Anyone know where I can buy a good quality wax cylinder?

[Elmo89m]

From what I gathered through a Google search I don't think the guy gives a damn about fidelity for fidelity's sake.

He seems much more interested in the fidelity of the SOUL of the music.

It's difficult to disagree with a guy that says popular music is a commodity.

It is.

It's prepackaged and sold and it might as well be sausage.

Give a listen sometime to the Folkway's American Music collection, recorded in the field by Alan and John Lomax. On the early recordings you can here the lathe in the background cutting the recording! Those recordings capture a folk music history that is long gone and died with the musicians. If not for those recordings we wouldn't have the faintest idea of American folk music from the early 20's and 30's.

I think from the passage above his bitch is about using technology to doctor the recording. You honestly think any of the big touring acts travel without racks of Autotunes??? Even Faith Hill is bound to have an off night. But NOBODY wants to hear THAT!

I know I'm one of the few DeadHeads around here, and say what you will about them, but when they sucked, they sucked for all it was worth.

And they never apologized for it.

But by not bending to use technology to cover up the fuckups, when they shined it was all them.

I think it points out a big problem in our modern society: the idea that everything has to be PERFECT all the time.

There's damned little soul in that. And when I've seen acts struggle through a set, often as not the crowd will get behind them and help get them back on track.

Music is about interaction. It's about reaching for that lick you've never been able to pull off. I'm as guilty as possible of NOT interacting with my music. Involving other people can be a huge pain in the ass! But the best music I've heard and seen was usually right off the cuff and improvised on the spot. Maybe it was a distillation of years of playing those licks, but you know you've had those magic moments when the players talking to each other through their instruments made your hair raise up on the back of your neck.

I feel fortunate that I've had plenty of those experiences. In arenas with 20,000 other people there watching, or around a campfire listening to a bluegrass band at a jam. Those are the best moments, when folks "grind diamonds out of time", as one old DH once put it.

I was moved by that. Truly. Even though i disagree with a some. Like what you said about popular music being 'sausage' thats not true. If a band becomes popular and mainstream they havent changed and are worth no less then when they started. Take a band like Radiohead for instance. They have three albums that are hugely popular and have become more poppy sounding as they go. That doesnt make there music worth less. On the other side of the fence there are bands started for the soul purpose of commercialism. Everyone's favourite punk rocker Ashlee simpson would be one of these types. And when it comes to these people i disagree that they are like 'sausage' as well. I call them shit.

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Wax cylinders can sound good, they can sound bad, it depends on the weather, and the person making them. I make the cylinders from scratch, and record on them. They have a presence and character that is amazing. Don't get me wrong, they are not HI Fi, but they do record everything that a modern recorder does not. about the softest sound they record is a whisper. They certainly sound better than a cheap cassette recorder. There are still over 100,000 Edison cylinder PHonographs, pretty good for somthing that has not been made since 1929 (the last cylinder records were recorded electrically)

Wow, this is an old thread! Thanks for your input, I've never used a wax cylinder to record in fact I've never been in the same room as one so I wasn't dismissing their use. I have a fair few of Alan lomaxes field recordings and I enjoy them very much.

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

Take a band like Radiohead for instance. They have three albums that are hugely popular and have become more poppy sounding as they go. That doesnt make there music worth less.

Sorry, I just don't get that. Radiohead have released 6 studio albums. OK computer (their 3rd) doesn't sound any more 'poppy' than Pablo honey (1st) to me, in fact I'd say it's less poppy.
And their most recent 3 albums have moved very much away from the mainstream sound.

 

[Elmo89m]

im sorry i think ok computer sounds a lot more poppy then say. the bends or kid a and pablo honey..i guess we have differing opinions of poppy

 

[timboZ]

Anyone know where I can buy a good quality wax cylinder?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1442&item=6534314026&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

Less than 2 days left.

 

[noisedude]

The Bends is Radiohead's most 'poppy' or 'mainstream' album. OK Computer is a masterpiece but you can see that they were (and still are) going down the road of 'critically acclaimed' music.

 

[Elmo89m]

ok...i conceed...radiohead was not the band to pick to exemplify the point i was trying to point out.

 

[giraffe]

i aggre whith the premise of the statement, maby the stereo comment seems a little out thare. but over all i think i aggree.

pop music- is not a divinci, it's a photograph of a warhul.

 

[riantide]

I'd love to know when "pop" became a four-letter word. It might very well be the broadest term we use to describe a genre of music. I mean, it seems to me that while pop refers to (unfortuantely) Switchfoot and Rob Thomas, it also refers to Wilco, The Beatles, U2, New Order, Smashing Pumpkins, Belle and Sebastian, Nick Drake, Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, etc... The Greats! How can you say that pop music is "a photograph of a warhol"? What, then, qualifies as a "DaVinci"?? I'd love to know what some of your favorite records are, oh long-necked one.

And Billy Childish's comments on "chart music" I am compelled to label as assenine and uninformed. Sausage. That's such a load I can't even believe it. Do you mean to tell me that every band that does well in the charts or sells x number of records is crap? Those are the words of a bitter thirtysomething that has channeled his angst about being unknown into bombastic snobbery. At least, that's how I read it.

And Elmo, like you I am very glad that someone catalogued that amazing period in American folk music. But do you think people should still record that way? Every time I listen to a Nigel Godrich mix I'm pretty happy that technology has come as far as it has, to be honest.

The Van Gogh argument is about as feeble as they get. The last time I checked, nobody had invented a digital paintbrush that quantizes and sound-replaces your painting. It's an incredibly stupid analogy.

And the whole, "At least he HAS an opinion" bit is pretty silly. I think the Hitler reference is completely applicable. Just because someone has an opinion or is sticking to their guns does not inherently mean that their opinion is informed in any way or that it's somehow honorable. This guy is a self-righteous whacko neo-luddite and a snob. That's my opinion.

For any of you who have seen the movie "DIG," I'm imagining Billy Childish as an older version of Anton from Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Sorry for the rant, I'm sure someone will tear me to pieces in no time. Anyway, in the analog vs digital debate, where DOES the line get drawn? Is is that digital inherently sucks or that people are using it in a very sucky way? And are new gadgets aiding or interfering with the art of audio engineering and production? I personally think analog records will probably always sound "better", but some of the records on my "top 10 of all time" list are digital and they sound and (most importantly) FEEL great.

Thoughts?

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

First let me say that you *can* hear mouse farts on the Sgt. Pepper's album if you play it backwards....that's what killed Paul!

Seriously though...(and I apologize here and now for yet another of my pattented looooong posts, but here we go)...on the face of it, like most of you, I totally disagree with everything that guy had to say. From the outset, saying that stereo was a gimmick makes about as much sense as saying that our having two ears is a gimmick.

Next he'll be saying that color photography is a gimick; that to make a picture of something other than monochromatic takes away from the soul of the content. Anybody who's seen the purple granite of the Rocky Mountians in the glow of an orange sunset would immediately know the limitations of Ansel Adams' b/w technique, beautiful as it may be.

All that said, however, I'd like to know in better detail the context within which he voiced that rant. I have the feeling that perhaps he was going hyperbolic just to amplify a much simpler point, and one in which I would happen to agree, and have actually expressed on this forum before:

"It's the content, stupid."

1.) Those of us solely on the control room side of the equation wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for the musicians. I am friends with, and related to, quite a few musicians of varying degrees of taste and talent. For several boring logistical reasons, while I have a pretty ok knowledge of and ear for music, I only blow a little blues harp, and that not all that well.
So I have enormous respect for the musicians (especially the ones that are really good), and thank the powers that be every time I get to put my wires and knobs to a truely inspired performance just to get it saved for further enjoyment. But the undeniable fact will always remain that musicians can always make music without us engineers, but we engineers could never even exist with the musicians. For that reason - like it or not, fellow engineers - the music will *always* be far more important than the recording.

2.) Great music or performances transcend the quality of the recording. As much as I have a critical ear for music production and recording quality, to this day I still go back to my old Son House, Duke Ellington, etc. recordings and listen to them almost daily, right along with today's stuff. While I may have them on CD or MP3 now, they are still just copies of old 78rpm records (or worse). They are full of scratches, have a combined frequency response of about 1/8th of an octave and a dynamic range the width of one of Charlie Parker's hypodermic needles. The sound quality sucks, OK? But the performance - more than that; the music - is so electric and can even now in the 21st century get so under my skin as to render the quality of the recording almost academic...

But notice I said "almost". Given the choice, I think anybody who would choose the acetate recording in Mom's kitchen over a full-fidelity capture to a 2" Studer, or who would think that the Alan Lomax recordings would sound worse and not better if he had trekked all over the South with a portable DAT machine instead of that public-library-quality tape recorder is just fooling themselves.

So, the question to me is, are the two points above part of what the author had in mind when he decided to make the point by going way over the top with his rant, or was he being literal and serious and just plain over the top for no rational reason whatsoever?

Kevin/Nick, what's your take on that?

G.

 

[enferno]

it's all prefrence. analogue vs. digital.

some people like the warm attributes that analogue produces, yet others like the dry, in your face, harsh feeling that digital produces.

it's just like saying red is better than blue, cuz, well, red is just better!

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

it's all prefrence. analogue vs. digital.

Your'e right, of course. But I think his thrust goes beyond that golden oldie argument. He's not just talking about analog vs. digital, I don't think (nor was I) so much as he was talking about lo-fi vs. hi-fi. Hell, he even started out by saying that mono was superior to stereo.

But, I'll re-iterate; I don't think even that was his point. I think he was just saying in a way-overblown manner that it's the performance, not the production that counts. And I don't think I could really disagree with that, personally. But, given a choice, I say, "Why not have both!"

G.

 

[hueseph]

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.

I think it all comes down to this sentance which I totally agree with. Recording has become so sterile that it often lacks character. Bands are so tied to technology that they often cannot perform without it(ie:Ashlee Simpson, Millie Vanilli). It's a travesty. Producers would rather get the performanc perfect than allow for the subtle nuances that make for an interesting and honest representation of the music. Just my opinion.

 

[Kevin Deschwazi]

I'd like to know in better detail the context within which he voiced that rant.

Here's the full article, I just cut and pasted the bits really relevant to the actual recording process, there isn't that much more to it:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/collective/A948323

Of course a lot of what he says is bull, I hope no-one assumed I thought he got it spot on or anything (that would make me, with my two monitors, a hypocrite ).

So, the question to me is, are the two points above part of what the author had in mind when he decided to make the point by going way over the top with his rant, or was he being literal and serious and just plain over the top for no rational reason whatsoever?

The article reeks of his eccentricism, I think if he'd thought about it some more, got a good nights sleep and had some camomile tea before sitting at his typewriter the article may have looked a little more like what you wrote in your points 1 and 2. I think that's essentially what he's trying to say and those are the concepts which I agree with, why he went way over the top? I have no idea, he's an eccentric and I think he enjoys being seen as such so it was probably fairly calculated.

Riantide- pop seems to mean different things to different people. Pop in the literal sense is everything you've described (anything that's 'popular') but not everyone would consider much of the talent you mentioned to be pop. So you can't assume that when someone says pop they mean the exact same types of music as you.

 

[giraffe]

The Van Gogh argument is about as feeble as they get. The last time I checked, nobody had invented a digital paintbrush that quantizes and sound-replaces your painting. It's an incredibly stupid analogy.

i'm sorry, you odviously don't get the anology.
it's largely about the ART in question, and much less about the reproduction.

a wharhaul dates your taste, he was wonderful and important in his time but his work will not survive with the reverance given to the real masters.
and any one who's ever been to see a legendary piece of art knows that no copy, no photo, no mimograph no matter how good can match the real thing.
that, i'm afaraid is simply not true of wharhaul (however you may spell it)
it can be perfectly reproduced but does not inspire, i promise, the awe, life that is completely unexplaineable about even just a sketch of divinci.

thare is no way to describe it unless you have seen it, go out of your way to see some legendary art, it will not dissapoint.


























P.S. screw you.

 

[riantide]

No, Giraffe, it's NOT about the art:

"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."

He's talking about the technology involved in sound reproduction and about the idea of retroactively improving something to make it, in terms of fidelity, "up to snuff." Technology, not art. And it's still a stupid analogy.

And you didn't answer my question. If you are willing so say something as bold as "pop music is a photograph of a Warhol (which is how HE spelled, not just me) and 'x' is a DaVinci," I'm just asking you what you consider "x" to be. That's all. You spend a lot of time talking about art but if you agree with this guy I have to wonder whether you've ever spent five minutes behind a console. And please don't tell me to go see art until you can spell.

Kevin - you're totally right, I think of pop music as being a lot more encompassing than some, it's true. It just really irritates me to hear people write off an entire genre of music because of how successful it's exponents have become. And you made it very clear from the beginning that you are merely providing fodder for discussion. Good fodder, at that. Thank you.

And to Hueseph: just please remember that when you say "chart music" you're talking about a lot of really good stuff in with the bad. You can't possibly mean that EVERYTHING that reaches the Billboard or CMJ Top 100 is crap that was poorly recorded, can you?

SouthSIDE Glen: I could not agree more. I could listen to a wonderful performance or, even better, to a great song that was recorded on any medium imagineable more than I could listen to crap that was recorded on the best console with the best deck and the most expensive mics. What gets me about the Childish blurb is exactly that hyperbolic speech to which you referred. I admit, I'm given to it at times as well. But I try to at least keep it somewhat reasonable. I hope I'm not failing miserably.

 

[hueseph]

And to Hueseph: just please remember that when you say "chart music" you're talking about a lot of really good stuff in with the bad. You can't possibly mean that EVERYTHING that reaches the Billboard or CMJ Top 100 is crap that was poorly recorded, can you?

No. You're right. I don't think that all pop is crap but much of it is. Where there are musicians involved, I know that many of pop artist use top grade session musicians. As far as country is concerned, I hate to admit it but I personally think some of the best musicians go to country music because it's the one genre that allows a musician to still find work and make a decent living. Even still, there is a tendancy to overproduce these days. IN regard to the Andy Warhol thing. I tend to agree somewhat. There is a lot of music that is built around cut and paste which, for me, takes the humanity out of music. There is something special about a virtuoso who can play an astonishing melody without electricity. I can't say I've ever watched a dj that made me think "Man! Now that guy really knows how to drop a needle!" or an electronic artist who made me say "Wow! A lot of people know how to press play but this guy presses play with real feeling!" . I'm not saying the only real musicians are virtuoso's but I do think there is something to be said for a person who has spent the time to learn his/her instrument whether it be a piano or voice. That being said there are some who manage to infuse the humanity into electronica. Bjork being one.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

What gets me about the Childish blurb is exactly that hyperbolic speech to which you referred.

Exactly. Which is why I asked the Kevster about whether this was just his style of writing or whether he was being literal.

The more I think about that Childish article, the more I think it's just written in the Hunter Thompson "gonzo journalism" style; not meant so much to be taken literally as meant to make a particular point by taking it way out to the extreme, at the same time pretending not to be extreme about it. (Kind of like the best comedy actors are the ones who play their parts totally straight.)

But since I'm not familiar with this Childish fellow, I didn't know if that was typical gonzo styling on his part or whether the guy noramlly writes like Tom Clancy and has just gone off the deep end here.

The more I think about it, the more I think he's just HST's long lost brother, in which case I think it's brilliant.

G.

 

[riantide]

Hueseph, we are cut from the same cloth, I believe.

As far as the analog vs. digital debate is concerned, my only problem with digital is that it affords people the opportunity to make music "perfect". And when people use it that way, it stops sounding like music to me. I would much rather hear every nuance of a great musician's performance than hear some nitwit that's been chopped and slid to death.

That's another thing that kills me: I don't think that bad musicians should expect to sound good. Owning a studio, it's a very hard call. I don't like, on sort of an ethical level, things such as AutoTune, Beat Detective, etc. But I DO want to give my clients a product that they're happy with so as to get a return customer and good word-of-mouth. I guess I think about "the good old days" when you just HAD to be good enough to cut it in the studio. Not to mention those musicans of old were the reason the records sounded so good. Good musicians have inherently great tone, great dynamics, and typically choose the right things to play so that when it comes to mixing, everything just works. Listen to "Pet Sounds" for Pete's sake.

Now I'm not pretending that there weren't some really clever tricks that people came up with using tape machines. Nor am I pretending that there aren't some people making really amazing and soulfull records with DAW's. It's just that now the tricks seem to have taken the place of skill (to a certain degree) and that's too bad.

Bottom line: you can get a performance to sound "perfect" with a DAW, but it will probably never SOUND or FEEL as good as Steve Ferrone's drumming on "Wildflowers" or Mick Jones' guitar work on The Clash records, you know what I mean?

 

[giraffe]

I suggest that all of Van Gogh’s paintings should be sanded down and redone with an airbrush."

the medium is, sometimes, part of the art.
i think that's what he means.

Bottom line: you can get a performance to sound "perfect" with a DAW, but it will probably never SOUND or FEEL as good as Steve Ferrone's drumming on "Wildflowers" or Mick Jones' guitar work on The Clash records, you know what I mean?

sounds like what i said already.
i said i aggree with the premis of the statement, and i think that is it.

If you are willing so say something as bold as "pop music is a photograph of a Warhol (which is how HE spelled, not just me) and 'x' is a DaVinci," I'm just asking you what you consider "x" to be.

only time will tell what X and Y will be.