Kevin Deschwazi
Well-known member
The following is a quote from Billy Childish (some of who's music I like a lot). Please note that I don't neccessarily share his opinions (i don't have adequate knowledge of music recording/production), but I'd really be interested to hear what some of you people who dedicate large parts of your life to recording music make of comments like this.
"I advocate mono over stereo. Stereo, after all, is only a gimmick based on the idea that, as we have two ears, we can have two speakers and flog twice as much junk to the mugs.
The valve is also preferable to the transistor. The transistor is superior to digital. Analogue recording is better than DAT. Analogue gives character to sound and DAT destroys it. Digital recording has been hyped so as to flatter the egos of the witless into believing they need to be able to hear a mouse fart on The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s album (which, incidentally, is the Beatles’ worst LP, not their best). The most authentic recording ever was made in a field on a wax cylinder, or on a cassette player in somebody’s kitchen. Chart music is not the recording of an event, but a synthetic commodity produced in the same manner as a factory sausage. This kind of plasticising of life destroys the roots of what makes music worth having in the first place.
A synthesised bassoon is only meaningful as a substitute for a real one. The remastering, remixing and digital enhancing of old recordings is pathetic. One of the arguments used to validate this practice is that early recording artists did not have the benefit of more modern recording techniques. Applying the same argument to art, I suggest that all of Van Gogh’s paintings should be sanded down and redone with an airbrush. A painter can be cack-handed and not obsessed with showing off and still be taken seriously. Yet in pop culture only one standard “studio” style of recording is deemed permissible. If we take sound to be the musical equivalent of colour, then Eurobeige is the only pigment allowed."
Discuss
"I advocate mono over stereo. Stereo, after all, is only a gimmick based on the idea that, as we have two ears, we can have two speakers and flog twice as much junk to the mugs.
The valve is also preferable to the transistor. The transistor is superior to digital. Analogue recording is better than DAT. Analogue gives character to sound and DAT destroys it. Digital recording has been hyped so as to flatter the egos of the witless into believing they need to be able to hear a mouse fart on The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s album (which, incidentally, is the Beatles’ worst LP, not their best). The most authentic recording ever was made in a field on a wax cylinder, or on a cassette player in somebody’s kitchen. Chart music is not the recording of an event, but a synthetic commodity produced in the same manner as a factory sausage. This kind of plasticising of life destroys the roots of what makes music worth having in the first place.
A synthesised bassoon is only meaningful as a substitute for a real one. The remastering, remixing and digital enhancing of old recordings is pathetic. One of the arguments used to validate this practice is that early recording artists did not have the benefit of more modern recording techniques. Applying the same argument to art, I suggest that all of Van Gogh’s paintings should be sanded down and redone with an airbrush. A painter can be cack-handed and not obsessed with showing off and still be taken seriously. Yet in pop culture only one standard “studio” style of recording is deemed permissible. If we take sound to be the musical equivalent of colour, then Eurobeige is the only pigment allowed."
Discuss
