Traction:Future Lounge 7/07

A DJ set of some chill-out by me,
~40 minutes of quality sounds:



(right click image and hit 'save link as' to download the mp3)



enjoy.

The Sounds of Ruin

The digital age has brought us a whole new era in recorded music. The CD, ProTools, home recording, and mp3's. Can anyone argue that the methods of capturing and presenting audio has changed drastically in the past few years? But, does it sound any better? Well, that depends on your definition of better. As recoding techniques have developed in recent history, so have mastering techniques. And one thing that has become an almost universal mantra in post production is "louder is better". I first noticed this in the late 1980's when i heard a Metallica song and a Janet Jackson song back to back. I couldn't put my finger on it at the time, but they sounded very similar to me and I was put off by that. Over the years I have come to realize that it was the massive amounts of compression applied to both that was the commonality I detected. There were NO dynamics. There was no room in any of the sound, not for an instant. Compressing music that heavily creates an almost white noise effect. There are no peaks and valleys anymore, just a plateau. FM radio had been doing this to their broadcasts for some time, to maximize their range and signal strength. This may create maximum impact when flipping radio stations, but for the critical listener it is a slap in the face. Can you imagine if the quiet parts in some of your favorite classic rock songs were artificially jacked up to the volume of the loud parts? Doing this to songs strips them of their impact, the very thing they were trying to achieve by this technique. I guess that modern radio-rock was never meant to be listened to critically anyway, so there is not much harm done there. But I can't help but feel that processing all music this way has led to the bleak monochromatic soundscape that we live in today. The insightful Bosco Mann has a theory that the recording of music has lost its way sometime in the 1980's. He states that throughout time we have used technological advances to make it easier and easier for someone to express themselves in a musical way. However, he states, sometime in the late 1980's to early 1990's things changed. The recording studio became a very complex and clinical place. I am a huge fan of the digital age, I believe it empowers creative people to do things that they never had the chance to do years ago. But is seems that the big commercial market has responded by trying to be the loudest, not necessarily the best. Screaming louder doesn't make you right, it just makes you obnoxious.

Here are some links to a short article explaining this same principal:

Why New Music Doesn't Sound As Good As It Did
and this video:
The Loudness War

Let's get dynamic!
Your pal,
TZA.