NESP Forum

Holograms. We have the technology. And actually, we could just have holograms + synthesized voices. I mean, why have actual humans do anything anymore?

Does anyone remember the episode of Arthur (the aardvark kid, cartoon on PBS) where he "met" the hottest group with the hottest song... and walked right through them because they were actually holograms? (I think Polyphonic Spree or someone did the actual recording.) I think the moral was something about being disappointed by your heroes.

Yup I know Arthur my kids watch him and like him......as far as me watching I'm outta that room so fast,but I'll ask them when they get home from school....

I'm glad I found this discussion. Last year I read an article online that I think explained a lot of why we enjoy live music, live recordings and older recordings (pre-CD era) than modern overly produced CDs. I've searched for the article but I can't find it anymore. What the article explained is that the human ear needs highs and lows in pitch and volume level in order to fully hear music. When rock music became popular, bands began to push sound engineers to mix their CDs to louder and louder levels, with consistently the same levels, no louds and softs. This was done to "capture a listener". Yes it does capture your attention, but the human ear quickly becomes weary. That's why what we call over-produced CDs are so unpleasant to listen to after a while, they don't give the ear a "break".

Here's an article that touches on the same subject but it's rather long. If you skim it you will some of what I am remembering from last year.
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/w...orever.htm

I first realized that this was the problem with the TH CD when I had it in my car CD player which holds 6 CDs. The CD before the TH CD was UTR. I had the sound level set at a comfortable level, one that didn't hurt my ears, but was loud enough to hear the music over the road noise. When the TH CD started playing, I immediately reached over without even thinking and turned down the volume. It was automatically too loud.

What I found most exciting about the Early Works CD is that I have conformation that Taylor Hicks has a fine ear for the production quality and sound level a CD needs. I have no worries that his future CDs will have that same warm quality that Early Works has. I believe I listened to it 3 times in a row when I first bought it and it was still very warm and soothing. It doesn't "exhaust" my ears.

Did I make any sense?

Now that's not to say that I don't like the "messy" live recordings. In fact those are my favorites. The live recordings were almost all I listened to until I got Early Works. I love the variations of the songs and the little surprises of a live recording.

In a side note, I recently bought The Essential Bruce Springsteen 3 CD set. My favorite CD from the set is the 3rd one that contains almost all live recordings or acoustical recordings with just Bruce and his guitar.

You not only make sense, I agree totally.
A few weeks ago, I listened to TH CD all the way through for the first time in awhile, and my immediate reaction was that it was so noisy. Not only the levels, but all the extraneous stuff that the producer felt necessary to throw into the mix.

After that, playing EW was quite refreshing. Nothing extra, just the music and the voice, and with the improved mixing, it was a treat for the ears.

I heard an interview on XM Exclusives this morning with Joss Stone. She is a very sharp young woman.
In her case, she converted from wanting to be "one of the Spice girls" when she grew up, to wanting to sing "real music" when she first heard Aretha Franklin's music at about age 11. She didn't have much good to say about current hit music, and thought it would be eye-opening if "Auto Tune" was made illegal for about two years. She does see part of her musical mission as turning on young people to musicians like Aretha.

Tish, excellent points. I don't have time to read the article today, but once my cable/internet are installed on Thursday (and how do they get away with charging so friggin' much!?) I will have a lot more time to catch up on things. Sounds like there's still some smart people out there, but now the task is to get them into studios and purge the dingbats who want us all to go deaf!

Margaux, I think Joss has it right on the money about Auto Tune. One of my professors once told me that music goes in cycles -- where for a while there will be actual musicians making strides in music development and wonderful things will happen, and then someone will find a way to commercialize, homogenize and utterly destroy all that beauty... but the cycle always swings back again. I keep hoping we'll swing back sometime soon! Definitely think Taylor could be at the forefront of it, but I don't want him to make it a "mission" to do so, as these things should happen organically.

Well, I'm going to ask a dumb question. What's Auto Tune?

It's the reason Paris Hilton can produce a CD

Nutshell
Basically it fixes any "off" notes by nudging them to where the producer / artist wants them to be.
Does away with that pesky old bit about doing it until you get it right.
Also explains why some artists sound good on their albums and majorly suck live - - or lip sync their shows

More in depth
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-Tune

Oh, LOL, you could have said Brittney Spears or Paris Hilton and I would have immediately gotten it.