Why contemporary music sounds terrible

["RICK WALKER" <looppool@cruzio.com>]

I enjoyed reading the article on the history of compression and brick wall 
limiting
in modern music and especially looking at the graphs of the examples.

I had a couple of thoughts about compression, both pro and con:


1) Only little of the music that this community makes,  even gets onto 
radio.
And, as the guy in this article points out,  even if you make a more 
dynamic 
CD  the Radio has
automatic and very sophisticated frequency controlled compression to even 
things out anyway:
This means that we might just start a trend back toward more dynamic 
recordings
here and away from brick wall compression in this community 
..............one that will allow our
fans to merely turn up the volume of their stereo if they want to hear the 
music louder.

2) Alternately, I am currently playing, listening to and composing a lot 
of 
music in the industrial/noise realm
(in between sensitive recording sessions with different world acoustic 
musicians..............lol)
and there is something really cool about a completely brick walled EBM or 
Power Noise track.

It has a sound that is really different and in your face in aggressive way 
that is part of the aesthetic appeal
(to some, of course) of the music to be produced this way.

I remember hearing the Simple Minds  "Don't you, Forget about Me"  at a 
movie theatre when it first came out
and it was just enormous using heavy compression in it's mix.   It was 
really powerful and I went out and
purchased it the next day because of it's sound.

Compressing the hell out of drumsets, as an example,  really makes the 
drum 
set sound different, timbrally
Not necessarily better mind you...........there's certainly room for both 
aesthetics but I
look at recording as almost a form of audio 'sculpture' if you will and 
this 
kind of over the top
compression and clipping just becomes a different texture of musical clay 
(thanks for bearing with that metaphor)

If you over compress you get 'pumping' or 'breathing' which is considered 
a 
bad thing in a lot of tradtional music.
I love that sound though when used in electronic music and use it for it's 
own purpose because of the timbral
quality it has.

Someone wisely said that one's worst character defect can be a powerful 
character asset if used with
conciousness and I imagine this is the wisest musical approach instead of 
an 
'all or none' tack.