RE: Why contemporary music sounds terrible

["L.A. Angulo" <labaloops@yahoo.com>]

Absolutely Brian!those Zeppelin record production
still amaze me,and they are made to be turned up!those
drum sounds still sound fresh and the sounds page got
out of those small amps and guitars are the most
interesting ive heard in rock n roll history.What ive
always found brilliant about such a band was the
passion behind it,there are mistakes all over the
place like the solo on "baby i am gonna leave you" the
instrumental "black mountain side" or the bleeding
echo at the end of "you shook me" or the cut off lost
part by their engineer which i believe page fired on
the spot which they had to solve by pasting another
part at the begining of "celebration day"... 
but is the honesty power and passion,no frills or
thrills they played back in those days that make them
so special to this day,almost as if it was the last
time they were going to live...
Luis




--- greg williams <gregorwilliams@comcast.net> wrote:

> Brian,
> 
> I am also a fan of Page and his production in
> general in terms of dynamics,
> but have you heard "How the West was Won"? It was
> hugely disappointing for
> me in this regard; it is squashed beyond belief, and
> so is the sound on the
> Zeppelin DVD, which was released around the same
> time. I don't know if it
> was Page himself who suddenly caved in or his
> mastering engineer, but I
> really wish I could hear those recordings with some
> dynamics still intact. 
> 
> ~Greg
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Brian Kupferschmid
> [mailto:apparitionapparition@yahoo.com] 
> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2007 8:48 AM
> To: Loopers-Delight@loopers-delight.com
> Subject: Re: Why contemporary music sounds terrible
> 
> I wholly agree with this, I believe a lot of today's
> music is crap, not just because the talent is
> lacking,
> but the dynamics as a whole is lacking.  Aside from
> super compressed material, the bands themselves only
> see to know two sounds, clean and dirty.  Where's
> the
> middle ground?  I can listen to a blues song and
> still
> hear the dynamics, I can hear the accentuations on
> the
> notes being played to create emotion.  A lot of
> today's pop and rock music lacks that.  Mind you,
> Metal in all it's forms, isn't supposed to be
> dynamic
> in the musical sense, but why would you squeeze the
> life out of any song to make it in your face?  My
> favorite stuff to listen to would be anything Jimmy
> Page produced(Led Zeppelin for sure).  He composed
> his
> songs and used the studio to enhance his material
> with
> what he refers to "light and shade".  The
> combination
> of close and room micing, soft versus loud and
> layering acoustics with clean electrics and so on. 
> If
> you think about it, even some of the heaviest
> sounding
> stuff he did, wasn't all that distorted. 
> Ultimately,
> his use of dynamics traslated over into the
> mastering
> part as well, what makes the big parts sound big is
> the small parts, thus making the song truly
> engulfing.
>  Another band to use dynamics to it's fullest is
> Tool,
> because of the ebb and flow, you can listen to an 8
> minute tune and not get bored, because the shifts in
> phrasing and dynamics keeps you there, and what's
> more, everytime you listen to it, a new part pops up
> you didn't realise was there before.  Anyway, I've
> spoken what I think, so I have to agree, part of
> what
> is annoying about today's music is the lack of
> dynamics, it wears you out.
> --- Krispen Hartung <khartung@cableone.net> wrote:
> 
> > This is an interesting article posted on the jazz
> > guitar discussion group. 
> > Jeff Kaiser and I had some interesting discussions
> > about the abuses or 
> > misgivings of compression and the quest for hotter
> > levels in newer CDs when 
> > I was mastering the discs for the Boise
> Experimental
> > Music Festival....all 
> > the different ways you can increase levels (for
> CDs
> > to sound comparable to 
> > other professional CDs in your player),  yet
> > maintain natural dynamics, etc. 
> > Now, it has occured to me that often times when I
> > hear a CD, especially 
> > pop/rock CDs, and I think to myself, wow that is a
> > really hot and "in your 
> > face" level", the mix also doesn't have much of a
> > dynamic range...some guy 
> > is screaming his lyrics, or you can tell that is
> is
> > practically blowing his 
> > brains out to get that tone out of his horn...but
> it
> > is no louder than the 
> > section where he is wispering poetry over an
> ambient
> > section.  It's like 
> > compress, compress, compress, limit, limit,
> > limit....turn that wave form 
> > into a solid bar, and then raise it to 0db...in
> your
> > face, 100% of the time. 
> > Below is the first time I've seen this referred to
> > as exhausting, but it 
> > makes sense. Even if you turn your stereo down,
> > there might be something to 
> > be said of giving the human pyche a break with
> > natural dynamics and more 
> > space. 
> >
>
Tension....release....tension...release....louder....softer,
> > etc, 
> > etc.
> > 
> > This article/topic, could I suppose turn into the
> > discussion of the 
> > pschological results/benefits of adding more space
> > to one's compositions 
> > (not making the composition "better" or "worse,"
> > mind you).  Can adding more 
> > space and natural dynamics put the human psche at
> > ease? Is it more condusive 
> > to generating natural emotive responses? (natural
> > meaning those that one 
> > might expect on the bell curve of a person, day to
> > day).  Good questions. I 
> > suppose part II of the article below could explore
> > this: "Natural dynamics 
> > in music and 'Horror of the Vacuum'."
> > 
> > What would be hilarious, or maybe frightening, is
> if
> > something happened to 
> > our atmosphere, such that it added a form of
> > compression and normalization 
> > to 0db to all sound....imagine walking down the
> > street, hearing a boy wisper 
> > to his mother, a man scream at his dog, a
> > streetworker jackhammering, cars 
> > beeping, etc...but everything  never veered much
> > from 0db....even the 
> > ambience in the atmosphere (white noise) would be
> > 0db. We might go insane. 
> > :)
> > 
> > I included some excerpts from the article below,
> as
> > well.
> > 
> > Kris
> > 
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > 
> > Everything Louder Than Everything Else: Have the
> > loudness wars reached their 
> > final battle?
> >
>
http://www.austin360.com/music/content/music/stories/xl/2006/09/28cover.html
> > 
> > "You listen to these modern records, they're
> > atrocious, they have sound all 
> > over them. There's no definition of nothing, no
> > vocal, no nothing, just 
> > like - static."
> > 
> > - Bob Dylan in Rolling Stone magazine
> > 
> > "There's something . . . sinister in audio that is
> > causing our listeners 
> > fatigue and even pain while trying to enjoy their
> > favorite music. It has 
> > been propagated by A&R departments for the last
> > eight years: The complete 
> > abuse of compression in mastering (forced on the
> > mastering engineers against 
> > their will and better judgment)."
> > 
> > "The mistaken belief that a 'super loud' record
> will
> > sound better and 
> > magically turn a song into a hit has caused most
> > major label releases in the 
> > past eight years to be an aural assault on the
> > listener," Montrone's letter 
> > continued. "Have you ever heard one of those test
> > tones on TV when the 
> > station is off the air? Notice how it becomes
> > painfully annoying in a very 
> > short time? That's essentially what you do to a
> song
> > when you super compress 
> > it. You eliminate all dynamics."
> > 
> > For those already confused, Montrone was
> essentially
> > saying that there are 
> 
=== message truncated ===


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