Sean Patrick Cooper

So what kind of music is this? It’s obviously music, right?—it sounds like it at least—but I don’t think it can be identified by the normal labels we would have given it in the past. Or, more specifically, it can’t be identified by only what it sounds like. Its type or essence is as much about how its presented and made as it is by the singing proper. The broad category under which this falls would have to be something like Video Music, or Online Music (or something much more clever than that, lest people mistake it for a menu tab in a new release of iTunes).  

What’s interesting is that it relates to a traditional music performance in multiple ways. There’s a performer here who felt compelled to share his creation with an audience. His goal or at least one of his goals isn’t to monetize his creative output—his desire is to just put out his stuff. That’s one. Another is that he’s using a relatively crude tool—his webcam—to make a more complex sound. Musicians have been doing this for centuries. Obvious examples abound. A kitchen spoon, a washboard, a casette recorder for field loops (hello The Books).  And yet, it still doesn’t look or register in my mind as anything like traditional music. 

So what is it?