This article was published in the Eye Magazine, Indian Express on 31 August, 2014 ( http://epaper.indianexpress.com/330021/Eye-The-Sunday-Express-Magazine/31-August-2014#page/3/1 ) In his book On Becoming a Rock Musician, sociologist H. Stith Benneth postulates that people develop a “recording consciousness” by internalizing sound or music via listening to records. The sounds from the records become the auditory platform based on which we enjoy, judge or perceive music. Before the recording era this internal mechanism was supplied solely by live music. Recording consciousness makes us filter out everything that our ‘platform’ doesn’t recognize even up to the point where live music is perceived to be a reproduction of a recording instead of the opposite – that a recording must be a fitting recreation of live music. How many times have we judged a performance based on how it was “on the album”? As opposed to what we might believe, music itself has always morphed into whatever format adheres to prevailing technology. The sizzling light-handed style of jazz drumming was simply a by-product of the early wax cylinder recording era where bass and drum sounds in particular posed a problem of making wider and deeper grooves which made the needles jump and skip playback. Hence drummers were forced to find ways to play lighter which became a standard for the rest of the unsuspecting world. The use of vibrato (a musical effect consisting of a pulsating change of pitch) – a topic of much debate in classical music – is believed to be a similar offshoot of recording restraints wherein by using it a violinist or a singer could gain volume and simultaneously smudge his pitch. Musical elements that seem to have existed since the big bang are not so universal after all. Considering that both the listener as well as the creator are heavily guided by technology, what form of “recording consciousness” do people have in the contemporary digital age? Do the analog connoisseurs have a point in saying something’s missing? A recent wave of successful “retro retooling”- sold-out shows of regrouped bands like Led Zeppelin, the Stone Roses, the Eagles – is suggestive of a large demographic all over the world that are at least partially alienated by the existing soundscape. Some musicians have also acted upon this elusive problem. Jack White, a great believer of “technology is a big destroyer of truth”, went on to create his own analog recording studio. His debut solo record ‘Blunderbuss’ was the first album that was completely recorded on an 8-track analogue tape to make it to the top of the UK and US charts in more than twenty years. But for such exceptions, the majority of the cases against digital technology seem to be as obscure as the issue itself. Certain new garage and indie bands, in the name of ‘authenticity’, have even achieved the literal opposite of a clean digitally produced sound: the historically dreaded hiss and crackle. This confusion in search for optimal sound is perhaps caused by the outreach of recording software like Pro Tools and Logic that has affected composition in itself. Quantizing, composing and recording on a grid (arrays to regularize tempo) has become the modus operandi in production due to the resultant ease in editing capabilities. But this form of facile perfection and excessive editing could be the real soul killer in the mix. David Byrne, of the Talking Heads, describes recording live instruments in his book How Music Works -” I sense that music breathes a little more as a result of me always not bending to what the software makes easiest.” To exploit ease of use and access, the most convenient route that a particular technology offers in its advertisements is perhaps best avoided. Certain kinds of music have reaped great benefits from the digital age while others have allegedly lost some soul. Byrne describes the genres that excel with the ubiquitous digital sound “…Most other pop genres retain some link to simulated live performance, or at least to the instruments used in one, but a song put together with finger snaps, super compressed or auto tuned vocals, squiggly synths, and an impossibly fat and unidentifiable bass sound doesn’t resemble any live band at all. This music floats free of all worldly reference”. The jamming, composing, recording and performing formats are well synchronized for artists dependent on digital technology. Their artistic expression has never been more facilitated , the finer aspects of their musicianship have never been more accommodated. But the ‘traditional’ ensembles seem to experience some trouble juggling the formats. There are no edits or grids in jamming sessions and shows, making the transition from mechanical to digital media imperfect when they sit down at the recording studio. The problem appears to be neither electronic music nor technology but the adoption of a recording process that works best for electronic music but fails to capture the intricacies of a live act. Perhaps the element most critical to modern recording consciousness will be the future of live music. The live act with visual cues could be crucial to internalizing sound and its origins. But in India (a nascent alternate music industry and a burgeoning hub for EDM), ‘conventional’ bands of all kinds are losing their playing spots at live venues since organizers find it easier to host DJs instead of live bands. And the ‘private’ DJ imparts almost no information on the origin of the music being created. It is easy to imagine a future generation with a sonic template completely free of all ‘worldly references’. Walter Benjamin, in the Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, claimed that “in even the most perfect reproduction, one thing is lacking: the here and now of the work of art – its unique existence in a particular place. It is this unique existence -and nothing else – that bears the mark of the history to which the work has been subject.” That has become more important than ever.
- menonmukul