The Human Element?

My last post was about the film "Sound City", and this one kind of touches on the same themes, the phrase Dave Grohl uses several times of the 'human element' to music. Since then, either I am more aware of it, or something is happening out there.......but I hear this theory being discusses more and more.

I am a total gadget nut......I love playing with new technologies, learning how to use softwares, apps, etc. I've never really considered just how much technology can isolate us. I've found myself arguing for how technology connects us, but has technology reached a point that it has replaced human connection? Since the dominance of cellphones, that seems to be the case.

Ever find yourself texting when you could call? Could visit? Could meet someone for lunch to discuss something rather than sending them an email? Maybe I am just getting old.....but I feel myself more and more wanting to battle this tendency to isolate myself from others via technology. I want my son to experience things without googling everything first.

The film Sound City, and the spinoffs it has induced; articles, blogs, etc, has touched on how technology has changed the way music is made. As a former graduate of audio engineering school and a technology freak, I have been all for the Neato!-factor. The gadgets, the different gear, and techniques to 'improve' the sound of music. How that is often done, is by isolating musicians in ISO-booths......or soundproof rooms so that their parts can be re-recorded or 'fixed'. Or simply to stop the bleeding of one sound into the microphones on a different instrument. Or how about not using microphones at all? Direct lining instruments, and then re-amping them later. (The process of taking a direct signal and patching it through different amplifiers, etc, to later simulate sounds). Then the next step is, just laying down all the parts to a song separately.....no longer needing to have musicians in the same room at the same time! Or even being in the same city/country and just sending files over the internet. Or just doing everything yourself. That is the trap I most often fall into.

It doesn't stop there......at music. This 'upgrade' in the way we work invades everything. Teleconferencing, conference calls, living life live VIA satellite. When did it stop being about a way to be there when you couldn't be there......and turn into a reason to just not need to be there?

My fondest memories of being in a band come from band practice.....or being on stage. You feel like a musician when you can make music with a group of people......improvise, push the envelope, challenge yourself to nail a part on the fly. Needing those other musicians to add their part that you can't reproduce. Blending your feelings and passions with another person to create something you can't do alone or in isolation. Why do we throw that out the window when making a record? Retreat to our soundproof booths from behind triple paned glass and go for coffee while the drummer puts down the beat to a click track? Is variation weak? Is being human not good enough? Sure, sometimes the creative process requires some experimentation that can't be done on the fly.....but most of the time that is not the reason to digitize the process. It's the want to make things better than we can humanly do.

The musicians I respect most can perform their music effortlessly live......without the veil of production. The act of playing music becomes pure expression because the want to 'get it right' is no longer there. Getting it right is a state of mind. The buzz they get from stretching music to new heights and never quite knowing what will happen next is the drug that they feed the audience. People miss that feeling or never have experienced it at all. Then they go to experience it and walk away from the concert hall raving about how much 'better it was than the album'. Then they tell their friends to watch the youtube video later to see what they missed, but the electricity isn't translated to the micro speaker on their friends' cellphones. They can't feel the floorboards thump with the feet of 500 fans stomping, hear the way the sound reverberates from the walls and watch the ways the crowd and musicians interact. They don't see the mistakes because they have all been scrubbed out for the video.

Being the guy who generally makes the videos and fixes stuff......I admit hypocrisy.

So.....I'm at the point of the post where I am supposed to start reeling it in. Making the point, giving the pinchline, or the 'what am I suggesting we do about it?'. I don't really know the answer......but several things come to mind. Stop trying to make everything perfect, stop being afraid to make mistakes or sound human! Realize that the 'mistakes' are often the best part because they remind us that we are listening to a group of people making music together rather than a computer. I hear the word 'authentic' tossed around a lot these days. As though authenticity is in short supply in today's digital world.

I'm getting closer to the point.....

Get together with people and make music......try something to see how it will turn out rather than planning everything out. Meet someone face to face to tell them some good/bad news rather than flipping them a heads up text. Go analog......in life. Easy for me to type, (I realize the irony here), but hence why I have all but ceased conventional studio recording and gone back to only recording bands live......or at least live off the floor in my studio. I want to feel that magic and capture a great performance rather than building one from the ground up. I want to make a band go home and practice until they are good enough to sound amazing live.

If you are still reading at this point.....you are either identifying with the musicians perspective or considering how it applies in every day life. And it does. Let's get back to using technology to remove barriers to us connecting......not letting technology connect for us. If you are watching something amazing and everyone is trying to film it on their phones......just watch. Experience it. Let your memory be the only record of that event, and then get together later with people and tell the story. Don't just write it in a blog and edit it till it sounds just right.   **wink**

 

Sound City

Anyone like myself who was coming of age when Nirvana's Nevermind was released in 1991 is probably a bit stunned at the heights Dave Grohl has reached in his career. I don't say that because he isn't deserving or hasn't worked harder than most. Think about it......how many stories are there of drummers stepping out from behind the kit to front a band......then going on to sell over 10 million records....and then going on to direct films? Oh....and collaborate with Sir Paul McCartney on live television? Yes....he deserves all the success he has earned.

I'm sure 19 year old Dave Grohl wouldn't even be able to process it, or even want it. That young kid drumming in Scream, a Virginia punk band would probably look at the success of Foo Fighters and accuse of "selling out".  Boy, have times changed. Grohl is fighting to keep a center in the current state of the music industry; which lives in the left, follows formulas to create hits, and insists that a drum beat must snap to a grid on a computer screen to sound "right". Heck, most bands now record their drum parts and then the engineer copies and pastes perfect drum hits over all the imperfect ones as though the differences in drum hits are some sort of flaw or weakness.

Hence, Grohl's newest project, "Sound City". A documentary film about the legendary music studio in the Los Angeles Valley that recently closed. As the film explains, studios popped up all over America in the late 60's, and through no rhyme or reason.....certain buildings became the environment where our greatest rock records were made. Sound City stayed the course with analog recording throughout the digital revolution, largely due to the legendary Neve recording console that it features. At the time, sticking with analog tape, tubes, and transistors seemed stubborn and limiting. In truth, the limitations of analog often force the musicians to focus on a great performance rather than laying down parts and "fixing it" later on a computer screen. I have been working towards a live recording culture at Spur of the Moment Media....although it ain't a cheap undertaking. Thankfully, I had the pleasure of using a Neve console and recording to 2" tape in college.... but now it is 15 years later and I have yet to do either again. Who has $50,000.00 to set up even the most basic of analog studios? What band can afford to pay a studio bill when their songs are being sold online for $0.0004 per play? I feel torn between these 2 worlds.

If you watched the 2012 Grammy's, you may remember Dave Grohl accepting an award for the Foo Fighters' album Wasting Light. In his speech he mentioned the human element in musical recording, and I wondered that night who was hearing this statement and understanding its meaning. What Grohl was trying to describe in a 33 second acceptance speech is now explored in detail with Sound City.

One point that is made in the film is that in todays world, many musicians would never make music if it wasn't for the ease and accessibility of recording to a computer. Bands can record themselves and release an album digitally at little to no cost. So what is more important......the human element of analog, or the ability for more musicians to make music? How many of today's bands would not exist if they needed a $10,000 budget to release a record?

Grohl is saying that there is a place for both....but again how relevant is this message outside of his world? After all, Grohl grew up in an era where a record label would cut a $60,000 cheque to a virtually unknown band and send them to a studio to craft an album.

In the end, this is a great documentary for any fan of Grohl's, or anyone who has an interest in what magic happens in the analog music studio. I'm not so sure about how the average music lover will appreciate or enjoy this film due to the extensive chat about the equipment and studio elements, but it is worth the effort either way.

Sound City is an important view into an era that is fading away, and I truly believe that analog recorded music must be preserved as an art form.