I like to think about how it was for a thunderstorm to move in before we had radar, weather maps, and other meteorological predictions.
Sometimes, it was a complete surprise. Other times, there were signs that you could use to predict. Signs that we might not even know to look for, now that we can just check weather maps on our phones.
It’s a little like the lost art of olfactory diagnosis. There was a time when physicians could diagnose certain ailments just by smell – certain kinds of cancer, other illnesses, etc. That’s mostly gone now, or learned accidentally. We have better diagnostic tools, so why take the time to learn these old fashioned tricks?
The point, though, is that there are other ways of knowing things besides the newest technological way. They can be trickier to learn and more trouble to implement, but they can also illuminate knowledge that the new computational tools do not.
What about music? What old ways of making music are lost when you are at the cutting edge of 2020 music-making?