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This book shows how changes in music software design in the first decades of the twenty-first century shaped the production techniques and performance practices of artists across media, from hip-hop and electronic dance music to video games and mobile apps. Emerging alongside developments in digital music distribution such as peer-to-peer file sharing and the MP3 format, digital audio workstations (DAWs) such as FL Studio and Ableton’s Live encouraged rapid music-creation workflows through flashy, user-friendly interfaces. Meanwhile, software such as Avid’s Pro Tools attempted to protect its status as the industry-standard “professional” DAW by incorporating design elements from predigital technologies. Other software, such as Cycling ’74’s Max, asserted its alterity to “commercial” DAWs by offering users just a blank screen. The book examines the social, cultural, and political values designed into music software and how those become embodied by musical communities through production and performance. It reveals ties between maximalist design in FL Studio, skeuomorphic design in Pro Tools, and gender inequity in the music products industry. It connects the computational thinking required by Max and iZotope’s innovations in artificial intelligence with the cultural politics of Silicon Valley’s “design thinking.” Finally, it examines what happens when software becomes hardware and users externalize their screens using musical instrument digital interface (MIDI) controllers, mobile media, and video-game controllers. Amid the perpetual upgrade culture of music technology, Push the book provides a model for understanding software as a microcosm for the increasing convergence of globalization, neoliberal capitalism, and techno-utopianism that has come to define our digital lives.

Throughout the history of hip-hop and EDM, the process of mixing vinyl records between two turntable decks has become standard practice for DJs, enhancing the perceived “live” presence of the DJ. However, the increasing presence of software in the DJ booth has thrown into question the nature of performance within dance music communities. In an attempt to heighten the sense of physicality when working with seemingly intangible software, producers and DJs have increasingly integrated button-based hardware “controllers” into their creative workflows. This chapter makes the connection between musical controllers and video game controllers, examining how hardware peripherals have allowed musicians to physically embody the gestural affordances of software. Combining design analyses of MIDI devices and game controllers with analyses of performance techniques from electronic musicians, the chapter posits the shift from “turntablism” to “controllerism” as exemplary of trends toward the emergence of a “controller culture” more broadly.

The introductory chapter contextualizes music technology in the early decades of the twenty-first century, pinpointing how the rise of software impacted the cultures of popular music and interactive media. The chapter considers how the aesthetics, ethics, and politics of digital audio producers and software companies become embedded in the design of software—a process referred to as interface aesthetics. The project is situated within software studies, sound studies, and interface criticism, and the chapter shows how and why the study of software design may uncover aspects of music that are not addressed by musicological and media studies research undertaken from semiotic, hermeneutic, and historical perspectives.

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