Chalkhills Digest Volume 14, Issue 16
Date: Saturday, 3 May 2008
Chalkhills Digest, Volume 14, Number 16
Saturday, 3 May 2008
Topics:
Compression and EQ
I can't believe what I'm hearing...
Speaking of Road Trips
Re: Uffington tattoo
"Beating of Hearts" is the MySpace song of the week
Amish Country
Gedankenexperiment
NY doc & Homo Safari
Re: A lost gem
re: We_Are_Amused
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---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 15:40:36 +0100 From: Robert Wood <robert.wood@apostrophe.co.uk> Subject: Compression and EQ Message-ID: <48149064.4070306@apostrophe.co.uk> >> No amount of production trickery or compression or equalization is going to rescue bad music, or degrade good music. If I think a record sucks, I think it sucks because the notes-n-lyrics-n-stuff suck, not because there's a microscopic distortion at a frequency only my dog can hear. << Ah, but this, at least partially, depends on whether you have decent hi-fi or not. If you're listening in the car or some dreadful iPod or MP3 player, it's not so marked, but on a decent system compression and EQ most definitely can seriously degrade the enjoyment of a song. By the same token, if a record is very well produced it can lift a record from being good to superb or from brilliant to sublime. There's a reason so much R&D goes into development of professional audio equipment: it's because it makes a bloody big difference to the quality of sound and therefore the enjoyment of the sound. I know lots of people who enjoy listening to music purely because of its sonic quality. I think it's akin to that (nonsense) phrase about a good song being a good song whether it's played on an acoustic guitar or with a full band. There are numerous examples of songs being ruined by terrible cover versions and songs being spoiled by bad producers and production.
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 10:08:42 -0700 From: Wayne Klein <wtdk123@msn.com> Subject: I can't believe what I'm hearing... Message-ID: <BAY108-W47BEBE8F3C0F6165FD16CAF9DF0@phx.gbl> Harrison wrote: > No amount of production trickery or compression or equalization> is going to rescue bad music, or degrade good music. If I think a> record sucks, I think it sucks because the notes-n-lyrics-n-stuff> suck, not because there's a microscopic distortion at a frequency only> my dog can hear.>> It's like complaining about an edition of Shakespeare because you> don't like the choice of typeface. Are you reading words-words-words,> or are you looking at 10/12 Garamond Premier under a magnifying glass> and tutting because Adobe's version skimped on the serifs by a> thousandth of a pica? Having missed the original post that Harrison was responding this sounds like a discussion on mp3's, the loudness wars, etc. If not, ignore. Well Harrison, I'd argue that you're dead wrong. Let's take your analogy a little further. Suppose it was a DVD edition of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" where the film is badly scratched, the film has been blown up from widescreen to full screen focusing on all the wrong action with the image blown up so large you can barely make out a human head from the San Francisco landscape and the dialogue is distorted so badly that you can't hear what the actors are saying and sequences are missing from the film because they've been altered in the translation from film to DVD. It damages a great film makes the experience LESS enjoyable and makes you long for the film in pristine condition where you can actually follow the plot by listening to the dialogue, seeing the images. You're robbed of the full experience the way that Hitchcock intended it nor can you make heads nor tails of important events because it's painful to listen to as it is distorted so badly it hurts the ears. The image is been mangled so badly in the Telecine transfer that you might as well be looking at a moving impressionist painting (that would be interesting if that's what the director had intended) destroying any sense of story, time and place. That is what is happening to music that is transferred with all peaks, no valleys and no dynamic range. Everything is just a giant mountain with no top or bottom so you can't even appreciate the scale and beauty. It's not something minor. It's a major alteration of the artist's vision (so to speak) and NOT the way it was intended to be heard. Perhaps you can listen to REM's "Accelerate" and appreciate the sonic gunk on the album but you have to struggle through the audio jungle of dense foilage thrown up randomly around the beautiful landscape beyond. It's annoying, unnecessary and changes the experience something no artist wants to see happen. If communication becomes so bad on a telephone that you can only make out every other word is it still the same message? Nope. You can't divorce the medium from the message completely particularly if the medium is a badly produced one.
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 18:24:00 +0100 From: "David Smith" <smudgeboy99@btinternet.com> Subject: Speaking of Road Trips Message-ID: <000f01c8a88b$7bd2eb40$4001a8c0@Dave1> Greetings fellow Chalkers of the Hill, long time no de-lurk. In #14-15 Belinda wrote thus: > Hubby and I stopped our lives, left our jobs and are touring around > USA coast to coast border to border for two months . . . Sounds to me like you guys just STARTED your lives! I'm planning something very similar later in the year - maybe I'm a sucker for detail, but I intend to spend two months purely 'doing' the West Coast. XTC content: er, nothing really. If they can't be bothered, neither can I. (It's a joke, goddamit!) Smudgeboy. From London. In Kent. Still working. But not for long.
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:57:34 -0400 From: "Bill and Bram" <bramnbill@rcn.com> Subject: Re: Uffington tattoo Message-ID: <002701c8a8b1$b2dfd370$020fa8c0@TheOne> Uffington tattoo? I go one of those a few years ago. Come check it out someday. I work at Independence National Historical Park. (You know, Independence Hall the birthplace of the United States, the Liberty Bell, etc.) I used to work at a War of 1812 park, and when I met Andy Partridge at a record signing in NYC, he knew enough about the battle associated with that park that we had a nice little history chat. Very cool! Thanks for the indulgence. PS If you come to Independence, ask for Ranger Bill.
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 17:18:31 -0700 (PDT) From: Todd Bernhardt <beat_town@yahoo.com> Subject: "Beating of Hearts" is the MySpace song of the week Message-ID: <648679.15594.qm@web32001.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Hi: Over at the XTCfans MySpace site (http://www.myspace.com/xtcfans), the song of the week is "Beating of Hearts." If you want to know which song Andy would use to torture prisoners, or why The Glitter Band played a pivotal role in this song, check out the XTCfans blog site at http://blog.myspace.com/xtcfans. Dancing us from darkest night is the rhythm of love Powered on by the beating of hearts -Todd
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:10:51 -0400 From: Christopher Coolidge <cauldron@together.net> Subject: Amish Country Message-ID: <7A34FD0F-2B6E-48E9-BD1A-245ED181B3AF@together.net> On Apr 27, 2008, at 10:30 AM, Chalkhills wrote: > Thanks XTC and Paul Wilde and the Forum folk for the friendships that > were made. > > Belinda, from London UK, currently in Amish country Pennsylvania! So how was Intercourse and Bird-in-Hand? My Internet Radio Station, Guerilla Music http://www.live365.com/stations/336124
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:14:53 -0400 From: Harrison Sherwood <hbsherwood@aol.com> Subject: Gedankenexperiment Message-ID: <160DC690-CD26-46FB-821D-D5D19DB50F90@aol.com> Allow me to propose a small thought-experiment... Suppose we had a time machine. Suppose we had Jimmie Rodgers, the Singing Brakeman, From Whom All Country Music Flows. Suppose we recorded Jimmie straight to wax in 1927. Singing, I dunno, "Blue Yodel No. 1," about a month before the first talking movie, for Victor Talking Machine Company, "as pre-eminent among phonographs as the Steinway is pre-eminent among pianos." Then, we transport Jimmie forward 81 years to today. We plunk him in front of a mindbogglingly expensive Neumann microphone and have him sing exactly the same piece of music, into a $900,000 digital system, replete with the finest plug-ins and ProTools pitch-correction trickery that Monet can buy. I challenge my interlocutors: Is it the same piece of music? Are the same emotions evoked? Is the yodel-lay-hee of 1927 the same yodel-lay- hee of 2008? Or is the *perfection* of the yodel-lay-hee of 2008 somehow quantitavely or qualitatively different from the yodel-lay-hee of 1927? And if so, what makes the difference? Harrison "We Go Meccanic Dancing'" Sherwood
------------------------------ Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:37:31 -0700 From: idahlberg@verizon.net Subject: NY doc & Homo Safari Message-ID: <0FA36ACF-9547-4862-8C29-8DB08A1C1556@verizon.net> Was watching the Ric Burns documentary on the history of New York (which is a fine series btw) and heard something familiar in the background - hey, isn't that from Homo Safari? Sure enough..'Frost Circus' was used as underscoring for a dreamy segment. Nice. Ian Dahlberg
------------------------------ Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2008 09:40:23 -0400 From: "David Stovall" <da9ve.s@gmail.com> Subject: Re: A lost gem Message-ID: <3045a4410804280640o50320b99ofaee37694f1256ea@mail.gmail.com> > From: Vocalize@earthlink.net > ... > > It was purely by accident that I happened upon Trip Shakespeare, a > group that had never before shown up on my radar. I can only speak > for the one CD I was able to find, but it's a real winner. "Lulu" was > released by A&M back in 1991 and it's stunning from top to bottom. If > you're a 'hooks and harmonies' fan of well-crafted pop ( sound > familiar?), this one should definitely find its way to your ears. > There's solid writing, clean production, a thick and assured > instrumental underpinning that supports some of the best three part > harmonies I've heard in ages. Amazon has some available in the 'new > and used' for under ten dollars. One of the guys, Dan Wilson, has > gone on to sing lead with Semisonic and has a great solo CD. "Free > Life." > > Of all the music I've actively championed to the uninitiated over the > years - They Might Be Giants, Crowded House, Joe Jackson, Mike > Oldfield and a couple others - - Trip Shakespeare just jumped onto > the short list. Just catching up on digests from the past several months, and ran across this post and had to add a loud "Amen!" I saw Trip Shakespeare live in, um, late 1991 or early 1992 (Mabel's, Urbana-Champaign, Illinois) at the urging of a good friend whose musical tastes I trust, and they did an absolutely thrilling show. This was a passionate live band who really threw themselves into their playing with hands and heart and heads,.... I was an instant convert, and bought all their releases I could find. Some of those discs (along with Lulu, look for Across the Universe as a high point) are pretty hard to find and will command high prices on eBay or the like. There have also been a fair number (prob'ly a couple dozen of TS and a comparable number of related acts like Semisonic) of live unofficial recordings make their way out to the public (and my hard drive) via trading and the bittorrent trackers like Dimeadozen. da9ve
------------------------------ Date: Sat, 3 May 2008 03:33:27 +0000 From: <homefrontradio@hotmail.com> Subject: re: We_Are_Amused Message-ID: <BAY128-W451A7DDD76B55AB9E10EC0D0D50@phx.gbl> > It's like complaining about an edition of Shakespeare because you > don't like the choice of typeface. Are you reading words-words > words, or are you looking at 10/12 Garamond Premier under a > magnifying glass and tutting because Adobe's version skimped on the > serifs by a thousandth of a pica? IMAGINE IF SHAKESPEARE WROTE KING LEAR ALL IN CAPS WITH NO PUNCTUATION OR PARAGRAPH BREAKS WOULD ANYONE HAVE BOTHERED TO READ THE ENTIRE THING TO DISCOVER IF IT SUCKED OR NOT HOW WOULD THAT INFLUENCE YOUR INTERPRETATION OF THE WORK DURING YOUR FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH IT ISN'T IN IMPORTANT TO EASE COMPREHENSION BY PRESENTING A WORK IN THE BEST POSSIBLE LIGHT TO NOT DELIBERATELY ALIENATE THE PERSON INTERACTING WITH IT OTHERWISE IT ALL JUST BECOMES WHITE NOISE AND EASILY DISMISSED DID ANYONE REALLY BOTHER READING THIS FAR Dynamics *are* aural punctuation, and if it is purely talent that makes a song 'suck' or not, then look me straight in the eye and tell me you'd be excited to hear an XTC album recorded by Steve Albini.
------------------------------ End of Chalkhills Digest #14-16 *******************************
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