Comments on: Sinking Deeper Every Day http://www.fluxblog.org/2009/02/sinking-deeper-every-day Thu, 09 Sep 2010 17:56:50 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.5 By: Matthew Perpetua http://www.fluxblog.org/2009/02/sinking-deeper-every-day#comment-15786 Matthew Perpetua Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:14:12 +0000 http://www.fluxblog.org/?p=2206#comment-15786 Oh yeah, definitely. That's not really what I'm thinking about though -- it's more about those connotations, and what we are getting out of this. Why is this connecting right now? And I'm not just talking about autotune/vocoder, I mean all the indie stuff that's all about heavily reverbed voices, shoegaze mutated into this digital ghost thing. That's the flipside of the T-Pain thing, or the sort of mainstream pop music where notes are digitally nudged into "perfection." Oh yeah, definitely. That’s not really what I’m thinking about though — it’s more about those connotations, and what we are getting out of this. Why is this connecting right now? And I’m not just talking about autotune/vocoder, I mean all the indie stuff that’s all about heavily reverbed voices, shoegaze mutated into this digital ghost thing. That’s the flipside of the T-Pain thing, or the sort of mainstream pop music where notes are digitally nudged into “perfection.”

]]> By: 2fs http://www.fluxblog.org/2009/02/sinking-deeper-every-day#comment-15785 2fs Thu, 19 Feb 2009 16:05:39 +0000 http://www.fluxblog.org/?p=2206#comment-15785 The whole question of what seems "natural" is a vexed one, of course. I think I read that when Bing Crosby became popular with his "crooning" vocal style (entirely dependent upon the microphone, since singing that intimately in the presence of a full orchestra could never be heard otherwise), critics claimed he couldn't "really" sing, or that it was absurd that such an artificial, obviously "false" recording should be accepted. And many changes in perception of what's "natural" vs. what's "overproduced" have come along over time. No one nowadays bats an eye if an acoustic guitar seems to be as loud as a trombone section - even though, acoustically, that's pretty much impossible. Or consider the way the piano has come to connote "intimacy." On one level, this makes sense: it's playable by one person, and the instrument is the sort of thing that might be in a person's house rather than an impersonal recording space...but on another, it's sort of absurd: a piano is a tremendously complex machine, large and heavy and not the sort of thing to be carted around, or used to serenade a loved one outside a bedroom window, for example. Same's true with a string section: it sounds "romantic" until we actually visualize a bunch of string players hanging around in the background while the singer confesses romantic intimacies. Point is, I guess: twenty years from now, maybe vocodering, AutoTuning, and the like will seem as unremarkable as standard studio EQing, light reverb, or double-tracking - none of which cause much occasional for comment as to "naturalness," even though they are, of course, all completely artificial products of the studio recording process. The whole question of what seems “natural” is a vexed one, of course. I think I read that when Bing Crosby became popular with his “crooning” vocal style (entirely dependent upon the microphone, since singing that intimately in the presence of a full orchestra could never be heard otherwise), critics claimed he couldn’t “really” sing, or that it was absurd that such an artificial, obviously “false” recording should be accepted. And many changes in perception of what’s “natural” vs. what’s “overproduced” have come along over time. No one nowadays bats an eye if an acoustic guitar seems to be as loud as a trombone section - even though, acoustically, that’s pretty much impossible.

Or consider the way the piano has come to connote “intimacy.” On one level, this makes sense: it’s playable by one person, and the instrument is the sort of thing that might be in a person’s house rather than an impersonal recording space…but on another, it’s sort of absurd: a piano is a tremendously complex machine, large and heavy and not the sort of thing to be carted around, or used to serenade a loved one outside a bedroom window, for example. Same’s true with a string section: it sounds “romantic” until we actually visualize a bunch of string players hanging around in the background while the singer confesses romantic intimacies.

Point is, I guess: twenty years from now, maybe vocodering, AutoTuning, and the like will seem as unremarkable as standard studio EQing, light reverb, or double-tracking - none of which cause much occasional for comment as to “naturalness,” even though they are, of course, all completely artificial products of the studio recording process.

]]>