Here's the scenario: You're reading an article in a magazine about the current state of the music business. You come across the inevitable part where the journalist talks about how empowered musicians are, now that recording is possible with personal computers. You might nod your head in agreement, or you might stop cold in your tracks like myself and think, "What in the hell are they talking about?"
"Whoa, what's Larry getting so fired up about?" you might ask. "Of course everyone can make records on their laptop at home nowadays."
Think back to the origins of recorded sound: One track of audio recorded through a mechanical horn onto a wax cylinder. Then, for many years, even with the advent of electrical- based recording and tape, there was only one mono audio track. Capturing a performance meant placing the musicians in proper relationship to one microphone. In later times it meant putting up several mics and blending their signals together to this one track.
As technology marched forward we stepped into the world of multitrack recording, whether via deck to deck with blended-in overdubs (like Joe Meek and Les Paul) or via multitrack tape decks. Those with the right equipment were able to either add extra overdubs, or even isolate instruments and players to separate tracks.
It's this isolation of tracks and overdubbing that begat the concept of performances that could be built up from events that did not occur simultaneously or in real time together. That's fine by me — it's a fact of life that we can manipulate time in order to create something that might (or might not) sound like people playing music together in a room. But it's essentially this multitracking that has confused and misguided so many folks when it comes to discussing the intersection of technology and music. Let me tell you why.