I spend a lot of time driving my not-quite-16-year-old son around, and I hate it. It’s not the time spent in the car; it’s the fact that he insists on playing his choice of music while we drive. I’ve been trying to figure out why this sets my teeth on edge, and a talk radio station in Boston summed it up for me today: Technology has ruined music.
Before you start blasting me with comments, I don’t mean the technology that allows us to buy one song at a time, download it to a portable device, and play it anywhere we want. That technology I love. The technology I hate is the stuff that allows a way-below-average singer to sound like Sinatra; sound effects (like a vinyl record being scratched by a stylus); an incessantly repetitive beat; and a million other electro-mixing and -editing technologies that I can’t even explain.
Here’s what set off the discussion: It seems as though today’s teenagers are downloading classic rock at an unusually high rate. Why? The radio audience figures classic pop music is simply better because of all the work and sweat that went in to it. Not only did bands and singers have to come together and collaborate hundreds of times, but music was test-driven in front of live audiences over and over again. Lead singers had to belt out songs from a stage, minus the editing and sound studio. You didn’t hear much about lip-syncing before the 1990s. (Milli Vanilli being the exception, of course.)
I also think the excesses we see on stage now are designed to draw attention away from the fact that many current artists have marginal talent. Yes, my generation had guitar-smashing, animal torture, pyrotechnics, gold parachute pants, and really, really bad hair. But it’s interesting to note that Adele -- easily one of the greatest voices of our day -- does nothing on stage but sing and sells out every show. As much as I like what Lady Gaga stands for, I can’t even sit through one of her videos.
I have tried to understand and appreciate my son’s choice in music, but repetitive, lightning-fast lyrics, electronically created rhythms and sounds, continual rebranding (Snoop Lion -- are you kidding me?), and other shtick just don’t do it for me. And this isn’t limited to hip-hop: Most 'tween pop stars have the same limitations. You start with “the look” and then backfill with music. (I know this isn’t unprecedented -- hello, Osmond Brothers -- but still… Britney Spears?)
But I guess you can’t have it both ways. Digital music has enabled Napster and iTunes the same way it has enabled some person that dresses like a crazed mouse. The biggest upside, I guess, is that you can still turn the radio off, and you don’t have to buy an entire album for one song. The biggest downside is, the alchemy that brought The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Who together just doesn’t happen that much anymore. Nowadays, if your drummer dies, you can always replace him with a computer. (Thank you, Spinal Tap.)
Hahahaha! Yes, this has been a topic of conversation between my friends and I for decades. As we have observed technology simultaneously make it easier for anyone - even me - to lay tracks down and cheat on just what it takes to be a "real musician", it has become more and more difficult to find new music that shows evidence of real talent. It's becoming harder and harder to feed one's audiophiliosis!
Even musicians with "real talent" can now fake it. Vocal enhancement technology enables aging rockers like Joe Walsh and Roger Waters to hit notes they otherwise have lost the ability to hit. Drummers are begging for gigs on the side of the road: "will drum for food". Keyboardists now play the QWERTY keys instead of the ol' black & white.
The one really good invention is headphones, which is what my kids wear when they're listening to music. I like it, and they don't have to listen to my music either. Win-win.
I agree completely. We now have music "stars" and I use that term lightly, who were born from reality TV contests and social media. It is amazing how little some of these people have talent. Thanks to technology, singers that would of been laughed at back in the day sound perfect. These are also the ones that lip sync at shows so they can put on a display. The more people that are drawn to the stage show, means less people paying attention to the actual singing or instruments being played.
What happened to the days of playing clubs relentlessly and travelling in a beat up van to play gigs just so you could build up an audience and get some record execs to listen to you? Apparently times have changed, and I don't think for the best. At least when it comes to producing great music.
Higher bit rates mean better quality. Quality between an analog recording and digital recording at a high bit rate is not discernible to human ears. More information on this topic can be found here.
I don't know much about this world but if you open Windows Media Player, select the Rip tab, under format choose MP3 format and then look at Bit Rate you'll see these choices:
Kevin: That's something I never heard before...do you have any idea how that works? I know there's a lot lost in analog to digital translation, but I thought that could be compensated for becuase digital can be edited so easily.
I have a confession: I listened to music on vinyl records...45s and 78s.
Barbara is certainly correct about the millisecond attention span that so many people have today. It is hard to explain something to them if the explanation takes more than a minute or two. They totally lack the ability to focus on anything for an extended period of time, like five minutes.
Of course there is also a huge lack of talent, and it is most demonstrated by "music" that can't stand on it's own, but that must have all sorts of show to complete "the experience."
Of course, I have a theory that the training of a whole generation to be unable to focus or pay attention is part one of a plot to enslave them all, since they will not be able to concentrate long enough to realize that they are not free any more. Interestingly, this idea has not yet been challenged as unreasonable.
A friend gave me a few tunes on recordable CD (how old fashioned that sounds already!). One of them I really liked and heard on old fashioned FM radio one day. Wow - It sounded like a completely different song! I checked the CD later and found the file had a very small file size - you really do lose something.
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