to or how we view society? Living in a time where music is more accessible (and, I would venture, easy to make & release) than ever, what repercussions does this newfound lack of exclusivity bring us? This easily stands as the most thoroughly researched and heavily worked on piece I’ve ever produced.