GUITARISTS: WHY THE FATE OF GREAT MUSIC IS IN YOUR HANDS
THE VALUE OF MUSIC
We all picked up guitars and amps because we love music. We just can’t resist playing it onstage or at home, and when we’re not riffing away ourselves, we’re invariably listening to someone else doing it. Yes, we love music, pure and simple – and that’s why we need to fight to preserve it in all its hi-fi glory…
These days, it seems we’re bombarded with a constant barrage of music everywhere we turn.
Recently, we were privy to a discussion about the way music is made today that’s likely to interest guitarists. The topic was producers’ practices in times of ubiquitous MP3 compression and cheap earplugs.
Have they gone over to producing specifically for low-fidelity consumption, dialing down the production values to match the bottom-feeder medium? Is anyone taking the trouble to craft music for true audiophiles anymore? Or is this the era of audio commodities – productions that are cobbled together quickly and cheaply on a laptop because they’re going to be consumed quickly and cheaply on some smartphone?
Disposable Heroes
These are legit questions considering that the outcome of what can be a very pricey recording chain – instruments, mics, mixer, FX and studio monitors – often ends up being piped into the listener’s ears via crappy $5 dollar headphones.
To add insult to injury, signals are usually over-compressed to maximize loudness. All the life is squashed out of tracks so they end up sounding about as dynamic as a power drill.
It seems contemporary music has devolved to some competition where the loudest wins. This is somewhat ironic, because audio technology has never been as powerful and affordable as it is today.
So, is good sound more a matter of attitude and less a question of money, or is music going the way of places where you can get your fats and starches under the Golden Arches; you know, fast-food for the ears? Will audio quality suffer the same fate as just about everything else that has been deemed disposable in our throwaway society?
We might sound like old farts saying this, but music was better in the old days! Wasn’t it? You need only listen to a modern-day remix of an older tune alongside the original to hear how 21st century mixing just involves turning every dial up to 11…
Please bear with us, as we’re leaving the tech talk aside for the moment to take a more philosophical view of music and its making.
Back in great-great-grandpa’s day, live was the only format and good sound was inseparable from the artist or musician’s performance. When ways were found to capture music on more permanent media in the early 19th century, those results were sonically underwhelming.
This began to change in the 1950s with the advent of solid-state technology. Radios, record players and speakers started getting better, lighter and cheaper from year to year, and the technology spread like a weaponized contagion.
Soon people around the world were grooving to the strains of canned music.
A brief history of music
A more or less uniform audio standard emerged in the 1960s as manufacturers vying for consumers’ favor began upping the ante in the high-fidelity stakes. This even went so far as to create a separate DIN standard (DIN 45500) (DIN = Deutsche Industrie Norm) in Germany at the time, which laid down binding minimum technical standards for hi-fi equipment. Music lovers were delighted as the notion of the audiophile listening experience took hold.
Higher-quality recordings drove demand for higher-definition playback devices and vice versa. The producer had become an artist in his own right, and fans spent a bundle in pursuit of higher fidelity.
The audiophile listening experience remained the norm among music fans until shortly before the turn of the millennium. Most had a hi-fi stereo set at home, its purpose being to render music as faithfully as it was recorded.
The vast sum of money spent on all this was a reflection of how much value was attached to the great common denominator that is music.
A new millennium, a new sound
Then things got weird and the pendulum swung hard in the opposite direction.
The mp3 standard arrived at the dawn of the noughties and handy little MP3 players soon followed. The web began to serve up a constant stream of music on a silver platter. Audio standards dipped and music consumption habits changed markedly within just a few years.
For decades, the record player was the listening tool of choice for music fans across the globe. These days, it’s been overtaken by digital formats (as have the cassette and the CD) in the popularity stakes, but there’s a core audience who swear by the joy of vinyl.
For decades, the record player was the listening tool of choice for music fans across the globe. These days, it’s been overtaken by digital formats (as have the cassette and the CD) in the popularity stakes, but there’s a core audience who swear by the joy of vinyl.
The price of music and player technology dropped like a rock thrown in a hypergravity field. Art is generally expensive because supply is low. When supply is overabundant, its value is diminished.
Today quantity reigns supreme over quality.
People stroll around with smartphones serving as their personal stereo sets, which can be an okay audio experience with decent headphones. But that annoying blaring of little Samsung, Sony, Google-Pixel and iPhone speakers? Unimpressive, to say the least, and the musician has every cause to contemplate how low quality can go, and if anything can be done to reverse the trend.
Back in the day, music fans were the arbiters of good taste in audio; today musicians are fine fidelity’s fiercest advocates.
The relentless pursuit of tone
And none are more concerned with championing that elusive sweet spot than electric guitar players. Hooray for our axe-wielding brothers and sisters in arms, we say.
Imagine if guitar tone had taken a similar downhill trajectory in recent years.
Who would be willing to invest all those hours honing their craft if their tone was iPhone thin and as tinny as an empty sardine can? It’s our ilk that proudly flies the audiophile banner.
So, our notorious pickiness about tone – that fussiness that can drive us to fits of foam-spitting fury – is praiseworthy indeed.
We engage in marathon tube A/Bing sessions, put different speakers and cords to the test, swap out pickups and even obsess over the relative merits of ash versus alder as a tone wood. We guitarists never give up in our efforts to eke out that last drop of tone from our rigs.
Our fates were sealed with that first chicken-skin moment we found that personal tone-zone we love to dwell in.
It’s like what Lyle Lovett says about redneckness: guitar playing is a disease; you catch it on your fingers and it crawls right up your sleeves. And if you experience those magical moments with a band, it’s like mainlining sonic bliss straight to your soul.
That’s the center of our little universe, and the guitar world revolves around it.
We often find that guitarists who listen to music try and digest it in the highest quality possible. Sure, we’ve all got MP3 players these days, but we reckon the percentage of musicians to non-musicians who prefer old school analogue sounds is way high!
The quest for spine-tingling tone is the impetus that propels every innovation in every piece of gear in the signal chain and the magnetic force that draws us to that gear. In marked contrast to passive music consumers, which have let the gravity of convenience drag ‘em down, we active makers know that the only way is up and we’ll keep flapping away until we fly.
The quality of our amps, studio gear, digital audio workstations and production software has certainly soared. Vintage sentiments aside, all the tools of our trade are better and more affordable than ever.
This makes it so hard to grasp – and stomach – the fact that music has been so dramatically devalued, as all those smartphone users and streaming services would attest.
Think about it: putting together a mix tape was hard work, but a labor of love, and the sequencing of your favorite compilation burned itself into your hard drive to be treasured for as long as your synapses keep firing.
The loss in audio quality was just a price you had to pay. Now music is magically multiplied with no more effort than a mouse click, with the track’s audio quality remaining intact.
Back in the day, you experienced the value of music first hand every time you handed hard-earned bucks or hard-won allowance across the counter to pay for an LP or CD.
These days, music is ‘obtained’, to put it politely, and the ethically dubious notion of ‘why pay if it’s free?’ has gone mainstream.
Stealing music is bad!
Here, too, guitarists are a breed apart from their contemporaries.
We know that great sound doesn’t come free. There’s a price to be paid in thousands of hours of wood-shedding and the money spent on quality gear. And that’s why guitarists, musicians and artists in general have a mission to accomplish. They are the ambassadors of the finer things in life – music and art – and they must not allow the value of our cultural treasures to be diminished.
Music is not just a clever money-making machine that manipulates our minds with cheap imagery, even cheaper video clips, and third-rate chart hits performed by interchangeable ‘artists’.
And music is more than a mere marketing ploy.
It affects us emotionally in ways that words cannot. It is a galvanizing force and a soothing balm; there’s even scientific evidence that music improves brain development.
Children who learn an instrument at a young age are better students later in life. Musicians’ brains are more efficiently networked – that’s the only reason we’re able to cultivate the art of improvisation.
So music serves important social and intellectual functions.
We guitarists are always after the best tones from our instruments and amps. Perhaps this explains why we seem to demand the best from the music we consume as well…
And we musicians also enjoy one of its most uplifting social benefits. It’s the ultimate social contract.
In what other pursuit would you listen to, interact and collaborate with, and offer feedback to your cohorts with such intensity?
Besides, where would we be without music, without Beethoven’s Ninth, Strauss’ airy waltzes, without Bill Haley, Elvis, the Stones, the Beatles and Pink Floyd? Without Steve Vai, Sepultura and Michael Jackson? Without Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Edith Piaf, Korn and AC/DC? Insert your favorites here.
Our world would surely be a drab, dull and passionless place without all that chicken-skin music.
For some, there’s nothing more stirring than the tears spilling into beers to the strains of a country ballad. For others, it’s that fist-pumping anthem that lets them shake off the chains by which we’re bound to the human condition.
For guitarists, it’s those goose-bumps you get when your touch, timing and tone come together at the perfect moment.
Because we’re worth it
Music is a multivitamin for the soul. It’s the great communicator that transcends national borders and language barriers. It’s an empathy generator that helps make us feeling beings rather than just sentient creatures. It’s been a force for political, cultural and social change.
We firmly believe it’s a conduit for peace, love and understanding. And that’s why the culture of the fine arts must be kept alive – it defines who we are, thoughtful and compassionate people.
And perhaps that’s the most important reason to never relent on your quest for even better tone. We’re worth it.
And it does matter how things sound and work because of the way it makes us feel.
How about you; how important is good sound to you?
Have you experienced that magical chicken-skin moment on stage or in the rehearsal room that changed everything? Here’s hoping you keep on making your music, never settle for sucky sound, and pursue your passion to help restore the value of music.
And don’t forget to tell us about your magic moments….
Oh, and one last thing! If you really want to keep your music live, human and analogue, you can watch Dave Grohl’s fantastic film ‘Sound City’ and find out if it inspires you! Over and out…
Analogue: Indescribable? Measurable? Tangible? Comprehensible? Hardly any musician can escape the magic of analogue sound…
