Pro Sound Web: I love technology. It is a beautiful thing.
However, while there’s nothing wrong technology itself, we need to consider the role that technology should play in our lives.
I’m mainly referring to technology as it pertains to making music, particularly in the recording world. These days everybody and their dog can have a home recording studio.
13 comments:
Hallelujiah! This is exactly what I love to hear. Technology is beautiful, it makes our lives easier, more beautiful, more exciting... but it should never replace the purity that human beings represent. Talent is not something that everyone has in any particular field, and therefore it is a thing to be celebrated in those who have it, and other people should nurture talent using their own talent in other fields. We should all be helping each other to grow and produce wonderful things with what we are good at, instead of faking it and pretending our way to try to equal the true talent we may be jealous of. Technology is meant to highlight and help, never to replace.
While I completely understand what this article is saying, and for the most part agree, I have to say that i don't think every amateur engineer should be condemned. As someone who is sound-stupid, I find it sort of unfair to tell all of the "average Joes'" to stop recording. Playing around and making terrible things is how people learn. Yes, talent is very important and if someone has it, it should be celebrated. But why shouldn't those who aren't naturally talented work hard at developing the skills that they weren't born with? To be perfectly honest, I think technology has leveled the playing field. Now those who aren't naturally talented can build up their skills and those who are talented now have to push themselves to be more than just naturally gifted.
There are definitely some mixed feelings on this article. First off, I think that the average person relies too heavily on technology when recording music, and would rather filter something through a cheap program off the internet to fix their off notes and to improve the sound quality than to actually learn how to make the music the right pitch and of a high quality the first time around. Mostly, it's laziness and lack of education, plus the marketing of these products. The companies themselves are the ones who lowered the prices and marketed this technology to "anyone who wants to sound just like the professionals". On the other hand. There are people out there who are genuinely interested in improving their recording skills either as a musician or an engineer. I'm a bit of an indie music fan, and there are quite a few bands that I enjoy and only know of because they could afford a basic recording system set up and they recorded in their home and published their music on the internet. Also, there are some people out there who couldn't take music technology classes or theatre applied sound classes in high school or even college, but they have an interest and a basic understanding. If they're willing to really learn, and not be lazy, what's to stop them from learning off of home equipment? Even the pros had to start somewhere. The author of this article pointed out that technology doesn't create creativity, but he forgot to mention how much it can enhance creativity.
This article sure did a good job of kicking off a ‘talent v. hard work’ debate, but I’m not sure that’s the point. This article is saying that technology cannot replace skill. If your band sucks, recording it with top-of the-line microphones and adding lots of processing is not going to make it any better. In a similar vein, owning home recording equipment doesn’t mean you know how to use it. A professional recording artist with a $500 system will probably create a better recording than an amateur with a $10,000 system. Making a recording no longer requires renting out an enormous studio and now anyone can own a decent small recording system of their own, but that doesn’t mean that everyone has the skill to do it. Owning the equipment is only the first step in making a good recording, skill is much more important.
this can easily be connected to the fad of auto tuning singers. Yes auto tune does have a place, be it rare and distant, but it should not be used on every song. I got to listen to the dry recording of T-Pain who is known for autotune in his music. He does not use autotune to cover up his mistake but he actually sings the different notes to manipulate the autotune. More technology does not make a better piece of art.
I agree that technology really can not replace skill and creativity. I would agree with the writer of the article that not everyone can create a good sound design just because they have expensive equiptment. It takes a good amount of training to really get a good handle on how to properly use systems, the amount of money thrown at it does not matter.
I like what Simone said. You can't just "throw money" at a problem and expect it to be fixed, and the same goes for music, sometimes you can get away with achieving a good sound, but it is far more difficult to try to produce good quality music with something bad to begin with. I think that, no matter how advanced music technology is becoming, some music can be more identifiably worse than all else, and quality can, hopefully still be recognized. I think that some, not necessarily "good" music gets away as better, but still not the best. I think there are still extraordinarily talented musicians out there, their voices/ sounds are just masked and covered with effects that we expect to hear, that why they are grouped together with poorer musicians who are using the same effects. I also think that having recording devices/ technologies is a gift, acquiring such a gift does not necessarily mean you are good at using the technologies you have, it takes a certain level of mastery and actual work to learn how to improve your skill to be knowledgable of how to use such instruments effectively.
The point of this article is fairly simple and obvious, yet one that does merit an article. Gear doesn't make things sound good, the person running it does. That honky sounding piano? An engineer who doesn't know that cutting 1kHz will get rid of it is just as useless behind a $50 piece of gear as he is behind a $50,000 one. The issue that the author of the article points out is that people have the completely false notion that the $50,000 gear will magically make them a better engineer, when in reality they should just try to improve their own skills with the gear they have and can afford. An engineer who blames gear for lack of talent won't be an engineer for long.
I think I understand what this article was trying to say, but it seems to me that the author was unnecessarily harsh towards the amateur engineer. Of course, there is no replacement for talent, and making a good record isn't only about the $50,000 sound equipment. However, I don't think that someone who sits in their basement and records a cover with a $100 mic and a $200 sound program would call themselves a professional sound engineer. They are not going to claim that they could have produced Michael Jackson's Thriller better than it was. This author seems to think that because sound equipment and home recording equipment is so cheap and available now that everyone and their mother now thinks of themselves as a sound engineer. Sure, there will always be those who are delusional, but I don't think there's a downside to the availability and affordability of the equipment and the software. It exposes more people to the intricacies of sound, and allows anyone to teach themselves as much as they want to learn.
This makes me think of the people on YouTube who have videos of them singing (badly) and then having that video get autotuned and then all of the sudden the song is amazing, the person is granted false talent, and they end up making money off of it. That's kind of unfair for people who actually have real talent and are struggling to make a living off of it. Yeah, technology is great, but I also think it all depends on the person using it and the reasons they're using it.
So I feel that this article can easily be broaden to many different fields, say sign painting? Ok so yes talent and God-given ability I truly can not be replaced. TI takes time to hone your skills and you should. If you pick a lap-top at age 13 with garage band and start making music. If you continue to work on it and to strive for improvement then over the years as your personal technology improves and technology in general you should become better (hopefully). Think this article is just saying plain and simple, just because of technology is there does not mean you will be as talented as a talented sound engineer. I believe we should use technology to amplify our natural abilities not to make up for our lack of ability. Find something your good at and hone those skills and find the technology that goes along with those skills.
The author is right about everything he says, but his attitude and conclusions are wrong. Technology does help more people have the ability for music recording. And just technology isn't enough to make a song recording good. But the best part of technology opening the doors to home recording studios is that everyone can try their hand at it. Most people might not have any talent, but there will be some people who would never have been discovered otherwise. So just because your sound recording skills are not as developed as the professionals does not mean that you shouldn't have fun messing around with it. For people with home recording studios it's not as much about the end product as it is about having fun getting there. This author sounds like a professional who is trying to convince himself that he has some sort of job security in this age of technological change.
This makes me think all the way back to thanksgiving. I think its been almost a week since then. i was watching the Macy thanksgiving parade and they had a bunch of singers. Out of all of them, only one was not auto tuned. Only 1! I think that a lot of the bad music being made is relying heavily on technology to fix their mistakes. There are however a few that are being brought down by the technology. Singers, like Rebecca Black who sings in many competitions and wins most, who sang a song she didn't write and then someone auto-tuned for no reason creating what was one of the worst music videos of all time are being held back. I think what Im trying to say is that I hate auto-tune and I wish people would stop using it all the time!
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