Your entire argument on behalf of Ken (and if that's what he was actually trying to say, he certainly should work a little harder on his emails) is based around the notion that the listener should fetishize how a record or song was made.
That can be interesting, especially for us musiciany types, just as the technique used to produce a piece of visual art might be. It can inform the appreciation, but I fail to see how it is the appreciation. If you tell me that my coffee this morning was picked by a legless, one armed man on a mountainside, strapped to a goat, carried bean by bean to the roaster by a trained pigeon who ate it and pooped it whole into the (roasting oven?), I would put a lot of attention into my coffee drinking ritual. But if it tastes like Folgers, it tastes like Folgers.
Most listening, though, is just like my morning coffee ritual: casual, done while occupied with other tasks, other thoughts. It is an integrated part of the listener's worldlife and only a central part at moments that the listener, not the musician chooses.
You can poopoo this, lamenting as you have, the decline of the qualitylistener, but you are incredibly late to the game. Adorno was doing itin 1938 ("On the Fetish Character of Music and the Regression of theListener") and even he was quick to point out that by gosh no generation hasn't said this.
"I have no reservations that Kenneth could make a CD that would make SOB
sound like it was played on a Casio. But who, besides a handful, would
APPRECIATE it?"
If the man can't write a song, and I have yet to hear an Elhardt piece, why would I care if it sounded nice? It's the artist's duty to seduce the listener, not the listener's duty to honor the artist's stature or importance.
The presence of my synth isn't going to move anyone, repulse them, excite them, make them dance or cry or remember a sunny day or a rainy one or send them screaming from the room; its presence won't draw you into contemplation. That's my job. So make me more new kit, Mr. Schreiber, and inspire me to find new ways to do all of this.
cheers,
eric f
--- On Thu, 9/11/08, Paul Schreiber <synth1@...> wrote:
From: Paul Schreiber <synth1@...>
Subject: [motm] Carlos/Tomita/Fast versus everything else
To: "MOTM List" <motm@yahoogroups.com>
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008, 11:03 AM
I think what Kenneth is talking about are the differences between the
pioneering synth LPs of the past versus what is out there today.
a) in 1968 (S.O.B), the Moog modular, to most people, was on the level of
'Star Trek'. It cost the same as ∗4∗ new Corvettes. And people back then
still thought TV was 'magical'.
b) there was also back then a greater "appreciation of effort" for lack of a
better term. Electronic music, up until S.O.B., was BugMusic on the highest
order (all that tape splicing, musique concrete stuff). Then SOB rolls out,
complete with NY Times articles about replacing musicians on Broadway, etc.
But as to the technical tour de force required, many folks back then in the
electronics hobbyist clan (like me) fully appreciated the work involved.
Especially if you wandered into a music store and played with say a ARP
Odyssey or MiniMoog for 5min. The first thought was "Holy Crap!, they could
create those LPs from THIS??!?"
Remember, no ProTools, no super-whiz-bang plugins, no real fancy external
effects processing.
Today, it is very difficult to find "sympathetic" people towards technology.
iPods, cell phones, GPS? Meh....$100 at Best Buy. Nowadays, people just are
not interested in the HOW, just the WHAT. The days when I used to read
Popular Electronics like the Bible are over (I spent HOURS reading the
'Build a Nixie Tube Clock' issue. To me, having an explanation how you use
the 60Hz line frequency to then count with circuits was just the coolest
thing in 1971 I could hope for).
The example I like to use is Toshi Doi of Sony and the CD player. (see
http://www.eetimes. com/disruption/ profiles/ doi.jhtml) I personally think he
is the smartest EE on the planet. When he was working on the CD player, his
job was to figure out the physical format of the data on the disc (Philips
part was to design the player itself). So, how long do you think he worked
on it (the error correction, the indexing, the interleaving, etc). 1yr?
3yrs? How about ∗10 years∗, by ∗himself∗ all hand calculated on legal pads.
Most people don't realize that the audio data content on a CD is about 40%,
the other 60% is error correction and other stuff that allows horribly
scratched CDs to play anyway. The audio you hear from a CD player was
actually read off the disc about 400ms prior, you have to do the block
Reed-Solomon ECC stuff before the DACs.
But CD players?...Pffttt. ...$29 at Target. Mostly now in cars. Toshi Doi?
Who is THAT?
Sadly, I too miss the "good old days" of synth LPs (I used to collect them).
Even the most cheesy Moog records, I bought EVERY ONE ∗just because∗, well,
it's Moog record! But to 'draw' the line' between a pure modular synth
record (again, SOB) and a 'synthesizer record' (say Fast's first "Synergy")
and then to a mostly synth CD (Robert Rich anything) is going to fall on
deaf ears (so to speak) in today's world. With a bazillion bad YouTube
videos, every record is sample-based and crappy MP3s on iPods played back by
11 cent earbuds (yes, the stock Apple earbuds cost 11 cents) what do you
expect?
I have no reservations that Kenneth could make a CD that would make SOB
sound like it was played on a Casio. But who, besides a handful, would
APPRECIATE it?
Paul S.
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