What would Beethoven do with a moog? Would he accept its electronic parts and write it into a symphony or would he defenestrate it?

I've had this argument before: Did music reach its peak with Beethoven or with Radiohead? I use these two artists referentially in considering if technology killed music.

As it is with guns, technology can't kill music, it's what people do with technology that has the potential for harm. Take distortion, for example. It has trained our ears to think that anything loud and confusing must be good, or at least "post-punk."

I tend to view distortion as I would any other art movement. After the first artists chose to implement the feedback noise, everyone after was simply imitating or using it in a less offensive, less original manner. It no longer became risky.

As far as I'm concerned, no one needs to look any further than Sonic Youth for any of their distortion needs. They did it first, and they did it the best.

Technology gives us the false feeling of advancing in society; musical technology just makes it easier to skate by without a basic understanding of what makes music.

It seems like this cheapens music when a specific sound can be produced at the touch of a button. Would Beethoven have liked to have an omni-directional microphone so he could record and then adjust the frequencies so he could hear, or rather feel, his music? Sure. Would he compromise a quivering almost half tone of a flute played by an erroneous human being for a perfect machine made half tone? I don't know, but I find beauty in slight musical imperfections, because they reflect the human condition.

At The Thermals/Cursive show this Sunday at the Pabst Theater, a male was playing his Nintendo DS during The Thermals set. Music was happening right in front of him, and he chose to be absorbed in his handheld electronics. He could have watched the musicians' hands and maybe learned a few chord progressions, but why would he have to when he could just click a mouse or press a button?

To Radiohead's credit, they don't subscribe to the philosophy that just because you can do something it means you should. They don't completely rely on electronic noise for all their songs, as they often draw as much from electronica as an acoustic avant-garde jazz feel. They have more technologies at their disposal, and therefore more sounds and distractions to choose from than Beethoven, which makes their choice of gear more difficult.

I don't mean to sound like I think electronic music is composed in a vacuum. I see a discreet collaborative process in it. Someone became inspired to design a certain pedal, pre-amp, whatever, and then a band picks it up to fit their purposes. It's good to have choices, it's just when these choices become gimmicky that I disagree with them.

Maybe none of this discussion even matters. As Frank Zappa said, "Writing about music is like dancing about architecture." All that matters is that music persistently continues to subsist, and keeps inspiring its listeners — the true essence of any art. Music is never going to go back to its puritanical roots, and I wouldn't want it that way. Non-guitar based, electronic music would fall on unreceptive ears, no one would be inspired, and new music as an art form would cease to exist.