Also be nice, everyone. This is for funsies not fightsies.
Mine is that Prince is suuuuuper overrated and merely a meh songwriter at best.
Music has always been heavily influenced by the physical spaces it occupies and the people who occupy that space. From classical symphonic music to EDM to stadium rock, all music relates to these spaces and adapts to the experience of their audiences. And the modern space is, disproportionately, headphones. And the modern audience is, disproportionately, a single person.
In other words, nearly all the modern music you listen to was created as an expression of capitalist atomization.
Yeah music made for headphones is more and more common. Lorde’s first album “Pure Heroine”, for example, is straight up meant to be listened to on headphones. A lot of the spacial effects don’t sound right on speakers.
An example of this is bass panning from one ear to another, or switching from ear to ear/channel to channel. (“Buzzcut Season” off of that album does this.) Doesn’t work well on speakers, bass isn’t spacial, your brain can’t really tell where it’s coming from. Its how something like a subwoofer in the corner of a room or theatre can work. But with headphones, where each ear is fully isolated from the other (if there’s no crossfeed involved) and you have an entire driver centimetres from your ear, it can produce a wonderful spacial effect.
I think the panned bass thing is a good example, yeah. Another big one is little intricacies being lost in large rooms. For example, jazz clubs traditionally being less reverberant so things like intense bebop runs were still intelligible and therefore able to be popularized whereas that stuff becomes like mush in a lot of really reflective spaces. It’s why so many bougie theaters have spent so much money on giant movable wooden panels for their walls and ceilings. I think a lot of modern metal music has a similar dynamic with headphones.
Yeah a lot of headphones can lose that sense of space or become super wide, and sound very unnatural with regards to details, with music made to be listened on speakers, because there are no reflections, at all. The drums on metal and hard rock go to mush quite often. The Harman target can help, but still.
And as you said, listening in a room full of reflections is no better either. Just another extreme. And treating rooms is expensive unless you’re fine with old egg carton boxes everywhere.
david byrne writes about this in the first chapter of his book “how music works”. more about the first part than the whole atomization thing but it’s still really interesting
There’s a loooot of music that I just didn’t get until I heard it performed live. A lot of 50’s rock music sounded super cliche to me until I played in a cover band whose leader was real good at picking hard dance tunes and some of that shit can really get you going with the right band.
I’m not really understanding this, how are the prevalence of headphones related to the capitalist atomization?
Prior to the advent of recorded audio, music was something people performed together, often as a family or community. Yeah, there were orchestras and professional singers, but the dominant way that people interacted with music was much more ephemeral and communal. Over time, more focus has been placed on music as a form of consumption. It became a marker of personal taste and identity, and importantly it did so in the way that all commodities do over time: in an increasingly individualistic manner.
I think the most immediate way to see how this processed had worked in the recent past is to look at the gentrification and corporate consolidation of music venues. But I think the whole thing about headphones is kind of a combination of these two phenomenon. Music is driven by its space and headphones are literally the driest space possible. And music is also increasingly individualistic under capitalism, so some music dovetails with capitalism better than others
Maybe, but part of the reason headphones are prevalent is the death of space and time and money for art and community. It’s much easier to go to a live concert when the ticket is $5 and you can take a streetcar to the venue. It’s an inevitable tension, but there’s a diversity of goals if people also engage with live music more often.
Lo-fi beats to study and relax to is just “Elevator Music: Youtube Edition”.
I dont think thats really controversial and I say that as someone who likes Lo-fi. I like Lo-fi because its simple and chill and doesnt interrupt my thought process while reading or working. (Its very nice background noise) I also like metal and rap but neither of those gernes are a great fit while reading or doing complexer tasks at work because the tempo and lyrics distract me.
Like you can dislike Lo-fi for being “Elevator Music” but thats kind of the whole selling point and exactly what the people want.
I like trance because it all sounds the same if you’re not paying attention, but if you do pay attention there’s plenty of depth and texture to explore.
Like I can use literally the same playlist for both active listening and background noise.
not quite trance, but have you ever listend to ‘on the other ocean’ by david behrman?
Oh, for sure. I actually do like it for the same reasons you do. But I just think we ought to be honest with ourselves about what it is.
Piss is bad actually. I have a poor diet and me pee pee smells funky. ew, who wants a face full of that shit? NOT ME.
It’s okay to go though music phases. You’re not a poser or a sell out, your tastes just changed as you got older and life happened. That is probably the most normal thing in the world. And I say this as a punk.
Also audiophiles are just weird, and I’m the type of guy to build my own obscure technology speakers (like DML/panel speakers) because I like the sound. They’re very easy to grift. Though this is more of an ice cold take.
Hotel California is still the best song to try out new speakers or headphones, or DIY creations. And if it doesn’t sound right, don’t get those headphones or speakers. For some reason this just works.
Politics and music only mix well of the artist knows what they are doing. Listening to Dua Lipa try to sing a feminist song on future nostalgia was torture. She does not know how to write political music.
Most people don’t know how pitch correction or autotune even sounds like. There are some breakout albums when a band got signed by a major label full of pitch correction on the vocals and no one cared and they still have their “100% real” reputation intact.
A recent one, everyone should listen to music from a DML/panel speaker paired with a subwoofer at least once. Even if the panels are made of cardboard or polystyrene, and the subwoofer is a cheap piece of junk, it’s just a completely different sound. Maybe not the best or most accurate, but to have a whole panel of something radiate sound is unique. In general people need to try different ways of listening to music. And it doesn’t have to be expensive audiophile nonsense.
Last couple of foo fighters albums have been unlistenable and Nickelback tier, as much as I like their earlier albums. Makes me appreciate the talent of Cobain much more.
Musicians and music listeners should DIY more. Maybe it’s just my DIY punk side, but seriously there’s a lot of beauty in it. Make your own band shirts. Modify your instruments. Plug guitars into weird shit (provided it won’t break it). People are too scared of making mistakes these days. If it breaks it breaks :shrug-outta-hecks:. Better to try than do nothing at all.
Bunkers! New hit out now!
Artwork is Dua Lipa doing the Albanian Eagle with her hands.
Musicians and music listeners should DIY more.
My band is hitting the point where we’re either doing shows that personally interest us, or DIY stuff. Around here, at least.
There are some breakout albums when a band got signed by a major label full of pitch correction on the vocals and no one cared and they still have their “100% real” reputation intact.
Do you have any examples?
Nearly anything recorded in the last 20 years has some amount of auto tune. Most people think auto tune is that weird vocoder shit. That’s not it. Auto tune is exactly what it says: it tunes your actual voice or notes being played. It also takes away all inflection and natural imperfections and makes voices sound bland.
Once you hear it, you can’t unhear it.
Hotel California
For classical this song is Charpentier’sTe Deum. Once at equal temprament, once at original.
Isn’t that used as the Eurovision TV network theme, and has been the opener for all the Eurovision song contests?
That could be why, many are familiar with it.
Plug guitars into weird shit (provided it won’t break it).
Whatever you do, do NOT plug a 1/4" guitar cable into the speaker output on your little 15 watt solid state Gorilla amplifier, put a 1/4" to 1/8" headphone adapter on the other end, and hook it up to your sound card’s input jack. (Or in my case, my Amiga’s outboard DSS8 sampler.)
