Another great article today from Word Magazine on the state of making records and all the issues involved, from sound quality to making hits. This article was written by Tom Whitwell who also maintains the awesome Music Thing blog.
Why records DO all sound the same | Word Magazine
“Why does most music sound the same these days? Because record companies are scared, they don’t want to take risks, and they’re doing the best they can to generate mainstream radio hits. That is their job, after all. And as the skies continue to darken over the poor benighted business of selling music, labels are going to cling to what they know more fiercely than ever.”
(Via Music Thing.)
Picture of Jack Joseph Puig in his studio.
A couple of interesting things popped up today about The Loundness War. Firstly this article in Rolling Stone. It’s one of the best I’ve seen on all the issues around overly loud records and how as audio technology evolves, the worse music sounds - and I’m not talking about content or style. As well as covering all the different aspects of the issues around The Loudness Wars - it also details the problems of MP3 with regard to sound quality and how engineers and producers are trying to counteract the negative aspects of this technology. There are also plenty of sonic examples detailing the problems around overly loud records and low rate MP3’s.
For me, one of the interesting things in this article was information about an organization called Turn Me Up! which is attempting to bring The Loudness War to an end. I’ve joined them for certification as a mastering engineer and I also hope to submit records that I produce/mix for certification as well - as long as my clients are up for making their records less loud!
It’s hard to say how effective any “bottom up” campaign will be against overly loud records. Whenever I talk to my clients about this, or discuss it with other people in the music business it would seem that everyone is reluctant to be the among the first to take the “risk” of making a less loud, yet better sounding record. And being a mastering engineer working in a service industry, I have little option other than to deliver what my clients want in order to keep my business afloat. What we need is high profile bands and artists to put out records that are less loud and make a point of doing so. Much like when Radiohead used the release of their In Rainbows LP to promote a new business model - a similar thing could be done for forwarding the idea of quieter and better sounding records. And Radiohead would probably be a great band to do such a thing.
…
So after writing that, I went over to the forum attached to the Radiohead site and posted this.
Will anything happen?
Maybe some of you know about how modern mastering takes most of the dynamics out of music for the sake of loudness. For those of you that don’t know what all this is about, check this out.
