I was never meant
to particularly live
in this century
Monday, March 19, 2012
Monday, March 5, 2012
20 minutes in a Best Buy: Sound Crank series part II
The soundscape we live in is eternally cheapened while becoming ever more expensive.
The tools for musical production and reproduction are themselves produced on an increasingly inhuman mass scale, while the consolidation and growth of owner-parents (namely corporations and banking entities) means more more more money for less less less quality and equality.
To remain in the sphere of used and refurbished goods undoes this cycle. The status quo degenerates and devolves and devalues, while the ownership class's endless pinch requires the price to go up while the quality of the product spirals downward.
What this means:
Say you bought a stereo in the age of vinyl records. The $xxx dollar system came with a certain array of circuitry - sound source, signal processing, amplification, speakers; with a desired end result of providing clear and pleasant reproduction of sound. Recording is the capture of an event, in this case instruments and voices, tediously rehearsed, arranged, and repeatedly attempted until perfected in the presence of a similar though more elaborate array of technology: microphones, signal processing, amplification, tape machine. The point was to recreate the best possible sound from musicians and bring it into homes.
The advent of the Compact Disc and its "digital age" warped this motive. It became easy to manipulate music in unnatural ways, and where natural tones and nuanced performance were lovely goals, they became lofty ideals that were slipped away from in the name of efficiency.
The auditory spectrum became limited by the sets of frequencies that translated well to a digital file, in which the electronic record of a musical event was converted by a computer into digital code that would be re-assembled into a suggestion of that event by another computer built into the CD player.
The final output, an approximation of music from a series of digital codes stored on an optical disk, came to dictate the methods of recording used in the studio. The digitization used at the end of the recording process crept backwards through the machines, to the production plants, to the recording studio, to the instruments themselves. Rich acoustic instruments are increasingly scarce. The strange possibilities of middle 20th century electric instruments, from the electric guitar to the analog synthesizer, that aided and abetted the creation of rock music, have been "modeled" now into computer-based reproduction machines that are somehow regarded superior to the ghosts they are said to conjure. Man has exceeded God.
The truth of this evolution is that music has not become easier to reproduce, only to mass-produce. The highest technology in music making is quite cheap to build, yet the business interests of the artisans who made instruments and recording devices and stereo systems have faded out as the profit motive of larger money interests that now own what once were many smaller manufacturers has meant "efficient" designs being mass-produced in factories and shipped back to the countries whose consumers can afford them, to create music that fits this aesthetic.
To understand the aesthetic, spend twenty minutes in a Best Buy. There is an array of stereo systems for sale, that are designed along these lines. The rich harmonics that make music pleasing to the ear have all been slashed to bits and rearranged by the recording process, and now musicians, producers, and technology are selected to make music that "makes the most" of the technology, which is now made to hyper-amplify the most extreme high and low tones, so consumers feel they're really getting something, a "clarity" that damages the ears and the brain as you turn up. Piercing treble tones made by digital percussion, squawking and shrieking vocalists, computer-based or -altered instruments, made by groups of musicians who met their A&R representatives before meeting each other. This all sounds great on the modern home stereo, because more effort was spent on the digital light display on the front panel than on anything the sound will pass through. Midrange is a metaphor for the substance that once was. Record label producers are the shop bosses of music industry: they oversee the creation of recordings with a special ear for what suits the suits, including what will play well over a digital radio broadcast or the internet. At the same time, their paid time creates a cash void that devours the good of the process. The studio bill becomes a maxed-out credit card that the artist must pay off on terms set by the record company, their personal lives and creative control relinquished as a down payment.
The tools for musical production and reproduction are themselves produced on an increasingly inhuman mass scale, while the consolidation and growth of owner-parents (namely corporations and banking entities) means more more more money for less less less quality and equality.
To remain in the sphere of used and refurbished goods undoes this cycle. The status quo degenerates and devolves and devalues, while the ownership class's endless pinch requires the price to go up while the quality of the product spirals downward.
What this means:
Say you bought a stereo in the age of vinyl records. The $xxx dollar system came with a certain array of circuitry - sound source, signal processing, amplification, speakers; with a desired end result of providing clear and pleasant reproduction of sound. Recording is the capture of an event, in this case instruments and voices, tediously rehearsed, arranged, and repeatedly attempted until perfected in the presence of a similar though more elaborate array of technology: microphones, signal processing, amplification, tape machine. The point was to recreate the best possible sound from musicians and bring it into homes.
The advent of the Compact Disc and its "digital age" warped this motive. It became easy to manipulate music in unnatural ways, and where natural tones and nuanced performance were lovely goals, they became lofty ideals that were slipped away from in the name of efficiency.
The auditory spectrum became limited by the sets of frequencies that translated well to a digital file, in which the electronic record of a musical event was converted by a computer into digital code that would be re-assembled into a suggestion of that event by another computer built into the CD player.
The final output, an approximation of music from a series of digital codes stored on an optical disk, came to dictate the methods of recording used in the studio. The digitization used at the end of the recording process crept backwards through the machines, to the production plants, to the recording studio, to the instruments themselves. Rich acoustic instruments are increasingly scarce. The strange possibilities of middle 20th century electric instruments, from the electric guitar to the analog synthesizer, that aided and abetted the creation of rock music, have been "modeled" now into computer-based reproduction machines that are somehow regarded superior to the ghosts they are said to conjure. Man has exceeded God.
The truth of this evolution is that music has not become easier to reproduce, only to mass-produce. The highest technology in music making is quite cheap to build, yet the business interests of the artisans who made instruments and recording devices and stereo systems have faded out as the profit motive of larger money interests that now own what once were many smaller manufacturers has meant "efficient" designs being mass-produced in factories and shipped back to the countries whose consumers can afford them, to create music that fits this aesthetic.
To understand the aesthetic, spend twenty minutes in a Best Buy. There is an array of stereo systems for sale, that are designed along these lines. The rich harmonics that make music pleasing to the ear have all been slashed to bits and rearranged by the recording process, and now musicians, producers, and technology are selected to make music that "makes the most" of the technology, which is now made to hyper-amplify the most extreme high and low tones, so consumers feel they're really getting something, a "clarity" that damages the ears and the brain as you turn up. Piercing treble tones made by digital percussion, squawking and shrieking vocalists, computer-based or -altered instruments, made by groups of musicians who met their A&R representatives before meeting each other. This all sounds great on the modern home stereo, because more effort was spent on the digital light display on the front panel than on anything the sound will pass through. Midrange is a metaphor for the substance that once was. Record label producers are the shop bosses of music industry: they oversee the creation of recordings with a special ear for what suits the suits, including what will play well over a digital radio broadcast or the internet. At the same time, their paid time creates a cash void that devours the good of the process. The studio bill becomes a maxed-out credit card that the artist must pay off on terms set by the record company, their personal lives and creative control relinquished as a down payment.
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