Mrs. Mang and I slouched in our living room after dinner to enjoy fresh coffee and the warmth of the wood stove. Reflexively, we put the TV on – it's a moment of decompression and signals the transition in our lives when the work day is over and the evening has truly begun.
I'm not proud. Last week, we happened upon some American Idol performances. Putting aside the obvious horrors and implications of the show, I had to admit that a few of the latest crop of dewy eyed warblers can sing, at least in tune if nothing else. A couple may even have pleasing vocal tones and yet, there was something uncomfortable about this scene. Something disconcerting, something that was just plain wrong.
"There's not enough exploitation."
"What?" replied Mrs Mang as she repositioned herself on the love seat to make room for our black Lab to annex ever more space, cushions and blanket.
"There's not enough exploitation...or at least, not enough of the right kind. These American Idol kids are just too damn comfortable."
Mrs Mang couldn't see where I was going with this.
Now, what do Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Jimi Hendrix have in common aside from being iconic and influential African American artists? They were all subjected to exploitative bastards. You'd be forgiven for thinking that it was a matter of common or garden racism that caused this and, there's undoubtedly an element of that present. But, there's another reason beyond melanin in play here. They were exploited because simply, they were fucking great at what they did.
Louis Armstrong aka 'Pops' aka 'Satchmo' single handedly invented the idea of the jazz solo, popularized scat singing and was probably the only jazzer to influence both vocalists and instrumentalists in equal measure. He was truly unique; an innovator drawing upon past traditions and extending them into the future. Yet, his early career was controlled by mobsters – literally at the business end of a revolver when rival gangs argued over who owned his contract.*
Billie Holiday had a string of god awful managers and agents. Many of them were her boyfriends and almost all of them were vicious, abusive assholes. But, she was getting $2k a week (a week!) during her heyday. Not because she had a 4 octave range like Mariah Carey but because she could sell a song like few others. She could even give really crappy songs some gravitas and swagger. Needless to say, when she had great material she was other worldly. Check out the 1950s footage of her doing 'Strange Fruit' and you'll get what I mean.
Duke Ellington's early manager and publisher Irving Mills generously helped himself to a writing credit on many of the classic Ellington compositions. He didn't contribute so much as a single note to what, in 1928 was dismissed as 'jungle' music but clearly, he knew enough about the 'biz' to see that the suave Mr Ellington was worth backing and bilking.
Jimi Hendrix? Here's a guy so stupidly good at the guitar but would sign pretty much any legal document thrust in front of him. You could blame the drugs. You could blame his terrible eyesight and the fact that he refused to ever wear prescription glasses. Remember though, that this is the same dude who got stuffed on a plane bound for London with almost no possessions beyond a passport and a toothbrush because someone promised to hook him up with Eric Clapton.
It's not just a black thing. Look at Elvis and Colonel Parker. He lit up the world of popular music with an improbable mélange of bluegrass and RnB and was given a series of execrable movies for his efforts. Race car drivers? Clam bakes? Hoola dancers!!??
These people and many others got royally screwed. Not because of color but because they were eminently bankable and that was because they were really fucking good at what they did.
If we permit ourselves to move ahead to a more recent example we find Kurt Cobain. So scared was he about being exploited, so tortured about his own authenticity that he blew his face off after bolting from a rehab center.
Kurt, if only you had stuck around for a few more years, you would've realized that you were scared of an era that was coming to an end. Your rehab could've been a TV show. Your escape from rehab would've been a TV show with better ratings. Don't worry about being bloated or letting yourself go because your weight loss would be a TV show. Don't worry about looking like a vagrant because your makeover would be a TV show. Don't like your band anymore? Fine. Get a new one on a TV show. Don't like your spouse? No problem, because Rock of Love was just around the corner and you could have replaced Courtney courtesy of VH1. It's somewhat immaterial whether you lived or not because "Nevermind" was still picked up by the Classic Album documentary series. Kurt, you got so paranoid about being fucked over by The Man tm that you jumped the gun (ha!) and fucked yourself – they only wanted you because you were good at what you did.**
The hip musical cognoscenti will berate Idol for perpetuating 'manufactured music'. Well guess what? Motown was manufactured music and deliberately so. Berry Gordy literally made the musical equivalent of an automotive plant. To ram the point home, he even let his artists film a promo 'video' on a car production line in Detroit.
He knew how to find talent though - The Supremes, The Jacksons, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder & Marvin Gaye. Manufactured? You bet your ass! But manufactured with A-list vocalists, hot songwriters and a house band that grooved like no other and would work hard both day & night. If a James Jamerson bass line doesn't move your soul you probably don't have one and you probably don't deserve the ears on your head either.
Something strange happened. I cannot pinpoint exactly when, but there was a paradigm shift. Perhaps not a shift so much as an extension of the existing regime. Exploiting musical artists has become a forgone conclusion so now it's time to increasingly exploit the audience. Let's pluck fry-cooks and shop girls from obscurity, make them comfortable***. Let them bring their moms & dads too and we just love, LOVE LOVE to hear about your childhood! Look how nice we are! So generous, so considerate! And with our generosity we will give you passable vocalists, forgettable songs, predictable schlock arrangements and homogenous wall lining production. Our magnanimity is boundless – here's a ring tone.
(When polled, 2/3rds of respondents said they'd still prefer to buy CDs but we're so munificent and you can have sonically inferior MP3 downloads instead because it's what the kids want and it's so much better to listen to MORE music on NEWER equipment than it is to listen to GOOD music on just about any equipment.)
As a musician myself, it is my sincerest wish that art and artists would be accorded the respect they deserve. I'd love to see good work justly compensated for and while I am an optimist at heart, I'm also not in denial. I know that that the industry will continue to drain and suck dry whatever floats past their clutches.
So, if you're going to be exploitative bastards, at least have some taste.
Footnotes:
*How many Mafioso would risk taking a bullet for Jordan Sparks? Susan Boyle? Anyone???? Hello????
** Kurt, how good does it feel to know that your beloved Sonic Youth did a compilation CD for Starbucks?
*** No one made Billie Holiday comfortable. They arrested the poor schlub while she was in hospital....dying.
How can MP3s be sonically different from CDs? They're both digital, aren't they? :?
I thought it was great, Mang.
That was so brilliant that I can't even.
It was well-written and I enjoyed it as a commentary on "reality star-making" tv.
But I am also genuinely curious about whether there is a difference in audio quality between CDs and MP3s, as it seems as if that would not be possible... maybe loss due to compression, though?
Found this:
http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/#
QuoteAs typically used, it reduces the file size for an audio song by a factor of 10; eg, a song that takes up 30MB on a CD takes up only 3MB as an MP3 file.
Great rant!
Guess that would be a yes, it does matter then.
Not a problem if you're listening to Justin Bieber.
Less is more.
Quote from: Mangrove on February 27, 2010, 01:16:17 AM
.
Footnotes:
*How many Mafioso would risk taking a bullet for Jordan Sparks? Susan Boyle? Anyone???? Hello????
** Kurt, how good does it feel to know that your beloved Sonic Youth did a compilation CD for Starbucks?
*** No one made Billie Holiday comfortable. They arrested the poor schlub while she was in hospital....dying.
:lol:
Quote from: Alty on February 27, 2010, 02:50:49 AM
Found this:
http://www.stereophile.com/features/308mp3cd/#
QuoteAs typically used, it reduces the file size for an audio song by a factor of 10; eg, a song that takes up 30MB on a CD takes up only 3MB as an MP3 file.
Great rant!
That was an interesting article; I actually didn't know that at all! Although this:
QuoteAlthough they are universally described in the mainstream press as being of "CD quality," MP3s and their lossy-compressed ilk do not offer sufficient audio quality for serious music listening.
reminded me of my douchey "audiophile" ex. :lulz:
Mang, that was awesome.
Nigel, take a cd, and rip it into WAV format. Then bounce it to a 360 mpb mp3. Then, to a 128, then a 64 (or close to). Then listen to all three in a row in headphones. You WILL hear a difference. In order to reduce file size, some information needs to be removed. The logarythms are designed to take out what they think you won't miss.
If you want to go further, try a cd released this year vs a remaster from the 50's. Or even a delicate classical piece. Something that deserves as much attention as possible.
Compression doesn't matter so much when everythings as loud as fuck, which is how most pop CDs are mastered today. But in a delicate piece, it's easily noticable.
I'm not going to do any of those things because I don't know what any of them mean and my eyes glazed over. I believe you, though.
That line just reminded me of my douchey ex who was so very proud of being an audiophile.
SEE, THIS
is why
VINYL OR TAPES
only. for the love. CD's cuz you have to
Also, now I guess I can be proud of my habit of buying CDs instead of pirating MP3s.
I don't like tapes because I always fuck them all up. I also don't like vinyl or CDs because I fuck them all up. I like music that is inside my computer because it's almost impossible for me to fuck it, scratch it, or get it wet.
tl;dr
The size of a digital file from CD is big.
The size of a Mp3 is small.
What is removed are sounds they think you won't miss.
The smaller the mp3 file, the more sounds are removed.
In summation, an mp3 has less sound information(quality) than a CD.
Quote from: LMNO on February 27, 2010, 03:53:48 AM
tl;dr
The size of a digital file from CD is big.
The size of a Mp3 is small.
What is removed are sounds they think you won't miss.
The smaller the mp3 file, the more sounds are removed.
In summation, an mp3 has less sound information(quality) than a CD.
Dude, I did read and understand the article.
And you still think it's douchey to state the truth?
Quote from: LMNO on February 27, 2010, 04:06:22 AM
And you still think it's douchey to state the truth?
:?
No, really, I did read the article that I just quoted and commented on, so I didn't need it restated in tl;dr terms. I just don't get (and don't care about) the whole "rip to WAV" etc stuff; it's not my bag and is gobbledygook to me, although I totally believe you about it.
The other thread is a completely different topic.
Thank you for the support.
Just for the record (ahem) I am definitely not an audiophile. I have some vinyl, lots of CDs and have, so far, avoided any kind of MP3 player.
As the Alphabetical one has pointed out, MP3 is inferior to CD but if musical nuance ain't your thing, then it probably doesn't matter. (cf: Jason Bieber)
I was reading in the 'audio' section of either Downbeat or Jazz Times magazine about sound quality. I don't ordinarily read the audio section but it was interesting because it raised the dilemma that:
a) CD recording, mastering, reproduction etc - is a shit ton better than it was when CD first came out and has, therefore, improved considerably.
b) Market forces has pushed people towards downloaded music even though it's not as good (sonically) as older, already existing technology.
c) Most people who like music (and aren't Hannah Montana enthusiasts) don't want to download their tunes. They still prefer the physical object of the CD which, at this point, sounds better if that's something you care about.
But, the INDUSTRY has spoken. Downloaded music is the future and we've returned to a singles based market once more but with i-Tunes instead of 45rpms. (Some people reading this post might not know what a 45 is.)
I am not an anti-technology person per se. I really like my Barnes & Noble 'nook' e-reader for example even though I've had some really snarky self-righteous snobs get in my face about it.
Still, what bothers me about the music scene, aside from the content of my frothy rant is the fact that someone, somewhere 'decided' that people like myself, who enjoyed browsing record stores were no longer relevant. Thus all the specialist music sections that used to exist in the Virgin Megastore that I once worked in were cut. The store shrunk and the selection of music across all genres descended into utter pointlessness.
The same thing happened here too. There was a Borders that I frequent that once had a great music section but no, that got axed because they only wanted to offer 'best sellers'. Well wait a minute. What if I want to buy something that's not a best seller? What if I wanted to find something enriching to my life that wasn't going to shift mega units? Nope. Fuck off Mang' - teh kidz w@nt dwnldz.
Because of that, people who are given to musical curiosity and experimentation have been deprived of an opportunity that used to be quite a lot of fun and, for me, a source of personal pleasure and artistic stimulation. Like the day I listened to Sonic Youth's 'Washing Machine' album on the instore headphones. Or the day I scooped up The Smiths and Curtis Mayfield.
Of course, it's all my fault for having a really long attention span. I can actually listen to a whole album from beginning to end and concentrate on it. I got to like records that had some sort of arc to them, a beginning, middle & end like a film or a novel and shifting moods yet capturing an overall feel of the moment the record was made. I like it when someone hits a guitar and not only does it sound like a guitar but you can hear the room it was recorded in. Sometimes it's great when someone hits a guitar and it sounds like something from another planet, at least they looked for a new texture or tonal palette.
That's hard to find in Best Buy or other equally shitty musical outlets. Mainstream record stores are a shadow of how they used to be and personally, it's a cultural travesty. For god's sake the teeny chick from CT on Idol sang 'Feeling Good' and everyone kept talking about that 'Michael Buble' song! WTF?? NINA SIMONE, BITCHES.
As I said, it's not the technology that's irksome so much as a deliberate lowering of the bar in terms of musical achievement. The $$$ offered by Idol far outstrips the sort of money an artist would earn on a regular record label but even they won't invest the time or money to find new artists and develop that. It's make a hit album straight out the gate or you get dumped.
I don't know about here, but the bubble burst in the UK around 1996 or 1997. During the Britpop boom record companies were doling out money like pedos handing out candies at a scout jamboree and just about anyone who could stand up with a guitar got some cash in their pocket and some demos recorded. But after that, development deals stopped. Then all the smaller labels got bought up and bought up and bought up some more until all the companies were just imprints and tax shelters of corporate monoliths.
Maybe I'm wrong here but it just feels, in my poor little bowels that the industry no longer wants to spend money/time/effort on finding anything new, interesting, innovative or provocative. Of course, fake controversy is fine just nothing genuinely challenging.
My only hope right now is Brian Eno's 'culture compost heap' theory is that when you have a big enough pile of shit, something will eventually grow out of it. Whether I'm around long enough to see it is another thing.
Fuck, I'm supposed to be in bed!
Mang, I buy most of my music on Amazon because I don't really like going to stores, and Amazon has a couple of great features; one, anyone can sell their CDs on it so they have almost everything you can imagine, and two, they have software that compares your purchases to other people's purchases and makes non-random suggestions based on where those coincide. I have made many impulse purchases of music I've never heard of before, and rarely regret it. A lot of it's indie-produced local bands.
Just a suggestion.
Downloaded music doesn't have to be lower quality. There are a couple options that are identical in quality to CD, and AAC (which iTunes uses) is perfectly capable of high quality audio if you increase the bitrate.
The industry simply chose not to provide the service, though iTunes will give you high quality (and no DRM) if you pay extra now.
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on February 27, 2010, 04:52:18 AM
Mang, I buy most of my music on Amazon because I don't really like going to stores, and Amazon has a couple of great features; one, anyone can sell their CDs on it so they have almost everything you can imagine, and two, they have software that compares your purchases to other people's purchases and makes non-random suggestions based on where those coincide. I have made many impulse purchases of music I've never heard of before, and rarely regret it. A lot of it's indie-produced local bands.
Just a suggestion.
Thanks Nigel.
Amazon can be good like that at times. There's been days when it seems like the 'recommend' software is on crack. My all time favorite being 'You bought X book about Aleister Crowley which is why we recommend this pogo stick.' No troll.
MANG
firstly, i would stop paying attention to what happens on "american idol". perhaps not entirely, but at least keep it in check. there's so much stuff out there. i heard some of LMNO's stuff recently at Nigel's and it was pretty cool. that, alone.
AND
classic jazz was great. it's being killed(again) RIGHT NOW on the west coast. cuz it was too powerful to ever stop. but yeah, it's not all about holding a note. brian eno absolutely rocks, even in ambient. as usual, the revolution will not be televized.
Quote from: Mangrove on February 27, 2010, 04:56:04 AM
Quote from: Calamity Nigel on February 27, 2010, 04:52:18 AM
Mang, I buy most of my music on Amazon because I don't really like going to stores, and Amazon has a couple of great features; one, anyone can sell their CDs on it so they have almost everything you can imagine, and two, they have software that compares your purchases to other people's purchases and makes non-random suggestions based on where those coincide. I have made many impulse purchases of music I've never heard of before, and rarely regret it. A lot of it's indie-produced local bands.
Just a suggestion.
Thanks Nigel.
Amazon can be good like that at times. There's been days when it seems like the 'recommend' software is on crack. My all time favorite being 'You bought X book about Aleister Crowley which is why we recommend this pogo stick.' No troll.
:lol: I've gotten some pretty hilarious "suggestions" as well, so I usually wait until I've gotten the same suggestion several times relating to albums I actually like before buying it.
FWIW, the few FLAC recordings I've downloaded sound superb.
That.
Also, I think the advent of the download as the primary form of distribution has enabled a diversity of available music that NEVER would have been possible under the old "you need someone else's money to get any sort of distribution outside of your town" model.
I have several gigs worth of obscure west african music, none of which I would ever have had the opportunity to have heard OF, let alone actually heard back in, say, 1995. In fact, I'd venture to say that as much as 75% of my HUGE music collection (I have literally 80 or 90 pounds of CD's, a hundred-and-something tapes, a dozen or so LPs, and several hundreds of gigs of music on my computer and external hard drive) would never have been found in a store in America ten years ago.
Yeah, most of what I've bought in the last few years is either from bands who never even would have considered trying to get a market in Utah, or smalltime bands that could never get onto brick & mortar shelves.
Which cannot be making the powers that be happy.
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 27, 2010, 06:09:24 AM
FWIW, the few FLAC recordings I've downloaded sound superb.
FLAC is lossless, which makes it nearly ideal, but do you know any music stores that offer FLAC?
First off, you can think of WAV as the same thing as a CD, uncompressed digital audio. The only difference is that CD audio is on a disc, while WAV audio is in a file on your computer. It sounds the same, unless your CD player is better quality than your PC audio card, but that's nothing to do with the format.
Then FLAC is in fact identical to CD or WAV quality. It's exactly the same information. Except compressed, so it takes about 2/3rds of the diskspace. It's lossless like ZIP compression, so it doesn't leave anything out.
Additionally, MP3 compression schemes have come a long, long way in the field of psycho-acoustics, since they were invented. A high quality VBR encoding* is no longer a size/quality trade-off but actually indistinguishable from the original to the human ear. Yes it leaves things out, but really only the things that human hearing really cannot hear. Only at lower bitrates it starts to leave out things you cannot really hear.
(* such as lame -V2 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 19.7 -b96)
EOT - I try not to pay much attention to Idol, though it did kind of bug the crap out of me last week, hence the rant. I think also having seen a Justin Bieber song on Youtube increased my ire. (And I feel calmer when I listen to Eno's 'Music for airports'...I should dig that out.
Nigel - Amazon's suggestions have gotten better and actually, I wouldn't be on PD.com if it were not for Amazon suggestions so yay!
EHC - I do think there is virtue in the download in that it does allow some artists to bypass certain traditional structures and deal direct. I think that part is cool. One of the neat things about BBC radio (or at least it was - not sure if they've changed it) was that they had DJs like John Peel and Andy Kershaw you made their own playlists and they played anything & everything they wanted. You would get some folk singer from Mali followed by a demo of an unsigned band followed by an old ass dub plate and then maybe some brain drilling techno. You didn't always enjoy the selections necessarily but there was always a chance they'd throw out something that you'd want to hunt for. American mainstream radio is so heavily formatted and the play lists are so restricted that you know you'll never get anything other than what some suit says you should have. Perhaps I remember record stores being better stocked than they were? The decline in quantity & variety is noticeable.
Everyone gets exploited, and shit music is a fact of life. It's the way of the world. But I loved reading that.
Quote from: Triple Zero on February 27, 2010, 11:41:33 AM
Additionally, MP3 compression schemes have come a long, long way in the field of psycho-acoustics, since they were invented. A high quality VBR encoding* is no longer a size/quality trade-off but actually indistinguishable from the original to the human ear. Yes it leaves things out, but really only the things that human hearing really cannot hear. Only at lower bitrates it starts to leave out things you cannot really hear.
(* such as lame -V2 --vbr-new -q0 --lowpass 19.7 -b96)
I don't for the record, get the lame project at all. Ogg vorbis and AAC are just as small as MP3, and a much better starting point for quality.
Ogg's are actualy about twice as big as MP3's in most cases.
I am a musician (well, that may be debateable, my wife insists I am not, but I maintain that I am) and a DJ and I have to say I really like MP3's. I don't think that music purely as software can ever truly become the dominant paradigm. People like having something they can hold in their hand, something they can carry around with them and play in the car or in a friend's audio system, something with cover art. MP3's may be lower quality, I know that the ones that get streamed on the station I DJ for are much lower quality than listening to a CD, but they are still good enough to enjoy the music. I used to use 120 minute tapes when i was a kid too, they were shit, but good enough for me most of the time. I always save MP3's in 256 or at least 128 kbps which is noticably better than the 64 kbps that gets streamed by my station, but I don't notice much difference between those and wavs or flac files. Mind you I prefer using wavs to actually make music from, but That feels like more of an ideosyncracy to me than anything else.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 11:06:39 AM
Quote from: Sigmatic on February 27, 2010, 06:09:24 AM
FWIW, the few FLAC recordings I've downloaded sound superb.
FLAC is lossless, which makes it nearly ideal, but do you know any music stores that offer FLAC?
No. :lol:
Quote from: Requia ☣ on February 27, 2010, 07:14:23 PM
I don't for the record, get the lame project at all. Ogg vorbis and AAC are just as small as MP3, and a much better starting point for quality.
Requia, true but it's more widely supported on mp3 players. even though AAC seems to be gaining ground, as my phone supports it :)
I used to be all about encoding my CDs to OGG, but later came to regret it as some DJing software [old versions of Traktor] didn't support it and I couldn't just drag-n-dump a bunch of tracks on my mp3 player, cause I needed to sort out the OGGs first and transcode them, which takes time so that sucks if you just want to grab a few tracks before you leave home.
Fortunately, the only quality difference between MP3 and OGG/AAC is at
low bitrates. So yes, AAC and OGG are superior taken over the entire range. Still, when encoding your CDs you want a high quality VBR, and there is virtually no quality difference, and then I prefer MP3 for interoperability.
AAC might be a good choice to encode home-mixed ringtones for my phone, though. Cause you can use ridiculously low bitrates and the quality loss just makes the sound a bit muffled, but not all robotic warbly glitchy like MP3 would.
Quote from: BabylonHoruv on February 27, 2010, 08:55:33 PM
I always save MP3's in 256 or at least 128 kbps which is noticably better than the 64 kbps that gets streamed by my station
You probably want to use VBR (variable bitrate) [especially using the LAME settings in my previous post]. There's really no reason to use constant bitrate MP3 encoding anymore these days. There used to be, but since a couple of years the newer versions of LAME have improved their VBR algorithms to the point that VBR is simply superior to CBR. You can read this website for more info: http://jthz.com/mp3/#VBR
I agree that above 192kpbs I don't hear the difference anymore myself, either.
Quotebut I don't notice much difference between those and wavs or flac files. Mind you I prefer using wavs to actually make music from, but That feels like more of an ideosyncracy to me than anything else.
no you should use lossless encodings when making music. for the same reason professional photographers and graphics artists don't save their intermediate work in JPG either. it's because if you (lossy) encode and then change something, and then re-encode, the quality losses stack up and you lose definition. which is pretty embarassing if you didn't notice it on your speakers at home, until you play the track in a club ... :)
btw your statement about OGGs being "twice as big as MP3s in most cases" is kind of meaningless as you can't compare the quality setting of OGG with that of MP3.
(uh Mang, btw if you want the discussion about MP3 encoding split off, give me the word)
As a sort of lame (literally) aside, I like to take my game music mp3s and reencode them into other formats back and forth until the quality is shitty enough to evoke that nostalgic feel.
Just saying.
Sigmatic, you might like Psychic Emperor. Their music is made with a toy guitar and an old Gameboy.
Why thank you!
I JUST
transferred all of my MP3's to 1/4 inch real-to-real
to both Sigmatic and EOT:
there's an app for that.
Quote from: E.O.T. on February 27, 2010, 09:44:56 PM
I JUST
transferred all of my MP3's to 1/4 inch real-to-real
:mittens:
Trip - you can leave the thread as is for now. I'm actually kind of glad that the MP3 comment I made has promoted some back & forth among people with the technical know-how, so it's not a bad thing. It's one of the more relevant thread-jacks I've seen. Could've gotten all fucked up with Cartesian dualism, so I'm not complaining.
What's also nice is that the people here who are concerned about formatting etc care enough about it and the music they listen to. If anything, that only serves to underscore my point and warms my heart a little knowing that in spite of my bitching, there are people with open minds and ears on PD.com.
Quote from: Maria on February 27, 2010, 04:22:35 PM
Everyone gets exploited, and shit music is a fact of life. It's the way of the world. But I loved reading that.
You managed to condense my whole rant into two sentences! :lol:
My hope is that the exploiters would show a little more taste in their choice of victims and skew the good to shit music ratio a little more in our favor.
Sorry if this resurrects a threadjack, but v0 mp3 is one of the most widely used mp3 encoding settings (among torrent sites i frequent, anyway) and is nigh-on CD quality for a fairly low filesize. The vast majority of my music is in it, and I love it.
Having said that, though, I can hear the difference between a v0 mp3 and the 24bit/96khz FLAC rips of the Beatles Stereo Remaster box set, and any mp3 below 128kbps may as well be 5 minutes of armpit farts as far as I'm concerned.
Oh and amazing rant.
Quote from: Mangrove on February 27, 2010, 01:16:17 AM
Mrs. Mang and I slouched in our living room after dinner to enjoy fresh coffee and the warmth of the wood stove. Reflexively, we put the TV on – it's a moment of decompression and signals the transition in our lives when the work day is over and the evening has truly begun.
I'm not proud. Last week, we happened upon some American Idol performances. Putting aside the obvious horrors and implications of the show, I had to admit that a few of the latest crop of dewy eyed warblers can sing, at least in tune if nothing else. A couple may even have pleasing vocal tones and yet, there was something uncomfortable about this scene. Something disconcerting, something that was just plain wrong.
"There's not enough exploitation."
"What?" replied Mrs Mang as she repositioned herself on the love seat to make room for our black Lab to annex ever more space, cushions and blanket.
"There's not enough exploitation...or at least, not enough of the right kind. These American Idol kids are just too damn comfortable."
Mrs Mang couldn't see where I was going with this.
Now, what do Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Jimi Hendrix have in common aside from being iconic and influential African American artists? They were all subjected to exploitative bastards. You'd be forgiven for thinking that it was a matter of common or garden racism that caused this and, there's undoubtedly an element of that present. But, there's another reason beyond melanin in play here. They were exploited because simply, they were fucking great at what they did.
Louis Armstrong aka 'Pops' aka 'Satchmo' single handedly invented the idea of the jazz solo, popularized scat singing and was probably the only jazzer to influence both vocalists and instrumentalists in equal measure. He was truly unique; an innovator drawing upon past traditions and extending them into the future. Yet, his early career was controlled by mobsters – literally at the business end of a revolver when rival gangs argued over who owned his contract.*
Billie Holiday had a string of god awful managers and agents. Many of them were her boyfriends and almost all of them were vicious, abusive assholes. But, she was getting $2k a week (a week!) during her heyday. Not because she had a 4 octave range like Mariah Carey but because she could sell a song like few others. She could even give really crappy songs some gravitas and swagger. Needless to say, when she had great material she was other worldly. Check out the 1950s footage of her doing 'Strange Fruit' and you'll get what I mean.
Duke Ellington's early manager and publisher Irving Mills generously helped himself to a writing credit on many of the classic Ellington compositions. He didn't contribute so much as a single note to what, in 1928 was dismissed as 'jungle' music but clearly, he knew enough about the 'biz' to see that the suave Mr Ellington was worth backing and bilking.
Jimi Hendrix? Here's a guy so stupidly good at the guitar but would sign pretty much any legal document thrust in front of him. You could blame the drugs. You could blame his terrible eyesight and the fact that he refused to ever wear prescription glasses. Remember though, that this is the same dude who got stuffed on a plane bound for London with almost no possessions beyond a passport and a toothbrush because someone promised to hook him up with Eric Clapton.
It's not just a black thing. Look at Elvis and Colonel Parker. He lit up the world of popular music with an improbable mélange of bluegrass and RnB and was given a series of execrable movies for his efforts. Race car drivers? Clam bakes? Hoola dancers!!??
These people and many others got royally screwed. Not because of color but because they were eminently bankable and that was because they were really fucking good at what they did.
If we permit ourselves to move ahead to a more recent example we find Kurt Cobain. So scared was he about being exploited, so tortured about his own authenticity that he blew his face off after bolting from a rehab center.
Kurt, if only you had stuck around for a few more years, you would've realized that you were scared of an era that was coming to an end. Your rehab could've been a TV show. Your escape from rehab would've been a TV show with better ratings. Don't worry about being bloated or letting yourself go because your weight loss would be a TV show. Don't worry about looking like a vagrant because your makeover would be a TV show. Don't like your band anymore? Fine. Get a new one on a TV show. Don't like your spouse? No problem, because Rock of Love was just around the corner and you could have replaced Courtney courtesy of VH1. It's somewhat immaterial whether you lived or not because "Nevermind" was still picked up by the Classic Album documentary series. Kurt, you got so paranoid about being fucked over by The Man tm that you jumped the gun (ha!) and fucked yourself – they only wanted you because you were good at what you did.**
The hip musical cognoscenti will berate Idol for perpetuating 'manufactured music'. Well guess what? Motown was manufactured music and deliberately so. Berry Gordy literally made the musical equivalent of an automotive plant. To ram the point home, he even let his artists film a promo 'video' on a car production line in Detroit.
He knew how to find talent though - The Supremes, The Jacksons, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder & Marvin Gaye. Manufactured? You bet your ass! But manufactured with A-list vocalists, hot songwriters and a house band that grooved like no other and would work hard both day & night. If a James Jamerson bass line doesn't move your soul you probably don't have one and you probably don't deserve the ears on your head either.
Something strange happened. I cannot pinpoint exactly when, but there was a paradigm shift. Perhaps not a shift so much as an extension of the existing regime. Exploiting musical artists has become a forgone conclusion so now it's time to increasingly exploit the audience. Let's pluck fry-cooks and shop girls from obscurity, make them comfortable***. Let them bring their moms & dads too and we just love, LOVE LOVE to hear about your childhood! Look how nice we are! So generous, so considerate! And with our generosity we will give you passable vocalists, forgettable songs, predictable schlock arrangements and homogenous wall lining production. Our magnanimity is boundless – here's a ring tone.
(When polled, 2/3rds of respondents said they'd still prefer to buy CDs but we're so munificent and you can have sonically inferior MP3 downloads instead because it's what the kids want and it's so much better to listen to MORE music on NEWER equipment than it is to listen to GOOD music on just about any equipment.)
As a musician myself, it is my sincerest wish that art and artists would be accorded the respect they deserve. I'd love to see good work justly compensated for and while I am an optimist at heart, I'm also not in denial. I know that that the industry will continue to drain and suck dry whatever floats past their clutches.
So, if you're going to be exploitative bastards, at least have some taste.
Footnotes:
*How many Mafioso would risk taking a bullet for Jordan Sparks? Susan Boyle? Anyone???? Hello????
** Kurt, how good does it feel to know that your beloved Sonic Youth did a compilation CD for Starbucks?
*** No one made Billie Holiday comfortable. They arrested the poor schlub while she was in hospital....dying.
Honestly, Mang, I don't know why anyone would be surprised by this sort of thing.
Music can be a very dangerous thing...Elvis was horribly dangerous to 1950/60's parents, and he wasn't even political. Bands in the 60s
made fun of Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, and one even
changed the national anthem...and if you can change THAT music, you can change
anything.
But fortunately, they had Colonel Parker and people like him, and all those radicals were brought into line, or died from their own excesses. And the industry learned: If you know what the kids want,
manufacture it, and control the message (and the advertising revenue, ho ho!).
So now you have the Jonas Brothers, who sell sex to 11 year olds in a
safe way, and fake-ass shit like Good Charlotte and Tokio Hotel, so our kids can learn that angst beats meaning and packaged products are
easier.
So, yeah.
And to answer your question, no. Mad science cannot fix the music industry.
But it can fix a local scene.
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 01, 2010, 02:53:02 AM
And to answer your question, no. Mad science cannot fix the music industry.
But it can fix a local scene.
:golfclap:
Quote from: Mangrove on February 27, 2010, 01:16:17 AM
Mrs. Mang and I slouched in our living room after dinner to enjoy fresh coffee and the warmth of the wood stove. Reflexively, we put the TV on – it's a moment of decompression and signals the transition in our lives when the work day is over and the evening has truly begun.
I'm not proud. Last week, we happened upon some American Idol performances. Putting aside the obvious horrors and implications of the show, I had to admit that a few of the latest crop of dewy eyed warblers can sing, at least in tune if nothing else. A couple may even have pleasing vocal tones and yet, there was something uncomfortable about this scene. Something disconcerting, something that was just plain wrong.
"There's not enough exploitation."
"What?" replied Mrs Mang as she repositioned herself on the love seat to make room for our black Lab to annex ever more space, cushions and blanket.
"There's not enough exploitation...or at least, not enough of the right kind. These American Idol kids are just too damn comfortable."
Mrs Mang couldn't see where I was going with this.
Now, what do Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington and Jimi Hendrix have in common aside from being iconic and influential African American artists? They were all subjected to exploitative bastards. You'd be forgiven for thinking that it was a matter of common or garden racism that caused this and, there's undoubtedly an element of that present. But, there's another reason beyond melanin in play here. They were exploited because simply, they were fucking great at what they did.
Louis Armstrong aka 'Pops' aka 'Satchmo' single handedly invented the idea of the jazz solo, popularized scat singing and was probably the only jazzer to influence both vocalists and instrumentalists in equal measure. He was truly unique; an innovator drawing upon past traditions and extending them into the future. Yet, his early career was controlled by mobsters – literally at the business end of a revolver when rival gangs argued over who owned his contract.*
Billie Holiday had a string of god awful managers and agents. Many of them were her boyfriends and almost all of them were vicious, abusive assholes. But, she was getting $2k a week (a week!) during her heyday. Not because she had a 4 octave range like Mariah Carey but because she could sell a song like few others. She could even give really crappy songs some gravitas and swagger. Needless to say, when she had great material she was other worldly. Check out the 1950s footage of her doing 'Strange Fruit' and you'll get what I mean.
Duke Ellington's early manager and publisher Irving Mills generously helped himself to a writing credit on many of the classic Ellington compositions. He didn't contribute so much as a single note to what, in 1928 was dismissed as 'jungle' music but clearly, he knew enough about the 'biz' to see that the suave Mr Ellington was worth backing and bilking.
Jimi Hendrix? Here's a guy so stupidly good at the guitar but would sign pretty much any legal document thrust in front of him. You could blame the drugs. You could blame his terrible eyesight and the fact that he refused to ever wear prescription glasses. Remember though, that this is the same dude who got stuffed on a plane bound for London with almost no possessions beyond a passport and a toothbrush because someone promised to hook him up with Eric Clapton.
It's not just a black thing. Look at Elvis and Colonel Parker. He lit up the world of popular music with an improbable mélange of bluegrass and RnB and was given a series of execrable movies for his efforts. Race car drivers? Clam bakes? Hoola dancers!!??
These people and many others got royally screwed. Not because of color but because they were eminently bankable and that was because they were really fucking good at what they did.
If we permit ourselves to move ahead to a more recent example we find Kurt Cobain. So scared was he about being exploited, so tortured about his own authenticity that he blew his face off after bolting from a rehab center.
Kurt, if only you had stuck around for a few more years, you would've realized that you were scared of an era that was coming to an end. Your rehab could've been a TV show. Your escape from rehab would've been a TV show with better ratings. Don't worry about being bloated or letting yourself go because your weight loss would be a TV show. Don't worry about looking like a vagrant because your makeover would be a TV show. Don't like your band anymore? Fine. Get a new one on a TV show. Don't like your spouse? No problem, because Rock of Love was just around the corner and you could have replaced Courtney courtesy of VH1. It's somewhat immaterial whether you lived or not because "Nevermind" was still picked up by the Classic Album documentary series. Kurt, you got so paranoid about being fucked over by The Man tm that you jumped the gun (ha!) and fucked yourself – they only wanted you because you were good at what you did.**
The hip musical cognoscenti will berate Idol for perpetuating 'manufactured music'. Well guess what? Motown was manufactured music and deliberately so. Berry Gordy literally made the musical equivalent of an automotive plant. To ram the point home, he even let his artists film a promo 'video' on a car production line in Detroit.
He knew how to find talent though - The Supremes, The Jacksons, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder & Marvin Gaye. Manufactured? You bet your ass! But manufactured with A-list vocalists, hot songwriters and a house band that grooved like no other and would work hard both day & night. If a James Jamerson bass line doesn't move your soul you probably don't have one and you probably don't deserve the ears on your head either.
Something strange happened. I cannot pinpoint exactly when, but there was a paradigm shift. Perhaps not a shift so much as an extension of the existing regime. Exploiting musical artists has become a forgone conclusion so now it's time to increasingly exploit the audience. Let's pluck fry-cooks and shop girls from obscurity, make them comfortable***. Let them bring their moms & dads too and we just love, LOVE LOVE to hear about your childhood! Look how nice we are! So generous, so considerate! And with our generosity we will give you passable vocalists, forgettable songs, predictable schlock arrangements and homogenous wall lining production. Our magnanimity is boundless – here's a ring tone.
(When polled, 2/3rds of respondents said they'd still prefer to buy CDs but we're so munificent and you can have sonically inferior MP3 downloads instead because it's what the kids want and it's so much better to listen to MORE music on NEWER equipment than it is to listen to GOOD music on just about any equipment.)
As a musician myself, it is my sincerest wish that art and artists would be accorded the respect they deserve. I'd love to see good work justly compensated for and while I am an optimist at heart, I'm also not in denial. I know that that the industry will continue to drain and suck dry whatever floats past their clutches.
So, if you're going to be exploitative bastards, at least have some taste.
Footnotes:
*How many Mafioso would risk taking a bullet for Jordan Sparks? Susan Boyle? Anyone???? Hello????
** Kurt, how good does it feel to know that your beloved Sonic Youth did a compilation CD for Starbucks?
*** No one made Billie Holiday comfortable. They arrested the poor schlub while she was in hospital....dying.
Mega :mittens: A great read, Mang.
Quote from: E.O.T. on March 01, 2010, 08:27:18 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 01, 2010, 02:53:02 AM
And to answer your question, no. Mad science cannot fix the music industry.
But it can fix a local scene.
:golfclap:
2nded!
Quote from: Mangrove on March 02, 2010, 10:21:34 PM
Quote from: E.O.T. on March 01, 2010, 08:27:18 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 01, 2010, 02:53:02 AM
And to answer your question, no. Mad science cannot fix the music industry.
But it can fix a local scene.
:golfclap:
2nded!
I shouldn't have bothered with the longer answer. :lulz:
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 02, 2010, 10:23:01 PM
Quote from: Mangrove on March 02, 2010, 10:21:34 PM
Quote from: E.O.T. on March 01, 2010, 08:27:18 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 01, 2010, 02:53:02 AM
And to answer your question, no. Mad science cannot fix the music industry.
But it can fix a local scene.
:golfclap:
2nded!
I shouldn't have bothered with the longer answer. :lulz:
Long answer is good too - but you managed to distill something very important.
Mad science perpetrated upon a local music scene. This intrigues me 8)
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 01, 2010, 02:53:02 AM
And to answer your question, no. Mad science cannot fix the music industry.
But it can fix a local scene.
This makes me wonder how well your stunner concept would work when applied through an auditory medium, like say, an amp modified to constantly produce a certain key frequency on top of everything else. All you'd have to do once the modifications were complete would be to generously lend the equipment for one of those coffee houses the hipsters love so much. Hilarity will ensue. Wash, rinse, repeat.
EDIT: Or, more practically, an amp with a timer that activates a mode of ridiculously high distortion halfway through the concert, to the point of absolutely no music being discernible in the midst of all the noise.
QuoteEDIT: Or, more practically, an amp with a timer that activates a mode of ridiculously high distortion halfway through the concert, to the point of absolutely no music being discernible in the midst of all the noise.
That sounds like a normal concert to me.
QuoteHe knew how to find talent though - The Supremes, The Jacksons, The Temptations, Smokey Robinson, Stevie Wonder & Marvin Gaye. Manufactured? You bet your ass! But manufactured with A-list vocalists, hot songwriters and a house band that grooved like no other and would work hard both day & night. If a James Jamerson bass line doesn't move your soul you probably don't have one and you probably don't deserve the ears on your head either.
Those bands were from a (very brief) period where some producers saw themselves as artists first, and businessmen second. Now they are businessmen first, and artists never.
Quote from: Mangrove on March 02, 2010, 10:43:08 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 02, 2010, 10:23:01 PM
Quote from: Mangrove on March 02, 2010, 10:21:34 PM
Quote from: E.O.T. on March 01, 2010, 08:27:18 AM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 01, 2010, 02:53:02 AM
And to answer your question, no. Mad science cannot fix the music industry.
But it can fix a local scene.
:golfclap:
2nded!
I shouldn't have bothered with the longer answer. :lulz:
Long answer is good too - but you managed to distill something very important. Mad science perpetrated upon a local music scene.
This intrigues me 8)
That's what I meant. The long answer was ranty and fun, but didn't say anything that people didn't already know.
But with modern (and cheap) sound software, etc, a bit of mad sciency fun could turn into something else entirely.
Quote from: CAPTAIN SLACK on March 02, 2010, 11:50:03 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on March 01, 2010, 02:53:02 AM
And to answer your question, no. Mad science cannot fix the music industry.
But it can fix a local scene.
This makes me wonder how well your stunner concept would work when applied through an auditory medium, like say, an amp modified to constantly produce a certain key frequency on top of everything else. All you'd have to do once the modifications were complete would be to generously lend the equipment for one of those coffee houses the hipsters love so much. Hilarity will ensue. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Not exactly the same thing, but rhere were a few metal bands and
maybe the melvins? :cn: anyway they experimented with really really detuning stuff and playing around with the so called brown note during gigs. Nausea ensued.
Quote from: Roaring Biscuit! on March 03, 2010, 02:37:22 AM
Not exactly the same thing, but rhere were a few metal bands and maybe the melvins? :cn: anyway they experimented with really really detuning stuff and playing around with the so called brown note during gigs. Nausea ensued.
Yeah, but I'm talking about lending it to unsuspecting bands.
There may be a way to create a hand-held device that can generate a radio signal to over-ride a PA system, if you're standing in proximity to the sound board.
I'll have to research this, and get back to you.
Hmm....this could go in a number of interesting directions.
I was thinking of the musicians employing 'mad science', weird things up and hopefully punch a hole in the paper bag of popular mediocrity.
However, some of you are suggesting that mad science be directed at would-be, innocent bystanders - which is hilarious.
And to be honest, I like the idea of both.
Musicians should follow their muse, regardless.
Critics have no such restrictions.
HAVE YOU GUYZ
ever heard
OF
experimental music?
Quote from: Mangrove on March 03, 2010, 08:06:26 PM
Hmm....this could go in a number of interesting directions.
I was thinking of the musicians employing 'mad science', weird things up and hopefully punch a hole in the paper bag of popular mediocrity.
I don't know what you know, but if you knew what I knew you'd know that you're talking about Dr. Steel. His work isn't that popular with this crowd for some reason, but it's pretty much exactly what you're talking about.
Quote from: E.O.T. on March 03, 2010, 09:45:27 PM
HAVE YOU GUYZ
ever heard
OF
experimental music?
YES
We have
BUT
Enki ruined if forever.
Quote from: E.O.T. on March 03, 2010, 09:45:27 PM
HAVE YOU GUYZ
ever heard
OF
experimental music?
Is 'experimental' is a euphemism for 'self indulgent sonic obnoxiousness'?
I can handle chaos, noise & abstraction in music so long as it's not
all the time and the people making it aren't trying to convince me that it's 'the future'.
Otherwise, I'm open to suggestions :D
Quote from: Mangrove on March 04, 2010, 09:20:07 PM
Quote from: E.O.T. on March 03, 2010, 09:45:27 PM
HAVE YOU GUYZ
ever heard
OF
experimental music?
Is 'experimental' is a euphemism for 'self indulgent sonic obnoxiousness'?
I can handle chaos, noise & abstraction in music so long as it's not all the time and the people making it aren't trying to convince me that it's 'the future'.
Otherwise, I'm open to suggestions :D
In my (very) limited experience, it means "I want to call myself a musician, but I can't be arsed to learn how to play an instrument". Of course, my sole experience with this was Enki's "French experimental music" binge on RFD.
ADMITTEDLY
my comment itself could be said to fit the self indulgent & obnoxious category
BUTT
I meant it in all seriousness. there are totally people ("artists") who can't help but bend the boundaries of what we call music, its structure & output. Until the most recent decades, the bulk of musical experimentalists came from the classical school like Partch or Cage. Even before them, Skriabin perhaps wasn't that strange to HEAR but how he wanted to perform and the settings he desired people to HEAR in, were uncommon, if not impossible. And of course, fluxus artists Joseph Beuys or Milan Knizak extended their thoughts to what either could be recorded as music or appear in familiar music format. Somewhere in between occur the 'Aktionists' i guess. Contemporary "experimental" may include the 'noise' genre, but certainly isn't limited at all to guys with guitar pedals and contact mikes. There is so much happening on the "fringes" of music that I don't know if I could begin to scratch the surface by listing names here. Whether the sound attempt is through technological means/ devices or alternate settings or purpose in music performance, the shit is going on. The war has already started, as they say.
WHERE
the radio or mtv are never going to promote such artists as legit, creative types really do exist. Some people who make "music" are assholes (for sure), but mostly I've found that artists support each other and encourage creativity. And as covered in the "avante-garde" music thread, other people call it experimental, for the most part, not the artists themselves.
I'm all about people taking music in new directions. Otherwise, we'd still be listening to Lawrence Welk, and who the fuck wants that?
But if they're just making noise, they should experiment in private, and wash their hands when they're done.