OK, Old Guy Confidential:
I only have two problems with Today's Music:
I'm generally put off by the modern digital recording process when it is (often) overused. I've got good enough ears to hear perfectly stacked vocal harmonies that have zero waver or vibrato or any of the slight differences you'd hear in three or four part harmony. I'm REALLY put out by time that's been squared up in nanoseconds where the groove never breathes. So much of what I hear is polishing less-than-capable performances with the precision of a computer-driven 5-axis lathe that often just isn't musical to me. I often think of artists who could not really be captured fully in recordings, and yet now it seems there are lots of artists who live in their recordings and can't deliver live . . . without LOTS of help.
On the other hand, done right (with an ear to approximating a first-rate analog/tape mix) it can be wonderful. But I rarely hear that kind of digital recording.
Secondly, in my day, the combination of radio, broadcast, and the record companies offered reliable sources to find and hear new music. Now radio is demolished into broad ownership by just a few companies, record companies (good and bad) are gone, and knowing where to find the new good stuff by depending on my smartphone or combing the internet is very difficult for me. Strangely enough I usually find new things in places like TalkBass or other online stops I routinely visit where this or that artist or band is mentioned, and I backtrack to see who that is.
Whether 'we did it better' or 'this new stuff sucks' is all just pointless. Time and tastes change as the generations of people do, and I'd no more expect a 20 year old to understand the 60's any more than I can understand the 2020's.
This is as it should be.
I only have two problems with Today's Music:
I'm generally put off by the modern digital recording process when it is (often) overused. I've got good enough ears to hear perfectly stacked vocal harmonies that have zero waver or vibrato or any of the slight differences you'd hear in three or four part harmony. I'm REALLY put out by time that's been squared up in nanoseconds where the groove never breathes. So much of what I hear is polishing less-than-capable performances with the precision of a computer-driven 5-axis lathe that often just isn't musical to me. I often think of artists who could not really be captured fully in recordings, and yet now it seems there are lots of artists who live in their recordings and can't deliver live . . . without LOTS of help.
On the other hand, done right (with an ear to approximating a first-rate analog/tape mix) it can be wonderful. But I rarely hear that kind of digital recording.
Secondly, in my day, the combination of radio, broadcast, and the record companies offered reliable sources to find and hear new music. Now radio is demolished into broad ownership by just a few companies, record companies (good and bad) are gone, and knowing where to find the new good stuff by depending on my smartphone or combing the internet is very difficult for me. Strangely enough I usually find new things in places like TalkBass or other online stops I routinely visit where this or that artist or band is mentioned, and I backtrack to see who that is.
Whether 'we did it better' or 'this new stuff sucks' is all just pointless. Time and tastes change as the generations of people do, and I'd no more expect a 20 year old to understand the 60's any more than I can understand the 2020's.
This is as it should be.
). Also the nature of recording itself, where, as Rick Beato has pointed out, much of it is substantially now a matter of someone alone at home futzing around on a computer, often with no real instruments even being played. The record (or CD) industry as it used to exist is basically gone, so everything is more diffuse, and more driven by social media. And so on.
