The State of Music (Inspired by the modestmouse thread)
 

Is there a music bubble about to pop?
Are we gorging on ever more releases by ever more bands/artists in ever more expanding sub-genre after sub-genre?

I ahve always been a big music fan, but I have also been a big reader, interested in writing that deals with the state of music, with music busioness and creation as a whole.
In the early 90's, with the availability of DAT and other new media, leading us into the full digital media spectrum we have now, many writers talked about a lowest common denominator problem which would or could soon hit Music.
In an age when anyone and everyone has the ability and means to not only record themsevles, but to release the music into the world seconds after recording it, whether via online or CD-r's etc, these writers would ask whether, as an effect of this, the quality controls that bands placed on music released would come down?
In many cases it seems to have. bands record and release songs that are barely more than an idea strecthed out too long, or that seem like "unfinished sketches" of song.

while that may be interesting to hear for a band whose work you already love, it leaves something wanting to me. mosttimes I would prefer to hear a band put out one album in two years of perfect tunes, than to hear 4 albums of half-songs, barely-worked ideas, and filler.

Part of me loves this stuff but part of me hates it.

I love the idea of easy release of music, without the constraints of a record label. I also love the idea that working hard to tweak and work out all the kinks in a song, to find a better change, or to re-work the bridge to better match the chorus, etc.

I also find it annoying when these original, recordings have huge energy, but then when the band set out to make a proper record, they lose that energy, and the plainness and redundancy of their music "ideas" is left in plain view.
I cannot count the number of bands whose first self-recorded release sounds NOTHING like their first official release, leaving me to wonder whether I just enjoyed the low fidelity of their shitty recording techniques, or whether the band just forgot how to write a good song.

I also cannot count how many bands' first release left me thining, "jesus, there are like 3 or four good bits in these songs, but the stuff connecting the good bits is so trite and generic."
ahhh, music.

that most glorious and universal of all the arts.

what do you guys think?

The state of music listeners would have been a more interesting thread.

ahh but I could care less about music listeners!!!!!!!!!!!! The only music listener I care about is myself.

I wouldn't be able to tell the state of music in general 'cause it's impossible to be precise, and I haven't got that much time to dedicate to it anymore. From the little I can tell there's a lot to be happy, it just would be more nice if some of the good bands would have more money to tour Europe more often.

I agree with this statemnet. I have no time to go check out bands here in L.A. but pretty sure there are some awesome band playing in a club somewhere.

There is a good and bad side to it, as there is to everything.

The good side of it is that with ALL of the available music out there, and with the internet making it available for FREE at the click of a mouse, you can find something that fits exactly what you want, as long as you are willing to look through it all.

The bad side to it is that we are flooded with art, music included. Just as everybody thinks they are an artist now because they made some stencils and spray painted a wall a la Banksy, everybody thinks they are not only musicians, but musicians who need to be heard, based simply on the fact that they CAN be heard.

Finding good music used to be like a needle in a haystack. Now it's more like a diamond ring in a boggy marsh. If you are willing to look, you are able to find something far greater than you used to be. Unfortunately you have to now dig through much nastier crap to find it.

i don't think the state of music really changes, there's shitloads of music being made all over the place all the time, some is awesome and some sucks, it's been like this for thousands of years and will keep going as long as there is human beings, and i'm fully satisfied with that, listeners and business etc. is not extremely important to me


i like improvising and all that type of shit so half finished songs are fine, honestly i don't think a song should ever be finished; moj dilbere is 600 years old and it still doesn't have a definitive form

To me the lowest common denominator problem is inherant at the top spectrum of the industry with the like of companies releasing people like britney and aguilera et al to mass critical acclaim. Also major label executives and music media are problematic.

The abililty of anyone recording in at home and releasing a cdr or uploading to a website is far less of a problem than the aforementioned top level garbage. With out home four tracks, daw's etc we wouldn't have some great stuff that exists now. Also I couldn't get paid for writing music like I do with out the said four tracks, daw's, cdr's and the internet. So I'm very much for all the DIY stuff whether it be good or bad. The enjoyment people get from doing be it trying to get some where or just as a hobby is incalcuable.

i agree that bad mass produced music is worse, bad DIY stuff is extremely easy to avoid. i don't care if the kid down the street makes shitty music because there's always something good playing inside my house and i don't have to listen to him unless i like it

I meant the recording and disseimnation of said music. and I am talking in general about rock music, a la sonic youth and "garage bands"

should have been more specific I guess

I think that an increase in the means to create, and in particular distribute, music does inevitably affect quality control. However (as Sarramkrop suggests) I tend to think that the more significant shift is not in what's out there, but how we as listeners attempt to sift through it. I imagine that the generation brought up with this new technology will find a way to negotiate through it far quicker than those of us still used to the old album format. There's less incentive now to give an album time to grow on you, knowing that an alternative is just a download away. This is bad for the album as we've traditionally known it. However, in terms of the history of music, the album is a relatively recent phenomenon which was itself bound to shifts within technology. As such, the idea that it will be replaced by some other 'standard' form is only of consequence to those of us that still hold on to it as the format.

The sheer will of a certain generation of consumers will inevitably see the album maintain its industry dominance long after it's actual viability has passed, but once that generation is replaced by one that holds no such affiliatins, the traditional album will surely be seen as little more than a charming eccentricity of a bygone age, and replaced by something more appropriate to their listening habits.

It seems that eventually, all original musical ideas will be expressed. A depressing thought.

You seem to be talking about a certain sloppiness creeping in, which is possibly true, but then if you look at the average amount of time a band spends on an album today compared to the 1960s then if anything more time is spent attending to details than ever before (at least with Rock music). Sgt Pepper's took roughly six months from the start of rehearsal/recording to its eventual release. Dark Side of the Moon took a few more months but was largely worked out, at least in its early stage, on the road. How long did Chinese Democracy take? It seems that one of the ironies of living in such an immediate society, that if anything more time is spent perfecting things now than ever before - and with no actual evidence that it benefits the end result.

I think it's great that that the younger generations aren't concerned about audio quality and downloading their whole collections of music without paying for it. Even if you do pay for it via itunes or what ever digital transmission it is not in full cd/vinyl quality.

"The sheer will of a certain generation of consumers will inevitably see the album maintain its industry dominance long after it's actual viability has passed"...

^if it maintains it's industry dominance long after it's viability has passed does this not mean it is viable.... hummm bit of a paradox there.

I don't know how the younger generations feel but I don't wan't my whole life reduced to 1s and 0s. The digital realm has helped with certain aspects of my life but I'm not interested in having my whole music collection in a low quality format and jpg's of cover art. I like the smell of my favourite indy record store and I like talking to my mates that work there and have the same passion for music I do, I also like getting discount because I spend alot of money there...

edit: and with batreleaser's thread, i hate ipods - he just lost all of his digital collection... something that won't ever happen with the tangible physical object

what's the question?

You talk about music as something to possess. Take film for example. People enjoyed them long before they could physically own them. The physical ownership of a person's favourite film or piece of music is a relatively recent phenomenon and as such is hardly a prerequisite to their being enjoyed. Who's to say that digital technology won't eventually mean that we no-longer own hard copies of the music or films we enjoy. Will a Beatles' song or a Hitchcock film diminish in quality simply because you or I don't have it on our shelves, but can instead download it at any time? I agree that it will change our relationship to those things, but that relationship was never carved in stone in the first place.

I agree about the issue of quality in terms of mp3s, etc. Although I tend to think that this is a teething issue not unusual in any new technology and that eventually digital technology (or whatever replaces it) will be at least as good as anything that vinyl was able to provide.

The argument I'm making will, I admit, put record shops such as the one you describe largely out of business, but then the advent of recorded music wasn't exactly great for orchestras who made a living playing to the public. And video has hardly benefited the local cinema.


You're right. I probably should've said practical rather than viable.

A generation of young people growing up with a tin ear and an actual preference for the crappy compressed mp3 sound will not help in efforts to make innovations in digital sound quality. Surveys are beginning to show this preference. Heavy sigh. Garbage in, garbage out.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/11/153205

I think the likely outcome of something like what is described in that article is that two tiers will emerge: a basic consumer level one and one aimed more at audiophiles (just as HD and Blu-Ray technology works in terms of DVD). There will always be a market for quality reproduction, even if, as is the case now, it's something only a minority are interested in.

You are right, however I do feel an extra connection of holding something in my hands like the cover with full artwork etc while i listen to the music. As for the teething issues, you have been able to buy/download music from the internet for a while and it seems people obviously aren't asking these companies to give them full audio quality otherwise they would have by now, there is a complacency that i see in the generations younger than myself about the quality of the goods they consume and this isn't just in the quality of the music they download. Peoples home internet connections these days have the bandwidth to download a full album at full audio quality in less than 15 minutes. I guess though I am showing my age and are kinda the last of the generations of people that like scouring all the record stores for that special find.

There are plusses and minuses to the self-serve smorgasboard of free and cheap downloads. Obviously, the biggest plus is the access people have to find any kind of music including highly obscure stuff with tools like Soulseek, MySpace, etc. But if the appreciation of or the finicky insistence on audiophile-quality recording fidelity has begun to erode as listeners become more accepting of downloadable or streaming media, that is probably as hurtful to listeners and musicians as it is helpful.

I doubt it's contributed too much to the burgeoning lo-fi zeitgeist, which in many ways reflects the much more widely recognized lo-fi movement of the late 80s/early 90s when even magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone were treating it like a new genre (isn't it always so problematic when a word or phrase that is essentially a mode of production [folk, indie, lo-fi] becomes recognized as a style or genre?). And we all know why that era was so full of crap that we've left buried in the past now, don't we? Well, if not, it's because so often, bands would hide behind "lo-fi" as an excuse to make a record that sounded like shit.

Little did these bands know that making a great lo-fi record was all about getting the best possible results outta limited or basic means! When you think all the way back to early legendary producers like Joe Meek and Phil Spector, those are the prime examples of what is possible with limited means right there, and that is the surest sign that so much is possible with a little inspiration and attention to detail regardless of how spartan the studio (or bedroom or basement or tool shed).

I think that much of the best so-called lo-fi music today is recapturing that inspiration. Check out the latest albums by Dan Melchior und Das Menace, Nothing People, Thee Oh Sees, Eat Skull......it's got all kindsa splendor and ghosts fluttering around in it, and it just sets the mood perfectly to enjoy some really splendid songwriting as well. But the more uncultured an ear becomes due to compass-less meandering through the self-serve smorgasboard, perhaps the less likely a lazy, undemanding listener is to fail to capture that brilliance. And don't we all know that these undemanding listeners aren't filtering down to the best that the so-called underground has to offer anyway? Not when there's still flashing commercial banner ads and online idol-worship centers like Pitchfork laying out the roadmap to today's trends sponsored by bags and bags o' $$$, and never veering more than one or 1½ standard deviations from the LCD center. (Queue up The Fall's "Middle Mass" now.)

What's encouraging about today is that there are more and more people at all levels of music fandom from casual to obsessive that are rejecting mainstream media, and that is causing some micro-revolutions. I may not be a fan of Bright Eyes, but I was pretty happy just thinking about the panicked board-room meetings that happened in corporate media after they picked up the issue of Billboard magazine when Bright Eyes was #1 on a sales chart. I just imagine chrome-domers in navy blue suits steaming from the ears, slamming the wrag down on the table going "WHO THE HELL IS BRIGHT EYES AND WHY DON'T WE KNOW ABOUT THEM???" And then there was the fan petitions numbering into the several hundred thousands (if not millions) demanding that the label give Fiona Apple permission to release an unreleased album that the label didn't feel was worthy.

These were moments that resonated in the recording industry the way that $4.50/gal gasoline played in Detroit. That certainly sets the table for a better marketplace that values musicians and their fans a lot more. Of course, that change will come slow.....especially in a marketplace that is continually diminishing due to the CD format's continual fadeout.

The most demanding listeners in the last few years have learned to live with the changes in negotiating the channels through which music becomes available, and where people go to learn something new about music and read opinion and share theirs with others. This has led to an actual increase in music sales of independently produced and marketed music on formats like vinyl (and even cassette culture is making an appreciable comeback). And perhaps the anonymity of the internet has led to a smearing or crumbling of borders between genre ghettoes.

Stylistically, there's the expansion in definition of psychedelic which has also greatly diversified music as much as it has also helped to provide paths for bonding between artists formerly divided by those genre ghettos. The only ill effect of this is the slow death of "irony as fashion" (can we just kill it off now already?!) and the increase in the amount of ironic facial hair that you see today. But that's a small price to pay for the kinda variety that so many people now share together.......and even words like "garage" which was so limited has changed so much, and words like "punk" are coming back from having been hijacked by marketers of crap that shall go unnamed, such that both garage and punk now include music that sounds as "proto-" as the stuff they used to call "punk" in the early to mid-70s, yet is also music that has been influenced by the past three decades as well.

Certainly, there was a huge amount of music that was made in the mid-90s explosion of indie/punk/underground culture that immediately followed the controversial mainstream media co-option of "alternative". And that might be believed to be something of a halcyon age, too. Goodness knows there's a lotta folks here who think that this is when Sonic Youth peaked along with the Pixies and My Bloody Valentine and Pavement and a lotta other bands that so many SY Gossippers wear kneepads for. I was into these bands, too, and also learned to love garagepunk, and sure...I thought New Bomb Turks, The Makers, Supercharger, Teengenerate, and Guitar Wolf were all awesome back then, and there were dozens more faves I had back then. But now that I think about it, I realize that I was 21 back then and super-enthusiastic, and now I understand that while there was a dizzying amount of records back then, most of it was dreck, and I don't listen to all of that stuff combined as much as I listen to the Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, who I only sorta liked back then. Nowadays, there's too many records to keep up with, and a lot of it compares well to the top 5% of great records 15 years ago.

If you're born in the mid-80s or later, I hope this last part doesn't read like some "you kids don't know shit" sorta thing, but I do feel like I'm able to see this more clearly because of my experience. Someone my dad's age can probably take me to task over everything I just said by saying that rock & roll has never been as great as it was in the years 1965-1968. (And he'd be right, but that's an even longer story!)

I'm just saying...if you're musically aware right now, whether you've been aware for years or just getting into it, RIGHT NOW is a really excellent time. And it's no time to be wishing you were born when I was born just so...what?...you could play hacky sack at Lollapalooza?

Most of people who record a song on audacity and upload it to myspace don't really have the money, (bandmates, maybe?) or connections to go into a studio and record everything as they wish it was.

Those sketches, demos, can be used to get signed to a label, who will maybe spend some bucks in giving you some freedom and better production..(not really probable)

there are lots of ways to make your songs sound like you want to...but I don't see anything wrong in sitting one day, record an acoustic song with a cheap computer mic and then upload it on myspace... If I really feel the need to do it better, then I'll certainly do it one day.

I agree that we are exposed to a lot of new music and art in general, but I don't mind as long as I can recognize what I like and what I don't..

Don't get me wrong, the things you mention are very much things that I believe in too. I just don't think they're absolutes. I think the traditional album format has proven to be a great way of communicating, but it's a fairly unique one really. Take album covers. In many ways certain covers have become as iconic as the records inside: The Velvets and Nico, Dark Side of the Moon, Sgt Peppers, etc. etc. But nobody thinks of for-example novels in this sense. There's no 'standard' cover to something like 'The Naked Lunch', or 'On the Road'. Nobody notices because people haven't become used to seeing it. Maybe associative covers will continue with music, but if they don't I'm sure that eventually people will stop noticing their absence just as they do with novels, or DVDs (where there also isn't a 'standard' cover design.)

I find it depressing to think of the first Velvets album without the Banana on the cover, but i wonder if my two year old neice (assuming she actually listens to it one day) will. We're in that difficult age bracket where we still remember how things used to be done and hate to think that those methods might someday pass. My point I suppose is that once all the wrinkles are ironed out with the whole digital thing, there'll still be great artists that emerge out of it, i just doubt that they'll be expressing themselves through albums, will kick-ass sleeves.

Looks like you sorted your sleep pattern right out demonrail. ;)

If you're trying to disagree with me about the whole fidelity/recording thing, you're not. I totally agree with you that there's nothing wrong with recording your music with whatever's available....personally, I'm a big fan of some boombox recordings.

But there's still more to it that just hitting the red button and playing the song. There's the characteristics of the room. There's the placement of the microphone. There's also the performance itself. If you just do a basic recording of an acoustic song, and it is hampered by the hum of an impedance problem, or it just sounds totally flat because of the room it's in, or you can only hear vocals and no guitar, and any of these things actually mar the song in a bad way, or the performance was not as good as it could be, then if you put those mp3s up on your MySpace page, you shouldn't be surprised when you meet disinterest or scoffing. And if your answer is "BUT I'M JUST LO-FI...WHAT DO YOU WANT?!?!", that is using lo-fi as a crutch rather than an honest mode to record music with zero or little budget.

You needn't know much of anything except how to hit record, but you should give trial and error its due diligence. If it doesn't work in this room, move to that room. Figure out where to sit and how to hold the guitar.

Of course, you really only hafta please yourself. But I do know I've met bands that have recorded DIY stuff which they themselves weren't pleased with, and that's why they were making excuses before I even heard it. Like they were warning me...."Well, it's pretty lo-fi!" And then all I heard was the flattest, most undynamic thing ever, and they wanted to know "What do you think?" I won't go totally Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares on 'em, but I will encourage them to re-record it over and over again until they no longer hafta use the "lo-fi" thing as an excuse.

i agree djr, lofi to me is and has been for a long time an aesthetic choice, cos even the simplest computer recording setup these days can produce incredibly pro sounding production, the only difference most of the time is in the mastering. e.g. nearly all of the eels albums were recorded in small home studios but are mostly incredibly lush sounding. mostly lofi is used alot as an excuse in people not arming themselves with knowledge (not that they have to at all), but i find things more fun the more i learn about things anyway.

All I know is, in my lifetime, this is the best musical landscape I've ever seen; such an overwhelming amount of great music coming out daily that it's ridiculous... yeah.

I agree.

dj that's why I said

there are lots of ways to make your songs sound like you want to (.....) If I really feel the need to do it better, then I'll certainly do it one day.

I mean every band is fully responsible of their sound..
but I recorded an acoustic song with a really cheap mic and with obviously intentional noise and hiss overdubs and none got it..

most of time, diy myspace songs recordings sound like shit, and only work as 'demos' of a 'song' that the band needs to work on before doing a proper release.. (not myspace release i mean)..so I agree that people shouldn't use the lo fi thing as an excuse. unless it was meant to be that way.

this is not exactly true.
before digital recordings you had records. before records you had sheet music. sheet music was sold for a couple centuries, and any good home had various sheet music collections for the family to play on piano or guitar or violin or whatever instruments the fammily had. sure, they were creating the music themselves, but they owned it, and it became treasured.
of course the enjoyment of music does not depend on the format, but the source for the music does add aesthetics. the aesthetics of a vinyl platter, and the sleeve and the care that must be taken not to damage it, all add to the experience. easy to get, easy to forget I say.

gotta spread some love before giving it to the instigator again

ahhh, but you are not throwing this into an album as "filler" just because you have 80 minutes of CD to work with.

so is this thread just a bunch over over 30s saying things were different/better in my day, and that young people today don't know they're born?

Those of us in our 30s should not be arguing that things were better in our day. They are better right now.

i'm 29 and i think things are better now, but it seems the difference is confusing to a lot of old people.

no one spends money on CD's anymore. musicians are having a harder and harder time making a living. as a result the state of music is getting worse and worse.

Time to start paying for those downloads instead of stealing them.

I like that Happy Hardcore makes more sense now than it did in the days of walkmen - it truly was the prescient format of mobile phone music. Grime works well out of mobile phones as well. I tried writing some music to be played out of my mobile - it sounded rubbish. It sounded great out of proper speakers, but rubbish on a mobile. I think that's fucking brilliant, that people make a virtue of an imperfect medium. Probably like the tape vogue that's back these days, although I've not really followed that one.

did you READ the thread? or are you one of those that cannot handle more than 4 sentences in a row?

;)

Yes, I suppose that technically you're right with regard sheet music, although I tend to think the relationship between the listener at least (rather than the player) did change dramatically with the arrival of the recording in that it was able to become far more of a private relationship, similar in that sense to books.


I completely agree about the aesthetics of a specific format. It's just interesting to me that certain types of music seem to be alone in having artwork that's so immediately associated with it that there'd be an outcry amongst fans if it was dramatically altered from one re-issue to the next. I'm not sure how or why this happened, but it does strike me as interesting and suggests that for future generations it may not stand.

it is all about the associations. images and sound co-mingle in the mind. sense memory is a powerful thing.

So then why has it never been more widely adopted within, say, classical music? I mean I have an idea why, and it has nothing to do with musical issues so far as I can see. It's a convention, that's all, and like all conventions it can just as easily become unconventional.