Dallas McLaughlin

The song is the purest and most natural form of entertainment known to man.  It truly is the universal language.  The youngest of infants (it’s speculated even unborn children) can hear, react, and reproduce musical forms, before they can even speak the language.  A vocalist of another language can sing a passage, and bring people of other nationalities to tears, using only the language of music.  Throughout time, music has been used to convey emotion, and explain the explainable.

I fear that our children, or our childrens children, will lose this connection to music.  I will do my best to tell you why.

When I was young, four years old, I had an unhealthy fascination with David Lee Roth.  At that time, David Lee Roth was already known as the former lead singer of Van Halen.  I remember riding with my dad in his car in Arizona and listening to David Lee Roth’s “Eat Em’ and Smile” on cassette tape (remember those?).  The one track I specifically remember, was “Yankee Rose”.

Yankee Rose wasn’t just any song, Yankee Rose was the song that sent me on the life journey I am on today.  That single 4 minute song changed my life.  Granted I was four years old, it was still about the music.  I didn’t go about my childhood singing Sesame Street, or Looney Tunes, I was singing David Lee Roth, The Beatles, AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Van Halen, and Metallica.  It was music, not a gimmick.

This was music in its purest form.  There was no “special formula” to making a hit song.  You either had it, or you didn’t.  No amount of studio work was gonna save your album if your vocalist was only a face and smile.

I eventually graduated from that punk kid blasting Metallica from his dads trunk, to the punk kid in his dads house splicing together cassette tapes and making crude sounding 1/8th” tape loops.  By the age of 10 I had my first guitar.  By 18 I was a student at The Institute of Production and Recording, built on top of Prince’s studio, by Prince’s engineers.  Now, I not only had the latest and greatest technology at my fingertips, I was face to face, being trained by the very same people that brought you Purple Rain, 1999, Little Red Corvette, When Doves Cry, Musicology, and much more.  And that’s only the Prince stuff.  These guys had forgotten more that morning than I might ever know.

What I learned scared me.

Evolution of The Recording Studio

In the old days (50’s, 60’s), if you wanted to record an album, you worked for months, sometimes even years to prepare for the recording process.  When it came time to record you recorded as a full band, live and straight to vinyl.  Literally recording straight to vinyl.  If your bass player fucked up, you threw away the vinyl record and ate the cost.  At one point in time, bands cut straight to cylinders which could not be reproduced.  This meant every available copy of the song was its own individual performance.  Bands were true performers.  They ate, slept, and breathed their music.

Eventually came the tape machine.  This was a turning point in music, a positive turning point.  This introduced the ability to improvise and experiment from within the studio.  Artists like The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Rolling Stones, and Jimi Hendrix took the recording process to new levels.  Now you had four tracks to work with.  You could record the drums to two or three, bounce down to track one.  Record the bass and guitars, bounce to track two, record more percussion, backing vocals and whatever else to track three, and finally vocals to track four.  This could all be done in seperate takes, mistakes could now be edited out and rerecorded.

The tape machine slowly evolved, adding more tracks, more inputs, linking and syncing of multiple tape machines, and more editing capabilities (still by manually slicing pieces of tape).  Eventually we had faders.  Faders seem like the simplest thing on a mixing console, however, the possibilities these offered engineers was endless.  Now we could record automation (various volume and pan changes) by physically playing the console like an instrument while the sound bounced down to stereo left and right.

Eventually the tape machine gave way to Digital Audio Workstations.  While the transition was slow, now it’s next to impossible to find a professional recording studio without a DAW. The DAW gave us the opportunity to record as many takes of a performance as we needed.  We were no longer eating vinyl, or tape.  If a take sucked, it was deleted, gone from the hard drive forever.

With the introduction of Pro Tools (previously Sound Tools) we were able to literally see the sound waves.  We could zoom in all the way to sample level and cut and paste individual syllables together.  We didn’t need to shuttle around on the playhead to find our precise edit spot, now we could visualize where we needed to edit.  We could also draw our volume changes, mutes, pans, and edits with virtual pencils.

Negatives to Evolution

With unlimited takes, far less emphasis was placed on the performance.  No longer did a performer need to “nail” a performance.  Now you simply sang a verse until you couldn’t sing it anymore, then compiled (comped) the best takes of each onto one seamless track.  Now you could literally pull the smack of the mouth opening from take 32, paste it to the first syllable of Take 17, with the tail of the note on take 42.  Thats just one word.

The technique of “comping” was now in wide use for everything fathomable.  Drums, guitars, bass, and especially vocalists now had the benefit of the “redo”.

Besides unlimited takes, the studio now offered unlimited (technically still limited by computing power) track counts and track inputs.  If you had the bankroll you could record over 100 tracks at once.  This put much less importance on mic placement and selection.  When we were bound to 16 tracks, we needed precise mic placement to get the best sound.  Can’t find the perfect spot in your kick to get the right amount of click and thump?  Don’t worry about it, stick ten mics around it you’re bound to get one that works.

Overall less time was being focused by the artists on performance, and far less time was being spent by the engineers trying to capture that perfect sound.

Beat Detective

Pro Tools also presented us with Beat Detective.  Beat Detective is the ultimate crutch to an ailing drummer.  Now instead of needing precise timing, a drummer (or any other instrument really) can play a passage, and have it immediately placed within a tempo map.  Bands no longer needed to be “tight”.  They could all play as close to each other as possible, and let the software pull it all together in the end.

Not only could you instantly map your live performance to a tempo map, you could even extract a “groove” of your favorite drummer, from any of his recordings, and map your performance to that groove.  This took any Joe Blow playing open mic nights, and made him sound like John Bonham.

Antares Auto Tune

Auto Tune is to vocals, what Beat Detective is to Drummers.  Lets say you have a vocalist who can’t hit the notes required of him or her.  In the past you either found someone who could sing, or you released a song with a vocalist who couldn’t sing his way out of a paper bag.  Now, you have them sing it anyway.  Run the signal through Auto Tune and the software can interpret what notes the vocalist is trying to sing.  It can take that F-flat and turn it into the G it’s supposed to be.  Now instead of being in tune with the rest of the band and instruments, you just need to be close, the software can do the rest.

Celemony Melodyne

Along the same lines as Auto Tune, comes Melodyne by Celemony.  Melodyne can take a piece of audio, cut it up, and place it on a visual keyboard.  With this keyboard, you can now see each individual note.  You can use this to let the computer decide where it should go, or you can drag and drop each individual note to where you feel it should be.

Melodyne is also leading the way in Audio to MIDI conversion.  Lets say you can’t play the piano, but you have a bitchin’ piano chord progression in your head.  Well, now all you need to do is set up a mic, hum the chord passage using your voice, the software will convert that audio to MIDI data, and place it on the same previously mentioned visual keyboard.  Apply a piano patch from any MIDI keyboard or soft-synth application, and you have your piano chords.

Yes, now you can literally hum a piano, guitar, bass, oboe, violin, cello, and any other obscure instrument part, and instantly have your performance.

Sell Fast, Fade Away Just As Fast

As I previously blogged about in, “Piracy Didn’t Kill The Music Business…“, the music business killed itself.  National corporations took note of the newest recording technologies.  They saw what audiophile’s feared, no longer did you need real talent, or potential to make it big.  Now, all you needed was a pretty face and a strong marketing package.  Along with the technologies that took the music out of music production, came lower costs, and faster turn around times.

Entire albums were now being written and recorded by very small teams of people.  These teams sold their songs to the highest bidder, who in turn grabbed any pretty face and applied modern day recording techniques to produce the next big thing.  Combining Auto Tune and Beat Detective, anybody they found could sing on-time, and in key.  The technology was so good that mainstream America could not tell the difference.

Now what we had was a bunch of “artists” performing songs that meant nothing to them.  These songs didn’t come from their hearts, these aren’t songs they’ve had “built up in them”, these aren’t songs from past personal experiences.  These are songs that groups of higher up’s know they can shove down America’s throat.

Now every actress, and teeny-bopper on Nickelodeon and Disney is made into a pop sensation.  Look at Hannah Montana, Hilary Duff, Ashlee Simpson, The Jonas Brothers, High School Musical, any of these “acts” that have been burning up the charts.  Despite what they are conditioned to say, look at who wrote their songs.  Men, in there late 40’s, most likely located in Nashville, are writing songs about meeting high school boys, going to birthday parties, school dances, and any other cliche thing they can come up with, only to turn a buck.

This video is the most accurate representation of what I have been trying to say.  It highlights more of the “how” and not so much of the “why”, but its essentially what is causing the death of music as we know it.

All these pre-manufactured artists burn up the charts, and fade into obscurity just as fast.  Looking at a 2004 music chart, you can see exactly what I mean.  Jojo, Hilary Duff, Ashlee Simpson, Ryan Cabrera, all had number one hits.  Christina Milian, Ciara, Simple Plan, Vanessa Carlton, Michelle Branch, Ruben Stoddard, where are all these people now?  Just four years ago these people were the face of music.

The reason these people aren’t around anymore is because they weren’t musicians.  They were a product.  They were faces stuck out on stage to perform other peoples music, to crowds they would never meet.  If you build enough hype around a product, it will sell.  Whether it’s good or not.

“If you build it, they will come”

In four years we will be wondering the same about the majority of “musicians” who top the 2008 charts.

Where Have All The Musicians Gone?

The thing that’s sad, is the fact the today’s younger demographic (12-18) has next to no clue what true music is.  They don’t have the reference material like my generation had.  I’m young, but while I was growing up music was still music.  We had Metallica, Pantera, Sublime, Nirvana, Michael Jackson (the black one), Prince, and other cutting edge musicians.  They were past their prime, but they were still relevant.

I can’t say the same about today’s kids in middle and high school.  Who do they have to look back on and say, “These guys had it together, these guys were music in its most natural form.” I honestly can’t name one band since 1993 who has had a serious impact on music, that has actually gone mainstream.  I’m sitting here trying to come up with someone and I can’t.  We’ve had “successful” musicians and entertainers, but I mean someone that REALLY changed things.  Someone we will still be listening to twenty years from now.

Look at a 2007 music chart, who on that list can you honestly say will be around in twenty years?  Amy Winehouse? Avril? Plain White T’s? Fergie, Akon, Fallout Boy, Ne-Yo, or Jordin Sparks?  Unfortunately in the age of unlimited possibilities, we have lost our airwaves (both radio and TV) to the highest bidders (mainly Clear Channel and Viacom).  So kids actually have LESS choice in new music, unless putting in real effort to find something new.

Conclusion

In an age of digital technologies, with the right amount of money, anyone can sound like a world class musician.  We’ve lost the link between musician and music.  Music is no longer a result of someones blood, sweat, and tears.  Music has now been dumbed down to simply a product.  If it doesn’t sell gabillions of units, its a colossal failure.  Major record companies no longer have the time to wait around and develop artists.  Companies need to justify their budgets every quarter, and every year.  This means find the highest selling market, over saturated it with every tweeny-bopper product, or whatever the current fad happens to be, until the market collapses, then move on to the next big thing.  We’ve seen it with boy bands (N Sync, Backstreet Boys), new wave “punk” (Fallout Boy, Simple Plan, Good Charlotte), girl bands/entertainers (Spice Girls, Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne, Pink), and so much more.  We will undoubtedly see the same from the current crop of teen sensations (I’m looking at you Miley Cyrus, Jonas Brothers, and any of the Disney “artists”).

Hopefully there is some kid out there somewhere who will one day change the face of music as we know it.  We can only hope.

Tags: Business, Death, Music, Recording

4 Responses to “Death of The Song”

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website