Music Evolved

So much has changed in the music business in the past decade alone. That’s not really news to anyone, but it’s so much more than just the distribution model being turned on its head, for which I am extremely grateful. I remember being 13 and being so frustrated by $18 CDs at Camelot Music. (Does anyone happen to remember when Camelot was one of five music retailers charged with price-fixing?)

By the time Camelot had become FYE, I had sworn off buying new CDs completely, only picking up used ones from the independent record shop across the street. And when they didn’t have what I wanted, I swapped CDs with friends and also broadened my music tastes by scanning the dial on the radio, discovering blues, jazz, and even classical. On a small scale, I adapted to make things work for my situation and, on a much larger scale, adapting is the very thing that the music industry hasn’t been able to do so well. Or so it seems.*

Realistically, since the pressing of the first compact disc, technology was in the works that would someday displace those retailers wanting to charge an extra five bucks for liner notes and a jewel case. Looking back, it seems that no one really believed CDs were dead at the dawn of the 21st century, except for Apple….and Napster.

If you fast-forward almost a decade later, in case you aren’t aware, things have also dramatically changed for the musician. A lot of major studios have shut their doors for good because cheaper technology has allowed musicians to record at home, rather than having to optimize $100,000 sound consoles that always look so cool in trade publications. These days, a very basic, but effective, recording setup can be had for a couple thousand dollars.

So now, the musician-entrepreneur can record at home, pay a nominal fee to an aggregator, who then passes submitted music along to sites like Amazon and iTunes, and you then hope, through self-marketing and sheer talent, that someone takes notice.

Of course, the market is certainly more flooded than ever, since digital distribution is now so simple and inexpensive, when compared to the $1000+ bands previously had to pay for the initial, professional pressing of every album they self-release. And speaking of albums, even that whole concept is in danger. As we consumers have greater freedom to pick individual songs to purchase, a whole lot of junk gets weeded out that otherwise would have ended up as “filler” on a album. On the other hand, art increasingly becomes just a commodity when it gets picked apart to be recategorized to fit someone’s “workout mix” on an iPod, as an example. On the other, other hand, the proliferation of radio in our lives is hardly debatable, and no one has ever seemed to mind that radio has always been single-driven, often pulling only the strongest songs from an album. So it all just comes full circle.

No doubt, this whole world is changing, as the focus of business becomes all things digital. It’s an interesting time and, despite all the problems/challenges this complex world faces, it’s also more exciting than ever to see what advances in sciences and the arts the world will come up with. Stay tuned, and let’s enjoy the ride together…

Taking a break from recording……

So a while earlier I was starting to write an entry under duress. The words and phrases just kept getting darker and darker, so I hit CTRL+A and DELETE and thought I would start again.

Starting fresh, happy Thursday to you all. Although I should be mixing audio rather than typing, I really need to take a little break. My throat is getting raw from trying to experiment with comp vocals. Sometimes I tell myself that the words are the key ingredient in the mix, but then I always revert to Nirvana. After listening to “modern rock” radio for 15 or so years, I still don’t know all the words to most of that band’s songs.

Nevertheless, I am looking for flow. I want it all the elements to sound good and fit together, and my building frustration earlier came from audio software that just wouldn’t cooperate. I am on a strict, though self-imposed, deadline. My day job resumes next week, and I was hoping to have 5 songs totally done and ready to ship by….well…tomorrow. I wrote my first song eight years ago, but I haven’t recorded with modern technology for quite as long. The learning curve is still there, and I discovered just a couple days ago – when I thought I only had one song left to wrap up – that I have been crushing my song mixes. They don’t really sound that bad, but they also don’t sound as clean as they should. Bringing down the level of the audio tracks seems like such an easy fix, but it really changes the sound of the mixes, so I have to make some changes accordingly. This all stems from researching the “loudness wars.” There is a lot of technical jargon involved in explaining these compressed signals and the reasoning for them, so the simplest suggestion is to do a “loudness wars” search on YouTube, if you don’t have anything better to do. Under that search, the Metallica video is the best example of what’s going on….and how crappy the audio sounds that’s being sold today.

Well, I am off. I have been sipping on some hot tea while writing this, and I think I am ready to get back to putting some more vocal tracks down. Adios!