Way back in the day, I had the great fortune to watch Prince one night doing his thing as a young man all alone in a Minneapolis studio. The talent the guy had was palpable. And the fact that he not only sang like Prince,  played like Prince, but could also run a complex studio? That was really something. No amateur could do that back then. You had to pay your dues simply to learn to get a proper sound on tape.

It’s technically a lot easier to do it yourself nowadays.  The past decade has delivered the same revolution in audio computing that occurred in the mid ’80’s with desktop publishing. The parallels are many and in fact, I would describe most music software programs as something like ‘Desktop Music Publishers’.

Like DTP, DMPs make it very easy for pretty much anyone with the right hardware to create something that kinda/sorta looks ‘professional’. Kinda. Sorta. And like DTP, the output devices have been dumbed-down which can make it harder see the […]

The issue of why I ‘do it all myself’  has been a real concern to me for many years and for many reasons. I thought I’d comment on it partly because lots of people either ask me about it or, don’t ask me about it but wonder about it, and also because this is something that affects more and more musicians as technology moves ahead and the record business continues to break down.

When I studied music I loved learning new instruments. My primary mentor in college, Dr. Alvin King was a disciple of Paul Hindemith, the great German composer. Hindemith stressed to all his students the importance of learning to play as many instruments as possible. Hindemith himself played at least one instrument in each of the main orchestral families at pretty much a pro level. I loved that idea and I’ve worked very hard at the craft of playing a variety of instruments.

At this point? I can usually get what I want most directly by playing the instruments myself. […]

In Part I, I ranted on about the evils of compression. How it has been used to make records louder and louder to the point that they are not only far less musical but also almost painful to listen to.

The flip side to this has been that music is itself changing in response to the technology. As I pointed out, this started out as a subtle enhancement to the pulse of music… aka ‘disco’, but now the effects are far more dramatic.

In fact, I’d suggest that things went so far afield that the music that so thrived during the heyday of CDs… culminating in rap, with the thundering 808 kick drum, has now been superseded by music that can have no bottom or top because, frankly, we’re all listening on ear buds while doing other things.

In other words, the music itself is changing to reflect the fact that music is a background activity; listened to (if one can call it that) even in a crowded place. So, what kinds of […]

Last time I talked about why records made in the seventies sounded so goooooood. Punchy. Danceable. And also, why the music started to suck. One factor… the widespread use of ‘compression’.

But there has been a second compression scandal which began in the early 90’s and continues to this day. This is commonly known as The Loudness Wars.

Now when CDs first came out, they were mastered a lot like vinyl. Sure the dynamic range is much greater, but the actual perceived volume of the CDs was quite similar to good ol’ records.

A funny thing started happening though. Like most drug habits, it was subtle at first, but over time, it turned into a monster that ruins lives. Little by little, CDs (the new ‘records’) became louder and louder.

Now technically, they didn’t get ‘louder’. They can’t really get louder. The strongest signal a CD can handle is exactly the same loudness as the strongest signal a record player can. But what can and does happen with digital tools is that the dynamic […]

OK, I’ve been finally listening to a gift I got at the Salvation Army about three years ago… Time Life’s “Super Hits From The Seventies ‘Have A Nice Day”. Twenty Five CDs with everything that made the seventies, er… whatever they were.

But whether or not you swoon (or run for the loo) when you hear ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’ you can’t help but be impressed by the sound of all the best recordings of that era. It truly is the Golden Age Of Recording for all devotees and it can be summed up with one word. No not cocaine–that was the 80’s, dude.

The word is compression.

Compression is the steroid that made everything sound good. In fact, I’ll go so far as to suggest that it is the answer to the question of ‘why?’

A little history and a little theory. A compressor is a device which automatically adjusts the volume of audio signals. In it’s most basic form it is much like the governor on an engine… it keeps the […]