Tuesday 21 November 2017

The Future Of Music

Hugh Valland plays an "omnisonor."
A Kithwoman plays a "polymusicon" and sounds a bugle call from it.
Heinlein's Rhysling plays an accordion but he lives in the early twenty first century when there has not yet been time for any new musical technology.
Spock has some kind of Vulcanian instrument, I think.
James Blish's "A Work of Art" (see here) is about the future of music, including musical technology.
There is multi-sensory art in Anderson's The Peregrine.
Anything else?

2 comments:

David Birr said...

Paul:
The character "Mouse" in Samuel R. Delany's *Nova* had a "sensory syrynx" which could generate auditory, holography, and olfactory effects. He could, for instance create music coupled with the image of a beautiful woman dancing to it ... and if the image came close, you could smell her perfume.

By increasing the intensity of the components, the syrinx could also function as a weapon, with sonic attacks, the equivalent of a tear-gas spray, AND a laser at least capable of setting an enemy's hair on fire.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And I remembered this from Chapter III of A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS, as Flandry arrived at the Coral Palace for a farewell party hosted by Emperor Hans: "When Flandry landed his car and stepped forth, no clouds of perfume (or psychogenic vapors, as had been common in Josip's reign) drifted from the palace to soften salt odors. Music wove among mild breezes, but formal, stately, neither hypersubtle nor raucous. Flandry wasn't sure whether it was composed on a colony planet--if so, doubtless Germania--or on Terra once, to be preserved through centuries while the mother world forgot. He did know that a decade ago, the court would have snickered at sounds this fusty-archaic."

Hmmm, was this formal and stately music something composed by Bach or Beethoven? And we see mention of how fashions in tastes and things like music can change!

Sean