buhdge

 

up the down escalator:
music and musical recording

 

Without going into a complex expostulation on ancient music, musicology, or the purity of the Gregorian chant, etc., let’s use Bach and his contemporaries as our starting point.

As Professor Tufts said in one of his classes I attended in college, “Bach was the ideal composer, his works being perfect and…” Blah, blah, blah...

He then continued with his idea that music since Bach had deteriorated throughout each period. (Funny that he too chose Bach as the starting point…lol.)

Having Borodin, Mendelssohn, and Mozart as my favorite composers, I supposed at the time that Professor Tufts was strongly struck by the fugal work and modal counterpoint of Bach, as well as his use of the Well-Tempered Clavier, etc.

I didn’t necessarily agree with him on this and many other subjects, of course, but in a way, I think he was correct.

Although I enjoy the compositions of Mozart, for instance, much more than anything by Bach, I can see the down spiraling of serious music through the ages. Today’s composers are absolutely laughable because they only compose for self-glory. They stink.
 
If you take this or that point in pop music such as Jazz, Rock, Country, etc., and look back to it from today you will most likely see that there is a downward movement from your starting point.

But having limited space for this column, I would like to make my main point in regards to the recording of music.

I feel that sheet music is a form of musical recording, but I’m talking about actual recorded sounds. The now-ancient forms notwithstanding, let’s make our starting point at vinyl.

From 78s to 33s and 45s, the feeling of listening to vinyl is different from listening to a digital recording. Without going into a technical explanation of “sweet harmonics” and what digital actually is, I find it interesting that even in the various forms/speeds of vinyl records there was a down spiraling. As technology improves, noise is eliminated and high fidelity is achieved but something indefinable is lost.

I’m not talking about over-compressing and normalizing recordings, although that is also problematic.

When I was recording my LP Merseybeat and had the great Doug Fieger as a guest on one of the songs, he asked me what sampling rate I was recording at. I told him and he said that although he records on 2-inch tape on a reel-to-reel, he now felt that the 192 sampling rate was indistinguishable from 2-inch tape!

I thought that was great, even though I didn’t record at 192.

All of the product from artists nowadays is recorded at the highest possible sample rate with the most expensive microphones, and the feeling I get from listening to a 78 from the 1920s or 1930s, or a 33-rpm album from the 1950s or an old Beatles record on vinyl just blows away all the modern stuff!

When we (the Sprague Brothers) visited Norm Petty’s studios in Clovis, New Mexico while on tour a few years back, we had an old reel-to- reel tape played for us through their old monitors (the song was Buddy Holly’s “Heartbeat”) and it was pure feeling, power, and soul.

Lots of people have recognized that “old” recording techniques are superior in spite of the noise and all, but you could take a square from the 20s, 50s, whenever, and record them back in their day and the music would still sound lame. That’s because one of the missing components today that is in the magic that is in those old records is talent, aka “feeling,” aka “motive behind the music.”

Anyway, vinyl became home reel-to-reels, then 8-tracks, then cassettes.blah, all worse than the format they were replacing.

Each new vehicle gave the labels a way to resell their libraries but the medium was inferior to actual vinyl records.

I’ve heard stories of people being tested by having them listen to a digital CD and then a vinyl record and they can’t tell the difference.

But these tests are a failure because the experience of playing vinyl records in your own home beats the dry, lousy, unsatisfying experience of playin’ some CDs at home, hands down.

Some describe it as “warmth,” but whatever you want to call it, there is no doubt in this Sprague Brother’s mind that vinyl records rule.

Speaking of the Sprague Brothers: We recorded at Louie and Sally Nesman’s studio a block from our house on York Avenue in Wichita Falls, Texas many times. Louie had an acetate machine  that he had used for years (including when Buddy Holly recorded there), so we had many acetates made of our releases by him, including our first record.

Those Sprague Bros. acetates still sound great today! (Nesman Studios is long gone.)

Now the CDs themselves are fading with the MP3s and digital downloads, file sharing, etc.

As usual, the quality of the sound follows the downward trend. People like to say that this file or that file is “CD Quality” but it is far from the truth. An MP3 or similar file is about a tenth the size of a non-compressed audio file. Once again, the music industry and technology take something and make it worse.

The main advantage in digital over analog is in the editing since there is no tape-splicing and rewinding. But there is no doubt that vinyl and analog reproduce music with more soul and warmth.

I think the time has come for labels to start making vinyl exclusively again. It would, after all, give them a new opportunity to resell their catalogues…lol.

And, in closing, my own philosophy towards music itself:

“Music is an acknowledgement of beauty in the face of adversity and tragedy, for music has always been the least important thing in life, and the most important thing in people’s lives.”--Frank Lee Sprague, July 2009

Party on.

An MP3 or similar file is about a tenth the size of a non-compressed audio file. Once again, the music industry and technology take something and make it worse.

Frank Lee Sprague
July 3, 2009