...is directly proportional to the recording's lasting worth. And the inverse is also true.

Hence the utter disposability of much of today's recorded music.

if only you hadn't jumped to conclusions.
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

and i'm wondering whether by analog you mean electronic analog or actually acoustic. but then again you probably means something closer to 'reflect the agency of the human musician playing' which is where an interesting discussion could happen, at the end of which such a conclusion could be made.
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Big PEMFin H & z's
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"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

In the old days of this board, this assertion would have provoked interesting discussion.

>and i'm wondering whether by analog you mean electronic
>analog or actually acoustic.

Good question. I mean, basically, established natural timbres, including the sounds of certain electronic instruments, such as various keyboard sounds.

> but then again you probably
>means something closer to 'reflect the agency of the human
>musician playing' which is where an interesting discussion
>could happen, at the end of which such a conclusion could be
>made.

And yes, some of that as well. Even in heavily electronic music, human agency can be heard and felt. And sometimes not at all. So yes, that too.

>Good question. I mean, basically, established natural timbres,
>including the sounds of certain electronic instruments, such
>as various keyboard sounds.

But what really equals a natural timber other than the voice. It's a slippery slope because pretty much every instrument required a technological innovation even if it was just picking up the stick to hit it on the tree trunk (which would result in the need of technology to explore further how to manipulate the trunk to change the sound).

>And yes, some of that as well. Even in heavily electronic
>music, human agency can be heard and felt. And sometimes not
>at all. So yes, that too.

Considering that we are in the midst of the age of automation though human agency isn't any more real than automated and programmed sound. And there's the rub, because moving forward who's to say that the latter won't be more desirable and thus not 'utterly disposable'.

________
Big PEMFin H & z's
█▆▇▅▇█▇▆▄▁▃
"I ain't no entertainer, and ain't trying to be one. I am 1 thing, a musician." © Miles

"When the music stops he falls back in the abyss."

>But what really equals a natural timber other than the voice.
>It's a slippery slope because pretty much every instrument
>required a technological innovation even if it was just
>picking up the stick to hit it on the tree trunk (which would
>result in the need of technology to explore further how to
>manipulate the trunk to change the sound).

But the essence of any of that is the vibration of a the vocal cords, a tree trunk, a string, a reed, a drum head...it isn't a slippery slope, because it's observed physical phenomena versus...not. Sound is naturally produced by vibration. This is not the case with digitally generated sounds, until such time as the sounds emerge from a speaker.

>Considering that we are in the midst of the age of automation
>though human agency isn't any more real than automated and
>programmed sound. And there's the rub, because moving forward
>who's to say that the latter won't be more desirable and thus
>not 'utterly disposable'.

Which is entirely possible, and that makes me sad.

are you saying that music is better when the digital sounds are closer to the sounds they are imitating?

That was my initial interpretation of your comment, and ... I can see an argument for that.

However, I think the opposite is generally more true: that music is better and more 'timeless' and more durable when analog instruments are allowed to make the analog sounds, and digital instruments are used only to produce sounds the analog instruments are not capable of making.

We're at a blurry technological point however where the analog and digital can blend together, ie running an analog instrument through a digital effect.

I think I may have cared more about this argument (and been wronger about it) when I was in college, though.

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avy by buckshot_defunct

>are you saying that music is better when the digital sounds
>are closer to the sounds they are imitating?

Don't know if you're familiar with the concept (probably are), but here's a link if you need it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley

If the sounds are so close as to be nearly indistinguishable on first listen, I'm good, and if they clearly are NOT real instruments, that's fine too. But there's a valley there that irritates the hell out of me...

>That was my initial interpretation of your comment, and ... I
>can see an argument for that.
>
>However, I think the opposite is generally more true: that
>music is better and more 'timeless' and more durable when
>analog instruments are allowed to make the analog sounds, and
>digital instruments are used only to produce sounds the analog
>instruments are not capable of making.

Perhaps, but I'm mostly worried about music that features no resemblance to analog sound. That's my target here. Music without an analog reference point.

>We're at a blurry technological point however where the analog
>and digital can blend together, ie running an analog
>instrument through a digital effect.

Well past that point, in fact. But as I said earlier, there are electronic sounds that have become canonical through familiarity.

>I think I may have cared more about this argument (and been
>wronger about it) when I was in college, though.

I don't care that much about it now, except that I've reached a point in my life that I'm interested in yelling at young people about how their generation sucks. Surely you can relate on some level...

So you're talking about the way an R. Kelly might flatten his music by taking the digital way out then?


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im sorry but they are not the same....

its not the same because digital sounds are more mechanical sounding....

as a producer.

Drums tend to date music a LOT...and only a few synthesized types of drums are timeless, such as the 808 set...the kicks, snares, and claps. Most music that didn't use acoustic, real drums, tends to sound dated unless it used drum sounds that were meant to sound acoustic and didn't have too many effects on them. For Rap, a lot of 80's sounds will always sound good to where you can polish em and use em today, but even then, it's dope in a vintage/throwback way vs a progressive, fresh way.

I've also noticed that with drums, they haven't really evolved much in the last 5-7 years. Just Blaze, Timbaland, Dre Neptunes, Dilla, and others still had drum sounds that we hadn't heard before until around 2005...but since then, it's rare that I hear drums and say "damn, I've never heard any like this before." The Hip Hop types like Black Milk have them sometimes, but commercially, the way that Drake's producers have made his drums sound are the only ones I can point out that really sound different to me. However, the patterns used have continued to evolve. Tracks like "Cat daddy" actually had ridiculous shit goin on with the drums that most folks would never pay attention to.

With synths, it's similar, except I can't tell you any synth sound names as I do with the 808. Like, some of them still sound great, although it's still in a vintage way...but I think there's more synths that have evolved and can sound like a particular year, recently at least.

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...and timeless, as you say. It's what I was talking about in #8, that certain electronic sounds have sort of earned a place alongside traditional analog instruments. And I don't know the names of the synth patches either, but certain synth sounds are like that too--the classic funk synth you hear on Time and early Prince tracks, for example.

It's more, as I think about it today, the dehumanizing of music. Autotune vocals are part of this as well. It just gets to the point where nothing on a track sounds real, or human.

>commercially, the way that Drake's producers
>have made his drums sound are the only ones I can point out
>that really sound different to me.

yes. in a great, unarchived post from 2011, i called it as IDM drums. i really think 40 if not 40 and drake both were (are) fans of the popular IDM and ambient-techno artists of the '90s and put that in their unique-for-poppy-hip-hop sound (amplifya dismissed it as coincidence and maintained the party line of '90s r&b, which i think is just a part of it, not the whole). this is most evident to me in 'so far gone' and 'thank me later.' i definitely appreciated the subtlety. it was one reason why i never was on board with the sound simply being an imitation of '808s and heartbreak,' because as much as i like that album, the drums are stiffer than 40's and, taiko aside, reminded me more of traditional pop and hip-hop than IDM. its electronic influences are the more popular dance sounds that would be lumped together today as EDM.


>I've also noticed that with drums, they haven't really evolved
>much in the last 5-7 years. Just Blaze, Timbaland, Dre
>Neptunes, Dilla, and others still had drum sounds that we
>hadn't heard before until around 2005...but since then, it's
>rare that I hear drums and say "damn, I've never heard any
>like this before." The Hip Hop types like Black Milk have them
>sometimes, but commercially, the way that Drake's producers
>have made his drums sound are the only ones I can point out
>that really sound different to me. However, the patterns used
>have continued to evolve. Tracks like "Cat daddy" actually had
>ridiculous shit goin on with the drums that most folks would
>never pay attention to.

something i've always appreciated (http://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=17&topic_id=76834&mesg_id=76834&listing_type=search) about hip-hop is that it is ever-evolving at least on some scale, arguably smaller in recent years as it's absorbed eurotechno and contemporary white indie music influences, but there's always something to listen for where you can tell the artist and producer are experimenting to some degree, which is cool.

There's plenty of "timeless" classics made with ancient samplers where the sampled instrument didn't sound quite like what went in it. Think of Peter Gabriel's "Shock The Monkey", which was done with a Fairlight CMI Series I sampler and the later "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time" hits. Samplers back then were completely incapable of capturing the nuances of acoustic sounds as they can today, yet here's three well known arguable classic songs done with an 8 bit/30KHz mono sampler (Shock The Monkey) and, if he upgraded between records, a 16bit/50KHz stereo sampler (with limited sample RAM). Many other classics would be made using Fairlight samplers and even Stevie Wonder

An old Akai S2000 would slaughter the Fairlight for sound quality and accuracy.

The Emu Emulator II was used by some of everyone and has quite a few classic songs and albums to it's credit, yet it's only an 8bit/27KHz sampler with about a half meg of sample time.


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