I am a mostly self-taught amateur photographer. I am also a classically trained violinist. By my early teens I was playing for paying audiences alongside professional musicians both within orchestras and as a soloist. I decided around age 13/14 not to pursue music as a career although I probably could have. To me, music is as much about the emotions it conjures up as it is about anything...whatever the genre. I'm into trad jazz, modern jazz, jazz-rock fusion, baroque, classical, rock n' roll, classic rock, progressive rock and some metal.....but most electronic music just leaves me cold. That Jarre fellow had a few decent records and The Pet Shop Boys know how to write lyrics...
I was in a hotel in Crete last week, swimming lazily in the pool around 11am when a "DJ" started blasting techno music for people to exercise to. Monotonous 4/4 time heavy electronic beats, all around 150bpm with no melody, no key shifts, no time signature change for the entire hour....how on earth can people actually stand to listen to that? It has no soul, no variation....it's not even a jazz guitarist noodling to himself. It's nothing. I made an exit to the sanctity of my hotel room.
But the rot set in much earlier. I remember reading in drummer Bill Bruford's autobiography of an incident around 1990 where he was recording a drum track for some record or other (possibly Yes' ill-fated Union album) and he made a slight timing error striking one of the drums. He wanted to re-record it but the engineer told him not to worry, he could digitally edit it to sound in time....we call this "quantising" today....musicians don't even have to play the right notes at the right time, nor sing them. The software can correct almost anything. I also read of a 21st century band, possibly the Kaiser Chiefs, who were involved in a project to re-record every track from Sgt Pepper for it's 40th anniversary in 2007. Several modern acts each recorded one track. They spent the morning floundering around in the studio getting nowhere until the producer advised they play together, as The Beatles had done....rather than isolate each member in an individual booth and lay down tracks on by one. After another hour or so they got it, and the band said it also had a significant boost to how they played live on stage....nobody had ever taught them how to play together!
Starting March this year I've been frequenting a small club in my town known mostly for blues and jazz with other "alternative" music acts such as some African artists, Americana, boogie-woogie and so on. The sound engineer there is praised by every act that visits, some of whom play around the globe with A-listers. The dynamics are wonderful, and people listen....so you get the full dynamic range from pin-drop quiet to ear-splitting. I think that is what's missing from so much recorded music. Listen to the early Telarc LPs such as Frederick Fennel's Music for the Royal Fireworks.....this was an early Soundstream digital recording and it is magnificent. 100dB dynamic range on the original digital tape and 96dB dynamic range on the LP. At the time people blew up speakers with it, there is even a warning on a slip of paper not to listen at high volume. It is literally like having a symphony orchestra in one's living room. The engineers didn't close mic every instrument as is common today because they had a basic understanding that the orchestra is positioned the way it is in order to meld the sound together....bass drums at the back because the low frequencies have higher pressure, brass usually with them....strings in the middle and woodwind at the side or front with the soloist also at the front - if soloist there be. Close micing each instrument as is common today just produces too much detail and doesn't achieve the effect that the composer or conductor was trying to achieve aurally.
The pop music loudness wars just destroyed any semblance of good pop music production from the mid 90s onwards....though I'll grant you that Mark Ronson isn't a bad record producer. But the art of knowing just how to mic every instrument, of playing together properly has all but been lost. In 2016 the British band Madness recorded an album 70s style. playing together recorded to 8-track 2" tape. It sounds *alive*. I understand the studio they recorded in used no piece of equipment more recent than 1968 in recording that album and it sounds great. OK yes there's some distortion as the levels were too high at times but the band is playing as a band, recorded onto analogue tape by someone who has at least a basic idea what they're doing.
I might add that tape engineering was something else I could have gone into...having experimented with 4-track recorders, boundary mics and mixing consoles even before I was a teenager. Self taught again, as is my photography.
Ah...photography.....there's always been an element of "editing in post" even if that meant dodging and burning or tinting in the dark room. But somehow things seem to have moved from trying to get it right in the camera and making subtle alterations to not caring how you shoot and fixing everything with Photoshop. It has no soul....a real photographic challenge is using slide film where you damned well have to get it right first time.
I'll get my pipe and slippers....no...wait...I am only 46....
