I am (hopefully) about to start recording my new solo acoustic album due to the prodding of some close friends who, for whatever reason, really love that part of my work. But each time I am about to go downstairs and set up the mics and get this thing going, one question keeps coming up, "Why?"
While there are some dark practical reasons to get it completed, there are no real valuable answers in the either which I shall tackle here in due time
Let me begin by stating a few personal observations about the world of being a musician in the 21st century:
TO BEGIN: Basic economic concept: The value of a product depends upon the desirability and scarcity of a product.
As has been stated literally thousands and thousands of times before, the digital age has made just about anyone able to record/have access to sounds and then edit it into some sort of shape at a quality, speed, and cost that only a decade ago was only dreamed of. The problem is that the unholy alliance of bootlegged software and bootlegged music has made matters exponentially worse. It has not made the playing field level, it has made it a vortex.
We seem to be at a point where the value of recorded music is approximating zero while the desire for music seems to be at an all time high, both points of which are a result of technology. Never before in the relatively short history of recorded music have we been able to carry with us so much music for our personal consumption. I say this only speaking of the personal storage devices. Once the Digital Cloud becomes the norm, all bets are off, the game is over as access to almost anything will be available to anyone with the right technology that will only come down in price over time. I find this to be both depressing and a tad scary for every creative thinking person out there.
Years ago, only the few record/CD collectors of deep obsession could have collected enough recorded music as to outweigh the amount of time they would have in their theoretical lifespan to listen to it. Now, that is commonplace. People I know download complete catalogs of artists in no time at all from bit torrent sites. years and years worth of an artist's work collected for free within less time than it takes to heat a Pop Tart. See the problem?
(I am no expert on this, so please feel free to consult the work of John Berger and the like, but here goes...)
The history of Music (using the definition of- rhythm, sonority, and silence) is, at the very least, as old as the human race. The female voice is (approximately) one octave above that of the male and the child's voice an octave above that. Any melody sung by the three at the same time would be within that octave "harmony". 2000 B.C. is where the first music notation starts and it takes about 3900 years before the recording of music starts. With sheet music/notation, the best one can get is an interpretation of what the original composition sounded like. With the recording, one can hear exactly how the performance sounded.
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh, now thanks to the digital age, the triumph of mathematical perfection, and cost effectiveness over human inconsistency, the reality of what is consumed as music has been bent at a right angle. The performer of the music has become merely the clay of the product, not the finished stone. And to all my recording brethren out there, allow me to state the following: WE ARE ALL GUILTY! I have used pitch correction tools to edit the living hell out of my own and others performances. Why? Speaking only for myself, two words: TIME and MONEY. It was cheaper for me to have the under rehearsed singer do a mediocre job and edit it later than to spend weeks getting it right when there was a cheap option available that has become the industry standard.
Oh yes, the "Industry Standard".
99.9% of all music heard these days is computer corrected. The artificial has replaced the human as the standard. No, really. Pop musicians (which means "popular" which means "consumed and accepted by the masses") either are singing along to pre-recorded back-up tracks live or are being auto-tuned when they perform live. The standard is no longer analogue, but digital. Human performance is no longer acceptable.
In the documentary "Sound City" all of what I am talking about is played out and discussed by those who made their career within the time of analogue gear. It is an amazing documentary about how digital technology transformed the art of recording music. I cannot recommend it enough to everyone who cares.
One thing I found stunning was about how, in the old days, the goal was to find "The magic take", the performance where you get "lightening in a bottle". You see a young Tom Petty go bonkers in some home footage after doing a song over two dozen times (or something like that). Even better is Dave Grohl talking about the recording of Nevermind, which was done at that studio and how he loathed using a click track to record the song "Lithium". While there were overdubs, the music was recorded by human beings who could do the performance. This is the former generation.
I asked a high school age guitarist this past week about recording his music, as well as that of other bands. He says he has never used any whole takes and did not record more than one instrument at a time. Even then, he just edited the takes to make the finished piece. This is the new generation.
If something is constructed by a machine to the point of mathematical perfection, can it exist as a piece of art made by a human? Is there a balance? Well, sure. I am not anti-synth or anti-Protools. My favorite example is Trent Reznor who has been using computers to make his music since the beginning of his career as NIN. The man uses a computer to make music and it is stunning.
Maybe it is all in the vocals?
The human being reacts most strongly to another human being. The voice, even without language (or with pseudo-language as in the case with Sigur Ross), the ear perks up and finds the human connection.. (I think the sales of music with voice/vocals as compared to instrumentals will back me up on this.) And how many instrumentalists can you say you can pick out by ear after one listening? Eddie Van Halen, Michael Hedges, and Jeff Beck come to mind about having a truly unique tone and there are others. But vocalists have a way of just putting a tractor beam on the soul.
Adele comes to mind here. When she opens her mouth, God enters the room. Look at the video to her Bob Dylan cover of "Make You Feel My Love". She does not lip-sync the video, she actually SINGS in the video. I have been blessed to know people who could and can do the same. One of those people, Steve Hajdu-Nemeth was in my bad The Post-Modern Tribe until he passed away from cancer. Susan Shaughnessy is another who has shared the stage with me who can do the same thing. Mary Ann Wilson too. And there are others. Like I said, I am one blessed man.
Which leads me to this beautiful topic: So if I were to record the acoustic album, spend hours and hours of my life alone in my studio then spend about a thousand dollars mixing and mastering it to a professional level,..... then what?
Don't everyone yell at once....
