The last year of real music: 1968
44
Now I know why I stopped listening to new music. Yes, aural fatigue. They've got that right.
74
I would like to see a companion piece to this that addresses the other major difference: music back in the day was largely about the music. Today, it is all about flash, pomp and performance, and much of pop sounds the same. Shows have to become more and more elaborate in order to compete, so anyone getting up on stage and ignoring all that to focus on the music really stands out.
69
When you're a hammer everything looks like a nail. Friends shouldn't let friends use their hammer improperly.
34
Like a number of those who have commented below, I think much has changed in addition to mastering techniques, regardless of the reason for their emergence. While there are exceptions, what's been missing in the majority of pop music for quite some time now is melody, development, lyric artistry, instrumental virtuosity — and what I call "transparency" in the production of a song. As a child of the late 60s and 70s, I would use Joni Mitchell, Steely Dan and others as additional examples of these essential elements. The Eagles, however you feel about their ultra-commercially successful work, are indeed examples of all these essential musical ingredients. After a music career that was interrupted by a near-death climbing accident, and then raising a family with my wife, I am now writing and recording music again that always includes melody, lyrics, guitar compositions that are challenging. And there is a small, if aging, audience for us DIYers, but the music is real, and provides a wonderful experience in a house concert setting, for example. And surprise! - supporters still pay for this kind of music and live performances.We all want that connection, and crave something that will move us. http://www.scottmartinsongs.com/free-music/
23
I found this article fascinating. My main complaint with modern music is less about dynamic range (although that may be a factor) and more about the general production value. There is a boring sameness to much popular music, due primarily to how it’s produced: the same general beat, background vocals, and instrumentation make it hard for individual songs to stand out. I admit I have never embraced rap, which is all beat and rhythm that to my ears sounds monotonous and annoying and yes, overly aggressive.
83
Mr. Milner's observations are consistent throughout the arts. The enduring comedies are not "Airplane" style gag overload but the poignant productions with peaks and valleys of dramatic tension and laughs. In painting, you can find images with visual overload--too much information--that never hold the interest of the image with a focus of attention. For this reason, urban photorealism will never trump Rembrandt. The list goes on, but variety and range of sensory experience is hard-wired into all of us. It's more than product. It's called art.
30
OK I get it, but all that scientific stuff doesn’t explain the real problem: today’s songs have no melody and no lyrics worth listening to. Remember lyrics — those poetic words that expressed an interesting thought or feeling? I own a book of lyrics which could not have been compiled today. As for melodies you can hum in the shower? Maybe not. Thank heavens we still have the oldies for pure musical pleasure.
73
An interesting spin on what now seems like an age-old issue (loudness wars). As a progressive-rock musician and avid music collector, this push toward maximum loudness and compression has really been discouraging. Additionally, my band, Advent, has opted for much higher dynamic range in our mastering (performed by the great Bob Katz) at the expense of competitive volume. If we were trying to shop the music to labels, I'm sure this would be less than ideal--and I always notice the perceived "softness" when our music is played on the radio--but I'm very happy that we remain firmly in opposition to the artificially loud and overly compressed mainstream in this regard (and musically independent as well).
23
For those of us who live in music, it’s the compression!!!!!
5
And I love ? and the mysterions
3
Current music is nothing more than a rhythm track (which is always too loud with too much bass) and a performer mouthing lyrics that no one can understand. And no melody. None. And these people get awards?
88
The notion that what Childish Gambino does is music is far-fetched by any definition. The so-called music of today is designed to be nothing more than a beat to either dance to or do your aerobics class to. It is designed to be "listened" to via earbuds, which is no way to listen to actual music. It is a perfect drug for the drone workforce that capitalism always sought to create and may have now created--it is mind-numbingly simplistic and repetitive and lacking any of the drama and emotion of rock and roll or blues.
71
From Shakespeare to twitter.....figuratively speaking that is....
20
I'm 53 so I love music from the 70s and 80s. My boys , 13 and 15, laugh at me when I play my stuff in the car, but I catch them humming along to Baker Street and Love is Like Oxygen. With that said, I listen to some of the things they like (Childish Gambino, Rich the Kid) and there is some real creativity there. It's not music from my past, obviously, but it is interesting nonetheless.
16
how about the fact that a lot of this music just lousy repetitive sound created and enhanced electronically by people with no talent for music but a lot of talent for self-promotion. It's lazy, dumb, and devoid of musicianship. Any jerk can pound incessant beats and manipulate electronics
28
Yup. The dynamic range is what gives music its 'pop,' and emotional 'hook,' at least when you're using real speakers or listening live to a band or orchestra. Some of the most amazing moments all time in music occur when the music basically stops and gets quiet, but the beat is still implied, like at the beginning of Bethoveen's 9th symphony or before the final shout chorus of Bruce Sprinsteen's "Born to Run"
https://youtu.be/IxuThNgl3YA?t=193
Even though it's formulaic, older rock songs often had a softer intro and first verse, then louder middle verses and chorus, then a softer bridge section (also called 'the hook' -- because it 'hooks' the listener) before the final crashing chorus. Not even half of rock music is like this, but enough of it is, that is should be noted. The music patterns itself after the physiology of a sexual orgasm. This is deliberate. 60's Parents knew that something was up with this music, they just didn't know exactly what.
Sonically (loudness), it looks like this:
| |
| _______________ |
| ________________ / |
| _____/ \_______/ |
+_________________________________________________|
20
I really could not care less, as one who considers all modern music an irritating noise and classical music that puts me to sleep. I love military marches and martial tunes.
2
I have a pet theory about music (I have a pet theory about most everything, sorry). Here it is: the most important part of music is the silence. The space between what is being played and what comes next is the silence, sometimes actual, full silence, sometimes just a momentary beat while other music in the background keeps moving.
To the youngest ears around in teenagers and very young adults, silence is the enemy. It threatens to bring on moments of thought, followed by confusion. The purpose of music is to push thought away and allow the brain to vibrate with alpha waves, or something. Silence to me gives music more meaning, more depth. It helps to define the rest of what is being played as music, not just noise.
Every go shopping for ear phones? More bass! Extra bass! Lots of thumps! No silence.
Sound systems in cars are engineered the same way, more bass. The ultimate car stereos will cause the metal on the outside of the car to vibrate and the eyeballs of those inside to push outward. This is good?
American movies have gone taken the same path, all action and no particular meaning. It sells. A typical violence oriented flick will start now with a big action scene even though you have no idea who the people are shooting and throwing bombs at each other or why. Eye bubble gum. It sells.
There is a point, and we've passed it, where giving people what they want ever faster is a bad idea, like serving cotton candy for dinner. We are endanger of killing artistry itself.
50
@Doug Terry That sounds like you need to be more selective about the stores that you shop at. Try looking around for some quality audio stores, and you will see that they don't emphasize bass as an end game.
3
Marvin who ?
3
Get offa my lawn!
14
As someone who produces music non-commercially as art - listeners, I beg you to USE YOUR VOLUME KNOB.
2
@Joseph M Actually, if one is dealing with recordings that don't utilize heavy compression, played back on a good system in a quiet room, there is no need to use your volume knob once you have the proper setting. The volume knob isn't a solution to compression either, as you can't reverse engineer that compression manually.
13
And, yet you can rest assured, Mr. Milne, that The Tree of Yellow Flowers is listening:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOr2O0FfpT8
Interesting how Pink Floyd rates so highly in articles like this, yet Roger Waters has now handed over his mastering responsibility to Radiohead's Nigel Godrich who has made a dogs breakfast of his last two releases, The Wall Live (unlistenable) and is this the life we really wnat ( a great album, let down by the compression.
3
In my opinion, the absolute WORST "song" currently on the airwaves is played on a teevee commercial for the Peloton exercise bike......
I can't get to the remote soon enough when that aural assault begins.
"On to the Next One" I think is name of this garbage.
13
What sets my teeth on edge with the bulk of what is blaring from cheap car audio systems and rattling license plates is the stupid constant metronome rhythm patterns usually sourced from a drum machine. Listening to it is like having a Marlon spike driven into one's head.
We will leave aside the whole argument that someone talking over a drum track is probably not music in the classic sense. It is something, just not music and I doubt it will be listened to in a couple of decades. Hip-hop is a plague upon the ears of the world and its 15 minutes cannot be up fast enough.
29
Anything up for a Grammy is guaranteed to be schlock. Always has been and always will be.
13
Oh, do avoid rampant fogeyism-- even if commenters here are likely to slam you for not being an uber-fogey.,
7
Perfect analysis! Love you NYT!
7
Don't lump this generational hogwash in to one useless argument.
As a gen-x music fan. I'm in love with the polyrhythmic dynamic peaks of "this is America"
if you'll remember, we cut our best tracks on ep to get those fat deep hits. we built tighter and tighter subs to bang our Ford escort hatchbacks.
we constantly bought tracks that banged and didn't whimper.
age is a state of mind, and if it's too loud you're too old
5
Thank you for this. As a musician working in the business I can tell you that the loudness wars have drastically changed the way music sounds - and not at all for the better. A quick listen to anything pre-loudness war vs. a modern day pop track will tell you everything you need to know. We all have volume controls - we can all turn it up a bit if need be. The solution lies in artists and producers making conscious choices in the studio to NOT be the loudest guy in the room and to pass that message along to their mastering engineer. Leave some dynamic range and let Spotify or whoever do their thing.
9
A recent gold standard in compression, eq and panning... is the magnificent sonic transformation of The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper and White Album, by the great producer Giles Martin/son of legendary George Martin. A true master class in dynamic range, it is the way this music was meant to be heard, in all its organic glory. By remixing as well as remastering these masterpieces, Giles was able to tap into the dna of every song on the albums.
11
Below,the Digital versus Analog sound debate persists.
“I have an original Rolling Stones album and the CD of it. The vinyl sounds like there is real band playing in my house and the digital sounds like it came out of a machine, which it did.”
What many people overlook is the quality of the sound system that they are listening to their music on. Pointing to the changes in Dynamic Sound quality and Loudness issue falls on deaf ears unless the sound system your are playing your music on is capable of reproducing what was recorded faithfully with respect to detail, depth of sound or sound stage, that the playback system is capable of reproducing.
Realistically, there is no difference between listening to an LP versus a CD. That an LP sounds less canned or “warmer,” than a CD is highly subjective depending on the listener, the room the music is played in, and the playback system. Unless the system you are listen to is capable of letting the music “breath” with respect to depth, detail and soundstage, all bets are off. Compression compromises the quality of sound regardless of the Dynamic versus Loudness issue.
I listen to music on a Vaccum tube system using a DAC for my CD player joined by a pre amp and an amplifier. The sound is warm, detailed and has great depth. It handles both the Dynaimc recordings of yesteryear as well as the Loudness of today’s recordings with great finesse from Marvin Gaye to Kendrick Lamar, and even The Rolling Stones !
Happy Listening !
10
As a musician in my 60s (rock and jazz drummer), I'm not a fan of much recent music, particularly that of one of my granddaughters. The other one loves all forms of music, the younger one just hip-hop. I have sat with the latter granddaughter and listened to her favorites including Childlish Gambino, and it sounds flat, and often impossible to understand (my mother used to say that about Led Zeppelin). I listen to many forms of music, rarely hip hop, and often Classical, and it's the dynamic range I seek. Of course, as a drummer that is my perspective, but this constant use of drum machines that are programmed to be flat is off-putting to say the least. My youngest granddaughter doesn't agree, but cannot articulate why she likes the music. Music appreciation by the young has always been subject to peer pressure. Perhaps not always a good thing creatively.
17
I don't know about the 'loudness' level, but the musical arrangements and melodies from the 60s and 70s and earlier sound more intricate than music being made today (and I do like current music). All I can say is that my untrained ears prefer the sound quality of my record collection over CD's and digital where one can pick out each instrument playing on an LP. Remember the disco music back in the 70's when they used full string orchestras, that horn section for Earth, Wind & Fire, or Nile Edwards & Bernard Edwards with their bass and guitar riffs? You don't hear that in the music being made today. They were masters!
11
Cute article. Cuter infographics.
The loudness wars are a thing, but if you think that's why people's careers are shorter, you're wrong.
it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that no one buys music anymore, and artists are forced to tour for 2 years at a time rather than relaxing at a destination studio thinking about how to best express themselves, or how to make an artistic impact. It couldn't be that people are making their music louder just to gain any possible edge so they can make a living... could it?
Loudness wars. Boohoo. Go buy some music. And tell your friends to buy some too.
16
I was hoping to find somewhere in the article a comparison of the compositions and SUNG/PLAYED virtuosity of the old (Paul Simon, Billy Joel, Elton John--to name just the three that came to mind first for me) vs. the garish show and, as the article describes, digital manipulation of more recent stuff (I'm clueless to name a recent high-quality composer).
Yep, I'm a geezer. So you'll blow me off when I say that the more recent stuff ain't music; it's noise. very. loud. noise.
16
Remember when your parents said the same thing about your music.
10
I’m delighted to find out that there’s a name for what I can’t stand about music my young friends playfor me. I want to like it, but it all sounds overproduced, too lush - yes, like the music itself is being strangled. I followed the link provided to the database of dynamic range analysis and, sure enough, the great albums I remember from the 80s all had phenomenal dynamic range.
A side note for people who sniff that rap and punk are loud, vulgar and too percussive. You’re missing the point of the article. A massively percussive punk album like Kings of the Wild Frontier can have unusually large dynamic range, even though it features two drummers, bass and rhythm guitar, and may express sexual sentiments that you find distasteful. The point is aural contrast, a formal quality separate from your patronizing judgments about whether music is unclean or demeaning to women.
5
More to the point, melody, like plot and composition, is difficult. The Beatles are replayed because they got their melodies from deep in the heads (that's another story.) Beauty in melody has something to do with the soul. You can hum practically any Beatles song and instantly know it. You can't hum the stuff now.
That's the difference between greatness and also-rans.
20
It is worth noting that, in addition to the reduction in dynamic range, at least two other notable systematic changes have been observed in contemporary popular music: "less variety in pitch transitions" and a "consistent homogenization of the timbral palette". Simply put, these changes make music 'sound the same'.:
In 2012 a group of researchers at the Spanish National Research Council's Artificial Intelligence Research Institute published an analysis (https://www.nature.com/articles/srep00521) of the million song dataset. According to the article, "the dataset includes the year annotations and audio descriptions of 464,411 distinct music recordings (from 1955 to 2010), which roughly corresponds to more than 1,200 days of continuous listening. Such recordings span a variety of popular genres, including rock, pop, hip hop, metal, or electronic."
They found "a number of trends in the evolution of contemporary popular music. These point towards less variety in pitch transitions, towards a consistent homogenization of the timbral palette, and towards louder and, in the end, potentially poorer volume dynamics."
9
Joni Mitchell, Carol King, Tori Amos, Tracey Chapman, Sinead O'Connor, Loreena McKennitt, Miriam Makeba, Maria Bethania, Celia Cruz -- these geniuses not only combined brilliant melodies, harmonies and rhythms with unique instrumentation and transcendent vocal stylizations, they also managed to comment on important social issues with poetic lyricism. Yes, they really don't make music like these women used to.
17
Yes, the compressed dynamic range is a headache and a bore. So are the songs with their dull-witted hooks and their melodic range of five notes and harmonic use of three chords. It’s boring to listen to singers with no breath control or phrasing. So many performers now seem to be impersonating musicians, badly.
14
@Portia
i think it's a melodic range of 3 notes and an ad nauseam
reuse of 4 chords ( don't forget that 6 minor ! )
of course in rap and hip-hop , no melody , 1 chord
NTTAWWT
7
So fortunate am I that my parents cultivated a love of classical music in me. Over 1,000 years of (notated) genres, structures, melodic, harmonic, rhythmic & textured tones (atonal tones too) to discover, uncover, explore, re-experience & enjoy on so many levels.
It seems that volume (loudness) is the primary criteria upon the rubric of pop music. Perchance, too much "sound and fury" without exploring variations & nuance (which is the art & craft of the creative musical mind).
Mediaeval, Renaissance, Baroque, Roccoco, Classical, Romantic, Late & Post-Romantic, Impressionistic, Modern, Post-Modern! Exploring the rivers of musical forms & the contributing wellsprings that contributed to them as well as later forms begat & influenced by earlier genres. Well-known compositions as well as the unknown & obscure! Avenues showcasing opera, sonatas, concerti, string quartets (just to cite a few genres). So much classical music & so little time to explore it!
Musicological studies continue to unearth obscure composers such as Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Ernesto Nazareth, Scott Joplin, R. Nathaniel Dett, William Grant Still, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington! Syncopated waltzes, polcas, tangos, ragtime, early blues & jazz!
Will billionaires underwrite a global effort to introduce to the public at large classical music & its tributaries to those, through no fault of their own, never had the opportunity to cultivate an appreciation for it? Let's start with children 1st.
8
I like music I can sing along to. Most of what passes as music today does not have that ability. Plus, I find most of the lyrics to be trite and lacking any sort of imagination. When Beyonce sings, "Baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby......." You begin to catch my drift.
14
So now all of it goes up to 11?
7
I want to like modern music. To bad so much of it is nothing. A person can bang a pan and a metal spoon together and get the same result. Just repeat the same words over and over, but look sincere or serious. Much of modern music is like the Kardashians looking into the camera. Empty as a moon scape on a dark night. Too bad.
22
What we're missing these days are songwriters who knew how to write great melody, harmonies, ingenious hooks and lyrics such as: Goffin and King, Smokey Robinson, Leiber and Stoller, Lennon and McCartney, Bob Dylan, etc...Tell, when was the last time you anything remotely as good as "shop around"?. Seriously.
10
@RG
" the Middle "
Who cares it it is on AM or FM or your cd or cassette or maybe your 8 track. If you are moved by music, compression has no effect on what is good or bad music. I can listen to my old New Colony Six music and still love everything about it.
Great music is great music. If you like music based on the way it was recorded, don't buy the Eagles Greatest or James Brown at the Apollo you high brow !!!!
2
@Mike Wittmann Perhaps some of us actually want to buy great music that was recorded at high quality? Compression does have an effect, if you actually listen and compare.
9
I love Rap music because it gives people who have no musical talent whatsoever, a chance to perform...
10
My husband has been drumming for a half century. If you want to hear what that sounds like, Rockabilly on Mondays.
Kidz are floored when they drop in unexpectedly to see what might be confused for a Dead Head rest stop at 6PM. Three part humanity tapping into the universal root. Can't put a label on it, but it reaches everyone.
I do not believe kidz today cannot hear. I believe I cannot appreciate what they hear. It's all about multiple patterns within patterns rather than a slow handed easy take on Sundays.
My husband can see how his parents wrote off half a century of music because it came through an amplifier rather than a megaphone. My Mother rode the cusp and caught Hendrix at the Monkees' FAO Schwarz concert. She was once chided by her elders for making fun of Larry's bubble pop. Got to admit it, today. Larry had a smoking hot band and could can the ham like no other. Lombardo bar the door.
I bet you kidz know how to listen to all that old stuff and that which I cannot detect among the chaos they hear as music today. It's a collective thing and they own ALL of it. Music is everyone's, and that's why it brings us together even when we span a half century. I swear half the girls like you look just like I did in the 1970s.
What do we look for across the Universe for signs of anything remotely akin to us? Rhythm. It's gonna get you.
6
Now I understand why most of contemporary music sounds so tinny.
4
Music? What music?
First, they excised harmony. All those guitar strummers know only three chords. None of them ever opened Walter Piston’s ‘Harmony,’ and chromatic harmony is like “The Lost Chord.” When you think of the incredible harmonic sophistication in popular music of the Thirties and Forties, you have to roll your eyes at the current crop of harmonic illiterates.
Then they excised rhythm. Rhythm is now one overpowering beat to a bar. Rhythm used to be the rhythmic patterns that composers put into a bar. Beat is boring!
Then they excised melody. There are no melodies in rap, merely aggressive shouting on one note.
Name me your favorite rap. Now, please hum for me a few bars.
Then they excised lyrics. Today’s rock stars confuse stream-of-consciousness rants with lyrics. They have all the clever craft of a talk show set to music, or rather screamed on one note.
Then they excised timbre, and replaced it with fuzzy distortion.
I love music, but I missed it by about 60 years. The Great American Songbook has fewer and fewer pages each year after 1960. Today there is no music in what is incorrectly called music.
9
Distorted, mechanical voices; repetitious phrasing; incoherent, meaningless "lyrics;" synthesized instrumentation; driving beats from drum machines; bizarrely gimmicky costuming; drugs/sex/money focus; zero story-telling; loud and obnoxious; pitiful little artistry; contrived crescendos; rarely any message; rarely any comment on politics/religion/bigotry/endless war; no beauty; no melody; nothing to remember.
The other night, watching the Super Bowl half-time show, I remarked that the 20-somethings in the room would likely have few truly good songs in they're memory banks 40-50 years hence. A 60-something launched into the chorus of "Leaving on a Jet Plane" and every other 60-something in the room immediately joined in--music, melody, harmonies, words, stories. Then, "Blowin' in the Wind."
Yes, I'm a Boomer--and downright thankful for it!
19
@Leslie
as am I , but do we have to hear the same 300 songs 10,000 times ?
i'm at the point where to me lyrics just are dumb , or worse , " empowering "
i'll listen to ECM jazz or EDM chill
2
I'm not an audiophile, am mostly tone deaf, and can hold a tune about as well as a sieve holds water, so I'm glad to see a graphical representation of the changes.
I think the article could have pre-empted many of the "modern music is the worst!" comments by gently reminding readers that for most people our musical tastes solidify by our early twenties.
7
Brilliant commentary on current editing techniques. I prefer dynamics and range in music...letting the song breathe and my ears rest.
But something else in this year's Grammy picks are the total lack of certain genres, like pop, alternative rock and traditional R&B. They're all popular, but all, save three, of the nominees offer the undynamic sound of hip-hop.
Some hip-hop music mixes the hard rat-tat-tat with a melodic, and usually different singer... offering dynamism and breathing room.
Some hip-hop songs have meaningful lyrics, even if the songs lack dynamics in range.
Some offer a string of sex, drugs, guns, cars, anger at frenetic pitch.
Sometimes the words, perhaps meaningful, are incomprehensible. And melody is not a hip-hop thing.
Since I don't in general like the sound of hip-hop, this year's Grammy nominationsare disappointing, except for Shallow and the two country western picks.
I wouldn't say I'm behind the times. I think the Grammy picks are PC-driven, respecting artists of color, despite quality of the music. Where's Muse, for instance?
4
@Lilou
that's like wondering why Yes didn't get a Grammy for "Close to the Edge "
3
Who really thinks compression influences perceptions enough to move "ugh" to "wow?"
Music's problem today is too much machine-generated sound, too little musical complexity, and either vapid or overly violent and misogynistic lyrics.
Simply put, popular music has died.
5
Thanks for this fascinating article!
4
This is tragic. So many of the comments on here seem to be from older people positive that they are making a groundbreaking statement about the decline of youth since they were young. Did you not listen to "My Generation" properly the first time round?
If younger people have a knowledge of music that spans back to the 50s, perhaps it isn't because they have no music from today to enjoy but it's just that they seek a broader vista than you were capable of seeing. If the act of seeking memorable hits was so much easier in the days of the Rolling Stones, Simon and Garfunkel, and Black Sabbath, perhaps those artists were more easily burned into the collective consciousness of a public without the the media to provide such a surfeit of choice as is available today. And if music sounds too loud to some people now, it perhaps has less to do with dynamic range and more to do with the fact that those people are no longer capable of hearing variance in new sounds, and so instead comfort themselves with regurgitating the their favourites ad nauseum all the while commenting to their peers and only their peers about how much better they had it when their favourite white artists rehashed black blues from the decades previous and called it revolution. Not to knock that music, 'Stones and 'Sabbath I love as much as the next'un, but lets all pipe down a bit on the grandstanding shall we?
6
@Colm: This reply ignores the science and reality: "And if music sounds too loud to some people now, it perhaps has less to do with dynamic range and more to do with the fact that those people are no longer capable of hearing variance in new sounds". There are valid reasons why you can hear each syllable of certain songs and you can't discern one word of others beyond the ability to hear (which is a cop out reason). The unarguable fact is that most current music has a very loud and very bass rhythm track and the performers scream or mumble into the mikes at the same loudness level as the rhythm track. Result: unintelligible mush. Saying the problem is that you can't hear is simply avoiding reality.
8
This is where Spinal Tap comes into play...for the better.
Any concern leaves when you crank Foo Fighters to 11....
Pure musical bliss.
1
Two words: Emily King
Please. Back in the day, the first thing you unpacked in college was "the stereo". Today, an iphone making tinny sounds from microscopic speakers is playing "music" while you unpack. An accurate bass note is nowhere to be found or properly reproduced. Blue tooth speakers add a worse than old school wire transmission system to the mix. While we do have 5.1 and better soundstages in home theater now, at the same time our normal daily listening music reproduction has actually gone backwards. LP's had issues, but the perfect sound recording ability of digital files is mostly wasted....
My theory as to why older music is better ? Bands lasted longer....toured a lot more. The record company gatekeeping meant you only moved if the Record Company blessed you, so a lot of good bands worked at a low simmer for a long time before "getting radio airplay".
4
Music started suffering when social media came around. It all sounds the same? It’s because social media is slowly destroying individuality. A curse if there ever was one.
6
While working through the drag that it tax preparation, I chose to listen to the top 100 hot pop hits of the last year just to clear my thoughts. Yup, it sounds like one long electronic drum solo interrupted occasionally by a familiar soul section, then back to the broke down rhythm. Is it really just background for these booze and Lamborghini commercials? I know a lost Gatsby asking for some meaning when I see one.
I note some folks' bits are being muted. I'll leave the judgement to the kidz as the Senate lets just any accused rapist sit in thier judgement. I like the kidz, today, just can't appreciate their music the way I did my own. That's what makes it theirs. The circle is complete. Repeat.
2
When forced to listen to rap or hip-hop as music, as it happens in so much of public, I wish for the fate of Beethoven.
5
Timely article. I just watched an interview by Rick Beato with Chris Lord-Alge, a well regarded mixer who created compression machines that have taken off in the professional and amateur realms. I’m not in the business, but it seems like there was a “genie let out of the bottle” effect that occurred as a result. Here’s the link. (Be warned, you might be compelled to watch Beato’s many other great YT videos afterward, most of which are compelling and addictive after a while).
https://youtu.be/WYElkX6nLvs
It would seem that every generation somehow finds a way to create "music" designed to drive the previous generation nuts!
4
@Cristino Xirau: I challenge you to name a half-dozen current songs that people will listen to 30 years from now and say, "Hey that's timeless."
4
I write and produce music for many years. Music is definitely worse now for the reasons detailed in the piece. But, also, for others reasons.
One is sampling, which is taking a piece of someone else’s original music and incorporating into yours. In other words, shall we say , less than original?
Another is classic song writing, with a verse, chorus and bridge connecting the two. And a hook. Music now seems to dispense with everything but the hook and the beat. It IS all about the bass, and , of course , the drums
And speaking of The drums, much of it is played by a machine. Safer, and blander, with big huge compressed sound. This is why beats brand headphones are so popular. They emphasize the heavy compression of the drums, and , of course , the bass.
As a drummer who practiced for ever to get good, I don’t approve.
And let’s not forget, that most of this music is forgettable. It mostly is not gonna age well. There’s a glaring lack of Beatles and Stones in the modern music constellation.
There is more, much more to add. Or actually , less.
4
I think this article just begins to scratch the surface of what we all call the musical world of today vs the musical world of yesterday. There is a reason for increased interest in analog vinyl records. They sound warmer and nuanced. With the advent of the cd and then compressed digital music, recordings went into a sonically downgraded mode. Thankfully there has been a discussion and resurgent interest in sound quality vs sound quantity. iTunes redefined and in some sense ruined the music business. The 99 cent song is now 1.29. Apple wants you to pay more each month just for access to what you have already purchased. Pandora has recently raised their subscription fees. Spotify and tidal round out what is shaping up to be the fang,s of the musical world. As a futurist said 40 years ago, the future belongs to those who will lease you your life experiences. Even the cassette is making something of a comeback. I also, could barely make sense of those graphs.
2
I would love to see similar analysis of how jazz and classical recording practices have evolved over time. My guess is that there is more attention to and acceptance of broad dynamics in these genres, but cannot prove it. I do recall many jazz recordings of the 80s suffering from over-compression, and listening to these albums now can be very fatiguing.
1
@Robo
RVG !!
Can anyone elaborate on how to read the graphs displaying the peaks and averages? I wasn’t able to fully understand those graphs.
3
I'd be really interested to learn *how* the graphics used in this article were created. Specially: can you share the code / process to analyze songs in this manner? I'd love to explore the data in more detail and try this analysis on songs I like.
The code for this would be a great thing to put on GitHub.
3
@Alain I agree. It looks like Sahil Chinoy would be the person to ask. https://www.nytco.com/press/sahil-chinoy-joins-opinion-as-a-graphics-editor/
3
Popular music has (with the odd exception) been on a steady downhill track since the late 60's and went into the abyss in the 90's. Can anyone say that body of popular music produced over the last 25 years is likely to survive by comparison with that produced between say 1920 and 1945 or between 1945 and 1970?
6
Thanks for this article. It is accurate. In 1981 when working with Dr. Takeaki Anazawa of Denon and recording the first performance in the rebuilt Opera of Dresden ( one of the early fully digital recordings) he warned that it could take 30 years to fully understand and adjust technique to use the newly enhanced dynamic range allowed. Dr. Anazawa and team built the first digital recorder at Denon and he also knew that the suppression of noise would allow overall "louder" recording.
Since louder often sounds better at first ( just check your own experiences) and certainly on a car audio system producers fell in love with being able to turn the volume up. As this article puts well, when everything is loud, then really nothing is. It is the dynamics in music that we often love.
It is also true that not all music or performance needs dynamic range, and so we must respect the output of the creatives and the likes of the audience, but it is also true that now that over 30 years have passed many producers and artists have come to recognize what this article points out. More need to.
Hi-Resolution Audio and Music is now becoming more available. More than just more bits, it comes with an enhanced approach to production with more concern about dynamic range. These recordings offer the sound as it comes off the board in the studio and can be strikingly different than what is heard commercially. Hopefully music lovers will listen, and hear the difference.
Then perhaps we can get back.
5
Fantastic article. Dynamics are one of the most important aspects of a music track. Another annoyance in modern music, is singers who riff on every note. It's all about the space in between kids!
9
@beatgirl99 You want perfection? Listen to any song by Ella Fitzgerald and Sinatra. Nuff said.
4
Interesting article and appreciate the technical analysis but the reason today's music is so different from prior eras is not so much the loudness, but the lack of storytelling and writing skills. Look at the Top 40 from 1969, 1975 or 1985 compared to today's top 40. There is literally no comparison because there we multiple genres back then, with real musicians writing interesting lyrics about a variety of topics. Now it's all EDM-type thumping (no real creativity with the music itself) and every song is about "going to da club". even early hip hop from the late 70s and into the 80s told stories, e.g. Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" or "White Lines" come to mind, or even NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" album. Once again, no comparison to today's "music".
5
Being born in 1950, weaned on the last of the 'Swing" era, growing up with the birth of rock n roll, then the Beatles, Motown (a glorious age of music), when I went to college, it was acid rock and Led Zeppelin, and rock and roll really left me. Then I turned to jazz (Ella, Louis, etc) and classical. Mozart and Schubert can't be beat.
Grateful for the music I was reared on and embraced. Today's top-selling music doesn't speak to me, though I keep open to new sounds. it seems there are no more melodies, just hooks. But, hey, enjoy.
You can't know where you're going unless you know where you've been. There are worlds of great music out there.
4
In the 70's we complained about radio stations compressing the music, and they were. There were several reasons for this, but the most annoying was the loudness war, it was first waged by radio. Our predominant consumption of music was by radio. So, when you finally bought the album, you found that the music did not sound like what you heard on the radio. That was usually a good thing, but occasionally it diverged enough to make it seem like an entirely different piece. One of the things that made it different is that you could hear the nuances it contained. You could hear where the instruments fit into the mix. Everything was not at the same level. All this was possible despite the limitations of vinyl that required enough compression to keep the needle in the groove, and above the noise floor.
If “normalizing” streaming music will help alleviate the loudness war, that's great, but, in my experience, normalizing will keep the peaks below a set level, but a highly compressed piece will still sound louder even if, like TV commercials, it's not. Maybe it's time to put on that Eagles album.
2
As a Jazz freak, i've noticed that is also happening on some (not all) new jazz records.
I listen to the great Blue Note Rudy Van Gelder engineered albums from the 50's and 60's. The recording quality is so much better than anything that I hear today.
Or just listen to a Tom Down or a Sir George Martin production. Amazing how much better and warmer the old sound is.
4
Most if not all vinyl records were recorded in analog. I have The Beatles catalog (original releases) and their catalog on digital CD. The analog sound is much richer, fuller and warmer than the digital. One example that illustrates this is the song "A Day In The Life." If anyone has access to the analog and digital versions of this song you can hear the difference. And on a side note, The Beatles preferred to record their songs in mono rather than stereo. The reason they gave was the sound quality.
2
In my view music today has changed because of talent. It takes less talent to record these engineered and sampled songs than songs written and played on instruments by artists like the Eagles. Take Linda Ronstadt. I just bought her new Live in Hollywood album and watched her videos of a 1980 live HBO show. Her vocal range is extraordinary and she is better live with that powerhouse voice, she stands at a microphone and belts it out. Also these artists toured. They didn't just win "American Idol" and release a CD. They honed their craft. In contrast today, you see Justin Bieber among others doing songs that are so computer digitized and manipulated that the voice is unrecognizable. We have social media talent now. It only takes a computer program to remix and remaster music, apparently that is the new talent. Its hard to listen to and its why the Eagles are the number one selling album. I hope Linda Ronstadt's Live in Hollywood becomes #2. After all they started as her backup band.
3
Amen to this analysis about the annoyance of conformity. No wonder my high school students wear Pink Floyd t-shirts, and are jealous when I tell them that we used to anticipate the release of the new Led Zeppelin album when we were their age.
6
I'm a classical musician and I have constant arguments about recorded music with a singer-songwriter friend who bemoans digital and reveres vinyl. This issue, music, and mindset is such a tiny sliver of music through history. I love all kinds of music, but for me it's live or it's not. All recorded musics are an entirely different art form.
Go to live music and stop obsessing over recording techniques.
10
@LS Yes!!! A thousand times yes!!! And include some experiences of music that is not amplified in any way. That, too, is an entirely different art form.
2
When I hear today's popular music, the one thing that stands out is the lack of original melody. Original and beautiful melodies were created in droves in the 60-80's period. An original melody is a thing of wonder and can be the result of inspiration, and often a songwriter cannot explain where the melody came from. Today's melodies, such as they are, sound like they have been written by an app. A common formula that's heard in country pop is a repeating melody riff over moving chords. I believe hundreds of songs have been written with this formula and it is enormously boring.
7
In my opinion, it's only mainstream music that has been changing. Music with soul is still alive and well...you just have to do a little digging for it.
We need to decide for ourselves what it is we enjoy and continue to seek out those things, instead of listening to what corporations and robots tell us we like and need.
9
Great analysis. The other issues that exist today arise from the destruction of a music "industry." Do we still have "musicians" for the production of the recordings? The "business" has homogenized the creative output. For me, ALL the requisite pieces of great music and the "sound" are artisanal pursuits. Musical creation has followed the path of so many pleasures of life in a society obsessed with corporate profits and production at a low price. I would ask is it is even "music" any longer.
3
Hyper compression is nothing new, listen to The Beatles 'Revolution' from 1968. As an artistic choice the excess compression stood out from everything else even at a time when AM stations routinely compressed everything as a basic form of noise reduction.
It should be mentioned one of the original motivators for compression was in response to road noise in a car. Any soft passage would be obscured by the sound of the car itself so moving the music up a few dB resulted in more music being heard. The same is true for AM radio. Limited dynamic range, if you turn up the receiver you turn up the static.
What's different today is that digital processing allows the compression to be applied by the millisecond so there is no uncompressed time. This results in listener fatigue and is purely a marketing ploy. Digital recording offers more dynamic range than ever before, HD radio the same, amplifiers have never spec'd better, but the dark side to digital is that it's too easy to over process the music into 'just sound'. This does a disservice to both the artist and listener, but in an industry always looking for a new sound not too different from the old sound that sold so well, don't expect this to change...
6
No wonder I often feel a headache at the slightest sound of rap and modern pop 'songs'.....the dB output is constantly pegging, putting unrelenting pressure on the ear canal, especially at low frequencies below 200 Hz, which can be FELT by the body as a moving force. I've played drums professionally for 4 decades and never forgot that dynamc range is interesting, creates an ebb and flow of tension, and helps navigate the listener through the phases and emotional changes of a song. Quiet on the verse, up on the chorus, full throated in the run-out, then up to the crescendo of the ending. The constant POW of rap must have long term psychological effect - it makes me cranky in just a few seconds. Can only imagine what years of listening would do the mental state of its audience.
11
Years ago I was transferring recorded songs into wave file format. I noticed that the songs I liked were all over the map as far as the wave chart. They looked like a seismograph on a California fault-line. Then I did the same to a more modern recording, and saw that the wave chart came out like a block of cheese.
I started to think of all media forms in this way. Not long after the realization of the "Block of Cheese" syndrome (as I now call it), I watched a modern Disney movie with my young daughter. The entire movie was one non-stop crisis after another. It was like jumping from one moving roller coaster to another.
A year or so ago I was watching the day old newscasts from YouTube. Each and every news segment came at me with alarming sounding "action movie" into music, breathless commentating at break-neck speed, and follow-up opinions from a panel which always managed to end up in a screaming match.
VOLUME!
Are we addicted to volume? Crisis?
10
it doesn't matter how much your needle "floats" after a few plays the sound starts to degrade. That said, the article and its graphs are so informative. Thank you Mr. Milner.
2
Very interesting. I suspect you might say something similar about visual media such as television, film and photography. Call me old-fashioned but I find modern television and movies nearly unwatchable, not because of my age and the nature of the storytelling (although the crassness of much of it is disappointing) but because of the saturated/plastic nature of the imagery. I miss the pre-CGI, digital processing days when the imagination still had a chance, and special effects were a mere sprinkling of entertaining eye candy, and human craft (not just a computer algorithm) was visible in the product. /old-fashioned
11
I'm on the older end of the millennial range (born in the late 80's) so my opinion will likely differ from most but I do agree that today's popular music isn't anywhere as good as 10-50 years ago. Some of my all time favorite songs were between 2000 - 2010. I'm assuming because most of the music is tied to my late teens/early twenties and reminds me of good memories. However, I also love music from the 70's - 90's. To me today's music all sounds the same and I prefer to listen to old playlists. As for the format of music I love and prefer digital for many reasons first being the convenience and second being the cost. I hated dragging around 50 cd's worrying about scratching them and not being able to listen to a bunch of different artists without having to constantly switch CD's. When Napster first came out I was able to make CD's with only my favorite tracks but it was a huge hassle. I'd often stay up until 2-3am waiting for MP3s to finish downloading (2-4 hrs per song) on dial up then convert each file to WAV format (45 mins for 15 songs) then wait another 45 mins to burn on a CD-R. Of course, when new songs were released that led to burning a new CD. Now it is so much better, especially when subscribed to a streaming service like Spotify. Most of the time when I'm listening to music it's in the car via my phone connected thru bluetooth.
2
I'm an endless fan of analog recordings.
Digital came in as a tool for editing and introducing - to be elegant about it - less than honest recordings -
In the old days,recordings were mostly one take events- for better or worse.
Any of the old guard singers had the training to deliver it right.
Then, there is the quality of Analog - far warmer and all together natural. As for classical recordings,the old DGG recordings with Karajan,Wunderlich, Bernstein and so many others - are timeless.
4
I think music died over 30 years ago. I will take Cole Porter, Rogers and Hammerstein, Jerome Kern and others of that era over the noisemakers of today. Other favorites were the Carpenters, Beach Boys, Joan Baez, Linda Ronstadt, Glen Campbell and John Denver.
5
@JSK
Metallica, Van Halen, Nirvana, Jane's Addiction, Queens of the Stone Age, Gary Clark Jr., Stevie Ray Vaughn, Alicia Keys, No Doubt, Foo Fighters, Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, Tom Petty, Rihanna....
What one generation calls noise another calls music....and loves it.
4
I don’t believe you can separate the manner in which music is recorded from the very zeitgeist that creates the music in the first place. They are indivisible and one, though to a larger extent now with computer-digital instruments born from the same stuff as the recording apparatus.
2
The first record to sell over a million copies was 'Vesti la giubba' from Leoncavallo's I Pagliacci, sung by the Italian opera singer Enrico Caruso (1873–1921). It was recorded in November 1902 and released by GT.
5
When discussing the then new CD, Rupert Neve said that he feared that an entire generation would evolve without knowing what a acoustic instrument really sounded like.
I wonder just how many of the 460+ posters here have ever attended an orchestral performance.
5
Another interesting example of dynamic range is the opening to Also Sprach Zarathustra, in which Strauss propels the listener from a smoldering launch pad to the sonic stratosphere in less than two minutes. It's no coincidence that this brief movement is one of the most iconic moments in classical music.
7
Fascinating article. The most memorable musical experiences i have had both playing and listening (for 62 years now) are the ones where dynamics have conveyed the deepest of human emotions. Loud to soft, soft to loud, this is what has always grabbed me.
I saw hundreds of Grateful Dead concerts, and recall vividly, the shows where the audience let the band get real quiet (think Morning Dew) only to build to a great crescendo on the line. "I guess it doesn't really matter anymore". Maybe you were there. Spine tingling.
The mono-dynamic stuff streaming through the internet pipelines of today really kinda miss some of this. But your attention needs to be grabbed and right away!! So the dynamic range is crunched. Missing so much emotion by doing this.
Gotta admit I did get a chuckle out of the comment that "most rock music is derivative and trite". Really!
4
Most music is forgettable from the year 2000. This century has made no music, just hype and overated stars.
7
@berts
Many of us still love going to concerts, listening to memorable music and see so many people out there doing the same. It refutes your point.
1
Oddly enough, my 24 year old son said to me a week or two ago: "Steely Dan are so big right now".
He's a DJ here in Melbourne. I know that he is familiar with the music of Steely Dan (who were renowned for their skill in the studio) - mainly because I used to play them all the time when he was growing up, and also because he is a drummer and familiar with Gadd, Purdie, Chambers etc - but even so, his comment surprised me. Maybe there is hope yet.
9
The ideal "musical" recording that is made today is simply a glorified advertisement or jingle to sell shoes, clothing, perfume, or jewelry. The "song" is just an excuse to market a brand. Typically, audio advertisements are highly compressed, as dynamic range is atypical of radio and TV ads, because the music has to be audible to compete with a noisy environment while driving, biking, running, etc.
In contrast, musical compositions and recordings, especially from decades ago, were first conceived as a compositions to be listened to quietly, and in private, with one's full attention. Though often seen as repugnant, the song might then be exploited as an afterthought for an advertisement and adapted.
Still, as far as loudness is concerned, what's "louder": A recording with narrow dynamic range played at a low volume, or, one with a wider dynamic range, that's mostly soft (with occasional loud peaks) played at a high volume?
It's all relative.
1
The use of relative and absolute dynamics in music is the primary driver of a musical phrase.
In contrast, the general purpose of compression and limiting is simply to manage an audio signal's dynamic range within the technical limitations of audio hardware to avoid distortion, or increase intelligibility, and not to make a music, per se.
While vinyl records are inherently much more limited in dynamic range than a CD, the a musical composition on a classical record usually utilizes a much wider "relative" range than a typical rap CD which is relatively narrow.
Thus the vinyl record may be perceived as being more "musical" because ultimately, musical phrases are more effectively conveyed to, and appreciated by a listener, if a wider relative "dynamic shape" is a component of the composition.
1
When the "Beatles #1's" was originally released in 2000, I attended the Audio Engineering Society convention and a panel of producers was asked if they thought The Beatles would be as popular as they had been originally if they were first released in 2000.
They all replied that they wouldn't have been, due to the compression used on recordings around 2000. They felt that with all the records The Beatles had issued when they first came to the U.S. and the number of songs that entered the charts, that they would have become tedious to listen to with that high level of compression and therefore would not have been as successful
I can't listen to most new music because of the high compression and loudness levels. I find it quite disturbing.
The strange part of all this is that digital formats, including the CD are capable of 96db dynamic range and the LP is only capable of about 35db dynamic range. Yet most vintage LP's had more dynamic range than music recorded today does.
That's not to say that music should not be compressed. If one has too loud a peak, the listener will tend to turn the level down which then lowers the level of all the instruments recorded at a lower level. So a certain amount of compression is always necessary, but those expressive peaks should also be allowed to be there.
Note that in additional to all the compression on the recordings, when music is played on the radio, it's compressed even more. Unlistenable, IMO.
5
This subject keeps getting regurgitated every few years...kinda like global warming.
And like global warming there is a slow deafening harm done to an industry relying on being different and natural. Technology has beaten down the differences that can still be made possible, yet it seems the flattening of the dynamic range mimics our desire for as much information as fast as possible. Time to find a better way to make music better and more enjoyable.
1
I have the original vinyl version of the famously well-produced soundtrack of The Pink Panther. I'm not an audiophile or a hipster—I'm older than the movie—but when I put this on a turntable I'm astounded by the sound quality.
10
I think the loudness wars are starting to subside a bit. This has been helped recently by streaming services like Spotify using normalization to specific loudness unit levels. (LUFS)
Normalizing to a specific LUFS level can make a really loud mix sound quieter and a lot less punchy than a mix with greater dynamic range.
Some modern bass heavy genres would never have worked on vinyl, the records would have started skipping as soon as the kick or bass came in. With the advent of digital, those constraints were no longer necessary. The limitations of the media required careful consideration during the mastering process.
In his master class deadmau5 talked about mastering and how when he does his sets, his tracks sound much louder and punchier than other DJs, his explanation was simple and obvious: he doesn't nail the maximizer for the whole track, thus preserving some dynamic range. The end result is a track that doesn't nail the venues limiter as badly which allows the engineers to turn it up.
It's easy to make it loud, it's a bit harder to make it punchy.
5
Performers handed the keys over to producers and engineers a long time and it's a shame. Compression killing space by bringing every thing up front. Living breathing musicians moving air molecules in a room with acoustic and electric instruments is more satisfying to the ear than in-the-box productions done with synths, drum machines and auto tuned vocals. The possibility of failure makes it interesting — when there's no chance of a mistake the whole thing is one big one.
Having said that, this particular curmudgeon loves Childish Gambino's "This Is America," a truly important song that crackles with danger and creativity. I hope he wins song of the year.
6
I see a lot of commenters disparaging the way kids today listen to music - as if they are not listening closely because the source is an iPhone with earbuds. As if that’s the reason why the menu of music commonly played now is monotonous. This is not the experience I have with my teen and pre-teen kids, my step-kids, and their friends. They have access to it all and consume it all. I’m envious. They have Spotify and Pandora and satellite radio. They are listening to the old stuff (often discovering it from new movies), the new louder, more monotonous stuff, the new complex and interesting stuff, and maybe a little Sinatra (introduced via the Christmas-all-the-time station). I envy their access and ability to listen to any genre that fits their mood anywhere, anytime. I used to wait by the radio hoping to catch and record my favorite songs when I ran out of cash to buy records. Meanwhile, they can choose from everything... and maybe will recognize the value of acoustic range when their energy levels aren’t “all up all the time” like the newest music often is.
5
The compression being discussed here has nothing to do with compression to reduce file size or bandwidth (MP3, AAC, etc). It is being applied to many recordings, across a range of genres, before they are released to iTunes, burned to a CD, or cut into LPs. So unfortunately, when consumers think they are avoiding such destructive processing by buying vinyl - think again. Many LPs are derived from the same compressed source material that the CDs and iTunes files are. And the newer LPs that actually are generated from less compressed source material - are few and far between and generally very expensive.
6
Oasis is the kind of music I like, but I always found it oddly difficult to enjoy for very long. Maybe this is why.
5
Yes, I know this is a non-sequiter, but the sweet sounds of the Eagles never fail to take me to my happy place.
7
I also miss stereo. It’s like being there. (Listen to the voices on ‘what’s going on’)
It’s a high tech and lo-fi world. The masses don’t mind their one big speaker.
3
Computers are making us lazy.
In the 1970's, a studio musician needed to command a range of dynamics, not to mention be a master of repetition, improvisation, taking direction and maintaining focus. This was what was required to do their job. They were able to summon an almost infinite range of colors because they were masters of their instruments. With accomplished musicians, anything is on the menu.
Enter MIDI. And drum machines.
Electronic advances wiped out the need for musicians to master their craft. Popular music has been in decline ever since - not because there's something wrong with using the tools, but because the tools allow us to homogenize and comodotize something that once upon a time was exquisitely unique.
5
It would be nice if people did appreciate music that was't loud and clipped but I'm afraid that Mr Johnson's test linking the commercial importance of songs to their greater dynamic range would never pass peer review. By multiplying the number of platinum certification by the number of years it has been on the market, he all but ensured that older music would be more commercially important simply because it was recorded in a time when recording practices were different.
2
I saw Paul Simon speak a year or so back. He said he made albums with the idea that people would put them on and listen to them, song by song. That was how it was done, by the Beatles, and other artists. That is how we listened back in the 60s and 70s. We read the lyrics, we looked at the cover art, we were moved by the poetry and the playing.
Well, "things have changed."
18
Comedy TV shows also have the same issue - the laugh track compresses the dialog with the canned laughter, so the dynamic range is minimized - you don't have time to react to the dialog before the laughter starts. Maybe the viewer should decide whether something is funny. (Looking at you, Big Bang Theory)
Another example of a TV show where dynamic range becomes minimized is the "Sunday Today Show" with Willie Geist. He'll do an interview in some nice bar or restaurant and then mid-stream, some loud canned music will start playing, making it hard for the audience to hear the words spoken by the interviewee (but not Willie of the booming voice). Does every moment need to be fill with pulsating sound?
4
I hear contemporary pop only in exercise classes, and I have a great deal of trouble telling the songs apart.
Not to sound like an old fuddyduddy, but in my era (ahem!) you could have acid rock, country, smooth jazz, easy listening, folk-rock, soul, funk, and instrumentals on the Top 40 chart. The hits of 1968 included "Those Were the Days," "Sunshine of Your Love," "Harper Valley PTA," "Magic Carpet Ride," "Piece of My Heart," "Time Has Come Today," "The Unicorn," and "The Look of Love." In other words, an English version of a Russian song, hard rock, country, hard rock, blues rock, soul, Irish folk, and Brazilian jazz.
Even taking exercise classes in the early 1990s, I had no trouble telling the songs apart, but now they all seem to be rhythm tracks under auto-tuned singers mouthing banal lyrics.
Yes, we had bad music in those days (I'm looking at you, bubblegum rock), but we also had variety.
21
Agree with all but don't mess with bubblegum music...! There's a ton of obscure, wonderful stuff with plenty of dynamics. Signed, a bubblegum fan
4
THE BIGGEST DIFFERENCE in today's recorded music, beyond the mastering process, is the lack of real instrumentation, played by real musicians. Protools and other recording technologies have diminished the fingerprint of real musicians in most recordings; sonically it is a real let down to hear new music that is largely synthesized. No programmer can duplicate the subtle nuances that real instrumentation provides. THAT is the primary difference in today's music.
22
I would take issue with the notion that mastering engineers are driving the "volume wars". Yes, they are the ones who have the digital tools - called "maximizers" - that do the dirty work of manipulating the apparent loudness of audio source material to unprecedented levels, creating undesirable sonic artifacts, and fatiguing sound along the way. But mastering engineers are employed by the artists, producers and record labels. They are hired to create a final product to a certain "spec" which, until recently, has been "as loud as possible".
Most mastering engineers will at least try to create a good sounding product with a healthy level, but also a healthy dynamic range. They will push back, up to a point, with clients when they feel the product is crossing over the line. Also, sometimes the mixdown engineer will supply an "unmastered" mix that has been so overcompressed that it severely limits the mastering engineer's options to improve the sound.
More recently, as the volume levels have backed down thanks to the streaming services, there has been an almost audible sigh of relief on the mastering discussion groups. There is a lot of talk about "LUFS" (loudness units relative to full scale), and what is the optimal target in LUFS in the new post-volume wars world.
Make no mistake: the mastering engineers want to make good sounding records, not loud ones.
4
Besides loudness most current music emphasizes rhythm and lyrics. The great songwriters of the mid 20th century were well versed in classical as well as jazz and blues. These idioms relied on melody, lyrics and complex harmony. As rock music gained prominence in the 60’s and 70s, much of this emphasis held, for the most part, although the complexity of the harmony fell off some(less 7th chords!), while rhythm grew in importance. Perhaps most significantly, music had space - it breathed! Today’s pop music, with its almost complete focus on rhythm and rapid fire lyrics, has no use for breathing space or silence. Yet, many people listen to it - perhaps it’s not being exposed to the good stuff or perhaps tastes just change over time.
5
This may be part of the reason why todays new music is almost intolerable, however, not the only reason. To me it is noise produced by souless computers being manipulated by nieve 'composers'.
Persons who deem classical music the gold and only standard will argue that the evolution of music from say blues to rock was a de-evolution. One could then argue the nuances from Romantic to Baroque to Classical. I believe they all had a comon thread of soulful passion.
Much of the 'new music' today requires minimum or no talent. Computers and autotune do the work... souless... passionless. When music was produced from the late sixties to early eighties, there were many elements that came together to form some of the worlds best songs. Musicians put their souls into the music much like the composers of 'classical' music.
One album that was not mentioned in the article, Fleetwood Macs, Rumours. The groups drama and pain of the time are forever etched in vinyl. The complex melodies, harmonies, meaningful poetic lyrics, are relevant today and have meaning to a new generation... timeless, as are many of the great groups mentioned in this article.
Classic Led Zeppelin interpreted by the London Philharmonic in 1997 is a wonderful example of how music from the 70's can translate beautifully within a classical frame. Try to do that with most of the 'songs' fabricated today.
7
I believe that it is much like wine. 90% of listeners will have no awareness of any change over time. 10% will notice a change in "character." Few have the palate to distinguish real quality.
1
@Lee
Agree, music critics are probably wine lovers.
2
I’m not familiar with any of this. Different fish to fry. But what am I getting as far as compression if I’m listening to Beethoven on iTunes, for instance?
I’m getting older. Not that this is on the radio all the time, but my 11 year old daughter loves the Hamilton soundtrack. And it’s very hard to even concentrate on a light conversation while it’s playing. Hard to formulate a complete sentence while it’s playing. I notice that with a lot of pop and faster music. (It was easier to multitask with Pearl Jam or Third Eye.)
5
@SDemocrat, a Broadway musical is not a good example. Show tunes - even those that become popular hits, like the 'Hamilton' soundtrack - are lyrically driven. You are meant to stop talking and listen to what they're saying.
9
A good article describing how technology is affecting music. One area where technology is affecting music is the means of transferring music. MP3 is now the standard for moving music from seller to buyer. But MP3 is not the actual music, it is a rendering which has been compressed by an algorithm to take up less bandwidth, which was very important in the days of dial-up internet. By analyzing the music, and removing parts of it, the music file can be shrunk down drastically.
But this shrinking process also reduces the quality of the music, I believe. When I buy music, I want to by the original recording, not a slimmed down version of it.
1
This subject has been presented at great length as well two years ago. https://www.youtube.co/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII
What should be mentioned is that much of popular music today is not written and composed by individuals presenting their poetic statement and vision often in a compendium album, but within corporate "factories" in which different parts are written and assembled according to market-tested algorithms and catch phrases with highly dumbed down lyrics to release quick single hits; and in many cases hundreds of top 40 hit songs performed by big-name singers are actually written by no more than two corporate overseer/composers -- one based in the US - Lucasz Gottwald, the other in Sweden -- Max Martin -- who are contracted by scores of music distribution companies to churn out the stuff that we hear today over the podcasts, and later on as ambient background while eating at Dunkin Donuts or Arby's.
9
@JW: I wonder how many of today's top 40 singers (I refuse to call them "artists") write their own songs or could play any of the instrumental lines.
There is better music out there, but it's not being promoted. I can think of bands made up of serious musicians with musical training and something important to say, but they are confined to college and non-commercial stations.
7
@JW: I was just discussing this with a friend, to whom I sent this article. There is a superb book about this, called "The Song Machine: Inside the Hit Factory" by John Seabrook.
It was simply astonishing to me. I had NO IDEA this is how music is constructed today. I guess I still thought that folksy creative people made it up in their spare time, cobbled together from memories and experiences and dreams.
Oh well.
4
I think one of the reasons that a lot of people claim to prefer the sound of vinyl is for the the very reason of the compression and clipping that can be achieved in digital formats. You really couldn't get the same levels with vinyl. The needle just won't stay in the groove. Too much energy. As an example the Killer's song on the album Hot Fuss sounds, at least to me, harsh and clipped through its entirety in any digital format. On vinyl it sounds entirely different and much more pleasant on the ear. I assume the vinyl edition was mastered specifically for the format.
I like vinyl but I'm not a disciple of it. I do think that the way much popular music is mastered with high compression and clipped peak levels may explain why a lot of people prefer the sound of vinyl.
Good article.
5
I remember the differences between AM radio (highly compressed, uniformly loud) and FM (with greater dynamic range) in the 1960s and 1970s. When CDs were introduced in the 1980s, the wide dynamic range (between the loudest and quietest parts of a recording) was touted as an improvement over what was possible with LPs and pre-recorded cassettes -- especially important for classical recordings, and with no tape hiss (unless it was on the master), vinyl rumble or other surface noise!
By the time Apple came out with iTunes, the user was offered an AM-like option, "Sound Check," which flattens out the music ("Automatically adjusts song playback volume to the same level"). That may be fine for listening to low-fi mp3s through earbuds, but it's a long way from the "high fidelity" of LPs from the '60s-'80s and CDs from the '80s and '90s.
One of the first CDs I ever bought (and I still have it) was Ennio Morricone's score for Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America," and it was astonishing -- though when listening through speakers late at night it required some judiciously timed volume adjustments.
4
As a recording engineer in the music business over 30 years ago, I recorded primarily through analog consoles onto tape. Dynamics were a big consideration, and musicians created some of the dynamics through musical arrangements and performance. Mixing accentuated the dynamics and heightened the drama of the song, and mastering engineers considered dynamics to be important as well.
The descent into the Valley of Loudness that is now common has been disheartening .
7
As a jazz vocalist with numerous recordings floating around since the 80's I must say that the music recorded on tape and mixed to tape has the warmest sound. Many good engineers can recreate that sound via the digital programs. It's in the mixing and mastering that you can "lose" a recording -- over compressing is one of the biggest culprits and cheapens the sound. It's an easy move that has big consequences.
8
I want to understand why extra loud music, with lyrics I can't hear/decipher is popular. I've read the article. I've read many comments and it seems people agree it has a certain popularity. Why? I have teenage grandchildren and I need to understand. When I ask them, they shrug and say its cool. What's cool. Answer: the sound. What are the listeners getting? Help!
3
@richw5: Young people like it because nothing else is presented to them unless they are adventurous and veer away from the Top 40 stations.
2
Whatever happened to music that you could sing and remember the tune and the lyrics to? Entertaining and happy stuff seems to have made an exit - Stage Left - years and years ago.
5
Listen to anything recorded by Mark Knopler, you will not want to reach out and turn it off because it doesn’t make you tired, it makes you groove. He is one of the best musicians to spend your money on. Audiophiles spend tens of thousands of dollars on fantastic stereo equipment that is playing poorly engineered and poorly recorded sound, waste of money.
7
Which is why, four times a year, I get Dave's Picks (up to 29) for three hours of pure joy!
Betty Cantor understood dynamic range better than most :)
2
Bottom line, today’s music has no sophistication and is more about creating a particular sound or noise. The reason for the loudness and diminished range is that it removes effort from the listener. There are great creative artists today, but they’re not the composers and musicians of past times.
3
Remember DBX? They compressed the dynamic range of music by increasing the loudness of the quietest parts while encoding tapes, then decoding it back to normal dynamic range moving the quiet sounds back down and pushing the tape's hiss and noise even further into the almost inaudible range. Cool analogue technology.
Unfortunately it is virtually impossible to enjoy classical music on a subway or any music with a wide dynamic range as the ambient noise drowns out all but the loudest passages. So the dynamically compressed loud music of today works better for noisy and endless commutes.
Sorry, but clipped recordings are not artistic - just poor recording, bad engineering or plain bad listening.
The first time I heard an audio CD at a demo event - when CD players cost many thousands - I experienced ecstatic chills up my spine hearing the low 32hz C organ emerge out of complete silence and the orchestra and brass growing to an unbelievably loud and glorious climax in Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra". No vinyl or mp3 could ever replicate that. Now, that piece is the ultimate challenge for any audio engineer to record faithfully. I never really appreciated the initial 32hz organ note on any vinyl recordings before - hidden by all the surface noise, clicks and pops.
Author should include the graph of the 2001 theme for a true dynamic example.
Now if I can only decode my DBX encoded cassettes.
2
You should see what a nightmares we had in the studios syncing DBX or Dolby racks with multitracks!
1
As others have commented, modern music is the sound equivalent of fast food. Auto-tune (sp?) has rendered ability and range irrelevant. My snowblower could have a hit song with the proper engineer playing with it. It would sound as flat and artificial as ANY of the modern singers, but it would win a Grammy.
6
Nothing last forever, by which I mean that this focus on hyper compressed pop music sound will not go on indefinitely. Even the hideous digitally "enhanced" pop singer vocals will go away. As other have said, this stuff is totally unlistenable on high fidelity playback equipment. When people rediscover the appeal of good sounding equipment those awful mixes and recordings will either be entirely remixed and remastered or just fall into disuse.
To the folks mourning the loss of more personal, organic music I recommend that you turn your backs on the major record labels altogether and go looking for the little independent labels with local regional acts. These folks share your tastes and musical values. No, you won't get the sheeny perfect sound of the expensive 16, 24 and 48 track studios of the final analog era but you will get honest music with honest recordings.
Remember: the mainstream is almost never where it's at. It never was.
5
you know-im 57-i have vinyl, i have stanley clarke, johnny winter, STEVIE RAY, steely dan, rolling stones, marshall tucker and on and on. this article misses the entire point of musical enjoyment. its aint scientific there fella-it works or it dont. silly article. thanks for segregating anther population group.
3
Beg to differ. This is *exactly* how music was made 50-60 years ago, before FM. Phil Spector developed the "Wall of Sound" to explode out of a single dashboard speaker turned to a car's AM radio, or perhaps a transistor radio on a bedside table. And plenty of top-40 stations sped up their turntables half a tone to make the music pop even more.
7
The day the music died. I mostly listen to 70s and 80s rock. A few late 60s and early 90s. It's my music, the music I grew up with. Music that if someone asks me what I was doing when a song played, I either don't want to say or don't remember.
I may have failed in many things during my lifetime, but succeeded knowing that my sons, born in the late 80s, mostly listen to my music. Their best band is Led Zeppelin.
7
I'm a headphone hobbyist and it's interesting. and surprising, to see an audiophile issue being discussed in the NYT. A couple of months ago I bought the Focal Elex, a full sized open back headphone that, among its other virtues, is known for its particularly large dynamic range. While a lot of music sounds wonderful through the Elex, it is well known that a lot of modern popular music does not precisely because of the compression issue discussed here. Thankfully, for me at least, I don't listen to a lot of modern pop music.
(TBH, this is not an issue that is going to matter much to--or literally heard at all by--the average mass listener streaming Spotify on their smartphone through cheap earphones.The Elex, which is assembled by hand in France by Focal, is a modified version of another Focal headphone. It is available only in the US and only through Massdrop, a US company which often crowd funds modded versions of existing products, for $700, a significant discount from the original product. My musical source is Tidal, a streaming service whose lossless CD level sound quality is much higher than that of Spotify, albeit at twice the cost and a much higher bit rate. This is streamed from my PC through hundreds of dollars electronics: external digital/analog converter and a bespoke headphone amp. I am well aware that the average listener would regard this gear, which is only considered mid-level by audiophiles, excessive and amusing.)
6
Thanks for this excellent article. I would also add that file compression (as in MP3) has had an adverse effect on overall sound quality for the masses. For a while it looked like high resolution audio formats like SACD and DVD-Audio were going to gain a sizable foothold in the digital market, but ultimately lower sampling rates became the standard due to smaller file sizes. Earbuds and limited mobile devices no doubt had a lot to do with this, as higher resolution sources can only really showcase their worth when played through decent gear. On the bright side vinyl has made an amazing comeback, not only with old fogies like myself but, also with younger generations. Just the other day while perusing records at a local store, two kids maybe 12 years old walked by me with one exclaiming "Cool... vinyl!". Perhaps high resolution, dynamic sounding music is not dead after all.
6
This is so interesting. I am a big Rush fan, but their final three albums (starting with Vapor Trails, which was mentioned in the article) are just so LOUD to me that I don’t like listening to them. I never understood why but now I do. I also can’t really get the hang of today’s hit music, although I loved pop radio when I was a teenager in the 80s (and still love the 80s station today). One likes what one likes, I suppose.
4
To me, and I am an aging baby boomer, the music of today is mostly loud, shouting (not singing) angry mis-matched wording that is angry and filled with venom, inappropriate language and lacking in tone, quality, dynamic range, and ability to project emotion, meaning or any message worth listening to. It seems to me that the beat, and the intensity of modern music is relentlessly loud, driving and totally devoid of nuance and real drama. It's painful to listen to. So, I don't.
I don't even listen to the singing and music on America's Got Talent, the Voice, and similar venues. It's not music.
I should add that at age 8 I took up the clarinet and piano. I was a member of the elementary school orchestra, and in jr. high and high school I was in the marching band, the concert band and also the choir. I continued my interest in the choir in college too. My brother is a professional musician who teaches classical and rock guitar and classical and jazz piano and keyboards. He went to Berkley in Boston. Our mom was a gifted pianist and my son also was extremely talented in piano.
I believe that we know what real music sounds like. And I also believe that I can speak for my family members when I say that most of today's music has little quality, meaning and less talent.
There is great validity to this article. Sadly, no one will be able to hear anything above the noise and nothing will change.
This evening I listened to Joni Mitchell's early music and it brought me to tears
20
@Jack Frost. Gee, this sounds exactly like what my dad used to say when I listened to the likes of the Rolling Stones, the Kinks and the Yardbirds when I was a kid in the 60s. Word for word.
3
Plenty of good music being made these days my friend. Listen to some Jason Isbell- start with Southeastern and continue forward.
1
Otis Redding sang "Dock of the Bay" in bare feet, coming in from his job as a dishwasher.
2
Egads! Who cares? First of all, the dynamic range and the frequency of dynamic peaks is relatively unimportant.
Second, analyzing the Eagles versus today's rock or hip-hop is like comparing french fries from two different eras. While there have been a few interesting rock bands and some fine song writers, most rock music is derivative and trite. Rap and hip-hop are culturally important, but musically horrid for the most part. 95% of the lyrics are not much better than a middle schooler's doggerel. (and I should know, based on screen name).
I love lots of popular music, but mostly because it's associated with life events. Even ? and the Mysterians, arguably the worst band in the 20th century, can get me to bounce in the car when 96 Tears comes on.
Over the decades, the volume of popular music and the garishness of costumes has increased in an inverse relationship to the quality of the music itself. It is more and more an "all hat and small cows" situation.
I'm really not a snob, but Metallica is not Mozart and the Eagles are not Elgar.
One of the shames of the past generation is that children don't hear great symphonies, Charlie Parker or Bach. There's more to life than french fries.
328
@Barking Doggerel
Disagree on your comment "First of all, the dynamic range and the frequency of dynamic peaks is relatively unimportant." I find compressed audio grating and fatiguing. For those who do not, good for you! The rest of us have to seek out vintage stuff, or only listen for for brief periods.
Note that one thing the article doesn't cover is that many pop stations add their own dose of compression, in case there might be some dynamic range lurking is some modern recording. A few stations do not. Hopefully you can find one.
51
@Barking Doggerel
A friend of mine recognized Question Mark year ago -- he was driving a cab.
15
@Barking Doggerel
I like a pipe for a Christmas present,
or records—Bessie, bop, or Bach. ---Langston Hughes
37
I miss the artwork and booklets that came with non-digital audio. Reading the liner notes and lyrics while listening. What an experience.
5
it's interesting. I think people said the same thing of the Beatles and Rolling Stones when they first came ashore as many of the reader comments here. I'm not defending any of it - i really can't take listening to the radio. Give me indie music (like Mandarin Orange or Beta Radio) or acoustic jazz (Brad Mehldau, Josh Redman, etc)that gets little or no airplay - there's lot of great contemporary stuff happening. it just doesn't fill auditoriums. (BTW - was never a fan of the Eagles. They just didn't do it for me!)
1
@curt hill Yes, we always wondered what you thought of the Eagles.
1
I consider most of today’s music more rhythmic verse than music. The tunes lack variation in melody and overall dynamics compared to past music – kind of the point the author was making in the article. Why this is happening now is probably related to numerous factors. One that comes to mind is that the message in most current songs seems to come from anger. It’s kind of hard to come up with a joyous catchy tune when there is anger or frustration in your heart.
316
@Ray Orr, you are exactly right. I have been trying to articulate the difference between today's music and older music. "Rhythmic verse" is a pretty good description of what passes for music nowadays. Melody seems to be dead. There is just a droning, rhythmic backdrop and all the songs follow a similar structure. This is precisely why I gave up on popular music 40 years ago and find endless joy in the music of the early-mid 20th Century.
33
@Ray Orr, while I agree with most of what you say, I disagree with your ultimate conclusion. There was more than enough anger and anguish in the Sixties, yet masterpieces were still produced. I think it has more to do with anyone who can talk making a record, regardless of their musical abilities. I think this was exacerbated by the rise of widespread sampling, which enabled those who just talk to get a free ride on the shoulders of those who actually made music.
36
@Ray Orr Yes, "rhythmic verse!" But there was plenty of anger in the 60s-70s and 80s music too. As well as sexual frustration!
9
Great article for people who remember vinyl recordings with dynamic range. When the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album came out, you could hear the guitar pick hit the strings, chairs creak, Paul taking a breath. Pink Floyd’s Dark side of the Moon was an adventure in stereo. Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions was an audiophile masterpiece.
I miss orchestral instruments and acoustic guitars and compositions with introductions, development, improvisation, crescendo, and coda. I miss virtuosity and live performance. I miss ensembles like the Grateful Dead, who mastered roots music and recorded live performances, no two set lists alike, while pioneering the Wall of Sound-the ultimate expression of dynamic range.
Kids these days may not want to play the violin, but teaching music in schools is more important today than ever.
589
@John Tobin one of my tests of stereo system has always been whether I could hear John Bonham's squeaky Ludwig bass drum pedal on Since I've Been Lovin' You. To me music is all about the dynamic range. From Led Zeppelin to Van Cliburn's performance of Fur Elise it's what gives music it's soul. When they apply today's compression they destroy the soul of the music.
53
@John Tobin wall of sound was Owsleys side gig... sorta
5
@John Tobin,
Thank you for including the Grateful Dead, who were always so particular about sound. They could play very loud and it never hurt my ears, it just felt very full. Now I understand why.
22
Interesting article. I would be interested in comparisons between recordings from the 70's and 50's. Does the aural fatigue hypothesis hold true or is it that we just like the music we like?
Here is another gripe by an older person: The mangling of The Star-Spangled Banner at the Superbowl and other major public gatherings. It used to be that talented singers, well, sang it. No more. For decades now, the latest upcoming singers do not so much sing as slip and slide around the official notes, covering up their shortcomings (as well as lip-syncing), and largely using it to service their own egos and marketability, rather than in service to the song itself.
One exception is James Taylor, in his own simple, unadorned manner gets the job done. Oh to wish to have Tony Bennett to be brought on to take this on.
Some people really can sing. Just not at the Superbowl.
242
@Victor Mark Our National Anthem is not the easiest piece to sing. One year the San Francisco Mime Troupe (most people will have to do some web searching to understand what this venerable group really is) played a version where they introduced several key shifts that reduced the range of notes - compression in a different dimension. It was a little strange, but everyone in the audience was able to sing. Purists may scoff at the change, but the important part is that everyone enjoyed participating.
14
@Victor Mark I thought Gladys Knight did a great job (Superbowl, 2019). She respected the melody and, while she may not have the highs she used to have, her deeper rendition gave it a unique richness.
40
@Victor Mark Whitney Houston did a beautiful rendition. It's on You Tube. She had a terrific vocal range. Try as I might, I simply can't hit half the notes of the Star Spangled Banner. I wish we could choose a song that most people could actually sing.
26
Perhaps this is the "they don't write them like that anymore" kind of commentary the author of this piece was avoiding, but my guess is that the inherent shallowness of so much music today would only benefit nominally from being recorded the old way, with more dynamic range. I've been listening to the Beatles "1" collection lately; even if it were engineered to be loud, the songs would still have the complexity, depth, inventiveness, and soul that would bring me back to them again and again. That can't be said of much of today's "product" which seems to be created to be consumed and disposed of (quickly). So why not make it loud? You're only going to listen to it for a few weeks anyway.
5
As a budding mastering engineer, I am thinking about optimizing the loudness without harming the music quite often. And although I could write far too much about my thoughts on this, I would like to share just one small irony:
The "louder", more over-compressed (inevitably distorted in barely audible, but highly fatiguing ways), and lacking in dynamics the music is - the less I want to turn it up. This is because the music is hurting my ears even at low volumes.
For example, me personally, I love rock music. And, I love to listen to it at high volumes (VERY high volumes) partly because I just love the way it makes my whole body feel. But I find myself unable to crank up music that's been overly compressed in the ways mentioned in the article. It's just super unpleasant. But music that hasn't been produced "too loud" - I can listen to very loud!
(hope that makes sense to all the non-mastering engineers out there!)
Good read. Thank you!
372
@Anawim Avila On the back of the first Butterfield album, circa 1965 there was a "play it loud" suggestion. If you like Chicago blues give it a try.
11
@Anawim Avila When something is over compressed it actually sounds smaller when you turn it up loud.
Like when an over compressed CD gets played on the radio that also uses compression you can hear the drums get smaller.
Another problem with modern music from the 80s onward is the drums are over compressed themselves and mixed too loud. When you listen to seventies rock the drums sit in the mix better. The snare will peek in and out of the mix. When the band gets louder it can almost disappear yet you still perceive it. The drums on a lot of modern records can sound separate from the rest of band.
21
I do not listen to pop music, period.
It is souless.
And it effects childrens brains similar to that of a fructose high causing depression when the blast is over.
2
I've been a recording engineer my whole career, from creating radio material in the 1970s to mixing theatrical films now. Loudness wars have been with us the whole time. The major difference now seems to be that during the analog era, it wasn't automatic: sophisticated processors that could control lows and high separately didn't get popular in recording studios until the 1990s. So you had to use your brain and fingers, adjusting individual levels and timbres until everything played together nicely.
Now that you can get cheap software that turns a recording into those constant-level graphs at the touch of a button, many producers expect you to use it. And turn it up "to 11".
The temptation is always there to over-use technical solutions when they're easier or require less thought than artistic solutions. You can auto-tune pitch-challenged singers, at the mere cost of making them sound like robots; assemble an "orchestration" from prerecorded loops of chords without knowing what real instruments can do. Or have newspapers replace reporters with software that does routine articles by digesting press releases or financial reports.
Good music will evolve and survive, as today's artists learn to use their new tools creatively. But when music-as-commodity meets commerce, quick-and-dirty always wins.
-
Background note: I'm a member of AES and CAS, and author of one of the standard textbooks on film and video sound.
429
@Jay Rose
Here’s a novel ides. How about letting sound be sound instead of tinkering with it just because we have the technology.
7
@JKile If you've ever played with any sound, you'll know subtle changes can make things sound substantially better. And I'm not even remotely good at it. Even what you're going to consider "pure" music isn't. Notice the mentions in the article about how much care was put into older songs. Watch guitar and amp hot swaps at concerts. Change isn't bad. Well thought out change enhances the experience.
5
@Jay Rose
Are those special instruments that you use to get to 11?
This is a perfect explanation of why I gave up listening to most of the current offerings out there in all forms of popular music. Zzzzzzz. Most of it is formulaic - the ridiculous over-hyped nothingness of the Super Bowl's most recent halftime "entertainment" - comes immediately to mind. Boring people surrounded by sycophants echoing the same tired stuff over and over again.
There are some genuine and uniquely talented people out there like Justin Timberlake, Lady Gaga, Joey Alexander, an astonishing young jazz pianist, or the late incredible Prince, who was the epitome of artistic evolution, like his and my hero, the incomparable Renaissance diva Joni Mitchell, who is in an artistic class few inhabit, but the science of loud has driven me away, and I was a member of two rock bands, one in the 1970s and another in the 1990s.
I haven't watched in years.
411
@MAW
I hear you. Every year, between Christmas and New Years, I look for lists of the years top tracks in every genera that I typically enjoy (pop, rock, metal, indie, alt, and so on) and I listen to that years offerings to see if anything catches my ear. It has reached the point that I can no longer identify any thing distinctive in any popular genera, it all just sounds the same as the previous year with different names. Originality is on life support.
110
@MAW
As a non-parent, I would like for someone to explain whether there is or is not any kind of genuine music scene today, i.e., a community of the young who actually share a body of new music over time, whose common life experiences are illuminated by it.
It appears to me that this is missing, too, from the present era, and it was a very, very important aspect of American music.
What would the present "era" even be called?
25
@arusso You might try listening to the low-high indie songs of the brilliant Alex Giannascoli. He’s living proof that people today are still making wonderful, original pop music (though you won't hear it on the radio).
8
Wow! New York Times published a great piece on technology and music that did not feel like it was either too dumbed-down or condescending.
As a non-audio engineer or musician, I have also been astonished by the quality and knowledge of the others publishing comments. It feels like a seminar.
Thank you.
8
A lot of the fun of buying and enjoying music, such as looking at the lyrics and sleeve, has disappeared with the digitization of everything. I'm also struck at how it seems the majority of the public just sees it as a mass product and not an art form to be appreciated and enjoyed. So they get their music from their iPhone or wherever they get it from nowadays. When I was a teenager, listening to music was an event. You'd clean the record and put it on your turntable, find a good spot on the couch and listen carefully to it while reading the liner notes. You'd have good JBL or other speakers, a Marantz amplifier and a Technics turntable. It was fun.
649
@Eugene Debs I still have a good stereo system, but it's getting harder to find equipment. Everything seems to be moving to home theater, or super high end speakers and amplifiers.
13
@Eugene Debs: agreed eugene.
i like to think BITD the public was given the proper tools to truly "experience" music. today the record companies are only interested in having us "consume" it.
i went to a live show recently, and was stunned at the number of people busily recording the performance with their phones... i guess they're just used to seeing it on a screen, rather than in person.
23
@Eugene Debs
Add to that the very personal act of selecting the record -especially if you didn't have a big budget. And if you liked what your got, next was bringing friends in to listen with you. It was the equivalent of a Japanese Tea Ceremony!
I still have a working Technics turntable.
When cassette players were still respectable, I tried to record most of my favorite old LPS. Onkyo Receiver/amp , Denon for cassettes, and currently an Emotiva CD player. This all sounds so much better .... it's worth the real estate it takes up.
28
As yet another baby boomer I enjoyed the story. I really got a laugh from the cranky old guy comments about how today's music is awful noise compared to the music of the 60s and 70s. Guess what our parents were saying about that awful noise? Get on the bus or step aside and watch the Lawrence Welk show on PBS.
1
I'm an audio engineer. I don't make recordings, I make equipment. I can't listen to digital anymore, only vinyl. I have an original Rolling Stones album and the CD of it. The vinyl sounds like there is real band playing in my house and the digital sounds like it came out of a machine, which it did.
The recording industry has killed fidelity and replaced it with pumped up noise. It's horrible. People don't know what real music sounds like. Even in live venues, they compress it and pump it up and them play through horrible sounding class D amplifiers.
This excellent article provides graphical evidence of what many of us have known for years. The record companies are butchering music. They have taken the soul out of it. They have removed the need for a true high fidelity system which can reveal that emotional connection with the artist.
I have Johnny Cash's The Man Comes Around. It's glorious. Cash was involved with the mastering. He was old school and knew how to master. The new guys don't have a clue and the old timers are dying out.
The music industry is doing to music what fast food did to cuisine. It's the lowest common denominator and it's all the same homogenize mediocrity. They sell canned noise instead of artistic creativity.
When my generation dies out, that will be the end of high quality music reproduction and the artistry it allows. BOOM, BOOM, BOOM. The public has no idea of what they are missing.
1056
@Bruce Rozenblit I agree. I listen to mostly rock music, and the vinyl of the 70's offered dynamics and variety, soft and loud. These days, many compact discs, even at lower volumes, will hurt my ears.
35
@Bruce Rozenblit Sorry, but I see nothing inherently wrong with digital. It seems to me that we made better concert recordings with digital than analog when using the best analog technology available in the late 70s while also feeding a stereo feed to an early Sony digital audio adapter/UMatic recorder. Besides having a much higher signal to noise level, the digital playback seemed to have more presence. The problems today are most likely the result of the siren song of easy digital manipulation.
41
@Bruce Rozenblit
"The record companies are butchering music. They have taken the soul out of it. They have removed the need for a true high fidelity system which can reveal that emotional connection with the artist."
What you say is true, but what you did not say is that the record companies/"artists" are simply giving a non-discerning public what it wants.
54
"Over time, with listeners increasingly consuming music through earbuds and cheap computer speakers, engineers and producers found themselves working in a denuded sonic landscape..."
Not really much different from the 60s and early 70s, when AM top 40 dominated. Yet engineers produced music then that would sound better on cheap transistor radios. They used equalization to adapt to the limitations of the equipment, not so much compression as to puree sound into a bland nothingness.
There's more going on here than mere technological limitations of cheap speakers. A cheap trick of increasing audio volume is being used to increase sales volume. Much as cheap sweeteners are added to beverages to make them initially attractive but ultimately unsatisfying.
2
Uhm...Jack White? Jeff Tweedy?
Well, I guess I’ll hold on to my large trove of vinyl from the 60s and later (not to mention 20s, 30s, 40s, and 50s) – pain that it is to move. The sound is worth it. I bought my first Beatles LP in 1964 and 55 years later, after hundreds of spins, it still sounds great. But it isn’t just the sound quality; it’s the quality of the music itself. It would be interesting to see if any of today’s music will still be admired 55 years from now. Can perfect-pitch software, digital vocal effects, and dynamic range compression save it from terminal monotony?
And 55 years from now will AI be creating all the music? – and maybe listening to our music for us: “Alexa, listen to that song for me.”
I loved Phil Spector’s “wall of sound,” but despite its sonic onslaught, there was never any aural fatigue. There were plenty of pleasing dynamic contrasts. And I don’t really care about today’s aggressive compression or loudness wars (unless the sound in the car next to me is sending shock waves of bass through my body) because, except for an occasional stand-out, an Adele or Winehouse, I don’t listen to much new music anyway. As a young Elvis once said in a highly scripted moment: it don’t move me. Sound quantity can’t substitute for sound quality.
There’s just too much vying for our limited attention spans today – so make it louder, faster, more outrageous. Put it on steroids. It’s boring.
I listen to a lot of jazz now and the sound of the greatest instrument of all, the human voice.
9
Pop music has always been a wasteland of music business types making money on the next shiny teen bop sugar guaranteed to haul in the cash. The better music seems to always come from the fringes where originality and heart are more important than glossy compressed pop hits.
The digital age gives everyone the ability to produce music. Few understand it well enough to make it work.
1
peak 2012 internet music forum arguments way to be on top of this in 2019 guys
Turn down that music! And get off my lawn!
4
So now it all seems to go up to 11.
4
Google "millennial whoop" to hear the current audio crime...
Sorry,
Wrong take...nothing to do with volume...and much more with lack of musicality....look it up......
1
I wonder what role, if any, is played by corporate radio conglomerates with their focus on short, loud songs with a limited variation from song to song? It seems like there is nothing today like the FM radio stations of the 70s and early 80s that played a greater variety of music (even if limited by genre) and allowed artists to experiment more, knowing they'd still be able to get airplay and sell records even if their music didn't closely hew to commercial formulas.
7
Interesting article, thanks.
It would be great if some of the commenters who are pro recording engineers could tell us where we might buy uncompressed music - if that's even still possible.
3
I’m 66 and was fortunate to grow up with the pop and then “underground” (but not really) music of the 60’s and 70’s. There were some tremendous players in bands and songwriters (writing melodically interesting stuff) back then and I could say the same going back to the 40’s or so and then maybe up until 2010 or so but now ... for me it’s mostly vapid stuff with an emphasis on bad choreography in the stage shows. Luckily, we have a huge catalog of older stuff and there are still excellent jazz and rock players and bands out there; they just need to be tracked down on the net and in smaller venues.
4
Wow!... Thank you for putting out this accurate informative story! I graduated recording school in 1983 and have watched (listened) as this was shoved down our collective ears. If you want it louder, turn up the volume...give me my dynamics back!
5
From reading the comments, one would think talented musicians are extinct. They exist, but largely outside the pop genre.
6
Just call me an old crank, but today's music lacks melody and memorable lyrics. Lots of screaming and yelling.
7
Lack of dynamics is a symptom, not the cause. Popular music by its very nature must vibrate sympathetically with the world. There is a reason Cole Porter and George Gershwin songs sound sophisticated. New York set the fashion for the world, and running about town with the in crowd, was both hip and urbane.
The tail end of the great musicals lasted into the sixties, great songs that will never die. Blues and country started out as folk music with roots in African and Scotch-Irish music.
When they combined we had the raw powerful sound of rock'n'roll.
2
Ok, I'm an old fart. I was at Woodstock. My college roommates were mostly musicians, including Huey Lewis. I was an audiophile all through high school and college, and I'm an electrical engineer, retired.
Back in the sixties and seventies, music had variety and verve. You could identify every band immediately because they all had their individual style. The stuff I hear today is utterly soporific. Every song sounds like a minor variation of all the others. And don't even get me started on rap - hardly music at all.
I'm glad I lived in the musical era that I did. Where's my copy of "Hotel California"?
8
Loudness has become an entertainment syndrome. I don't know about you, but I take cotton balls with me to the movie theater so as not to get my eardrums blown in.
2
It seems like today’s music is all about “the show”. Jumping and hoping around is more important than the sound or the lyrics. Can’t take new music but love the oldies.
In a related topic a real peeve of mine is when in a movie or television the “background” music is so loud you can’t hear what the person is saying. Especially if it’s a real dramatic moment and they lower their voice. Does anyone listen to these things before they show them?
1
Pop music today is mostly about a pretty or handsome face and young body. Nobody looks like Bob Dylan anymore or moves like Ella Fitzgerald.
No talent? No problem, we have computers to perfect the pitch (at the risk of shrill in the sound quality). Some cynics would also say that rap music was developed for those who can't sing.
Don't write songs? Are you kidding? We got a ton of songs submitted by anyone with a computer, and modified by a team of sound engineers.
Cranking out a certain formula is meant to generate short-term hits, and revenue. Radio stations are told, by head office, what to play and how often. I know, my daughter is a radio show host. The local station has almost zero discretion in choosing what the listener will be fed. Creativeness has been squeezed out of the music, sadly.
5
This is why I hate my local gym.
8
Let's be real. What they call "music" these days is just garbage. No genius, no creativity. Seems the music died in the early 90s. Give me Marvin Gaye forever.
6
This article disappoints because it concentrates too much on the "acoustics" of modern pop rather than the content. Lyrics and melodies from the 60s, 70s and 80s are so much more poetic and strike so much more of a universal note for listeners. Hip hop, at its best, can do the same thing lyrically, but, more often than not, its either stream of conscience in dire need of an editor, or its one line repeated over and over and over ad infinitum. The incredible artistry of telling a story through lyrics that actually have a beginning, middle and end, is getting lost amongst all the amazing "outboard" equipment that mixers have to pump up the bass. I know I am getting old but, more than anything else, I think this is why I am constantly amazed to see young people reaching back to the music of my era to have a "good listen."
1
Um, the days of yore were the 50s and 60s.
3
Thank goodness no one makes music like the Eagles anymore because they are terrible.
1
I've read some articles recently from millenial-born music critics who say that the Eagles were the worst band ever. I personally don't care much of what milleanials have to say regarding music. Especially from self-appointed critics. They're the ones who rave about hip-hop, and the current top 40 musicians) god awful music if you ask me). It would be like me critiquing music from the 1930's- 1940's; musicians like Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey. These millenials need to zip it when it comes to deciding whats good music and what's bad music. Personally, if i were them I'd hide in the closet and not show my face around town for that's how embarrassing they are.
3
Pornography and music. One you know when you see it; the other when it is heard.
Music produced since the turn of the century has been little more than aural pornography.
3
The only version of the National Anthem worth listening to is Jimi’s.
3
I'm well into my 60's and I find many of the comments here made by my fellow old fogey's to be downright embarrassing. Don't you folks hear yourselves? Don't you realize that you have become exactly what you swore you would never be? So today's music doesn't speak to you. Deal with it. It's not trying to speak to you. You are not the target audience any more than our grandparents were the target audience of the musicians we listened to. I mostly listen to older stuff myself, but I try to keep my ears open to new stuff as well. There is a lot of great music being made today it just takes a little more effort to find it. Get out of your niche and avoid being programmed by some anonymous algorithm and maybe you'll find some good new music too.
13
How does this article square with the thriving live music scene that has much better sound systems than the good old days? Are they somehow compressing that music too?
Just get yourself a copy of Sonny Rollins' "Saxophone Colossus" and forget all this.
3
If you can't whistle it it isn't music.
3
When the Beatles-CD "Greatest Hits" was released in `98, it was not only a #1. It sold more than all the other TopTen-CDs behind t o g e t h e r .
If somebody would have rereleased during the Beatles years, say `65, a "Greatest Hits"-CD of an artist popular 35 years ago - e.g. Louis Armstrong or Frank Sinatra - would it have even made it into the TopTen?
It`s gonna take a few more years, until the last musical hero of that age is dead ... indispensable condition for that kind of music to become "Classical Music".
I don`t have any doubt at all that this will happen.
Enjoy getting deaf, kids! And it's not even worth it nowadays. All of the music today, with rare exception, sounds the same. Also, why are misogynist lyrics still tolerated? We have #MeToo and people claiming to be more aware of women in society yet we're still totally cool with objectifying them in lyrics, especially rap.
1
To curmudgeons in the comments who say good music is dead: NONSENSE. The music industry hasn't killed it yet, it just doesn't promote it. There are hordes of talented musical artists out there, you just won't find many of them on the radio or top 100 lists. Go to Youtube and surf through some of the live performances hosted by KEXP or NPR's tiny desk concerts. They are full of gems that put mediocre bands like the Eagles to shame.
4
Point taken about compression. But what about everything else that makes music terrible? Pop music made on laptops, sometimes with no live instruments. Songs written by committee.
Digital/technical enhancement of everything in live performance, to say nothing of in the studio. Musicians of today: what would happen if you put a Fender amplifier on a folding chair, with no monitor, and started playing and singing? Good luck.
2
All the dynamic range in the world doesn't mean the Eagles aren't the most boring band in history. Their popularity probably owes itself to the same thing as the popularity of opiates--people just want to be sedated.
1
I cranked up Marvin Gaye so I could sing along and pretend I harmonized with him. That was when songs were worth cranking up.
4
Maybe they're using compression to mask the fact that there is little musicianship in most modern pop.
When do you hear a really good drummer anymore or a bass line that is anything but thumping?
1
You left out the primary reason: Hip-hop isn't really music. It's just junk for those too stupid to appreciate actual music.
1
I would also like too add there are great new bands and artists out there.War on Drugs,Low cut Connie,Kurt vile and Courtney Barnett.The Beth’s,Greensky Bluegrass.All of these bands and many more put out vinyl and great quality music.Its there for you if you want it!
2
All of this technology is really an outgrowth of a weird attempt to perfect music. Music isn't perfect. I love 50's music; jazz, blues, rock and roll, jump blues, doo wop, modern jazz, about none of it is perfect. (Well, maybe Arthur Rubinstein.) Anyhow I've noticed some of you bragging about your analog systems. OK-
1964 Fischer with latticework speakers and a Gerrard turntable.
Fool on the Hill, Beatles; Caravan by Bunny Berigan; Little Walter; Segovia; The Moonglows; marvelous.
My 22 year old daughter came over after I got it. She said; "How does it work?" Well, you take this plastic disk....
A few minutes later she said; "It does sound better!"
Maybe they can create an app that makes music fill a room with warmth; rather than perfected sounds - doubt it.
2
There’s very little music worth listening to after 1975!
2
That's why I listen to Tidal!
1
I find this to be a more interesting article than (at first glance) it appeared to be. I mean, how many times have you muted the sound on a commercial? This is much more than that simple question.
I first learned about sound compression when I was working in a guitar shop in the 1970's. We sold the best guitars, amplifiers, keyboards, etc. I played lead guitar & used a small device (a foot pedal) called a "compressor". I sometimes used 1 or 2 other devices.
It literally compressed the sound of someone playing lead guitar, providing sustain. This was a new & terrific device. The best part about it was having sustain whenever desired, while playing at low volume. You should understand, prior to the invention of this device, one had to play at high volume to achieve the desired sustain of a particular note, or series of notes, on a guitar solo.
I played music at high volume, mainly because I love rock and jazz-rock, aka: "Fusion". My favorite guitar player was Jimi Hendrix. This was 1967. When I first heard him, it changed my life. Unfortunately, Hendrix died in September, 1970; only 27 years old.
I bought a guitar, & after a friend taught me how to play scales & chords, I practiced as much as possible.
I am a huge fan of the greatest living guitarist: Jeff Beck. I bought "Truth", his 1st album in 1968, & many more. I've seen him play twice in Dallas, TX: 1975 on the "Blow By Blow" tour & in 1980 on the "There & Back" tour. The 3rd time was about 2006 in a club in NY City.
1
To repeat a line I once read on another site's forum, "when I listen to Led Zeppelin, so do my neighbors!"
In the end, it's all about muscling your way to the front, isn't it? Louder, higher, faster, bigger, brighter look-at-me. No delicacy, no taste needed. Kind of explains Trump, too.
2
Whatever happened to dramatic use of silence?
1
Loudness wars are not new.
From an article about audio processing for broadcast in db magazine, September, 1981:
After a long description of the market demands and technology used, the article closes with "WPLJ is the loudest station in New York"
There have always been people who actually listen to music vs those who only cursorily hear it. The advent of data dropping MP3s and low quality high volume personal stereos, headphones and the like have, as described in the article's exposure of poor mixing and engineering to serve these, made it difficult for the former vs the latter.
I was always impressed with the music that came out of the Nashville studios. They kept it clean and simple with a minimum of processing. The superb musicians created their own dynamics. Just hit "record." There was a recent PBS documentary on this. The studios in NY and LA used far more compression, reverb and equalization. I guess to make up for a lack of talent. Speaking of talent, that's what's really missing in today's music. In the 60's a band had to impress a producer and sign a contract to get into a studio and on the radio. It was a high bar to clear. Real talent percolated to the top. Now any bozo with a laptop and software in his living room can become a millionaire streaming star. Sad.
I have stopped listening to most of the popular music of today. It's not just the loudness that bothers me. It's the lack of artistry and cleverness in the words and the music. I loved listening to Simon and Garfunkel, The Eagles, and Marvin Gaye. There was a level of warmth in that music which is missing today. The CDs don't capture it the way vinyl did.
Luckily for me there is still folk music to listen to. And I can always remember Harry Chapin's "Taxi" in my head.
6
While it's comfortable to bask in the glory of the music of older bands and movements, I find it can be pretty limiting to hail those who came before us instead of searching for contemporary music that's equally if not more transformative. One simply has to be curious and look past the surface film of popular culture and find a plethora of bands who are wholly dedicated to pure music. And the best thing is, there will always be a plethora.
1
agree with article. I'm a boomer from the Motown era. I still listen to all those songs, but with a greatly improved stereo system. I'm amazed how when I listen to the songs I hear things I never heard before; the bass is more clearly defined and background singers. I'm sure it was there all the time, I just didn't have a stereo capable of reproducing it. I can turn the music up loud and enjoy the highs and lows.
But I also have some of the newer songs (at least newer to me) where hip-hop began. I have to get up and turn the sound down because all that bam bam bam. They don't sound like notes to me, at least what I can discern; just loud sounds. A couple of minutes of that and I'm ready to go to the next song. Where I can get back to melodies, music and vocals.
I'm sure the younger generation will laugh. Probably my Mom, God rest her soul, thought the same thing about Motown when it came along.
2
Thanks for this piece. I'm not in the music biz, but I've often wondered why the music of my childhood (the 1960s and 70s) has managed to last.
We live in an era when there are lots of musically talented artists, but so much of it sounds the same.
And I've often listened to contemporary music and thought, why don't they make this more...interesting?
Musicians--take over the sound room!
1
For me the bigly difference between the old(er) music and now music - melody! Most of the stuff released today, especially pop, lacks melody. They may have a cool beat, but they lack melody.
Of the two samples; Gaye versus Gambino...which one can you hum to? Which one can you "play" the lyrics by humming them? Which one, when you cant recall the title, can you hum for a friend, and they'll know it? (as long as you can reasonably duplicate a melody)
I play this game with "these kids" all the time. Hum a Beyonce song, now! They cant. Quick, hum a Cardi B song! They cant.
They might give me the beat, but its usually indecipherable from dozens of other songs. It doesn't conjure the lyrics. Hum that Gambino piece! You can't. You cant conjure the lyrics for someone by humming that song.
While humans love a good beat, can be made delirious by them - its the melody that sticks in our soul! Its why - like them or not - the Beatles catalogue is so enduring. Why many of us older adults can "play" (by making some mouth noise) all the parts of Hotel California. Or Bohemian Rhapsody.
Watch a young-one who appreciates music, listen to good Classic Rock, or back-in-the-day music, and see their eyes and souls light up! All the nuances, all the frills, all the never before made - organically made from scratch in a studio - sounds and vocal overlays, and the melodies galore - its like drinking cool water after a long trudge thru a desert.
Its the melody baby!
7
Thanks for quantifying a shift in sound that I definitely recognized but never could put a finger on. I was working in a record store in the late nineties, and every day we'd throw new releases into the CD changer. By and large, we sold to audiophiles and record collectors, but I'd try to keep an open mind to more popular rock releases. But they'd be so abrasively monotonously loud in contrast to the other CDs in the mix, I'd have to take them out. I have a specific memory of the Red Hot Chili Peppers album mentioned in this article being a culprit.
Believe me, I do love loud music but give me depth, not that harsh flatness. Of course it hasn't stopped me from listening to all sorts of over-compressed music over the years, but I do love expansive production.
1
I do not listen to pop music stations unless they play mostly 60s, 70s, 80s, and some 90s music. I do like some of the current music but not very much of it.
2
You want to hear a great recording,purchase the 50th Anniversary of the Beatles White Album half speed remastered by Giles Martin 180gram vinyl.What an incredible remastering job Giles did.His father would be proud.Can’t wait for Abbey Road.Hopefully he does All Things Must Pass.Long live Vinyl!!
4
This correlates to what has happened to movies and how they are written, directed and edited.
Once movies alternated between violence and calm, lightness and darkness, high drama and quiet thoughtfulness.
Now the movies, like music, pour it on, unrelentingly, with continuous special effects, nonstop loudness, and a bulldozing bomb of suspense when scary; and grotesque comedy without pause when "comic." The experience for the viewer is both exhaustingly numbing and extremely forgettable.
I am not a scientist or an engineer. I just go by feeling and instinct. And the music I listen to was written from 1940-1970. And the movies I watch the same....
I'd much rather listen to Nat King Cole sing than witness Adam Levine pound the stage with his 200 tattoos, 1000 flames burning, pimps, cheerleaders and technical special effects.... and zero sincere artistry.
Sorry Hollywood.
9
@Harding Dawson As I sat watching the Super Bowl half-time spectacle of flames and fireworks and flashing lights and explosions and choreographed lanterns and flying clothing and fields of dark green tats and low-riding pants and gyrating hips and fluffy furs and golden bling and dark glasses and censors' bleeps and gimmicky falsettos and thunderous noise, and a huge crowd of bit players mimicking a faux concert crowd and, and, and. . . . .I wondered?
How do you "top" that? How on Earth could any show truly be "special" and uplifting and inspiring and worth the time and money???
Maybe next year, they could set up a mic and a chair on the 50 yard line. And some kid with a lovely voice, an acoustic guitar, an understanding of beauty, and a story to tell could walk out onto that field, sit down in that chair, check the tuning on their guitar, and start to sing an actual song. And maybe, we would listen.
2
I think the problem runs deeper. Just look at the lack of stylistic diversity on the music charts. We now have the least diverse pop charts in generations.
7
I'm a 1970's and early 1980's music fan, my son listens to today's music which is how I know that today's artists are stealing bits and pieces of '70's and '80's music, and remixing them into songs that I can't tell what era they are from. I can hear 4 or 5 songs I know within the first few measures, and it irritates me to no end. I usually argue with him that this should be illegal, that the original artists are being ripped off and why can't his generation get their own music, lol :-)
2
Music reflects the society that creates it. Today's society is concerned with commercial, rather than artistic, success. Loudness sells so we get loudness for the sake of selling more, rather than having dynamic range serve the artistic demands of the music. Fortunately, there are still artists who care about artistry. Their names aren't household words, but some of them manage to make enough money to be full time musicians. Some of us listeners really appreciate the beauty and insight of musicians who serve and respect their music rather than their bank accounts.
3
There are, in fact, good young musicians around making wonderful music, but most of them are unknown to the wider public because the music industry, such as it is these days, is not interested in them. In the day of LP dominance--the 1960's for example--a record label would be happy with album sales of, say, 50,000. That would ensure a modest profit and continued success for the artist and the label. Now, if it's not a million seller, the industry is not interested. You can imagine the effect this commercial requirement has on musical taste and on how recordings are produced.
I am fortunate enough to hear those younger musicians who still make music with real artistic merit--I record live podcast performances featuring many of them. It is a shame that these artists are unknown to the wider public. We are impoverished because of that.
4
Contemporary pop musicians have walked away from melody, the essence of good music. I don't listen to their music.
8
If you have not hear Jeff Beck's live at the Hollywood Bowl you are really missing something great and it's on Spotify! I did not know this existed until I watch the companion documentary on Showtime and I was blown away. Even though he is 74 he sounds the best he has ever sounded, in my opinion. He just keeps getting better with age.
1
My kids are 18 and 22 now. I've always shared my music with them, mostly 70s and 80s but with a good dose of Motown. Though they listen to plenty of new artists, they often prefer the "classic rock" I introduced them to. As my son put it, music from "when they played real instruments."
10
When I go to church I hear the same thing as on the modern pop radio stations - oversimplified chord structures, boring melodies, and the same words over, and over, and over again. In a 'modern' service last week I counted the same line sung 33 times in the one song. 33 times. I almost fell asleep by the end of it.
It's not just loud and soft. 'Modern' music is boring, repetitive, and vanilla. When you think about it, it's exactly what we do with young people today - we wrap them in cotton wool to make sure they don't have to think too much or have anything difficult to deal with. Music is simply a reflection of this attitude of oversimplification. Young people today don't have the ability to deal with anything that challenges them; listening to The Eagles (which I am doing while writing this) is way too challenging musically for the modern young person to process.
I trained as a classical musician; I can't lower myself to the level of most modern music, it just hurts my brain.
15
A great article for us listeners!
Another great read for listeners, a book by none other than the Great Aaron Copland, "What to Listen for in Music," first published in 1939.
10
I use Copland's essay entitled, "How We Listen" in all of my undergraduate music history courses. A classic stands the test of time.
4
Two major differences in contemporary pop music are the lack of both 1) harmonic and 2) melodic development. The evolution of music from JS Bach to Charlie Parker to Marvin Gaye has seemingly come to a complete halt in many Grammy entries. Rhythm uber alles.
16
Listening to Top 40 today is like going to the movie theater and noticing that every movie is directed by Michael Bay. Pop music used to be much more varied, now it just sounds like the same song but with different singers. Plus it’s like a weird hip-hop/R&B/techno hybrid. Like a California Roll stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes - not exactly “bad” but not exactly “good” or “genuine”, either.
20
Formerly, pop music was subject to natural selection. People listened to what was most appealing, and the radio stations played what people wanted to listen to. There were many different record labels. It was a free market with equal opportunities for musicians, which had a chance when they had the talent to create music. Music that had the potential to become popular.
Today, almost all music is represented by three record labels (Universal, Sony, and Warner) which dominate the charts in many countries around the globe, and what people listen to is primarily a matter of marketing. Marketing supported by social media. The music charts of these countries barely vary. People listen to average music if nothing else is in store for them. People consume the music that is being dished out, not the music they would prefer if they had a choice. The taste is defined by the marketing i.e. the capital of the most powerful labels. It is perfectly sufficient and pretty easy to top-down overwhelm young listeners with what they are supposed to consume.
Very similar brave-new-world brainwash happens in the academic world, by the way, where three science-publishers (Elsevier, Springer-Nature, and Wiley) monopolize the 'renowned' technical journals. As much as there are coauthorships with featured authors, who are given power to control the academic circus, new artists typically have to feature established 'musicians' to become established, rather than just to create original and good music.
5
I am in my 70s now and work in a retail setting where I come in contact with young people routinely. I am amazed that when I mention a song out of the 1950s, they very often are familiar with it. I think that is because, today, they have no memorable music of their own.
47
@Aaron Adams Or, perhaps it's because streaming has made listening to older music more accessible for younger listeners? Marvelous, isn't it?
5
This was a great explanation of something I've felt about new music versus old but that I didn't have the technical skills to articulate. I listen to a wide range of music and I have noticed in my car when I am switching between old and new, I fiddle with the volume all the time. Really enjoyed this article and want to listen to see if I can pick this out in specific songs. Great stuff!
9
I think I knew this intuitively but didn't have the technical knowledge to figure it out. For years I've told whoever was willing to talk music with me that I much preferred the recordings with a stripped-down sound....songs that weren't "overproduced"....because it was just too much noise. I would point to Paul Simon or James Taylor recordings, but your article points out that even hard rockers like Led Zeppelin fit that same ilk: music, not just sound.
15
The author has provided the data so I can't argue with that; but I remember going to rock concerts in the Sixties and Seventies, and the experience caused me temporary hearing loss.
Having a few quiet bits among the noisy bits doesn't give enough respite for sensitive ears.
1
An interesting, yet academic article about the state of today's music. The simple fact of the matter is most millenials do not LISTEN to music - they WATCH it on their various devices. Music is visual. Therefore the sound bit SERVES the visual part of the brain.
5
Loudness? Dynamic range? Nah, it’s way simpler than that. The music of today just sucks. At the risk of sounding like my dad - whose idea of great music was Tommy Dorsey, and who thought Black Sabbath, Alice Cooper, and The Rolling Stones were, collectively, “noise” - I pity the youth of today. I work with adolescents, and 90% listen to hip-hop. A more boring, repetitive form of music couldn’t possibly exist. It’s like a joke on the culture.
146
@Boring Tool Let us not forget to include the problem with lyrics, or even lack of, in today's music.
At least during the time of censorship, the debasing of the English language with words that George Carlin said couldn't be said on TV (and for good reason) were mostly edited out. Other than the Beatles using 'tit,tit,tit,tit' repetitively in the background of "Girl", not much sneaked through.
I'm happier with a song that has some story, meaning, or purpose. That clearly is lacking today along with the disparaging remarks about others that seem to be de rugiueur.
2
@Boring Tool Boring and repetitive... to you. Hip hop is not my usual cup of tea but there are certain songs that I do like. Each to their own.
@Boring Tool Not to mention filled with the same messages of violence and misogyny.
4
There are a lot of reasons why today’s music sucks. The main reason is- it all sounds the same. There’s like two guys in the world who write something like sixty percent of all top 40 songs- and they use the same elements over and over again- like the “millennial whoop” that’s been discussed all over the internet.
Like every other art form- music has been commoditized and homogenized for mass consumption to the point where it’s not art at all.
40
@Greg Lieber/Stoller? Holland/Dozier/Holland? Howard/Blaikley? Goffin/King? Yeah, good music ended around 1972, but "two guys" aren't the reason.
1
From what I hear of it when forced to listen to it in public places, today’s popular music is entirely flat, acoustically. There is no depth to the sound, there is no sense of music being produced by the vibration of instruments and vocal cords. This article suggests one reason for this.
I have long lamented that so few people in today’s society have ever heard good music skillfully produced that is NOT being pushed through speakers. It’s a completely different experience. I don’t care how good the sound system is, it cannot compare to the visceral experience of sitting in the same space as a great orchestra or singer and feeling/hearing the vibrations directly from their bodies and instruments to your ears — without that electronic hum that I hear in all music coming through a sound system (and that includes recorded classical music played on a good sound system). The best concert halls add another dimension to the sound, as well - a shape and depth and resonance.
I think people whose earbuds are their constant companions have very little ability to discriminate the quality and dimensionality of sounds in the real world.
24
@Karen So give them the $250 tickets and let them listen. You might be surprised at their discrimination.
@kenneth You don’t need to buy $250 tickets to hear excellent classical music. A quick search reveals that tickets are available to hear the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra — one of the greatest in the world — at Carnegie Hall on Valentine’s Day for $25 each. Or look at what’s on at Julliard — amazing stuff for very little money.
1
I believe that music is changing and other styles of music is coming out. Just like humans are evolving and changing, music is evolving and changing.
@Ethan fuhrmeister - It is worth examining what are the forces at work on music, causing it to change in the ways it is changing.
Digital recording, compression, and the dominance of downloading has resulted in a lot of crap production. Compare ANY LP to the MP3 version and the latter pales. And yet, producers aim for the “it sounds decent on tinny headphones” sound. Dependence less on actual instruments and more in beeps and beats, while equally creative, results in less dynamic range, human (not perfect) rhythm, and those limits often spill into the quality of the music itself.
Sadly, Gabriel, as a recording artist, I have to take into account the format in which my music will be listened to. People listen to music on their phones now, sometimes not even with her headphones on. They will just plop the phone on the table while they're cooking or doing something else, or maybe play it on a laptop or cheap desktop speakers. I have to make sure that my music sounds halfway decent in those formats, as well as on CD or vinyl. it's a shame we have to do it that way, but it's impractical to have several different mixes for several different formats.
1
One more thing, on this subject so dear to my heart -- those who advocate for the music of today, when conceding the mediocrity of so much that gets attention, inevitably say, "There's great stuff out there if you take the time to look for it." What they can't know, even when we inform them, is that we didn't have to "look for it." It was right there, in our faces and our ears. The most ordinary weekly Top Ten chart from the most ordinary 60s pop station would have hits by Dylan, Hendrix, the Beatles, Simon&Garfunkel et al. No searching required. The range was remarkable. Maybe we were spoiled.
57
@John Goodchild - Naw. We're just old.
It would appear that younger music enthusiasts are being deprived of a great voice in its purest form, straight singing without digital enhancement. But then, who are the great voices of today? In terms of sheer beauty, an analog recording of Linda Ronstadt would blow away any modern, studio enhanced auto-tuned Top 40 voice.
14
Classic Rock ended at the end of 1979. Pink Floyd's The Wall was the last Classic Rock album.
2
@Robert James
Still some good stuff in the 80's (Dire Straits and Pearl Jam come to mind), but yeah, it is the end of an era.
1979....first year university and I remember Pink Floyd blaring in the annex...…"We don't need no, education"
1
@Robert James What about Van Halen??
If the ideas you're trying to convey don't seem to add up to much when spoken softly, then maybe try screaming them.
brutal (adjective): punishingly crude, harsh, and unrelenting
3
The vast majority of music made today is junk.
There are, what, ~7 acts responsible for 95% of new music played on the radio?
I think the fact that there are only 3 record companies left has something to do with it. Like everything else in which money is the main motivating factor, modern music has turned to... Kanye West being a perfect example. His music, like his clothing line, is inversely proportional to how good he thinks it is. In other words, it's atrocious.
11
@Chicago Guy Only 3 record companies has a lot to do with it but the 1996 Telecommunications act has more to do with the decline of quality and variety on the radio.
Here's my old-geezer two bits: It doesn't matter whether you play it loudly or allow more highs and lows in volume. If your lyrics are pinned to only 3 or 4 notes with or without a lot of drum banging in the background (and the lyrics themselves are one or two inane phrases repeated over and over), it's not what I'd call music. The stuff being produced these days is worse than Gregorian Chant.
6
@Connor Dougherty They aren't drums. They are computers.
I am 63 and I love Gregorian chant. Today's garbage doesn't hold a candle to it.
1
Of course a 'song' like 'This is America' is all-loud. It's not music at all, it's 'rap' - it's speaking over a bass track. Speaking has less melodic, therefore less dynamic, range than singing.
And actually, we should not even refer to 'rap', as 'music' because rap is a different attempt at art entirely.
5
I always thought it ironic that the only album for which Carlos Santana ever received a Grammy award was the horribly compresssed "Supernatural". Sounded "OK" in the car, but was absolutely unlistenable on the mothership system in the living room.
1
having been a childhood professional (church, ballet class, piano singalong and classical) musician I'm all about the dynamic range
my preferred music is cool jazz - interestingly most noticed in Japanese cafes - with silence as the background, interspersed with interesting sounds
or string quartets - where I can actually discern and listen to individual instruments
what offends me these days (OK I'm now an old guy) is movies where I feel to cover poor dialogue script, they use swelling music to overwhelm my attempts to actually hear what they might be saying to each other.
Reminds me of a National Lampoon sketch 'let American experts FEEL Your Emotions For You Tonight !' - as they have long used music to signal scary, happy, changes in mood some seconds before 'actual' event is shown in the movie [yawn]
Now I'm old I can think - OK target market for pop music may be under 25s, maybe even 7yos learn the words of pop songs - but for me if it's aggressive loud I just won't even listen to it - I'll just walk away.
Like restaurants - no sound damping so 90dB cos' that attracts people and sells more drinks when people can't hear each other talk ? Cool - I won't enter walk into your restaurant. I'll go to a quieter one I can enjoy some peace.
4
When I am making a playlist of songs for my wife or daughter, I always have to keep the output even, so they do not blast their ears out when listening to a loud song after a soft song. I like to include some older songs I enjoy, but these have been miked differently and they seem to be so quiet that you can have difficulty hearing them. Sometimes I have to take an audio file, tap it up a few decibels in output so the listening experience is consistent.
I have noticed that when you listen to older recordings, especially with headphones, it sounds like you are listening to the music off in the distance, like on a stage. Modern music sounds more intimate. Though it technically may be louder, it sounds more personal and close. So when I make a playlist that someone will be listening to, you want the listening experience to be even and not soft, LOUD, soft, etc. then they turn up the volume onto e softer songs, only to be blasted when a louder song comes on.
@Timesaver - I am a classical musician, beyond "middle age". When I was in my mid-teens and first getting seriously interested in my music studies I used to go downstairs in the middle of the night, put on the big headphones that completely covered my ears, and listen to an LP of Vaughn-Williams "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis". It is for 2 string orchestras, an organ and a string quartet. It has a huge volume range, from just the quartet to the entire group.
Then as the music played I would REDUCE the volume. In 2-3 minutes my ears would have adjusted and it would sound normal again. So I would reduce it some more. I'd do this several times. Each time the music would pull me deeper into it.
I ended up with incredibly acute hearing, such that my doctor told me he had never encountered before.
3
"They really don't make music like they used to."
I always lamented a similar sentiment whenever I had to listen to the "music" of John Cage compared to that of my musical hero - J.S. Bach when studying classical music in college.
But it isn't always just the music, but the lyrics as well that makes a song exceptional and grammy worthy. Simon and Garfunkel have always been greatly under appreciated on so many levels for their genius. Artie's voice coupled with Paul's poetry with words and notes and their joint harmony is a work of beauty and true genius. While they did clean up pretty dang at the Grammys for their "Bridge over Troubled Water" album, they consistently produced superior music and lyrics long before that smash hit.
I know my parents used to say the same thing about the music of the 50's and 60's compared to what they grew up with in the 40's.
It seems every generation makes their own unique mark on the music scene.
2
For someone who knows an impressive amount about music technology, there isn't much grasp of recent music itself. But this isn't novel, every generation's ears lose the ability to appreciate music more advanced than what they grew up with. The golden generation couldn't appreciate rock because they didn't grow up with electric guitars. The boomers never understood hip hop. And already, the older edge of millennials can't hear the accomplishments in the music made today. Every era has bad music of course, but it's on you if you don't know the good artists producing music now.
The point about music compression is interesting even though it's delivered with a depressing outlook. You never explore the artistic merits of compressed sound even though a great example is mentioned throughout your article. "This Is America" absolutely does sound tight, compressed and asphyxiated, but if you're complaining you missed the point. This Is America.
It would be fascinating to see charts for songs from some of the critically acclaimed albums from the past 20 years. It shouldn't be necessary to say Black Eyed Peas, Drake, Cardi B, and Post Malone are not the best examples. Obviously Gambino's "Redbone" would look vastly different from "This Is America." In part, I think that's because genre is more of a factor than this article lets on. Really, it looks at very few total examples.
2
@J "...absolutely does sound tight, compressed and asphyxiated, " Asphyxiated? That's a plus ?
2
@kenneth Music can be good when it makes you feel uncomfortable or upset. As J suggests, that's sort of the point of that song, which is a social commentary.
@J
"...every generation's ears lose the ability to appreciate music more advanced than what they grew up with."
More advanced?
Were you conscious of your bias when you wrote that? I'm not saying here that today's music is "less advanced". I just find your "more advanced" statement rather surprising and difficult to accept.
I've no clue how "advanced" could be measured. But I would point out simple things like how much more harmonically complex is a TYPICAL Beach Boys song compared to the bulk of what is being written today, or how much more complex is the orchestration and sound layering of something by Talking Heads. If complexity and the requisite more developed order necessary to support it can be considered a measure of "advanced" then I'd say what Byrne & Eno were doing in 1979-81 very rarely gets approached today.
3
It demonstrates just how bad things have become when Black Sabbath has a higher dynamic range than most current music.
Most people seem to prefer the music they listened to as teenagers and young adults. But I think that a way to judge is by how much current music will still be listened to after 40 or 50 years. By this standard I think the music of the 1960s and 70s holds up very well.
8
@Steve B Well said. I grew up with classical, Pacific Coast jazz, and folk. Then, in the 60s thru 80s, I added to them rock, some pop, and international. That panorama of the musical world was so interesting to me, and listening never got boring or repetitive. But now, for me, much contemporary music has crossed the event horizon, so in my dotage, rock and pop have fallen away -- too homogeneous, and too often aurally assaultive -- and I never learned to appreciate hip-hop, only because it never captured my *musical* interest.
So, as you say, the circle closes, and I have returned to my roots, as it were. While classical music is just that -- unchanging beauty -- jazz has grown and diversified impressively over the decades, built on a solid foundation of standards and instrumental virtuosity: the sounds of Dave Brubeck and Johannes Brahms, the musicianship of Pablo Casals and Paul Desmond, the inventiveness of Bela Fleck and Keith Jarrett -- they never get old.
My musical universe seems to have shrunk back toward its origins. But it still keeps my aged feet tapping.
2
As far as I know, in general only classical and jazz recordings are free of this lack of dynamics, and consequently actually are capable of conveying subtlety. For that matter, the very same is true of live concerts. Live jazz and classical music concerts are free from the type of so-called "sound men" who think their job is to turn everything up to eleven.
10
There is nothing like live music! A classical music concert, a jazz performance, an evening at the theater ... it truly is music to the ears !
1
@Joe Runciter
Bless 'em. Really.
I'm amazed at all the music purists on here trashing modern music and longing for the days of vinyl classic rock. I'm a DIY electronic musician who records, mixes, and masters his own music. I find compression to be a wonderful tool that can make a lifeless and overly dynamic track really sound exciting and more even. Much of modern electronic music is by its nature digital and no longer analog with traditional instruments at all. It's wonderfully freeing to have an expanded pallet of digital musical instruments that beg to be compressed and aren't stuck in the 1960s and 70s.
2
@Frank Well those 15 ips recordings from the seventies have a warmth and cohesiveness that digital will never be able to recreate
@Frank See? Now you and William have choices. That's probably why God made both when She was
in the studio.
@kenneth Actually you don't have much of a choice. They quit making those tape recorders about forty years ago.
Actually some people still do make music like they used to BUT:
Music industry consolidation has been the biggest culprit in the decline of quality and variety. Fifty years ago there were dozens of independent record companies with A&R men all competing with each other. Today we have only the big three. Sony, Universal and Warner dominate over 85% of the market.
Add to that the 1996 Telecommunications act which allowed iheart media and cumulus and Cox to buy up all the national radio stations and you have a closed system which cares nothing about quality or variety.
5
I started my electrical engineering career working with touring sound reinforcement companies in the 70's and then with commercial recording studios in the 80's. Compressors, (AKA limiters) are very noticeable during TV sporting events where commentators and crowd noise compete. We used them for live sound as a precaution to keep equipment from overloading. I was one of a handful of engineers responsible for keeping the first generation of digital multi-track recorders (3M's 32 track) running from NY to LA in the 80's. I have worked with Bob Ludwig (The Best) during numerous mastering sessions. When mastering consisted of cutters, limiters were essential to prevent the cutting head from jumping.
Back in the 70's and 80's, recording engineers often proofed their mix on very small speakers to approximate how consumers would listen (cars and portable radios). 'Eye of the Tiger' (Rocky III) is a noticeable example. I am sure recording engineers are still reminiscing about the sound qualities of analog compression (punching an analog tape with a hot signal) so fondly compared with the sound of old tube amplifiers.
I defy any analog medium to approach the signal to noise ratio of digital. Modern day recordings may be over-processed, but take any recording and compare it's analog (vinyl) version to it's digital version, and I'll take digital every time. When you listen to vinyl, you are physically degrading it. It will never sound as good the next time you play it.
3
@solar farmer It depends on the listening system and the final medium.
Some CDs sound better than albums. Some of these new vinyls and made from digital sixteen bit masters so the CD would probably sound better. Some older recordings from the seventies have been remastered several times. Some with m,ore compression and some with less. Depends on with version you have.
@solar farmer "When you listen to vinyl, you are physically degrading it."
Of course you are degrading it. That's what makes it so special.
So, degradation as the gateway to appeciation? Sounds just like the curse of humanity and the pillage of our planet. Have a special time listening to that metal needle ripping it's way through a tiny vinyl trench. I find it as antiquated and primative.
This is analogous to so much toxic, polluting excess in today's society from the obesity epidemic to McMansions to violence and guns in tv and movies. We must start consuming less.
7
"The Recording Industry Association of America certified that the Eagles’ “Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975),” was the best-selling album of all time, with sales of 38 million."
And here I always thought the Beatles would have been the group that claimed the honor.
I had no clue there were so many of us Eagles fans still flying around out there. I miss Glenn Fry terribly.
2
@Marge Keller
here you go Marge - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5Xqzp8NvDI
I read one comment from a guy saying he was in the audience at that concert over 40 years ago - and it was still the most exceptional performance he'd ever seen - a top band at their peak - still my go to ...
2
Fascinating article and it confirms what many of us have sensed but couldn't really quantify. It's just another example of what a catastrophe digital "culture" has been.
4
Can anyone tell me what software/app was used to generate these plots? I could use the editing software I have, but it would require a lot of tedious manual work and I can't imagine that was done for all of these plots. The reason I ask is that I am curious as to how my currently favorite songs compare to these songs and others.
Also, some of the comments seem to conflate content with presentation. And, yes, it sounds a lot like "Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!"
@ClydeMallory, and he’s right. The guitar, flute, drum, or any instrument may be banished to reels of history. I’m sure some music today is completely electronic or digitally sourced. And who’s to say the mind may never be recorded or encoded into melody?
"audiophiles" have been aware of this for decades, and it is also a very common problem with radio. During radio playback, the broadcasters will also often compress the dynamic range of the cuts they are playing, for the same reason as is done during CD mastering.
It is one of the primary reasons audiophiles look down on modern popular music and those involved with it's production.
The producers simply trash the audio hoping it will be more appealing to users playing back on equipment that is inferior and limited in ability to reproduce dynamics and other characteristics of live music.
5
A ban on subwoofers would be a good start. There is not much music in that range anyhow, it damages ears and generally sounds bad. Maybe people will start hearing instruments again and harmony.
I always felt that the music industry changed from being about the music to being about the stage show. And well all lost.
I have had vinyl singles and LPs, 8-tracks (big mistake), cassettes and CDs— with the CDs still in use and ripped to iPod as well. If they change the formats again…arrrgh.
4
For me, the most satisfying element of music is harmony, going back to J.S. Bach (Brandenburg Concertos, Well-Tempered Clavier) and earlier, and up through The Beatles ("Yesterday", Revolver) and beyond (a little ways). That element seems to be downplayed, if not MIA, in much of current music, e.g. rap. Some of it can be interesting, but its not nearly as satisfying.
1
Well, yes compression is terrible, true, as is the songwriting (moronic) and musicianship (nonexistent.) I don't care about any awards show because you couldn't pay me to sit through just about any "song" from these rubbish bands.
When it happened, the descent into the sewer for pop music was really discouraging and shocking to me, as I spent a couple of decades practicing hard and playing guitar in blues, rock, soul and disco bands. Now all some art school genius has to do is bash the strings with his or her right arm while sliding his or her frozen left hand up and down the fretboard. And millions of suckers buy it. I actually get a bit of a laugh on the late night TV shows when yet another unlistenable collection of dopes comes on.
First: This is the quiet part before the loud part.
Then Second:
The loud part, turning the intro into a screaming wall of sound some of it blasted through a fifty stomp box pedal board. If there were any lyrics, they are buried in the "mix," accessible only through headphones. It's funny and painful all at once. Our "crap band of the night" we call it.
Tonight's presentation features some of old fossils from Motown. Maybe a few youngsters will be exposed to genius music for the first time. Good. But John Legend ain't no Marvin Gaye, they only made one of him.
If any of you young people think you can write a response to this post, preferably without the word "like" in it, then have at it.
9
"A blaring television commercial may make us turn down the volume of our sets, but its sonic peaks are no higher than the regular programming preceding it."
I have to throw down the gauntlet on that statement.
It may have been true back in the days when the television industry was monitored and regulated, when a complaint to the FCC would cause action . . . but pursuit of the almighty dollar has led to less and less regulation, and more and more spending by lobbyists.
If you don't believe me, set up a dB meter some time.
15
Music = well crafted compositions played by musicians on musical instruments (including voices) and recorded with good microphones and preamps using mostly transparent techniques that enhance the live performance.
Many contemporary pop recordings are trying to compensate for the lack craft and musicians.
12
It's kind of like when Pepsi did taste tests and found that it beat Coke, The reason it beat Coke was that it was sweeter and in a taste people usually prefer the sweeter one.
It's the same with psychoacoustics. Take a recording of a song that has been compressed and a recording of the same song that hasn't been compressed and on first listen people usually prefer the louder one.
But just like too much sugar can become overwhelming it's the same with audio. Loudness can start to sound fatiguing after a while. And Coke still outsells Pepsi.
8
Give me old school jazz, soul, and rock, music made to get into your heart and head. I have noticed the dynamic range differences between recordings by great jazz players and singers of yore and today's talented performers. There is no comparison. The dynamic compression done nowadays does a great disservice to today's artists.
3
Too much compression is also why I don't like to listen to audio books. I feel like the voice is assaulting me relentlessly, without the nuances of dynamics that a live reader has. And in fact I've heard some leading audio books voice talent read in person. Much different, much more human experience.
6
@C Wolfe
Even radio stations pile more "processing" on top of the already compressed recorded music, and compress their announcers voices until it hurts listeners' ears.
4
I am also a longtime recording and mastering engineer and I have won a Grammy for a record by James Moody that respected the need for dynamic range. One thing that I haven't seen commented on is that even though I work on music where wide dynamic range is understood and appreciated, many of the jazz and avant garde musicians I work with will choose the more compressed version of a master when I give them the choice. I don't really blame them considering the environmental noise we live with every day has increased so much that they want their music to cut through the din. The assault of attention seekers is so intense now that everyone needs to be hyper aggressive. I certainly do agree that this trend has made it very hard to present music that requires extended listener attention. Engineers are caught in between these two conflicting priorities.
46
The problem with pop music isn't necessarily its "loudness," though I will agree that often modern (approx. the last couple of decades) music does have a deficiency in volume contrasts. People in their 30s will remember that a lot of music in the 90s had such volume contrasts galore. But that isn't the real issue.
Most pop music is awful because the lyrics are written by committee (as usual, the best tunes, such as this year's "This is America" are exceptions to this) and the backing beats or instruments are planned out as if by focus group. "Overproduced" is a word that might come up a lot.
Just as you can tell (say) a popular 80s song by the characteristic drum machine echo/fadeout on each beat, or by the synth or synth-adjacent backing melody, you can tell a song from the last decade or so by the peculiar slotting of every pitch range with a laptop-generated track. Go back to the 60s and you have a huge amount of songs with the James Bond theme guitar styling and electric organ. So even though the slogan has been a legitimate complaint since the first music was recorded, it really is true - "all music sounds the same these days!"
5
The other thing missing from much of today's music is the use of stereo sound staging. When each channel does more than blast the same sound, the result can be a three dimensional delight. But, that too seems to be a dying art.
On an old Crosby, Stills, and Nash recording, you can close your eyes and hear three distinct voices coming from three different places.
The way that voices and instruments blend to create a sound stage with both breadth and depth on The Grateful Dead's American Beauty album is nothing short of ethereal.
The way the drums rise to envelop the listener on Peter Gabriel's Lay Your Hands on Me is intensely emotional and almost claustrophobic at its most acute moments.
But it should come as no surprise that compression and flat sound staging rule the day because today's audio equipment used for casual listening has surrendered to the idea that pumping bass is equivalent to good sound. The second generation echo show sounds more compressed and bass heavy than the first generation. The upgraded system in my car sounds drowns the highs with too much thump even when there's no real thump in the recording.
It's a good thing I still have that system I bought 20 years ago for when I want to actually pay attention to the music.
12
@John I call that 60s stero. When stero first came out, separation was important. Problem was that the driver heard a different version from the passenger. Unfortunately the other extreme is now popular where the same mix is on both the left and right speakers which seems boring.
1
Not what I was expecting when I started to read the article but VERY interesting. I'd be curious to see similar graphs of a few Talking Heads tracks. One of the things that appeals to me in their music was they huge range of sounds and volumes they used, which created real drama and development in the course of just a few minutes.
What I had expected ... Much, maybe most of the popular music we hear nowadays, especially when out in public, really isn't made the same way anymore. It is not really "composed" and "performed". It is more manufactured, BY recording engineers in studios, using little bits of music, much of it created electronically without acoustic instruments at all. A singer might only need to record, 20-40 seconds of singing to carry a song over several minutes because any bit that repeats throughout the song will simply be an actual "copy-paste" repetition of something that was sung once into a microphone. The same applies to many instrumental tracks. Much of the rhythm elements won't have been played on physical instruments at all and could even be selected from pre-recorded rhythm tracks.
When you consider the shear quantity of music that is required it's easy to see how this mass manufacturing has come about. It's a question of economics. "Pop stars" are mostly just there to provide branding for a product that is manufactured in a factory.
8
I don't know -- sounds like another excuse for the middle-aged boys club to disdain art it doesn't understand (and, as much of pop these days has a hip-hop element, there is undoubtedly a racial element). No surprise that The Eagles are the shining example of "good" music in an article like this.
I'm not saying that I always enjoy contemporary trends in music, and certainly I don't like it when a trend becomes too ubiquitous, but this kind of pseudo-quantification of "good music" is a farce. It seems to me as if we have reverse engineered a way for a bunch of older white guys to pat themselves on the back for having good taste -- but meanwhile, if we really cared about dynamic range we would be talking a lot more about classical music.
We can get different things from music at different times and for different reasons -- I'm sure we could quantify some of the ways that contemporary are better than classic rock, if only we had a cultural bias we needed to support with "evidence."
2
@Ale that's fair enough to point out, but the charts on dynamic range aren't subjective analysis, they're objective visualisations of data.
Leaving aside lyrics and culture, music doesn't have the same aural dynamics that it had before the mid-90s.
1
@Joel I understand that, but this article has a clear tendency with its analysis. If this were just about trends, rather than about taste, we might get something more about other types of music -- what about early jazz? Even if we want to talk about only popular music from the '70s-'80s vs. popular music now, there's no early hip-hop, no disco.
Furthermore, we could look at other tendencies that correlate with top albums, or about some of the limitations of that methodology -- there are a lot of reasons music becomes popular or stays popular.
A couple years ago I walked into a Starbucks that was playing the Beatles' "I Need You" -- a George Harrison piece, not Lennon-McCartney -- and I was blown away. Maybe it was remastered or somehow enhanced, but the sound of George and his volume pedal brought tears to my eyes. It's not even all that great a composition; it's just wonderful to hear.
Nothing hits me like that today.
7
@Chris They remastered the Beatles ten years ago with more compression to try to compete with the new music of today.
I thought it was mainly the loss of complex melody that was at the heart of the decline in pop music, but it's clear now that compression of dynamic range has also played a role. I still enjoy my classic rock- and jazz, bluegrass, and folk- played through an amp with high quality floor speakers. None of these blue tooth speakers for me, and certainly not much in the way of recent pop!
7
@JS The loss of melody and soulfulness is a much bigger reason for the decline. A good melodic song with good musicianship that has been over compressed still beats most of the pop music on the airwaves today.
1
Of course there are current artist making great music, but most of what we hear through mainstream media, is not about being great. It's about marketing, money, manufacturing stars, catering to current trends, etc. As the major labels introduce new artist to the world, or pick up the latest sound cloud artist based on their number of followers, it's about the bottom line, Money. It's not just the cheap recording tricks to attract through loudness, it's the whole bag. The Grammy's nominations don't mean much these days either. They are just accomplices to these modern day smut peddlers. I grew up in the 70's -80's, and have diverse taste in music, covering many genres from classical, soul, hip hop, rock, punk, indie, etc. I enjoyed Hip Hop in the 80's-90's, I guess what many call hip hop's "Golden Era". I don't recall many grammy's given out to those artist then. Now that hip hop has hit rock bottom, it seems that the grammy's are given those artist awards like cup cakes. Sure the show will just go on, but never with artist as talented as what we had up until the turn of this century.
9
@D
there might be current artists making great music...i'd venture to guess we won't know what's truly great — "great" meaning, in large part, a work that has a long future. hard to ignore that current, "smashed" mixes and recordings lack a certain craftspersonship in songwriting and production. there's great marketing, but we'll have to see how many listens these current "hits" can compel before they are perceived as shallow, detail-wise.
2
@D Music industry consolidation has been the biggest culprit in the decline. Fifty years ago there were dozens of independent record companies with A&R men all competing with each other. Today we have only the big three. Sony, Universal and Warner dominate over 85% of the market.
Add to that the 1996 Telecommunications act which allowed iheart media and cumulus and Cox to buy up all the national radio stations and you have a closed system which cares nothing about quality or variety.
@George Massenburg
Awesome to have a legendary recording chiming in on this. Thanks!
2
Sonic varietyis the spice of musical life. This is a wonderful quantifiable study on the correlation between dynamic range and longevity. I bet if you looked at vocal range, meter variety, and the number and variety in length and range within melodic themes, you woud find that variety in any given musical metric is a hallmark of quality. We are biology, and in all biology diversity is quality.
6
Note that, up until the late sixties, LPs were recorded for monaural reproduction, and there were several years of sub-par stereo recordings when it came on the scene because people were learning how to use it. The "simulated stereo" LPs were pretty bad. Anyway, mono pop records were recorded and engineered to "pop" out of tinny little transistor radios. That's why a lot of early rock sounds best in mono. So, I guess it wasn't a loudness war at that time, per se, but the imperative to grab the audience's attention via the technology they used was the same.
1
There is plenty of evidence that loudness creates aural fatigue. Ask Dolby labs how long film mixers can work without a break. Ask the surviving FM programmers who aired Jim Schulke's "Beautiful Music" format how their attention to dynamic range made a difference in their ratings. I'd love to see Neil Young respond to this thread - he certainly cares about quality, but had some very densely recorded tracks as well.
8
I remember when “(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?” came out and Champagne Super Nova was all over the airwaves. I knew something was wrong with the recording because the soft parts were just as loud as the loud parts.
It's interesting that that record hasn't really stood the test of time because the song was really good.
5
I’d like to see how Phil Spector’s recordings stacked up on these charts. He overdubbed the hell out of those. I bet you can hear the tape hiss and punch in!
2
@John Tobin
I believe he recorded straight to 4-track.
2
@John Tobin
Still and all, will take Mr. Spector's 'Wall of Sound' over what passes for music and singing these days.
I am 85. I grew up with AM radio and shellac records and an RCA Victrola. Then there was FM. (I built a Heathkit FM2 which used mostly surplus WW2 electronic components. That was a revelation.) Then came 45s and 78s. Musical fare was mostly classical. My parents were Italian immigrants. My father loved opera - and he whistled it a lot. (Nobody whistles and sings in public anymore.) Then jazz. And rock, etc. Even country-western.
In all this the medium is not the message. The music is. And the music today really sucks. Hip-hop is the worst. I am told that the music is important because of its social message. But I can never decipher the message. (And it is not my hearing that is at fault; it is one of my few remaining faculties that is in good shape.) Boring, boring, boring and loud, loud, loud. And you can't possibly whistle it or hum it.
The fault is not in the medium Dear Brutus but in us who misuse it.
159
@Joseph Prospero I don't look at rap as music at all. It is a form of poetry and the music is kind of incidental.
5
@Joseph Prospero,
Amen!
2
Audio equipment stores have known for decades that when customers compare two sets of speakers, they will prefer the pair that is the slightest bit louder. And those in the market for a television will prefer the set that's brighter and more colorful than the professionally calibrated model.
Like so many things, more seems better, at least initially. Later, when your senses tell you you're not enjoying yourself anymore, it becomes apparent why that's not true.
4
Pop music is terrible these days. Now get off my lawn.
52
And BTW here is a great article that provides some stunning insight into how songs are "written" these days. They are sort of manufactured!
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/26/the-song-machine
5
@BCY123 Songs used to be written by songwriters standing around a piano or sitting with a guitar.
Songwriters would work out the chord structures and melodies and harmonies and work up an arrangement. Then musicians would get together to perform the song and record it.
Today they have producers who sit at a computer programming beats and sequences. Then they bring in a rapper or vocalist to either rap or improvise a vocal part and they record to a rigid computer time grid. Most pop and hip-hop songs today start with a producer not a songwriter.
This is why so many pop songs on the radio today lack catchy melodies and soulfulness. It used to be about starting with a good song first and working up from there. Computers don't have any soul. They don't vary tempo or dynamics.
6
Music?
This isn't music.
I get more from a garbage truck.
9
@wb why are you listening to garbage trucks?
1
Bob Katz literally wrote the book on this subject: "Mastering Audio." See the K-system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-system
Anther reason they don't make music like they used to is they way computers allow an engineer to "fix it in the mix" -- allowing artists that can't sing in tune or play in time to stay in the game.
4
@kauff And yet another reason has to do with the calendar. Nelson Eddy went out of fashion when the Charleston came in, which went out of style when BoogieWoogie came in, which went out of style when Rock&Roll came in, which went out of style.....
And hardly anyone listens to My Old Kentucky Home anymore.
---I've been listening to, and enjoying, a wide variety of music for most of my 60 years. Personally, while I have gotten much pleasure from some material that tends more toward sonic dissonance, or avant garde jams, the essential element that I seek- that my "ears" respond to, or demand- is something largely absent from much of today's music, in my mind, that being...good melody. Beauty. The purity and pleasure derived from well-written and constructed song. Sound that compels emotional response not based on volume, or shouted excoriations or bass lines that you can feel in your bones- not that there's anything wrong with those things, or, that there isn't a place for them in music. All sound, however presented, could be considered to be music, of a sort. And there are as many types of music as there are personal preferences. That doesn't make it...good. Ultimate subjectivity.
Melody is King, still.
Thanks for a very interesting article. And the explanation of something many of us have experienced, but, perhaps not understood in technical terms.
12
Great piece of cultural analysis! Commenter Jerry Aaron below and many others are onto the meaning of it I think; all forms of stimulation are amping it up.
But why? Is it competition for attention? And/or is it that the audience is so deadened now to stimulative noise that we need a whack from a proverbial 2x4 over the head in order to see or hear it? This is the expression BTW that Flannery O’Connor used to explain her use of the grotesque.
Either way it can’t be good, right? It’s like these people offing themselves with opioids. What are they missing? What’s the hole they’re trying to fill that requires drowning everything else out?
On the other hand, I think things might not be so bad. Maybe we’re only looking here at mass market commercial output, and that those quiet and more rangey examples are the solace that people keep going back to. And I know it sounds kind of sad, but maybe it’s the same with those adult coloring books, the Marie Kondo stuff, and the mindfulness movement. It’s like we realize that loud, dumb, and fast isn’t working out for us, and so we’re clearly reaching just as hard for alternatives to tamp the noise down.
7
As someone who unftly fits into the "Millennial" category, I can say that nothing will get me on to the dance floor as fast as Motown from the 60s, Disco from the 70s and New Wave from the 80s
I find todays music with the auto-tune, and boasting about what a what a great lover the singer is, how "big" he is and what a B his girl is off-putting as do most of my friends. I will admit, I like a lot of hip-hop, until the rapper starts singing, errr shouting, eerrr boasting.
9
Old man yells at cloud.
3
@Bryan They compress all forms of music these days so it has nothing to do with age. They even compress remasters of old albums from the sixties and seventies including the Beatles.
1
It's striking in this discussion that so little attention is paid to the content of the songs, more specifically the lyrics. There was loudness in the Beatles "Revolution," the Stones "Gimme Shelter," the Hendrix version of Dylan's "Watchtower" etc. -- there were also ideas, relevant perspectives, a bigger picture more worthy of adult listeners. Most pop is frivolous by design, the fast-food of music, but it needn't always be a thumping beat and little else, paltry lyrics stuck in the hoary cliches of "I want your body" or "my boyfriend's a creep." A wider range of material could only help, the rhythmic rage and misogyny of rap notwithstanding. Or it might be that mass commercialism and technical efficiency has inevitably brought a more pervasive shallowness to popular entertainment. There will always be those rare gems, but the dung pile that obscures them is thick and getting thicker.
5
@John Goodchild
Couldn't agree more.
Imagine someone today trying to emulate the lyrics of something like the Stone's Sympathy for the Devil (who are the troubadours heading for Bombay?!) or, less magisterially, the private musings of Al Stewart's Year of the Cat (wait, who's Peter Lorre?!). How about Jesse Colin Young just singing about his house on a ridge top?
It's all silly adolescent hungering now which is why there's no difference between popular music and music they play in my gym. It's all bad music.
@John Goodchild Are you perhaps thinking about those "little fishies" that "swam all over that dam"? Or were you referring instead to the Aba Daba Honeymoon?
We probably get the music we deserve. When people took the time to clean a record and sit and listen for 30 minutes, it made sense to try to delight and surpise the listener. But when music is filler in the background while you're on the treadmill or doing your taxes, all you need is angry lyrics and loud thumping.
And speaking of loud thumping, it may be necessary to adjust the dynamic range of music for listeners who've blown out their eardrums from overcranked subwoofers in cars.
6
@JR I still love the music you seem to prefer. But I really don't get angry that other folks have other preferences.
Ah........after the 60's/70's it's all noise to me.
14
@Lee
Elvis Costello and Dr. Dre ain’t noise to me.
@Lee
Really?
Madonna, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Whitney Houston, Billy Joel, Elton John, Stevie Wonder ...........
Lee, you've missed a lot !
1
I am going to have to keep this in mind when I finally get around to recording my songs. I do not want any melodic masterpiece to become an overcompressed monsterpiece.
At least, I *hope* some of my songs will qualify as masterpieces...
1
@Jacob Sommer Keep what in mind?
OK. I'm an old-timer audio geek. With a technical background in acoustics. And I've loved music all my life. All types.
Turns out that there is no perfect way to record and replay music. Every method has unique characteristics. The benefits must be traded off against the limitations. Interestingly, the inherent limitations of a particular recording system are often what becomes most appreciated, especially if you are comparing what you grew up with to modern day technologies.
Take vinyl recordings vs digital. Tracking a mechanical moving needle along the wiggles imbedded plastic track involves a whole bunch of trade-offs. For example, loud deep sounds create large deep grooves that make the needle wiggle and respond in unexpected ways, creating distortion. This was managed to some degree by pre-processing the analog signal before it was laid down in vinyl. All amplifiers included a circuit to remove this preprocessing. The technique is not perfect, creating the particular sound you expect to hear from vinyl.
Same thing with guitar amps: tube vs solid state. The tube amps are preferred precisely because they do distort. And that distortion is what guitar players love to hear.
I can't wait for the next generation of recording technologies to give us yet another form to relish and compare to the prior ones. But perhaps most important, I look forward to new performers who create new art. Artistry is really the core of the music, not the technology.
9
@Jim Arenson, nice!
1. The Grammy's have a long tradition (from waaay back) of nominating songs that either fail the test of time OR were sung by has-been artists to make up for snubs in the past. There's plenty of new music out there that will fit anyone's taste. As always, don't depend on the Grammy's or the radio to find it.
2. Adding more "noise" to recordings started way before the '70s. Beethoven had more than Mozart who had more than Bach (all great!). Miles Davis had more than Ellington who had more than Fats Waller (all great!). Early Beatles had more the late Beatles. "The Wall of Sound" was coined for new '60s production styles.
And there's been multiple reactions to this: Minimalism in classical music, Punk Rock vs. overproduced '70s rock (The Eagles being public enemy #1). Rap vs. orchestral R&B. Grunge vs. Hair Metal.
3. When old people LIKE young people's music? THAT'S when you've found a case of dog bites man.
1
@Justin
"Wall of Sound" was Phil Spector's trademark and referred to his recording multiple parts at the same time, with several guitar players, bassists, etc. playing the same part (in a very small studio) to create a dense, unique sound.
Yes, I know he's in prison.
2
So, maybe this is why I don't like much of today's music....but actually, I think it's just a generational thing for me
1
Talk about digital vs analogue, when asked about using pitch perfect a digital software program that puts the singer on key, Aretha Franklin said she never heard of it and why would she ever use it? The digital world corrects the artist when their natural talent is sub par. Now every amateur can be a recording artist. How sad.
7
VERY cool article. I love explanations that include data, clearly presented and explained. Thanks so much!
8
Richard Thompson puts out great listenable music. Good luck hearing it on 95 percent of the radio stations.
4
@George, Yes it's true. But have hope: In 2018 while at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, listening to the Del McCoury Band perform their superb cover of "Vincent Black Lightening," a younger friend turned to me and asked "Didn't Richard Thompson write this song?" I was impressed.
1
Good article, but the author makes a common mistake in explaining compression and dynamic range. The issue isn't the difference between the peaks and quietest sounds in the song (any song might have moments of silence). It's the difference between the AVERAGE level and the peaks. It's that average level that determines the overall subjective loudness.
And yes, contemporary music has been seeing those average levels rise and rise. Which means the dynamics are being squashed out of the music, and it's all being made to sound flat and fatiguing.
In a brief side-by-side listening test, you're likely to find the compressed version to sound more "exciting" ... for the first few seconds. But then you can take the less-compressed song, and perform a magic trick: turn up the volume. Suddenly the song comes to life with real excitement, and you realize that record producers have been cheating you for the last 20 years.
4
Thank you for this fascinating article. Now I know it's NOT just me turning into my parents, who back in the 1970s were constantly yelling, "Turn that music down!"
8
In the context of all of this, records are making a comeback, which is due to their ''warmth'' of sound. What is really is that vinyl has a very limited dynamic range in comparison to the fidelity of digital samples. ( I personally like the sound as well)
As we get older, we generally lose our high end range (which is another reason why commercials on the TV come on much louder than the programs) They want to gather our attention.
I like all kinds of music, so long as I can make out what the singer is actually trying to enunciate. If it is all made up of screeching or just wailing notes, then I find it quite boring.
At any volume or dynamic range.
3
Fascinating article, and rigorous! Thank you, Mr. Milner, and thank you, NYT.
6
There are seven notes in the musical scale. That produces a finite number of melodies. The problem with popular music is that composers ran out of usable melodies years ago.
https://plus.maths.org/content/how-many-melodies-are-there
1
@Publius Whereas classical music composers, using the same scales, can produce more melodies ?
1
@Publius
12, but who’s counting.
2
Turn up the Eagles the neighbors are listening.
2
This 59 year old likes the Eagles and "Shallow."
1
I have a tin ear and couldn't hear dynamic range or the difference between current songs and older songs. What I do know is a song must be melodic and evoke emotion. "What's Going On" does that. Repetitive mumbling over a gong sound aka "This is America" does not do that. I get it - I am old and today's music is meant for the young. That is how it should be.
4
Marvin Gaye,Stevie Wonder and maybe the Eagles could be considered music,in its classic form. most of the other mentions ,sonic noise or cacophony,especially Rap,which isn't music at all .Why would you turn up the noise ,except in torture,which actually they do.
6
@Alan Einstoss
Music is sound organized through time. Rap fits this definition.
The quality of popular music being made these days is much inferior to the music of the past and the music of the 60s and 70s. A few decades ago, music was taught in the schools and most of the 60s and 70s musicians could actually read music and play an instrument.
These days, so-called musicians cannot read music and most music is heavily influenced by digital signal processing, AutoTune for those who cannot carry a melody when they sing, compression, special effects, sampling, looping, electronics. Modern music is mostly made by machine and it sounds like it. And the musically unsophisticated and uneducated young do not even have the ability to discern good music from irritating sound.
8
@Earthling The Beatles could barely play their instruments. The Rolling Stones could barely play their instruments. It's always been about studio magic. Same now as it was back then--just more tools in the toolbox for producers.
1
@Daniel It is an overstatement to say the Beatles and Stones could barely play their instruments. Both groups produced many memorable instrumental moments. No, they weren't King Crimson or Yes, but they played in a way that served the songs.
1
@Daniel - I beg to differ, The Beatles and The Stones were fantastic musicians, especially McCartney, Starr, Watts and Richards. They were real bands and recorded their basic tracks ensemble, which is a huge part of why they sound so cohesive and great.
3
Each week I watch Saturday Night Live and really try to listen to the "new" music, but rarely get through the segment.
I may be old but I got to hear the good bands!
9
@jeff
There were also many bad bands playing contemporaneously with those good bands. The good bands are remembered. The others, not so much.
4
@Bucketomeat There's a reason for that. The good bands kept playing.
Thanks for the example of Marvin Gaye. Gonna play him all weekend now.
5
So called music background in every single store today seems to be twenty-somethings caterwauling unintelligibly about love. Trying to concentrate on store items can nearly drive one mad.
Question is why is such "music" subscribed to?
5
@Oregondoggie and why do I need music when I'm grocery shopping, in the doctor's office, at the mall, at the gas station? I switched away from pop music a long time ago. It's alternative, jazz or classical for my ears now. Todays music all just sounds like a bunch of noise. Guess I'm getting old.
2
@Oregondoggie I think there have been "twenty-somethings caterwauling unintelligibly about love" for the entire history of music. Doesn't seem like a new development to me.
Music today is being "compressed to death" in recordings, dynamic range is being squashed to make recordings "loud"?
This seems to have been easily predicted in retrospect, when we consider the history of the musician in America in brief over the 20th century. America it appears has never really taken to the arts, everything from writing to music to painting to film. I know this sounds absurd, but over the 20th century artists have been compressed, discouraged, to point that only the outsiders, most resistant, would write books such as Gatsby or make jazz or rock 'n roll and the pressure was so powerful against them that it's been rare for a person to have a full and developing life in the arts like in Europe especially prior to 20th century, a career like Dickens or a classical composer.
Artists now are so discouraged that art is considered only something children buy and do (everything from music entirely geared to children to Harry Potter books to even ridiculous and committee strangled movies, and certainly adolescent ones such as superhero movies) and it's incredibly difficult to be a growing and developing artist of any type. Which brings me to compressed recordings in music: It seems just the final blow, the final locking of the artist, "the kid", in his room. Just compress the punk, the thug, and he or she'll come around and become a suit like all the rest, become "realistic" and help make God knows what better life for all of us, will "Participate in Society".
6
I haven't listened to new music in over 15 years. I have the entire Beatles catalog on vinyl and CD. I'm good with that.
17
@susan Of course if people in the 1960s had had the same attitude as you do today, there would be no Beatles catalog for you to cherish.
Not true at all. I was born in 1954. My mother brought home our first rock and roll record - Bill Haley & The Comets - "Rock Around The Clock." She bought our first Beatles record - "I Want To Hold Your Hand." She loved The Beatles.
Great music transcends the generational divide. There is no great pop music anymore. There are very few great young musicians. It's garbage in - garbage out. I figured that out 15 years ago.
2
This article is well intended but perhaps misguided and superficial. It goes all in assuming that people are perceptive enough to notice or care about these differences in loudness and complexity -- as though either of those things contribute to the philistine landscape of art today. The main reason why art in general (music, movies, literature) are so weak and unoriginal today is not just because of the mercenary philosophy of corporate art: it's because pretention is what blinds our perceptions and limits the extent of our consciousness the most. In fact, no one seems to know what it means to be an artist. First and foremost an artist is a person of peceptions. Our sensibilities are what make us unique and we achieve this through self-effacing curiosity and love. What's also terribly important to know is that a true artist does not care for "success". And they must all accept that an artist must have the intellectual and physical courage to fail over and over again until death. If you're an artist and you're not prepared for this then you must find something else to do since you will be broken by the simple and childish reward-based philosophy in which you rest your tiny and unambitious hopes and dreams.
7
...listen to George Strait's Murder on Music Row - that sums up what's happened to country music.....
...regarding the other music - like the halftime Super Bowl show - with all the fire and lights - it's not really music as much as it is entertainment.....
...we'll never see the Beatles on the roof in Liverpool again..
I've gravitated to mostly bluegrass - back to the roots of country music.....
...to satisfy my rock and roll heritage, there's progressive young bluegrass bands (Brother Comatose, GreenSky, Trampled by Turtles) which takes me back to my past.....
...but for me, bluegrass rocks....
5
@JMS The Beatles played on the roof of their company Apple's headquarters, which was in London.
1
And there are people who'll plunk down a couple of hundred dollars in a restaurant to eat to this stuff!
2
This article is about the technical changes in the recording process. But, when people my age complain about today's music, it isn't only the unrelenting loudness that we complain about. Just as when my parents complained about 60s rock and roll (recorded with the same analog techniques as pop and classical music), it wasn't just the volume, they thought the songs themselves were noise, not music. "No one will listen to those Beatles in 20 years, like we do with Benny Goodman!"
I imagine Beethoven's mother scolding young Ludwig, "why don't you play pretty music like Herr Mozart?" Every generation rebels against its parents' music and hates the music of the younger generation.
2
@MEM
But, Ludwig Van Beethoven's music WAS "diminished" from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's, in that Mozart's music contained more - as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself explained:
"The music is in the nothingness..."
Yeah, polyphonic "structure." Beethoven, was the introduction of the Romantic period, and MORE "stimulus," and/or musical sounds, and less "structure."
3
@MEM I don't know...my parents liked much of The Beatles music...
@MEM
And yet, back then, young and old classical and jazz musicians admired the Beatles (and other rock groups). Because there was depth to the music.
I can't imagine anyone with sophisticated musical taste listening to pop these days. It's harmonically and melodically simplistic. And the lyrics are just plain dumb.
I listen to Benny Goodman and all other quality music, no matter what era is was created in.
This may not apply exactly to the theme of this article (which is quite wonderful!), but back in 2003 Paul McCartney released the "naked" version of the original album, "Let it Be" (1970) which extracted Phil Spector's background arrangements. It's stunning and sublime. To me, it represents a stripping down of the music to an almost zen-like calmness. BUT, I have to say, I truly enjoy the original with the "wall-of-sound" as well. Even though Spector's approach was to envelop the listener in sound, he still managed to produce some truly wonderful music which feels more authentic than music produced today. Just my humble opinion.
11
Here's hoping that what passes for pop, or rock, or hip hop, or country (the same three tunes played again, and again), will, on the fullness of time, or lickety-split, comes to an unfruitful end Here's hoping that one day, in the not too distant future, that the rising generation of music aficionados, will no longer give in to peer pressure, and claim that the "new music," in whatever form it's presented, is cool; (please, readers feel free to substitute your own cutting edge adjective for "cool,' but my creative powers have withered with the appeal of the Grammys.) Here's hoping....
3
Engineers could always increase the presence of a recording.
In the old AM music days,
WABC pumped out a very tightly compressed signal. If you looked a VU meter, it would vibrate between -1 and 0 DB. Three tools and one trick were used to accomplish this.
CBS Laboratories made two devices Audimax and Volumax. These were used together to increase the compression and adjusted to decrease the recovery time. The third tool used was the addition of a very amount of reverb.
The trick was to speed up the turntables, so that a 45 RPM record was sped up to 46.5 RPM. That little bit made the music crisper. And when the hits were dubbed from vinyl to cartridge, that was done with the fast turntable. The first three items were done as broadcast. The fast turntable was the overture to the magic formula.
7
On a related note, perhaps tangential to hyper-compression and loudness, recorded music seems to be devolving. I'm in my early sixties, and the stereo systems I recall from the '70's and '80's (played on vinyl) could make you feel like you were in the studio or the arena. Of course, back then people would make a trip to purchase a "record".
The quality seems to be degrading, perhaps due to mass distribution, with participants fighting for every penny in the digital fire hose of distribution. Maybe I'm correct about this, or just missing something. Probably some of both.
8
@Alan R Brock yes, vinyl on my gigantic KLH speakers...beautiful...couldn't afford much else, but that turntable and speakers were awesome...
2
One way to make commercials sound louder without going over the db limit is to use signal compression to the maximum. It gives the signal a sharper sound without actually being louder and does not violate the FCC limits. Advertisers utilize this tool a lot.
2
When I think of dynamic range I think of Steely Dan's Aja album. I'm not their greatest fan but that album sounds great.
10
I record and mix tiny desk concerts for npr and I'm constantly in a balancing act. When a tiny desk concert autoplays on youtube I don't want people reaching for their volume dials to turn it up following a commercially produced track. But preserving dynamics is essential to the music and enjoyment of it.
7
I have been a musician. I have never been an audiophile. The subtleties of audio recording elude me. I have, however devoted thought to the symbiotic relationship between popular music and the way we think. (space requires me to omit categories like jazz and theater music) In my childhood (Forties) popular songs tended to be cliché driven, with simple themes and rhyme schemes. Popular thought tended also to be simplistic, both in the ways history was understood, and social dynamics were presented. Out of this, emerged rock and roll, which challenging the ways that youthful voices were represented, and redefining relationships, emphasizing rhythm and beat over June, moon, spoon. At the same time, the reemergence of folk music challenged the ways in which we saw social conditions, coaxing our minds to be a little more open. In the late sixties and early seventies, these forms came together, reflecting and encouraging a deeper exploration of our minds, our place in society, and our place in the cosmos. The emergence of disco paralleled an increase in self-centeredness – a focus on the external.
Thinking became about "me." As society became more tribal, pop music fractured into sectarianism. Metal, funk, euro-pop, glam rock, funk, grunge, etc. etc. Each genre somehow mirroring its own aspect of an intellectual diaspora. Today we have groove driven music, where repetitive themes prevail, and our polarized thinking is indeed groove driven, driven by repeating memes and slogans.
32
The problem is much worse than recording level choices. Most music today is awful for other reasons including extremely limited lyrics, basic and limited melodies, and singer's voices which are often hidden beneath layers of digital manipulation. Instead today's songs have hooks, ear worms, and are usually accompanied by interesting videos. Entertainment? Maybe. Music? Probably not.
What's stranger is that today's digital technology has a far greater signal to noise capability (from the quietest to loudest sounds) than was available with analog recordings. Proof? Try listening to the digital soundtrack that accompanies today's movies on a good home sound system without turning the level down during the explosion scenes, only to have to turn it back up when the actors resume whispering to each other.
50
@John,
Signal-to-noise is different from dynamic range.
2
Music and its reproduction are my life. As a DJ in the 80's, I learned quickly the power of deep bass and high highs. While '70s disco created the sound of the '80's, it was the sound engineers of the 1980's, along with a technological jump from cassette tape to CD, that really permitted the return of the punch of vinyl - although vinyl, while an antique is still the warmest of blankets in our digital world.
But by the 1990's, the dynamic of music had bent toward the world of grunge and with it, a very compressed audio range, even before massive digitally remastered compression. There was just too much sound in small dynamic range that often caused my ear drums to simply crinkle.
I recall a conversation while visiting a speaker manufacturer in the 1990's. They were lamenting over the fact that although they had not changed their designs dramatically since the 1980's, that the failure rate on their speakers was now excessively high. After analysis, they concluded that while power handling wasn't the issue, the fact that the speaker was constantly being pushed to extremes (grunge sound) had unintended stress on speakers that worked flawlessly for a decade prior.
Today, it is unfortunate that engineers push to 11 the compression of harmonics. And it is even more unfortunate that most of us listen to the magic through a cheep pair of earbuds. But Milner is right, the beauty of audio is in the dynamic range and not the loudness. To appreciate requires a better audio system.
23
I wonder if this issue is also widely true for new jazz records. I used to listen to new records/CDs continuously at home (part of my job). Now after 2-3 hours of new music, I'm saturated and only several days of silence will refresh me. Looking at wave forms of many pieces (as I prepare my radio show), I see many more instances of aggressive compression. Maybe it's just that the new music, while well-played and cleanly recorded, is just not interesting?
6
For many music lovers, the good old days were in the '70s and '80s, but for some of us they were in the 40s (Hello Benny). My theory is that the music we absorbed as teens and young adults digs a groove that never leaves us. Sure we're open to other kinds of music from other eras, but nothing beats that first love affair with music.
6
Well, it is true that compression was generally inapplicable to direct-to-disc 78s. Bass was often better, too, than LPs.
@KC
They used to gain ride 78's like crazy -- the engineer sat there with a score and adjusted volume to fit the music to the very limited dynamic range of the disks.
In the days of acoustical recordings, the musicians would actually move closer to or further away from the horns to achieve compression!
1
@Josh Hill In one of Louie Armstrong's early recordings, the piercing tones of his trumpet led engineers to place him alone outside of the studio with the door open to achieve balance with the other "normal" players.
2
I have an aural and visual eidetic recall that allows me to chart my way through over a two terabytes of music compressed at 320bytes per second and generally match the artist, state, and year of recording. While I agree with author's points, I would also endeavor to consider the revolution in access that the technological revolution has produced. It has opened a door to self-invention for musicians that once was closed at the studio-session door.
And let's not forget that much of today's music, loudness aside, is simply not very good. There are some bright spots but today's average pop music pales in comparison to anything produced, even going back to the 50's.
15
@A. Jubatus
How tiresome. I'm in my late 60's and it always depresses me when I hear my contemporaries sounding like the old fogies we disdained so much when we were kids. Everything said in your comment matches what they said about the music we were listening to. There is actually quite a bit of good music being made today. The problem is that because of today's media landscape it takes more effort to find it.
Did you ever stop to think that the reason much of today's music doesn't speak to you is because it's not trying to? You and I are no more the target audience of today's young musicians than our grandparents were the target audience of the musicians we listened to.
The biggest problem with today's music is how narrowly it's programmed and listened to. Back in the day we got exposed to a wide swath of music. If you listened to WABC to hear the latest from the Rolling Stones you were also going to hear The Supremes and maybe something like "Ode to Billie Joe". If you watched Ed Sullivan to see The Doors you might, like it or not, also hear someone like Joan Sutherland. Today's niche programming and algorithms insure that no one ever has to listen to anything that they don't already know and like. That stunts the growth of both the audience and the musicians and in the long run does make for less interesting music. It's a shame.
9
@A. Jubatus
Every era from the dawn of humanity to the present has its share of good songs and not so good songs. Like you, I personally don't appreciate much of contemporary, youth oriented popular music, such as hip-hop and rap. But saying "I don't like it" is not the same as saying "it's no good."
1
This is obvious even among music of artists with long careers. Willie Nelson, Santana, Van Morrison. The new stuff is much louder than the older recordings and you find yourself constantly adjusting the volume.
And taking this a step further. It is even discouraging to attend live concerts, where the drums and bass are now so loud they overpower everything else on the stage. Forget the impressive guitar solo or even the vocals. They get buried under an avalanche of Bass.
10
@Meza Yeah, that's a huge pet peeve of mine. The crazy bass for music that doesn't call for it.
There are many factors. Commercially-oriented music is a business. With some exceptions, each genre is produced in one of a restricted number of geographic areas, often by noted producers who know how to get the "sound" of previous hits. Celebrity players or small teams of pro session players are common, so there often is no cohesive "band", and heavy use of computer technology (including detached players sending in tracks electronically) to achieve "perfection" adds to the lack of authenticity. One-hit "wonders" seem to be long gone, due to tight control of playlists. Overall, people may have become jaded to the sounds from this business model; even TV has brilliant-sounding music now. And perhaps the great melodies, romantic themes, etc. have mostly been done, so we're left with show-biz celebrity and superficial appearances. But, it's still possible for young listeners to discover the rich catalogs of the past.
2
Music used to be for dancing. Jazz and Rock and Roll were social events, where men and women got to know each other and have fun. Boy meets Girl. After the sexual revolution, this type of mating ritual was no longer needed.
Then came the boom box. Suddenly music became a social weapon, a way for selfish people to clear out space for themselves using loud abrasive Rap music to imply a certain threat mentality. Compressing the music, using sexist profanity while stealing beats from old songs and repeating them mindlessly all became elements in this new anti-social noise.
Of course it sucks.
20
@Carl Hultberg - This profoundly uncomprehending history leaves no room for a connection between rap and dancing. Early hip-hop culture in the Bronx was all about dance parties, and then, once it was in the streets, break dancing. Obviously, "boy meets girl" might transpire in such settings. Ditto for hip hop culture's Jamaican sound system roots, which grew out of block parties.
Much of rap's texture comes from funk and soul, hardly "abrasive" music, but rather smooth, easy, and uh, funky. And a "threat mentality", huh? You seem only to be aware of so-called gangster rap; there are many other forms, some of them more cuddly than others (just like Jazz and R&R).
What's "anti-social" about an art that brings people together and that shapes and affirms cultural identities and political movements in a given time and place? Isn't this exactly what Jazz and Rock have done?
Also, are you really saying there's no "sexist profanity" in Rock?! Or that Rock never stole, say, the entire catalog of blues riffs to be repackaged as less racially threatening white art? Please.
4
@Scottb:
You’re right that it’s probably unfair to blame Hip Hop and Rap for the demise of social dancing. Jazz had already begun to shed its dancers in the 40s as folks started listening to the Trad Jazz revival and then Be Bop as Art Music. The dancers went over to Rock and Roll but the teen dances died out in the 1960s with the advent of Rock. Modern Country Music is now like Rock, not a dance music.
In fact it was the rapping DJ’s in the Bronx and Compton California in the 70s and early 80s who kept the social dance scene going in the face of the gang violence that was making it difficult. The problem was that with all the scratching and beat manipulation the DJs became more important than the music and the music basically got buried under all that monotonous ego flash.
2
@Scottb:
The whole point of this article is that the music has become louder and more abrasive. Your argument is with the author, not me.
As far as what we think is the best music, two factors for us older folks: there seems to be an age when the brain is busy filling its jukebox, and, after that age, it's much harder to remember new songs' titles or artists. Also, after losing the top end of our frequency range, it's a lot harder to hear what young people are hearing, and to pick out the words from the rest of the music.
4
Thankfully, at 70, I seem to have missed the full jukebox gene. There is so much good, new music around today that it’s dizzying.
This is why the "old vinyl" of an album is better than it's "re-mastered CD"
5
@Tony Yes. You can get some new vinyl remasters that are done well and sourced from the original tapes and sound fantastic, but you have to do your research first.
@Tony Ah yes, the abstract rhythm of the clicks and pops as well as the spaciousness of the sound produced by the out-of-phase surface noise and grunge really added to the enjoyment. And let's not forget how the 2nd order harmonic distortion of 4% or more from even the best phono cartridges added to the richness of the sound.
All I know is somewhere in the lady 20 years the music became unlistenable. Everyone sounds the same and boring.
7
For those interested in seeing how this applies to their favorite (or most hated) recordings, the Dynamic Range Database is a wonderful resource that shows DR info on 129493 albums (as of right now).
http://dr.loudness-war.info/
18
The best-selling LP records and reel-to-reel tape have in principle near-infinite dynamic range, but 1. It'll cost you; and 2. Most of the best examples were recorded in the 50s and early 60s.
I'm also somewhat surprised that there is no mention here of digital's half-bit problem, which certainly compromises dynamic range at the quiet end.
7
Interesting article about recording loudness. The article referenced the Eagles Greatest Hits album as the best selling album of all time. While recording loudness may have played a role in this distinction, my children pointed out to me that many artists these days do not produce full albums, and that customers no longer buy albums, or even purchase individual songs but stream and listen to music on Youtube, Spotify and the like for free. Therefore it would be difficult to compare the all time selling albums/artists of the past with present day all time listened to albums/artists (whether bought or streamed for free). Yes, I detest rap artists who feel the need to constantly curse or use degrading language about race or women (I'm ok when it happens occasionally and the song is good), just as my parents disliked my listening to the Talking Heads while doing my homework. I like the fact that the article referenced the poor headphones and computer speakers that everyone listens to music on now, compared to the old stereo systems we all owned, although my Bose ear buds sound really good! Another factor that the article did not mention is what impact gazing at album art had on the musical experience. Is it the same as watching a video? or at nothing at all? Probably not. Lastly, there are large differences between attention spans required when one listens to an entire themed Pink Floyd album versus a Lady Gaga or Post Malone three minute song. In the end it's all good music!
11
Today's music simply won't endure because there's nothing memorable about it as far as I'm concerned.
8
@ClydeMallory Which is exactly what your grandparents said about the music you love and their grandparents said about their music and what I'll undoubtedly say about my grandchildren's music someday.
6
@ClydeMallory My dad on first hearing the Beatles in 1964: "That's not music, it's just a bunch of noise. Five years from now nobody will remember it."
1
@ClydeMallory
Also far few people own the music for the children to flip though and discover later on. Tomorrow's teens will just listen to whatever the stream service du jour outputs to their ears.
I think that appreciation for production quality is for professional musicians or for hardcore music enthusiasts... not the average listener.
As a person who is on the Gen-X/Millennial line (or Xennial, as some people like to call it) I feel like I can appreciate both analog and digital. I own vinyl, cassettes, CDs, and digital files... I couldn't tell you I preferred one sound over the other, only that I appreciate when I'm able to take my music with me on the go if I'm not able to listen to it only at home. It is comforting to listen to an older LP on the turntable but to be honest, I've found the same comfort listening to a brand new released album streaming on Spotify over my iPhone. I think it's just a matter of preference... just like I don't really think that the Eagles are that great.
1
Other than classical music, there is another type of music today with wide dynamic range. And it is the last one you would expect: electronic music.
4
@JustInsideBeltway and acoustic jazz.
3
@JustInsideBeltway
Instrumental music (jazz, electronic, symphonic, chamber, etc.) use dynamics as part of their core DNA.
Songs nowadays seem to foreground everything.
2
Interesting that we compare today's pop music with that of the previous generation. Regardless of the technical factors that have changed production of this stuff, we should also consider the linear dumbing down of pop music over the last 70 years. Rock and roll ruined everything. It is silly adolescent music that retirees still enjoy, while a wealth of quality music is available. I mean jazz. It is far more advanced rhythmically, harmonically, melodically and dynamically. Yet it represents 2% of the consumed music in North America. The dumbing down of music mirrors the dumbing down of all aspects of life in the USA, from politics to scientific understanding, to social graces, etc.
6
@TB Johnson
As a rock and roller player for years...I know it's only rock and roll, but I like it......that's all that matters! Don't need no complicated explanation...it's music, like what you want!
3
@TB Johnson I love jazz too, and have a large collection, including my late father's original LPs, which I love to play. But when a bunch of teenage girls are driving to the beach, they want to crank up Katy Perry, not ponder the time signatures of "Giant Steps." And sophisticated jazz was never really pop music, even 70 years ago.
5
@BCY123 - Far out man!
TVTropes.org actually has a whole section on this very subject, titled "Record of Loudness War" (the name is a pun on a work of manga/anime titled "Record of Lodoss War").
Incidentally, there is an ongoing idea in the music industry that the whole Loudness War was, at least initially, driven by cocaine use amongst musicians and engineers that diminished sensitivity to loud noises.
5
What if every star in the sky was the same brightness ?
11
I blame this entire mess on MTV and music videos in general.
Before music videos it was all about what you were listening to. After music videos, it was all about what you were watching. Sexy dancing girls, lots of changing and shifting of camera angles, so you couldn't tell that there was really nothing going on, etc. At this point the music became a background sound track for the video.
Can any of these people, Arianna Grande, Lady Gaga, Brittany Spears, Adam Levine, Katie Perry, etc., actually sing? Could they get admitted to a conservatory? No. It is all incompetence that is highly rewarded. Then again, you could say the same about Mick Jagger, Steve Tyler, etc.
One of the best explanations of this I heard was when Billy Joel was interviewed on 60 minutes years ago. At the end of the interview he was asked, "so at the end of the day, what's so great about Billy Joel?" He said something like, "I actually have a theory about that. This is a business where a lot of people can't read or write music very well, they can't sing very well, or play very well. And they are making lots of records and lots of money. In a business that rewards a lot of incompetence, I'm actually competent."
And there it is.
9
@Gerry Aranna and Gaga are actual very good singers.
1
@Gerry Yes, Lady Gaga CAN sing. The rest, no.
So THAT explains why commercials sound so much louder...they just start out screaming and keep the same obnoxious sound level the whole time.
I feel that the difference can be summed up as the difference between music and noise. Music has crescendos and lulls where there is a range of sound. It has notes and generally is not monotone. It is complex, melodic, and can have many different rhythms.
I admit sometimes I like noise. I like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, even the rap songs. I like some Metallica, Rush, etc... I love classical music and opera. I grew up with the Beatles and the Stones as my music.
Smashing the range to extremely narrow and loud is just marketing. I can see how it can't be a career.
6
Yes, but behind Marvin Gaye's wonderful voice and cadence, there was music.
2
Compared to the best music of the 60s-80s era the noise today is absolutely unbearable.
I'll stick with Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull and Zeppelin any day.
9
I read a thread on youtube some time ago, arguing about what was the best era for music...the pro and cons went back and forth until someone my age (not me) wrote. "1968 was the best year for music. That is not an opinion...that is a fact."
I agree...though I will have to admit some of the good stuff that was not released in time for 1968, spilled over to the early 1970s.....
4
Great article and I now understand why most pop music now sounds so persistently annoying -- it's imitating the sonic form of persistently annoying commercials!
18
Very interesting essay that is fresh and provocative. I would be interested in seeing how this analysis works outside the narrow ambit of the Grammy-Billboard music that is analyzed here. As a 57 year old who listens primarily to music made in the present I can assure you that there is much alternative, hip hop, rock, and jazz that is distinguishable from the sort of dreck that one will find featured on the Grammy s. I stopped watching that award show in the 1970's when a disco band that used to play free shows at Disneyland named "Taste of Honey" was awarded best new artist over a fellow by the name of Elvis Costello.
16
Great article, but one error: "A blaring television commercial may make us turn down the volume of our sets, but its sonic peaks are no higher than the regular programming preceding it.". There was a battle in the past about commercials being turned up in volume. Customers wanted them the same volume as the program they were watching. Businesses wanted them louder so you could hear them if you left for a bathroom break or to go get a drink. There was a big battle over this, kind of similar to today's Net Neutrality. The business people got their way. The public didn't. I can't hear the program from my back bedroom, but the commercial I can!
7
Hmmm, I wonder if this is why, IMHO, the SuperBowl half-time show was awful. The entire set was just LOUD. Too bad, because the visuals (stage set up, lighting, fire, fireworks, marching drummers, costumes) were outstanding.
I’ve been to a few concerts by The Rolling Stones and U2, and while concerts are (almost) always LOUD, I could still tell what song was being played and how it was being executed for a live audience. That’s important because artists will often tweak the studio versions for a new audience. It’s been said that Keith Richards never played the same song the same way, always changing something to make it sound new(er).
Subtlety is an art. Check out Radiohead for an example of good music being made today (actually, for the last 20 years or so in their case).
8
One of the finest antidotes to the marginal dynamics noted and the atrophied use of tonal colors can be found in the likes of any album overseen by Jordi Savall. And for those who miss liner notes explore any of his "book" CD albums with their in depth presentation of the music, the history and context and their wonderful art work.... Not a throw back but rather taking both the amazing sounds and the wealth of the visuals and written word to profoundly new heights.
2
@rg
I could listen to Jordi Savall recordings all day...and sometimes, I do!
Popular music was once about inspiring love, warmth, joy and happiness - and sometimes it was sad or mournful. But it was about human emotion and connection. It was mostly melodic and understandable. Much of today's music is antagonistic, misogynistic, and angry for its own sake. Too booming, grating and incoherent. It's unlistenable unless you're sweating in a clump of like-minded souls at a concert or a club, and high, of course. To each generation its own, but this is not for me. I'm sure my parents said the same thing.
27
The "loudness" issue does not have to do with analog vs digital. In fact, some compression was required to make all vinyl records simply because of the limited width and depth of the groove.
Those who love vinyl should go for it. One advantage today is that since the aficionados who want it are more particular, chances are that a current vinyl disk is carefully manufactured.
But as for me, I am happy to listen to better quality CDs and leave the surface noise, pops and clicks, ease of damage, and wear of vinyl behind me.
5
As an old geezer I don't understand the technical stuff, but I know songs of last few decades are not full of joy to listen to, and don't ask about meaningless lyrics. Songs and music used to be art, now they are just a business.
80
@Jack Simply avoid pop music. "Pop", of course, is short for "popular" and "popular" usually--not always--means that the music targets the lowest common denominator. There a plenty of tremendous songwriters working today whose work stands up well along side the so-called classics. Unfortunately, these songwriters--folks like John Hiatt, Chuck Prophet, Kasey Chambers, Les Claypool, Ray Wylie Hubbard, James McMurtry, and Steve Earle--as much as they'd like a hit, are more interested in writing great music and lyrics than in packing arenas and stadia. Fortunately, these artists and their compadres have strong enough followings that for those of us who realize that, in the words of Elvis Costello, "radio is in the hands of such a lot fools trying to anesthetize the way that" we feel, we have somewhere else to turn. Or tune.
4
@Jack
Yes, it's really sad that today's musicians can't write meaningful, heartfelt lyrics like "I am the walrus, goo goo ja boo".
3
We now have "producers." We used to have "arrangers." The art of arranging is understanding the sounds, and all of the subtleties, of various instruments, including the most diverse instrument of all, the human voice. Not all producers are guilty, but one of the products of over production is that everything starts to sound the same.
Competition in the music business has been largely about being heard. Hence loudness.
Musical tastes evolve slowly, and I suspect that we've raised a generation suckled on loudness.
But there is reason for hope; there are young artists now, listening to their grandparents' music (and even their grandparents' parents' music--e.g. Duke Ellington, Hoagy Carmichael, and Charlie Parker) as well as musical influences from around the world, blending it with their own music, and exploring richer timbral and harmonic ranges.
Truthfully, these artists have always been there, but they've been largely ignored commercially. I think finally we're developing ways to discover new (and old) artists. And, in terms of musical sophistication and virtuosity (but maybe not creativity, yet), some of the new artists sit second chair to no one.
4
@Justin
Arrangement is still very much a part of the process of producing music. It is a task that is included in either the songwriting credit or the production credit, or sometimes even still a credit unto itself. But unless the music in question is only going to be performed live, a producer is essential, be it the artist themselves or a professional hired for that purpose.
4
@Justin
Recordings have always had producers and many of the producers of the past were very powerful, controlling and exploitative.
1
The method and manner of composition also need to be considered. There--and not the mastering process--is where dynamic range of music is really born. From the 1980s going back the vast majority of music was composed using music instruments. Most pop music now is not composed with instruments in the traditional sense but rather built atop sampled and sequenced beats.
12
@Legitimategolf
This is an interesting point. I would say that if the song is going to end up with dynamic range, it has to have it to begin with, but even if it is composed with dynamic range, record companies will often insist that compression be applied to squash the range out of it. That's really where the problem lies.
This is fascinating and explains so much about my musical tastes. I'm 25, and there are plenty of current pop songs that I enjoy. But when I'm listening to the radio at home--especially when I'm listening with headphones on--I rarely turn to current hits stations anymore. It just feels like too much, and until reading this I hadn't been able to put my finger on why. Great read!
10
Nice article. I don't have remotely the knowledge the author here (Milner) has of technology, recording methods, physics of sound, etc. but his words, the article, sounds logically correct to my intuition. And it matches what I've been dealing with for years when trading for bootleg recordings of live performances of artists from the classic rock era (say up to 1985).
In the bootleg community the scrutiny of bootlegs is harsh, and there have been many problems of tapes (bootlegs of live performances were recorded on tape by members of audience during performance) being "crushed" or "distorted" or mastered wrong, not allowed to breathe properly. While a lot of bootleg original tapes do need to be cleaned up, a lot of really good ones end up ruined in hands of people who just don't know or care about how they should sound, which brings me to the biggest problem I see in music and indeed in all art: Complete decline in taste, complete decline in knowledge of what quality is, complete decline of belief that art has a place in society beyond childhood, which is to say no one believes the place of adults is create music, to write books, to do visual art, etc.
If you look over the past two hundred years of Western history art was something a person would do well into old age, there was development, trajectory, a lifetime of exploration. Now everything is crushed by technology, by committee, there seems no possibility of anyone creating a great body of work in any art.
6
I am so pleased to know that there are actual verifiable reasons why I’m stuck in “my” music and cannot bear much else although I love to sing along with moderns like Florence, Taylor, Pharrell, and a few others. But what I actually BUY is still Neil Young, Robert Plant, and Sigur Ros. And now I know why I use earplugs in most retail stores. The music is unbearable - too loud too awful. I’m grateful for this informative article.
6
Interesting, but I think only one of many factors. To my ear, today's music lacks compelling and original melodies, harmonies, progressions, drum riffs, bass lines, counterpoints, overlapping hooks - all the elements that make music interesting. Music from the 60's and 70's was full of this stuff. They were very well thought out and arranged compositions, played by very talented musicians. Today's stuff (when I can bring myself to try listening to it) sounds like narcissistic kvetching to me, when it's not obscene, backed up by repetitious electronic noise.
273
@Michael
Much of today's music is meant for dancing and geared towards the adolescent, from lyrics to brain piercing loudness. I'm bored to death of repetitive sounding music bereft of dynamics.
9
@Michael
A Savoy Brown album from the 70's is worth checking out just for the exploration in sound production. It's hard to find similar producers these days.
3
I hate to present as the "in my day" complainer thought of those who have anything like my 70 years -- but, while it ain't like there isn't any good music made 'today' (even rap and hip-hop have some damn goods to greats), the music in my day was so much better ... sound engineering issues aside.
(Could anybody top my favorite concert today -- Jimi, Janis and The Chambers Brothers at a 5-6,000 seat Louis Armstrong Stadium before re-modeling and tennis?)
6
The answer is blowing in the wind. Before digital recording, the air in the studio or concert hall physically made it into the vinyl grooves - your ears could breathe. Digital recording "killed" the actual notes, then like Frankenstein, resurrected them as numbers. Our ears are now boxed into a hyper loud cage where the soulless numbers "signify" the sounds and pummel the light out of our senses.
I remember the days when musicians and engineers would go into a stairway or bathroom to get the natural reverb into the recording; now it's done by machine.
11
This is really an argument about soulful v soul-less.
Lyrically. Instrumentally. Vocally. Engineering.
18
Interesting article, thanks. But I think the reason for the grumbling has less to do with dynamic range and more to do with the fact that melody and harmony have largely disappeared in popular music, supplanted by rhythm and groove.
Whether rap is or isn’t the cause, pop artists generally aren’t writing chord changes with melody anymore. For those old enough to remember anything different, that’s dissatisfying. Hence the grumbling.
205
@James
Lost is the art of arrangement. I listen to bands from the 20's and 30's where it's apparent how much work went into the orchestration. Soloists aside, the music required rapid changes from reeds, to brass to strings, often popping in or out for just an instant. With a large outfit like Paul Whiteman, these scores could become symphonic.
If I see a large ensemble backing up a singer these days, I no longer expect any kind of artistry. They can be a full orchestra but they will never do anything more than provide "depth", with no player ever allowed to overshadow the singer for even an instant.
5
@James
But hasn't that always been the case?
In the 50s and 60s, 3-chord rock replaced Gershwin and Porter and Rodgers on the bigger radio stations.
A few decades earlier, dinner and dance clubs moved from Kern and Romberg et al, replacing them with jitterbug.
Go back even earlier, and you'll hear people grumbling that Wagner's operas were a formless mess, compared to Mozart's...
The big change now - and I believe the thrust of the article - is that commercial pressures have replaced performing and producing with something mechanical and artificial.
13
@James
I couldn't agree more. As I wrote above, I used to play lead guitar throughout my twenties. I am a tremendous fan of Jeff Beck, who I (and many others) believe is the greatest living guitarist.
He is incredibly lyrical with his guitar, and plays the finest melodies (which I believe is your point). If you get the chance to, go see him in person.
You will see about 85% of the audience is other guitar players. When I wrote "and many others", I was referring to Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, John McLaughlin, etc: He is the best of the best, and has been touring routinely for a solid 6 decades. There is no one else like him.
He is known for discovering and using the best accompanying guitarists, drummers and bassists. He frequently has a female guitar player as well.
A perfect example: The 2nd time I saw Jeff Beck play in person, it was in 1980 at Reunion Arena (this venue has subsequently been demolished) in Dallas, TX. He was on his "There & Back" tour. His drummer was a teenager named Simon Phillips (he was 18-19 years old). The young man was amazing. He was doing drum rolls with his feet on double bass drums; absolutely stunning.
2
Most music consumers don't take the effort/have the time to sit down and truly listen and enjoy their favorite musicians. Their earbuds are in while their doing something else. It's a shame. I've found myself moving back to vinyl whenever possible. You're almost forced to sit and pay attention. I finally have a home with a basement finished enough where I could bust out my parents first big purchase as a married couple - a 1972 Kenwood KR 4140 receiver. I bought a refurbished Thorens turntable and an old pair of Advents and I travel back in time every weekend.
60
With the advent of ITunes, music "consumption" shifted from the leisurely enjoyment and discovery of a freshly bought album spinning on the turntable to the attention grabbing wham bam of a single or lose it to the next recording clamoring for your purchase as you click through snippets of dozens of songs. In today's information overload society, we, especially the younger audience, all have some degree of ADD that has devalued savoring an artist's entire album versus voraciously consuming the "hit" that doesn't take repeated listening to appreciate its subtleties.
6
As a professional recording engineer, studio owner and life long musician, I am pleased to see this topic getting main stream attention. We in the audio community have been having this discussion for years. I would offer that another factor contributing to the "soul less" perfectly in time and perfectly tuned music of today is that, with the exception of Jazz and some of the Nashville players, the concept of a performance has disappeared. Don't get me wrong, there are some great new bands out there but so much of the pop world is pre packaged drums and synths that the "vibe" you got from that Marvin Gaye song is clearly missing.
128
@Lawrence Kucher
I dunno, it seems that vibe hasn't been what sells since the 1970s. That's less the fault of artists and producers than it is of AR reps and advertisers. The former always have wanted to put out something they can be proud of, whereas the latter came to care only about what will sell the most copies. On first impression, loud sounds better, so that's what the latter want.
6
But you know, for all the thoughtful analysis, generational loyalty will hold. The kids don't care. They'll remain convinced that the pop-rock of today is as good as any -- what else could be expected of them -- and it will thrive, loud and limited as it is. The pubescent monotony will persist, the exceptional talents struggling to be heard. The sheer range of the 1960s was a riotous anomaly, informed by violent social and political drama, the best of its artists still unmatched (God save us from the swarm of 'tribute' acts). Music changed in the '80s as many predicted, when MTV and video and the execrable glam-rock trend made it more about the look than the sound. A triumph of style over substance that goes on to this day. All the cute little boys and girls straight from the corporate kiddie-pop machine, the karaoke covers and instant You-Tube fame, the studio wizards and their digital blandness. Noise rules. The strutting mediocrities and the silly awards have long been something of a hoax. Best suited to those with limited attention spans, to those who crave endless diversion. Others might look elsewhere.
64
@John Goodchild
"Glam rock" started in the 1970s (associated with artists like David Bowie, New York Dolls, Roxy Music, etc.). I think what you're referring to are hair bands of the 1980s, which I agree were awful. There was a lot of great music made in the 1980s which had nothing to do with MTV.
29
@John Goodchild
What Jess said. Glam was a move to add theater, performance art, to rock and roll. Bowie in the 70's, the Dolls, Bolan - some of the best crafted music in all of rock.
21
@John Goodchild I work at a college and I frequently have my Spotify tuned to hits of the 1970s... or even the 1930s and 1940s. It's lovely to see how many young students will stop outside my door and tell me what "great" music I am listening to!
10
I’m not going to debate which music is better or which is more obnoxious but the golden age of music was to sit on floors in front of the stereo and thumb through the albums and the cover art. To see that iconic artwork fall to the wayside -first by the cd and then to digital once and for all was a terrible thing to lose.
243
@Ted Siebert, there may be some hope on the horizon. My 25 year old nephew and rock musician recently showed me his vinyl album collection. Truly surprising to watch him sit with album covers and share with me the liner notes he connected with. And the majority were recent album releases, not vintage albums. Given that retailers like Best Buy have stopped selling CDs and are now stocking vinyl LPs, we may be entering another great period for music collectors and appreciators. Time to dig out my old LP collection!!
16
If your nephew’s vinyl albums are of recent vintage they’re digital, unlike yours, and won’t have the warmth of analog recordings. Don’t part with your old vinyl—you can’t get it anymore, unless you shop at a used record store.
29
@Hope Anderson I still have most of my vinyl collection and would like to add more . But not at $25.00 per record. There has been a vinyl resurgence but who is buying at $25-30 per recording ? One can scour the used bins and find decent vinyl for a decent price. How many used record stores are in existence today? They are as scarce as hen's teeth.Selling used vinyl at $5-10 doesn't pay the lease,rent,taxes and insurance a store owner has to pony up every month.
7
In 1986, when I purchased my first CD player (despite claims of greater theoretical dynamic range), it was clear to me in practice the format offered less dynamics and far greater "listening fatigue" than my then somewhat humble turntable and cartridge. I never really bought into the digital is superior argument then, and certainly don't today.
Fast forward to college a few years later. When I studied information theory, it became clear to me why digital recordings in practice will never sound as good as the best analog systems. Information loss. At the highest frequencies (the most fatiguing by nature, and also requiring the greatest bandwidth to reproduce appropriately), quantization error (aliasing) takes place, due to limited data processing space. This aliasing is a inherent distortion component in the high frequency registers that are made even worse when high levels are compression are used (i.e. the "loudness" requires even greater data processing space to produce appropriately).
Aliased frequencies don't sound like music. They are harsh and fatiguing by nature, even if they are not consciously noticed. It is very true you will not want to listen for long periods of time. The study of psychoacoutics has much to say about this.
That and NOTHING has the dynamics in practice as a good moving-coil phono cartridge.
35
@Jason Vanrell
Some of the earliest CDs were execrable, but SACD actually has greater fidelity than most vinyl; too bad Sony lost that battle. My SACD Mobile Fidelity Original Master recordings of "Slowhand", "Misfits", and "Blood on the Tracks" actually sound better than their virgin vinyl counterparts (I have both). Blu-ray is pretty good, too.
Just like a Dual 1229Q with a great cartridge beats a Crossly, a dedicated SACD/Blu-ray player beats a standard CD player.
8
@Jason Vanrell
I'm gonna beg to differ on most points here.
An analog recording has lower dynamic range than digital. This is a form of information loss, too.
Aliasing can be well dealt with by a proper filter.
Live music (which should be the gold standard sound) has a dynamic range in excess of 100dB, compared to the 80dB or so one can get with vinyl, 96dB from CD.
And there is nothing worse than a record with a scratch, especially in a favourite quiet section (compared to the joys of error correcting codes used on CDs).
That being said, there were some awful CDs made. Lots of vinyl records were mastered with the recording artists in the room watching the process. They listened to the sound their audience would hear (through second rate systems) and adjusted the sound accordingly. Then suddenly there were hundreds of CDs to be released and some were rushed.
But to compare the best of analog vs CD, try the Steve Wilson re-mastered Jethro Tull and compare to the vinyl or original the CD. He aimed for the same sound, but just better quality. Amazing.
26
@Jason Vanrell Well, some might say that live music has even greater dynamics than a moving-coil phono cartridge.
Vinyl, in addition to a lot of physical artifacts (popping, wobble, etc.) has some serious limitations in terms of dynamic range. How much frequency and amplitude variation is possible with a needle travelling through a narrow vinyl groove?
Add to that the fact that most vinyl produced now days is from a digital master.
5
i worked on movies in the sound business for almost 46 years, and can tell you that the same loudness wars are being fought on the dubbing stages of hollywood as well--at least as far as the cinematic equivalents of the "pop" music you cite as are concerned: superheroes, space sagas, dinosaurs, et al.
88
@k. francis
Yes! I made the mistake of seeing a couple of movies in IMAX. My ears were ringing when I left the theater. The sound was so loud it was uncomfortable. No thanks.
17
@k. francis
And the deep irony is the SFX design often drowns out the orchestral film score!
9
@k. francis
You remind me of one reason I don't go to movies. They are far, far too loud. Unnecessarily loud. Assaultively loud. And why? I don't know.
10
I suppose much of this in one way has to do with Analog as opposed to Digital. But music in the mastering stage is being compressed so much for volume sometimes it's un-listenable, esp with popular music. I decided with my new album not to master it. We found a nice volume in the studio and that's it. It will have a note at the bottom of the CD. ...This Music Is Not Mastered. If You Want it Loud, Turn It Up.
8
@Doctor Woo
What a crazy idea -- making a disk with the actual original sound on it. It'll never sell.
Seriously, thanks for not mastering. I had no idea how bad it could get.
1
The pre-digital era required something else... Talent!
Now autotuners, digital instruments and endless loops are what pass for music. It's a tragedy. In the immortal and prescient words of the Who... "Rock is Dead. Long Live Rock!"
73
Indeed. Producer Rick Beato has an informative series on YT, "What Makes This Song Great." His segment on Soundgarden's Spoonman, and the isolated vocal track by Chris Cornell, demonstrates the pure talent of singers prior to Autotune, with Cornell getting kudos for his remarkable range, dexterity. Beato mentions engineers had a few tricks to adjust the pitch a bit, but basically it was about pure vocal talent.
18
@LMT Except that Cornell didn't predate Autotune--he just didn't use it. Great artists of the past, from Ella to Aretha, never even had access to it. They will not be forgotten (nor will Chris) just because programming has improved.
The human voice, with all of its imperfections, is our original musical instrument. All of the great voices, even Pavarotti and Callas, had imperfections. That and their struggle to attain perfection is, in my mind, a big part of what attracts us to them (and not to autotune).
Rick is a great resource for anyone that wants a better understanding of music--musicians and listeners alike. He gets into some very sophisticated stuff, but he also produces videos that should be accessible to the average listener.
10
@Justin. While Cornell had a long career, much of it post-dating Autotune, I believe all of the original Soundgarden EPs and albums (1984-1997) predated Autotune. Work on the soundtrack for Singles, as well as the Temple of the Dog tribute.
Some of Cornell's later live performances sounded like he might be accompanying himself on pre-recorded tracks. Then again some of that could have been his and bandmates' old habits of live feedback, echoing and distortion. Perhaps other readers this far into the weeds can clarify...
---
2
I was not aware of this technical shift in production following recording. It was very interesting. I would add that, in my non-professional opinion, style has stagnated over the last 2 decades or so as well. "Music" has not really changed in a meaningful way for 20+ years. What we get is new pop stars that perform highly derivative music and are the right age for new younger audiences to identify with and embrace. What 13 year old right now would attach to Taylor Swift, or Lady Gaga instead of a newer, younger artist performing songs that are indistibguishable from the pop music of 10 or 15 years ago. Each new generation of teens wants "artists" that are closer to their own age, to differentiate themselves from the previous generation. But the "music" these new artists offer is recycled.
Also, from maybe the 50s up into the mid 90s, it seems that much innovation in modern music was driven by technology. Sometime in the mid 90s the ability to synthetically produce almost any sound that an artist could imagine was reached and paradigm changing leaps in pop music styles stagnated.
10
Probably my imagination or wishful thinking but most of what I acquire now, even though digitized, sounds better than American stuff. I download almost exclusively European roots music.
3
@operadog . I once bought a Deutsche Garmmophone pressing of the early Stones, which had 2-3 Beatles songs on it, that I had never heard on an American Stones album.
Be careful taking your vinyl to a party with strangers, you never know what will walk out the door unassisted. (A lesson learned too late)
4
@operadog
I googled "European roots music" and what came up was "European folk music". Is that what you mean? Interesting. I will listen.
2
@RW
Yes probably classified "folk" but much is old or like old as in medieval or older, much played on old instruments.
See Hednenvarnen, Wardruna, Eluvite, Gangspil, even Danish String Quartet, Frigg
Fascinating. Now I understand why older albums, even CD versions, that have not been recently "remastered" sound so different from newer music. The contrast in a random playlist can be striking. Great article.
12
Fortunately, I have raised my kids on (mostly) pop music that was analog, with great dynamic range. And being a DIY musician in his late 50’s, I record and mix my own tunes, and have produced a couple of albums. During all of the production stages, I was able to fight against overcompression, using EQ, compression and a few other techniques judiciously. And I have tinnitus, AND listened to arena rock at excruciating levels (The Who’s 1975 concert in The Summit, where I sat directly across from the band in the first row of the horseshoe, left my ears ringing literally for 3 days). So I am sensitive to dynamics, and dynamic range, despite the fact that my own is now something between 160 and 8500 Hz.
7
None of this should come as a surprise. People's threshold for stimulation in all forms of entertainment has been steadily rising forever. Most young people would not be entertained by classic movies of the past because they simply don't offer the pulse-pounding action and tension of today's blockbusters. Something like Space Invaders or Missile Command couldn't hold the attention of a five-year-old today. You can bet that 30 years from now, games like Counter Strike will seem as lame as those games compared to what game designers will have cooked up. Music is no different, and there are a lot of aspiring musicians and producers vying for attention. An average of 24,000 songs are released on Spotify daily. For a track to latch on, it really has to grab people. Something anodyne like the Eagles simply can't stand up to today's dance and hip-hop tracks that are saturated with energy. I, for one, am addicted to the adrenaline rush. The complainers can go back to listening to their dreadfully boring records and yelling at kids on their lawn.
4
@Jeremy Aaron
In certain situations I love music with an adrenaline rush -- when I'm working out of course, when I'm cleaning, and also (okay, I admit it) when I'm driving. At other times, I don't. When i'm relaxing at home, cooking, hanging out with friends, I prefer quieter music. One size does not fit all, even for the same person. To some extent this has always been a function of different genres (listening to folk or jazz rather than rock, for example, but if everything gets compressed, then switching genres won't help. I'm hoping this trend will eventually, pardon the pun, play itself out.
9
@Jeremy Aaron You miss a very important point and that the way people hear and process music has not changed – despite this attempt at making the most of *more*.
Your analogy between video games, which are technological constructs and how the human body receives and processes music is not valid.
12
@Jeremy Aaron
I don't think you understand the problem. Your video games comparison is a bad analogy for the loudness problem. A game like Space Invaders doesn't hold up today because it's not as engaging and complex as say, God of War. What makes sound engaging and complex is dynamics. This is not a critique of the music itself, but the way it is mastered.
7
@MAW, check out anything by Steven Wilson, genre is Rock. Not only is he an outstanding musician and composer, he’s also a producer and remixes for others.
2
@PC Saw Steve Wilson at House of Blues San Diego last year and he held up his guitar and wondered aloud whether today's musicians would recognize it.
2
Yes, indeed. I've been spending decades now digitizing my albums, cassettes and CDs - from Nine Inch Nails to chamber quartets, and with the software I use I've been staring at this change, as the CD started producing flatter and flatter waveforms. Bye-bye nuance.
Picture if audio engineers for movies and TV did the same thing - some drama, where two people in a whispered conversation are just as loud as a shouting mob.
18
I’ve been a musician for 50 years and dynamics is what sets apart the good from the great. There’s a reason that in addition to notes of different values music also has rests (which indicates no sound) of different values: Because silence is necessary for sound to exist.
378
@Stephen
How true, how true!~!
When I teach or critique people who want to learn to be REAL painters, not just slop paint on something, the very first thing they learn is about the yin/yan of "values" - the difference between light and dark.
Without dark you cannot have light; without light you cannot have dark.
Same with music as was taught long ago.
You cannot have music without silent rests; and you cannot have silent rests without music.
Too few musical and visual artists fail to grasp even the most basic things.
11
Thank you for explaining why I can't listen to much of the current popular music. Loud does not equate to musicianship. Half of the time you cannot hear the vocalist as they are being drowned out by the drums or guitars. I also like to hear each instrumentalist player when listening to a piece of music. You lose at lot when loudness is the only criteria by which to judge music.
By the way, keep playing songs too loud and see what happens to your hearing when you hit age 50 or 60. Medicare doesn't cover hearing aids.
164
The article is bang on. The loudness wars have rendered the expanded palette of tools provided by new technologies useless. Even remastered versions of older albums are being ruined. A light touch can do wonders but that appears to be lost on many.
Rush's Vapor Trails was a sonic catastrophe and it wasn't until many years later that a newly mixed version came out (thankfully). Rush fans new it was a really difficult album for the band to make but in the end they still needed to take more care with the end product.
36
As a boomer, intrigued by the dynamics of songs for decades, and puzzled over how many current songs sound, this is fascinating news. At least I am forewarned. Very glad this was written.
102