There was an article on CNN today about The Dos and Don’ts of Listening to Music at Work and it briefly touched on a subject that has been nagging at me for a long time. As much as audio purists wish it weren’t the case, the truth is that the vast majority of the listening public is going to be doing something else while listening to your tunes. This is a new reality that saddens me, but is one that we have to accept if we are going to survive in the new age of music consumption.
Have you ever been asked to fill out one of those personality questionnaires that asks you what your hobbies are? If you are reading this blog, then it’s pretty likely that you’d check the box that indicates “you enjoy listening to music in your free time.” But really stop and think about that: when was the last time that you bought a record and actually sat down and did absolutely nothing else but bask in the glory of that album? Didn’t you go for a jog while rocking out to Go! Team? Didn’t you prepare dinner while listening to Portishead? Didn’t you mosey over to giggle at the lolcats while listening to Of Montreal? Didn’t you grind on a crowded dance floor with a hundred other people while [Shaking] Your Money Maker?
My dad had this old TEAC reel-to-reel tape recorder at our house. It was my first real exposure to a recording device of any type. When I was a pre-teen I found a journal he kept that contained the track listings of all the mixtapes he had made from his LPs and recorded onto his ¼” reels. I remember getting all choked up thinking about my dad sitting Indian-style on the floor of his first apartment with headphones on, hovering over his first record player and finding the songs that really meant something to him—or at least meant enough to go through all the trouble of making a mix tape on a reel-to-reel, which is not as easy as clicking “Shuffle” on your iPod.
Maybe I’m overly atavistic or maybe I’m just idealizing a past that never existed, but it seems like there once was a time when you’d go out to the record store, find an album by a band you liked, take it home, and just listen to it. Do nothing but listen to it. I just don’t see that happening anymore. When I get a new record that really blows me away, I’m lucky if I can get my girlfriend to sit still for 30 seconds before she starts checking her e-mail.
A new era in the appreciation of music has arrived and it requires that your music grab your audience’s attention away from whatever task they may be doing. It has to sing over whatever banality they are trifling with. This means your music has to be treated in a new way and yes this involves many things including compression.
Many audio legends bemoan this reality as the loss of dynamics and sound quality and so forth. But you tell me how much fidelity there is worth maintaining in garage rock anthems like “Fell in Love with a Girl” or how much dynamic contrast there is to be preserved in “So Bored.” Now if you this were the 1980s or you were recording a cello sonata, then these would be important considerations. But your average kid lambasting their eardrums with the latest T-Pain track is probably not relishing in his tasteful use of sforzando.
The fact of the matter is that today’s music requires a new approach. It means that your songs have to sound good in noisy environments (driving your truck, loading your dishwasher) as well as quiet ones. It means that your myspace has to sound good on dinky little computer speakers and shabby little headphones as well as on hi-fi sound systems. It means that your music has to demand attention from the listener who wants to reduce your art to their workout soundtrack.
This is indeed a challenge and a lot of the old guard audio engineers are either unwilling or unable to perform the task. But I submit that it is the job of every recording, mixing, and mastering engineer as well as every producer out there to recognize this paradigm shift and make it their own. It doesn’t have to be a battle between “punchiness” and “volume” or “sounding good” and “being loud.” It is our job to make things sound good AND be loud.
