Just a note about modern music, and the story that made me realize this.
I was listening to Oasis's album
(What's the Story) Morning Glory
today. I got the chance to just sit down and chill, only listening to
the music, focusing on nothing else. I like doing this, just listening
to the music, because you actually get to really hear what's going on
instead of just having music playing as background noise.
Anyways, I decided to listen to
(What's the Story) Morning Glory,
since it's one of my favourite albums, and I haven't heard anything off
of it in a good 4 months. So I parked myself on the couch in our front
room, powered up my iPod, and plugged in my headphones. I wasn't
listening through anything amazing, just a pair of Skullcandy Ink'd
buds, but they do their job just fine. I proceeded to get nice and
relaxed, ready to enjoy the album.
I was halfway through the album when I realized two things. First of
all, I didn't really remember the songs that I had already gotten
through, which was weird, since I was devoting my full attention to the
music. Secondly, I realized that I couldn't wait for the album to be
over, and had a very strong urge to just skip the songs. These two
revelations shocked me, as
(What's the Story) Morning Glory
has always been one of my favourite albums ever. At this point, I
started to really critically listen to the music, trying to figure out
what was wrong.
Another track in, I realized that the album's main problem was that it
was flat. Not tonally, but there were absolutely no dynamics
whatsoever. No rise and fall in the music, no expression, nothing. With
no dynamic range, every part of the music just came screaming at me,
never letting up. This tired my ears to listen to. Even the instruments
were the same level, without variation. Because they were the same
volume level as the rest of the music, the drums had no punch. They
didn't cut through the guitars and vocals on the beats. They were just
there, merely present, with absolutely no force whatsoever behind them.
There was no true pulse to the music. Everything was the same. There
was no life to it. The music was a bore to listen to, and my brain was
subconsciously turning it into background noise. Also, with the
complete lack of variation, I felt compelled to skip tracks, since
listening to it tired me out.
THIS IS THE BEST ANALOGY I CAN THINK OF ABOUT LISTENING TO THE
MUSIC. EVERYTHING FELT THE SAME, AND IT WAS HARD TO LISTEN TO. JUST
LIKE THIS IS HARD TO READ. ISN'T IT ANNOYING HAVING THIS SECTION
ENTIRELY IN CAPS? EVERYTHING COMES SCREAMING AT YOU. THERE'S NO
DEFINITION TO ANYTHING, AND EVERYTHING BECOMES BORING. YOU FEEL A
STRONG DESIRE TO SKIP IT, SINCE IT'S HARD TO DECIPHER, REALLY ANNOYING,
AND JUST SUCKS TRYING TO READ IT. THE MUSIC IS JUST LIKE THIS
PARAGRAPH.
Now, wasn't that annoying? I'd bet money that half of the people that
are actually reading this skipped part of that last paragraph. It's
just plain annoying to read, like music without dynamics. The
realization that
(What's the Story) Morning Glory
is like this made me wonder two things. First of all, why hadn't I
realized this before? It's not like the album suddenly changed
overnight. I don't know if I can really answer this question. Perhaps I
never have truly listened to this album before, and instead, just
treated it like background noise, not giving it any real attention. My
second question was why on earth would any mixing engineer mix the
album like they did? The constant barrage of sameness makes it almost
painful to listen to the music, and destroys what the music is supposed
to sound like. Why would they torture the music in this way? To answer
this question, I did some research on the Internet. Call me a music
nerd, if you must. I just really wanted to figure out what was wrong
with the music.
Enter what's called "The Loudness War". While watching T.V., you've
probably noticed that commercials are substantially louder than the
program you're watching. This is because loudness really grabs your
attention, and you notice extra details when things are loud. The
labels producing modern records are applying this same technique to
many, if not most, new albums that are coming out. In order to grab
your attention, they try to crank the music as loud as possible.
However, this destroys a lot of the music's quality. The best way to
show how this happens is to hear it, since it is audio, after all. This
Youtube video demonstrates the basic principle of the loudness war, and
how it hurts sound quality:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Gmex_4hreQ Trust me, watching it is a two minutes well spent.
You can now see how cranking up the volume kills the music. It has no
feeling, no life, when everything is cranked up to the max. As a
result, you get bored of the music when listening to it, and just want
to skip on to something more interesting and full-sounding. What's
worse is that there's very little most mixing engineers or artists can
do about it. The label is the one who forces the music to be loud, and
the label employs both the artists and the engineers. Unless they
butcher the sound, the artists and engineers are out of a job.
This truly terrible trend is present in most modern day music.
(What' the Story) Morning Glory
is far from the only album to suffer from the mutilation of too much
loudness. This problem plagues most modern albums. And there's very
little we can do about it. We are stuck, listening to music that is
flat and uninteresting. Yes, it's better than not having the music, but
it still hurts to realize that the music could have, and should have,
sounded so much better.
A couple of interesting links/reads about the Loudness War:
Youtube: The Loudness War (I linked to this video earlier)
Rolling Stone Magazine: The Death of High Fidelity
The Future of Music: Tearing Down the Wall of Noise (One of the best reads on the subject, in my opinion)
If you've made it this far, thanks for reading this. =D