Guest David
GuestForum Replies Created
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Hey guys, I’m glad your having a discussion of vinyl. You’re just the right group to address a question I’ve had for a while. As a kid I listened to vinyl because CDs didn’t arrive until I was in my 20s. Audiophiles, many of you will remember, disparaged the sound of CDs when they first came out as being harsh. The claim was that because the recording process was analog (tapes), the digitization of sound for the CDs led to a loss of sonic info, whereas the analog vinyl preserved everything that was on the tapes. Since then, recording in most places has gone digital all the way through, so the sound is digitized when first captured and stays digital when encoded on a CD or streamed online.
Here’s my question: If a vinyl record from the 1960s is superior to a CD made from the same tapes because of that analog-to-digital conversion, what about a vinyl record made today from a digital source? Does anyone find that, for instance, the Orange vinyl sounds different from the Orange CD? How so?
Thanks!
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Hi Roger, I’ve used the “download all albums” button in the “Club Music” section and then moved the folders of MP3 files to a usb drive. I have an AV receiver that accepts usb input. It works fine to interpret the files. It’s worth a try to see if you can just download everything to the USB drive. Maybe try with one album and see how it goes, then cut back to just the MP3s if your playback device gets hung up or is reading files twice or something.
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Hi Jung,
Thanks for posting about my hero Bertrand Russell. As a struggling grad student in Philosophy, I appreciated Bertrand Russell above all other philosophers I was reading for the simple fact that he was willing to change his mind and willing to admit that he had changed his mind. So many bent over backwards to avoid the possibility that their argument might not be correct. Russell was humble enough to acknowledge that Philosophy was an ongoing process of exploration. No doubt it tarnished his reputation in the field, where admission of uncertainty is a sign of weakness.
He’s also amazing for his continued intellectual growth throughout his long life. Had he retired in 1920 he would have already made major contributions to the Philosophy of Language and for influencing his student, Ludwig Wittgenstein who, coincidentally, also hailed from Austria. Instead, he went on, as shown in the videos, to be a social thinker and critic, writing on pacifism, religion, and the human condition.
As an aside, one of my most cherished possessions is an autographed book of his from his earlier, more hardcore, philosophical days.
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Hi Bill. Yes, very sad news. I absolutely agree with your assessment. In a way, she was the Paul McCartney of Fleetwood Mac at its heyday: steady, relatable, and imminently listenable. But today I’m thinking back to this beautiful, sad performance from before her days with Fleetwood Mac, when she was, appropriately, Christine Perfect.
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Hi Sara and everybody. I’m not musically literate enough to talk chord progressions or time signatures and what not, but I know that Todd Rundgren did a Beatles homage album, Deface The Music. Apparently he’s now on a Beatles tribute tour with Christopher Cross and others. So I guess that counts! 😉
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Hi Jung and folks,
Speaking of Rick Beato, he just put out a video of quick reactions to the current top ten songs in the world. It all sounds like club music to me, each a collection of filters and sound effects to a heavy beat. Rick notes how far back the vocals are in the mix, and I guess that would be true if what the songs say is not important.
I haven’t listened to the radio for music in probably twenty-five years, so it was a bit of a shock to hear where music is today. It’s not protest music, it’s not music to listen to in the still of the night with headphones on, or for singing along while driving down the highway. It’s Disco 2.0. I wonder if others get the same sense.
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Hi Sara, Arrival was also one of my first buys. I loved “Knowing Me, Knowing You.” Based on release dates, though, I think my first purchase was probably Heart’s “Dreamboat Annie.” Except for the Beatles, I’ve always had a preference for female singers. Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac (Lindsey Buckingham doesn’t count), Cyndi Lauper, Carly Simon, Karla Bonoff, Joni Mitchell, and so on and so on. I guess it’s no surprise I’m an MLT fan.
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Hi Jürgen,
I got into minimalist and experimental music back in the 70s, though less so these days as the minimalist movement seems to have run its course. I remember the first time I listened to an early Philip Glass album, it was so wildly different that even though I can’t say I enjoyed it, I was compelled to listen to more.
The tapestry of sound is certainly accurate for some composers. Terry Riley’s “In C” is a perfect example. Others have a more identifiable structure but use it to play around with repetition or shifts in time, etc. Then others, like John Cage, made noise (or silence) and challenged the audience to think about what it takes for something to be “music.”
As for influences in more popular music, Revolution 9 I think qualifies as minimalist (and Yoko Ono knew John Cage) and I always thought “I Want You, She’s So Heavy” had minimalist sensibilities in the spare lyrics and in the way they repeated the instrumental phrase for 3+ minutes and then cut with no fade, no resolution. Compare it to the piano ending in Clapton’s Layla.
More “avant garde” composers like Brian Eno, Tangerine Dream, or Kraftwerk have definitely borrowed from minimalism, though sometimes these days the aim seems to be more about creating a great dance groove than trying to strip away elements of traditional classical music to try to find what’s essential. Anyway, I can’t even play an instrument, so I can only talk about what it sounds like to me!
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Hi Jürgen,
Steve Reich, whose composition is performed in the video, was trained as a percussionist. His compositions tend to feature percussion instruments, from hand claps to wood to marimbas. Most of his better known works are experimenting with time and sounds that go in and out of phase with other sounds, sounds that get shorter or longer. Fans of “minimalist” music and percussion should definitely check out his “Drumming.” You can scrub through if you just want to sample the variety of instruments and sounds in the nearly hour-long composition.
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Hi Jürgen,
John Cage was an experimental composer, mid 1900s. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything by him, either. His best known work is something called 4’33, which consisted of the musicians going on stage and then just sitting for four minutes 33 seconds. The idea was to question just what music is and to get the audience to hear the ambient sounds around them as music. He also liked to alter pianos so you could still play it like a piano but it just made different noises based on what he wired into it. All to blur the line between random sounds and traditional music. Like I say, experimental.
Actually, though, I suspect John Lennon and certainly Yoko Ono knew of him. Yoko Ono even collaborated with him on something back in 1962. There’s a video on YT. It’s noise, apparently. Anyway, it wouldn’t surprise me at all to learn that his work was one inspiration behind “Revolution #9”. Is it noise? Is it music? Is it a song? Fast forward to Orange and we could ask the same thing about “The Future.”
Oh, and as if this weren’t enough, he’s also credited with the longest composition in history, something that’s supposed to take more than 600 years to perform. Hopefully there’s an intermission. 😉
Great wiper video! I hope I never look over to see the driver in the next lane trying to keep the glass clear in a pouring rain by using a squeegee. Yikes!
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Why not programmable windshield wipers that could replicate different beats instead of just the steady slap-slap-slap we get now? Have each wiper driven individually for left and right hand.
Sure it might create a safety hazard, but it might make driving in the rain a bit more fun. Imagine the ride with Bobby McGee with some more varied beats…
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Also cool, for those of a certain mindset, would be to record the natural sounds of a stretch of road—the potholes, the gravel, the bumps and patches, and then reproduce that using traditional musical instruments. The very act of performing the sounds in a setting and using the recognized tools of music production would transform the collection of random noises into music, almost by definition.
Well, John Cage would’ve thought it was cool at least. Perhaps.
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Thanks Daryl. True I don’t know much about triplets, but I think twins are pretty cool. 😉
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Hmm, good question. I’m thinking maybe something like, “How to Tell if You’re Really Conscious” or “Even More Ways To Serve Man.”
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Hey David, you might appreciate this based on an old Ripley’s Believe It Or Not on the population of China.
