When you turn on the radio, you might think music all sounds the
same these days, then wonder if you're just getting old. But you're right, it
does all sound the same. Every element of the recording process, from the first
takes to the final tweaks, has been evolved with one simple aim: control. And
that control often lies in the hands of a record company desperate to get their
song on the radio. So they'll encourage a controlled recording environment
(slow, high-tech and using malleable digital effects). Every finished track is
then coated in a thick layer of audio polish before being market-tested and
despatched to a radio station, where further layers of polish are applied until
the original recording is barely visible. That's how you make a mainstream radio
hit, and that's what record labels want.
.....
"When old-school producers and engineers talk about modern music,
they're convinced that better recorded music would save the music industry from
itself. Producer Joe Boyd wrote of the Buena Vista Social Club album (4m copies
worldwide): "It's success is usually ascribed to the film or the brilliant
marketing. But I am convinced that the sound of the record was equally if not
more important." Beautifully recorded records by Norah Jones, Bob Dylan and
others have certainly shifted units. But the Red Hot Chilli Peppers' brutally
mastered Californication has sold 15m copies worldwide.
Why does most music sound the same these days? Because record companies are
scared, they don't want to take risks, and they're doing the best they can to
generate mainstream radio hits. That is their job, after all. And as the skies
continue to darken over the poor benighted business of selling music, labels are
going to cling to what they know more fiercely than ever.
So is that is? Have we arrived? Will records continue to increase in loudness
and homogeneity until literally everything sounds like Californication?
Optimistic engineers dream of a day when the world's music listeners
spontaneously rebel against over-processed music. The Loudness War will end and
people will stop buying Black Eyed Peas records. A new era of high-fidelity
recording will be born, and men in white coats will once again stride
confidently through acoustically-lively studios placing their vintage
microphones with care"
I welcome my impending cootdom. You kids get off my lawn!!
Why records DO all sound the same | Word Magazine
Via
Zenarchery
