(no subject)

[avevale_intelligencer]

matociquala links to this. I've heard the argument before--when CDs came in there was an outcry to the effect that they were Teh Death Uv Rock Un Roll because they weren't scratchy enough, or something like that--and I'm not convinced.

There's a snobbishness and a mystique here that grates on me. I'm a craftsperson when I do music, as when I write or draw--not a good one, by any means, but that's my aspiration. As with the singing cobbler, whose song I have never consciously heard all the way through, I believe work can only be done one way. If someone, under a somewhat bizarre set of circumstances, were to hand-make me a car, I would feel somewhat miffed if that person were to say something like "well, the wing mirrors are on backwards, the headlights don't work and the exhaust vents into the heater--but that makes it a rrreal car (with optional air-clenching and teeth-gritting à la mode Kirk Douglas or Rod Steiger)." I would, in short, ask for a replacement or my money back. Recordings are different from cars, of course, in that you're catching a moment to some extent, but it's still nonsensical not to do the best you can with what you've got. As the Beatles did. They didn't sit around saying "Orright, wack, so we'll bung a bum note in here..." and so on. At least I hope they didn't.

To make mistakes is human. To make the occasional happy mistake is wonderful. To glorify mistakes is idiotic. It leads to the blind alley of punk, in which the most "honest" musician is one who can't play and doesn't care. Or if you take it another way, the best recording ever was Thomas Edison's celebrated rendition of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" and if you want to hear real honesty, try a 78. What the article is documenting is the quest for perfection, and while it's certainly possible to take the wrong path on that quest (as possibly with the over-compression issue) it can only be stupid to decry the quest itself on the grounds that it's wrong to try to make it good.

I feel very strongly about this. There's an entire Cosmic Trifle album stalled up in Peterborough partly because I know my performances as they stand are not good enough, and cannot be made good enough despite all Mike's technical trickery, to be put on a recording for sale. If I were a "real" rock musician, according to this, I should let my out-of-tune croakings and off-beat playing be inflicted on people because that's more "honest." I can't do that. I'm not Tom Waits or Bob Dylan, and that kind of "honesty" isn't my stock in trade. I hope, at some point, to be able to get over there and do better (or find someone else to do it instead) at which point the album will become the work of two distinct groups at two different points in time, apparently playing together. It will become a lie. But it will be a lie composed of good, listenable performances (please gods) and people will enjoy listening to it. And when we play live, which we hope to do soon, I will do my best as always, and hope that people will forgive my mistakes. Forgive them. Not glorify them. Not say my performance wouldn't be better without them. Because art is also craft, and if you aren't doing the best you can with what you've got, you aren't serving either.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

This. Good point about the slide, there are a number of singers and other performers whose style is technically 'wrong' who would become totally forgettable if it were 'corrected'.

Also, a lot of the 'corrections' being talked about in the article are indeed those which make the music 'alive'. For instance, I can send you note-perfect and timing-perfect MIDI files of Bach, which are boring. They sound (as they are) like a machine -- nothing to do with the sound card reproduction of the instruments, which is also perfect, but because they have no emotion, no variation in tempo or volume. They are, as some people accuse all of Bach of being, mathematical exercises.

One of the other points in the article was compression. "Let's remove all of the 'errors' in the volume". Yes, let's remove all dynamics so that every drumbeat sounds identical, so that no one ever has to adjust the volume of their car radio. Oops, you just lost all of the intentional dynamics as well as the unintentional ones.

It's what we mean when we say a recording has been "over-produced" (well, one of the aspects).

(Why do 'live' albums sell? Because there are a lot of people who prefer the sound of a band which sound like a band rather than like a machine..)

I would also much rather have a Cosmic Trifle CD to which I can listen than one who comes out after I'm dead but is 'perfect'. I'm glad that I heard "The Filk of Human Kindness" and "Dancing Flames" 20 years ago rather than waiting until they were 'perfect' recordings (and yes, if either were available on CD, straight from the masters with no remixing or 'tidying', warts and all, I would happily buy them and stick them in the car and listen to them over and over; the same for a number of other recordings of that vintage).