As a musician, one way technology has impacted my life is in the way I practice. Nowadays, when I am learning a song, I can go on YouTube and find thousands of performances of it. I can buy piano accompaniment CDs that go with my music books, put them on my iPod, and sing along. I imagine that I will continue to do this for as long as I learn new music and practice it. I find the accompaniment CDs particularly helpful, although some of the tracks don't go at the tempo I'm comfortable with. That's the only danger of using the CDs too much. If you are used to a certain tempo, you could throw off your technique by practicing it another way. Or, you could end up increasing your flexibility by trying the same song at different tempos.
Before I started practicing songs with accompaniment CDs, however, I used to have my voice teacher record my part on the piano with a cassette tape so I could learn it. This was, of course, before I could read music - about four years ago. After I learned to read music, I went to the piano myself and fished for notes. This is still how I learn music. I only add the accompaniment once I know my part. It works, so I see no reason to change it. The only thing I would change would be my piano skills. I want to be able to accompany myself. Hopefully, by the time I graduate, I will be able to do that. Until then, I will keep practicing with CDs, especially if the accompaniment is particularly difficult.
In terms of music technology today, I like everything except the availability of it. I would love to be able to get a quality microphone with which I could record myself, make a CD, and then send it off to places where I want to audition. But those are expensive, and as a college student I don't have the money for it. Once I get a job, though, I expect to be able to do things like that. That is how I will begin auditioning for opera companies - by sending in recordings of myself. I may also send in DVDs. I know that some companies don't believe that they need anything more than the sound of a voice to make a decision regarding whether the person should come in for an audition, but still others don't mind if they can see "the whole package."
Technology has certainly affected the way I listen to music as well as the way I make it. When my older sister was a teenager, all of her music came in the form of CDs. The only CDs I ever bought were ones that I could not find on iTunes. Everything else came from iTunes, and it's all stored on my computer and my iPod. I do not have to take out a CD player every time I want to listen to music. It's a wonderful, wonderful world we live in where music is so easily accessible.
