OK, but would he? I'm more interested in the actual loss of information and how/if that loss propagates than the audiophile issues and as mentioned I don't have the math for that. Actual sound quality on reproduction has a whole lot to do with the room the speakers are in. The 'truest' playback rooms all have their own little flavors. Things sound entirely different across sets of headphones.
> Besides... it's pointless anyway, when you consider mic preamps, effect boxes, and mixing desks all potentially contain their own lowpass filters for various performance and quality reasons.
All of this is part of the sound. Surely you're not saying we're rolling off everything bellow 20 cycles - for about 15 years (Tribe?) we boost the 'inaudible' bass. I had a mastering guy filter all the stuff we 'couldn't hear'. I had to redo the job.
My argument is not with the audiophiles - face it, kids mostly listen to mp3s which aren't exactly thick. I'm curious about the physical loss of information which is there whether or not it reaches the audible range.
> So your talking about the sound bouncing around and inaudible frequencies canceling out little pieces of audible frequencies right?
yes
>whatever sound from a minute ago that has somehow managed not to dissipate
More along the lines of reverbs at small fraction of a second. It's a math problem I'm not qualified to approach. Inaudible, to me unclear.
I've had engineers in the digital domain change things and say 'you can't possibly hear that' and I've had to say 'I don't know what I'm hearing but my track is now bad' (this having to do with digital latency while mixing which is entirely OT in this case)
> Over iterations? Are you talking about the production phase of the discs? What does that have to do with the choice of final media?
Ouch. No. I'm talking about frequencies that are missed by the sampling algorithm altering the wave during propagation as all audio becomes an analog signal again when the speaker starts shaking the air. See: Butterfly Effect.
I usually get shouted down by links to Nyquist but the one math guy I discussed it with said I may have a point. All the audio guys have already taken sides in the analog/digital holy wars.
>I'm sure my dog appreciates the difference but humans just can't
See: butterfly effect.
Frequencies beyond the sample rate constructively and destructively interfering over iterations. Flame away fellow recording engineers. This has been argued to a standstill in many a mastering house over the years.
My personal conclusion: Vinyl is overall easier on the ears. What is a truer representation? Depends on the room. Book the band and drink four beers.
No links, sorry, but Radiohead also offered a big package with disks, hardcover book and vinyl - I know a DJ who bought one. There are people who want the big pretty collectable: double vinyl album / poster / design heavy liner notes / decoder ring. The great reality of the post-biz music racket is by giving away / undercharging for digital, selling vinyl, building fans and selling them tickets and beer there is more than enough money around for mid and even lower tier artists. But no money around for lawyers who decide you need 'more cowbell', are too old or that 'guitar bands are over'.
Not a big Radiohead fan but the record is interesting. Atmospheric with thick string parts and distant vocals in places. I heard it in a cafe and I'm pretty sure they don't pay ASCAP - though ASCAP does come around asking sometimes ('I am the ghost of business models past')
I'm the same story - skipped out on most math in High School by programming (Basic and Fortran so I guess I'm old now). Got obsessed a few years back and started learning some advanced stuff - matrix algebra, calculus. Got the concepts but without the basics it was too frustrating so I decided to relive 10th grade - except now I get the chicks.
Algebra Demystified/McGraw-Hill - The whole series has been working for me. Each solution is spelled out step by step. I've been doing them in a notebook so I can go back and do them again for review. The Trig book was great and I'm moving through Calculus. You've got to put in the time but once the terror subsides you get in a rhythm.
NYC has a spot but it was hard to book as even though we're over run with venues they all book 6 weeks - 2 months in advance. The twenty year party should have flying car accessibility and everyone should bring their gPhones and...
Sold out stadiums. Had a record deal as a side project. Also Dave Mathiews. Anyone remember the Grateful Dead (man)? Not a fan of above, don't mind early Dead, but I'm just sayin... Later, see: Wilco. Anybody who ever ran a minor label will tell you promotion is almost always a waste of money. Too much noise out there. It was like political contributions. Unless you came in at the highest level, full pages in Rolling Stone (and that conincidental long story in the next issue), you were wasting your money.
There's no money in the business for anyone anymore except the players. (the sound of players worldwide laughing)
But... 20th century media was an employment machine. While I personally get a kick out of the image of power hungry lawyer / label wanna-bes saying 'you want fries with that', there were a lot of support jobs that were honest work: Record Store clerks (insert joke), audio engineers,... uh, that's about it. The other honest jobs in tour support are still needed.
A self tuning lute would save some sanity all around.
>comes from practice and playing not tuning.
Tuning is practicing. It's more practicing hearing than playing but it is practicing. It's fine (as opposed to coarse) ear training. It also trains your fingers to press in tune. Tt's more complicated than just grabbing the string between the frets.
> the use of tuners is a symptom of the mediocrity rather than the cause.
Good point. I would say it enabled some of the mediocrity by removing any criteria beyond video friendly 'tude from the money equation. Luckily the music biz is dying.
> Learning to tune is a feedback loop - traditionally, if you didn't just get it, you had to simply learn over time the in-tune sound of your instrument, a long slow process. A tuner breaks that feedback loop and speeds up your learning. Of course you have to stop using the tuner eventually but take it from me, it speeds up- the process.
And then people don't. I've known guys with relatively big names who had real problems without a tuner. On the other hand, their music was pretty good and maybe they would have given up if faced with 6 cranky strings every day. Tuners have also made things much easier on live audiences. If you get good however you get there is fine. I personally would say more 'damage' has been done by digital pitch but even that is my relatively old guy opinion. Pop has become sound sculpture as opposed to the team effort of the 20th century. Bad, good? Just is.
> if you are a good musician, your ear doesn't friggin' need to get trained by tuning a guitar
Bullshit. Your comparison doesn't hold. There is a physicality to playing music, your fingers are actually touching a string (or lips on a reed etc...). You have to train that muscle. Knowing that you want the ball in the hoop doesn't give you the reflexes to shoot a 3 point basket. The pitch connection between ear and muscle has to be trained, as does the ability to hear in tune. Don't believe me? Try playing a violin. Sure looks easy.
> no more than a good mathematician needs to do multiplication tables to train for advanced number theory.
Actually I know mathematicians that disagree with exactly that statement but I'm not qualified.
>The mediocrity in music that you hear today is because you have mediocre players that are being promoted due to things other than musical talent
Agree. But cheap digital tuners lowered the bar to the ground in the 80s.
Brian Wilson (I think, I can't source it) said tuners killed rock music as it's easier to strum an in tune guitar than it is to tune a guitar - way easier for a beginner. But if you can't tune with your ear, your ear doesn't get trained. Donald Fagen (I'm pretty sure, sourced it once but too lazy to look now) said that Pro Tools and digital pitch were has dumbed down pop music. You see, just intonation isn't true intonation, small variations in the pitch give sweeter, or sour - blends, as desired. Listen to the difference between vocal groups pre 1980 and post 1990. The true blend is the voices intermingling, the great harmony bands of the rock and soul decades. That's where you get Pet Sounds, What's Goin On, Lambert Hendrix and Ross. Throw some vocals in and pitch them all in Pro Tools, you get Seal. I've heard digital engineers talking about pitching Abbey Road, about Harrison flat at the end. Good thing the music business is finished.
So get your auto tune guitar boys. No one's gonna want to hear you play.
All good points, especially searches, gmail and the adsense cookies. Avoidable with a sufficient level of paranoia but who is going to bother except the actual bad guys The NSA could also be scanning all voice traffic and travel info, which combined with my cookies, browser cache and email would reveal how boring I am. ouch
Just for the sake of argument - What prevents the NSA, or you or me or Microsoft or the Illuminati, from writing a web spider and cataloging until our servers can't take it anymore? Given Google's got the software / hardware / smarts to do the job right, but it seems like the govt could reach into their vast pool of talent and unlimited resources and data mine for days. "heck of a map reduce, Brownie"
full disclosure: I didn't RTF story but this is/. so you knew that already
Once you've made a constitutional amendment who enforces it? The south was not going to strike down their apartheid voting laws without being leaned on. Off the civil rights track, what about polution controls? Dioxin from a smokestack in Ohio can reach the Atlantic ocean. Rivers run through multiple states. Democracy cannot mean tyranny of the majority. That's pretty much why the Bill Of Rights was put into the Constitution.
I'm playing devils advocate here as I am all in favor of a weakened federal system. I don't believe the feds should collect the tax dollars, for one. Pay the cities, the cities pay the states, the states pay DC. None of this send the money to the beltway and then they send it back. Note my state pays out much more than we take in.
What about voters rights. Suppose the majority in a state is ruthlessly supressing the minority like, say, the south until 1964? Should Mississippi be allowed to roll the clocks back and put racial barriers up to prevent voting [insert Rove ref here]? Suppose Hawaii votes in Sharia? A long shot but for the sake of argument. Do all the females have to move or submit?
My feeling is there's a middle ground but I may be an optimist. Civil rights for all, gay marrage state by state.
I'm a socialist at the municipal level. It's the only way to keep an eye on the money. There's going to be corruption in government, so let's keep it close to home.
Where the problems arise with a weak Federal government is in civil rights cases - protecting the rights of the minority. So the majority in one state is against gay marrage and considers it an assult on the family while the majority in another state is against teaching creationism as science to school kids and considers it child abuse.
Back on topic: Best candidate for nerds? Probably Bloomberg though I wouldn't vote for him (great software company, a mayor for the higher income brackets).
Generations that grew up getting all their music for free don't value it that much. They write songs off the same templates and do as little as possible while trying to 'get famous'. See: Pop charts - 2007.
Support live music - much of what we still listen to (read: pre-1980) was created by players who cut their teeth playing live every night. Lots of great pop music was invented by cats (old guy slang) getting bored on the bandstand, whether it was Chicago in the 20s, Kansas City in the 40s, Hamburg in 1962 or the motor city. When you pay at the door, the artist (hopefully) gets a good taste. When you buy a beer at the venue, if the artist is smart, they get a percentage.
The great music of the 20th century was created by people who played live most nights of the week. As the 80s and MTV kicked into gear there were less gigs to go around, as protools came in you no longer had to be able to sing in tune. We now have a generation that thinks of music as something that they are entitled to. To make it, you recycle the moves of the past with your cheap home protools rig and look great. There is an almost unlimited supply of quality pop culture from the previous century, and best of all, it's all free.
If you want good music in the future, support live music. See bands, buy their disks at their gigs. There's still going to be music and musicians, it's the vast support employment engines that grew up around 20th century media that are going away. If you wanted to be a critic or a publicist, think again. And remember, your other skills are worth no more than anyone else in the world, you'll just pay higher rent.
As a long time pro, times couldn't be better. People still drink beer and when they dance they hook up and the species continues. And we sell in the EU, keep all the money, and go there twice a year at a large profit.
Above is nonsense. To historically understand ground breaking music you have to listen to the music before it. There would have been no Kinks, as they sounded, without John Lennon's early rhythm guitar. There would have been no Lennon without Chuck, but the styles are different.
> it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic
Proving he doesn't play and doesn't know any pop history. Draw a line from Words Of Love (or Johnny B Goode) to Waterloo Sunset (or Quadrophenia or...) and you pass directly through Meet The Beatles.
Above critic snobbery reminds me of some of the (third rate) modern jazz guys dismissing The Hot Fives and Sevens or guitar nerds in the 80s saying Hendrix wasn't 'clean' enough, or JS Bach falling out of fashion. Arguing with a music critic is like arguing sex with a virgin, if he was getting some, he might know something.
If you don't follow electronic music you wouldn't know. Timbaland has ruled the beats on and off since the mid 90s. IMHO the heaviest and most memorable pop artist of that decade (among an admittedly weak field). His polyrhythms were very advanced when he first broke (still are).
Slashdot Mirror
> Only your dog would notice.
OK, but would he? I'm more interested in the actual loss of information and how/if that loss propagates than the audiophile issues and as mentioned I don't have the math for that. Actual sound quality on reproduction has a whole lot to do with the room the speakers are in. The 'truest' playback rooms all have their own little flavors. Things sound entirely different across sets of headphones.
> Besides... it's pointless anyway, when you consider mic preamps, effect boxes, and mixing desks all potentially contain their own lowpass filters for various performance and quality reasons.
All of this is part of the sound. Surely you're not saying we're rolling off everything bellow 20 cycles - for about 15 years (Tribe?) we boost the 'inaudible' bass. I had a mastering guy filter all the stuff we 'couldn't hear'. I had to redo the job.
My argument is not with the audiophiles - face it, kids mostly listen to mp3s which aren't exactly thick. I'm curious about the physical loss of information which is there whether or not it reaches the audible range.
> So your talking about the sound bouncing around and inaudible frequencies canceling out little pieces of audible frequencies right?
yes
>whatever sound from a minute ago that has somehow managed not to dissipate
More along the lines of reverbs at small fraction of a second. It's a math problem I'm not qualified to approach. Inaudible, to me unclear.
I've had engineers in the digital domain change things and say 'you can't possibly hear that' and I've had to say 'I don't know what I'm hearing but my track is now bad' (this having to do with digital latency while mixing which is entirely OT in this case)
Acoustically
> Over iterations? Are you talking about the production phase of the discs? What does that have to do with the choice of final media?
Ouch. No. I'm talking about frequencies that are missed by the sampling algorithm altering the wave during propagation as all audio becomes an analog signal again when the speaker starts shaking the air. See: Butterfly Effect.
I usually get shouted down by links to Nyquist but the one math guy I discussed it with said I may have a point. All the audio guys have already taken sides in the analog/digital holy wars.
Your point being bad math or blog spam? I'm interested if it's math.
Hell I can barely hear anything anyway after years in front of NS 10s (ouch)
>I'm sure my dog appreciates the difference but humans just can't
See: butterfly effect.
Frequencies beyond the sample rate constructively and destructively interfering over iterations.
Flame away fellow recording engineers. This has been argued to a standstill in many a mastering house over the years.
My personal conclusion: Vinyl is overall easier on the ears. What is a truer representation? Depends on the room.
Book the band and drink four beers.
A new location / date will be announced this time with t-shirts!
Yet another excuse to fall off the wagon.
Info here or at myslashdottag+interactive at gee male.
No links, sorry, but Radiohead also offered a big package with disks, hardcover book and vinyl - I know a DJ who bought one. There are people who want the big pretty collectable: double vinyl album / poster / design heavy liner notes / decoder ring. The great reality of the post-biz music racket is by giving away / undercharging for digital, selling vinyl, building fans and selling them tickets and beer there is more than enough money around for mid and even lower tier artists. But no money around for lawyers who decide you need 'more cowbell', are too old or that 'guitar bands are over'.
Not a big Radiohead fan but the record is interesting. Atmospheric with thick string parts and distant vocals in places. I heard it in a cafe and I'm pretty sure they don't pay ASCAP - though ASCAP does come around asking sometimes ('I am the ghost of business models past')
I'm the same story - skipped out on most math in High School by programming (Basic and Fortran so I guess I'm old now). Got obsessed a few years back and started learning some advanced stuff - matrix algebra, calculus. Got the concepts but without the basics it was too frustrating so I decided to relive 10th grade - except now I get the chicks.
Algebra Demystified/McGraw-Hill - The whole series has been working for me. Each solution is spelled out step by step. I've been doing them in a notebook so I can go back and do them again for review. The Trig book was great and I'm moving through Calculus. You've got to put in the time but once the terror subsides you get in a rhythm.
NYC has a spot but it was hard to book as even though we're over run with venues they all book 6 weeks - 2 months in advance. ...
The twenty year party should have flying car accessibility and everyone should bring their gPhones and
slashdot.org/anniversary.pl?view_id=55
Sold out stadiums. Had a record deal as a side project. Also Dave Mathiews. Anyone remember the Grateful Dead (man)? ... Later, see: Wilco. Anybody who ever ran a minor label will tell you promotion is almost always a waste of money. Too much noise out there. It was like political contributions. Unless you came in at the highest level, full pages in Rolling Stone (and that conincidental long story in the next issue), you were wasting your money.
... 20th century media was an employment machine. While I personally get a kick out of the image of power hungry lawyer / label wanna-bes saying 'you want fries with that', there were a lot of support jobs that were honest work: Record Store clerks (insert joke), audio engineers, ... uh, that's about it. The other honest jobs in tour support are still needed.
Not a fan of above, don't mind early Dead, but I'm just sayin
There's no money in the business for anyone anymore except the players.
(the sound of players worldwide laughing)
But
A self tuning lute would save some sanity all around.
>comes from practice and playing not tuning.
Tuning is practicing. It's more practicing hearing than playing but it is practicing. It's fine (as opposed to coarse) ear training. It also trains your fingers to press in tune. Tt's more complicated than just grabbing the string between the frets.
> the use of tuners is a symptom of the mediocrity rather than the cause.
Good point. I would say it enabled some of the mediocrity by removing any criteria beyond video friendly 'tude from the money equation. Luckily the music biz is dying.
> Learning to tune is a feedback loop - traditionally, if you didn't just get it, you had to simply learn over time the in-tune sound of your instrument, a long slow process. A tuner breaks that feedback loop and speeds up your learning. Of course you have to stop using the tuner eventually but take it from me, it speeds up- the process.
And then people don't. I've known guys with relatively big names who had real problems without a tuner. On the other hand, their music was pretty good and maybe they would have given up if faced with 6 cranky strings every day. Tuners have also made things much easier on live audiences. If you get good however you get there is fine. I personally would say more 'damage' has been done by digital pitch but even that is my relatively old guy opinion. Pop has become sound sculpture as opposed to the team effort of the 20th century. Bad, good? Just is.
> if you are a good musician, your ear doesn't friggin' need to get trained by tuning a guitar
...). You have to train that muscle. Knowing that you want the ball in the hoop doesn't give you the reflexes to shoot a 3 point basket. The pitch connection between ear and muscle has to be trained, as does the ability to hear in tune. Don't believe me? Try playing a violin. Sure looks easy.
Bullshit. Your comparison doesn't hold. There is a physicality to playing music, your fingers are actually touching a string (or lips on a reed etc
> no more than a good mathematician needs to do multiplication tables to train for advanced number theory.
Actually I know mathematicians that disagree with exactly that statement but I'm not qualified.
>The mediocrity in music that you hear today is because you have mediocre players that are being promoted due to things other than musical talent
Agree. But cheap digital tuners lowered the bar to the ground in the 80s.
Brian Wilson (I think, I can't source it) said tuners killed rock music as it's easier to strum an in tune guitar than it is to tune a guitar - way easier for a beginner. But if you can't tune with your ear, your ear doesn't get trained. Donald Fagen (I'm pretty sure, sourced it once but too lazy to look now) said that Pro Tools and digital pitch were has dumbed down pop music. You see, just intonation isn't true intonation, small variations in the pitch give sweeter, or sour - blends, as desired. Listen to the difference between vocal groups pre 1980 and post 1990. The true blend is the voices intermingling, the great harmony bands of the rock and soul decades. That's where you get Pet Sounds, What's Goin On, Lambert Hendrix and Ross. Throw some vocals in and pitch them all in Pro Tools, you get Seal. I've heard digital engineers talking about pitching Abbey Road, about Harrison flat at the end. Good thing the music business is finished.
So get your auto tune guitar boys. No one's gonna want to hear you play.
All good points, especially searches, gmail and the adsense cookies.
Avoidable with a sufficient level of paranoia but who is going to bother except the actual bad guys
The NSA could also be scanning all voice traffic and travel info, which combined with my cookies, browser cache and email would reveal how boring I am.
ouch
Just for the sake of argument -
/. so you knew that already
What prevents the NSA, or you or me or Microsoft or the Illuminati, from writing a web spider and cataloging until our servers can't take it anymore? Given Google's got the software / hardware / smarts to do the job right, but it seems like the govt could reach into their vast pool of talent and unlimited resources and data mine for days.
"heck of a map reduce, Brownie"
full disclosure: I didn't RTF story but this is
Isn't a cloud water vapor?
So he's saying they're working on vapor?
Now that's honesty.
Once you've made a constitutional amendment who enforces it?
The south was not going to strike down their apartheid voting laws without being leaned on. Off the civil rights track, what about polution controls? Dioxin from a smokestack in Ohio can reach the Atlantic ocean. Rivers run through multiple states.
Democracy cannot mean tyranny of the majority. That's pretty much why the Bill Of Rights was put into the Constitution.
I'm playing devils advocate here as I am all in favor of a weakened federal system. I don't believe the feds should collect the tax dollars, for one. Pay the cities, the cities pay the states, the states pay DC. None of this send the money to the beltway and then they send it back. Note my state pays out much more than we take in.
hmmm that argument can be made ... but ...
What about voters rights. Suppose the majority in a state is ruthlessly supressing the minority like, say, the south until 1964?
Should Mississippi be allowed to roll the clocks back and put racial barriers up to prevent voting [insert Rove ref here]? Suppose Hawaii votes in Sharia? A long shot but for the sake of argument. Do all the females have to move or submit?
My feeling is there's a middle ground but I may be an optimist. Civil rights for all, gay marrage state by state.
I'm a socialist at the municipal level. It's the only way to keep an eye on the money. There's going to be corruption in government, so let's keep it close to home.
Where the problems arise with a weak Federal government is in civil rights cases - protecting the rights of the minority. So the majority in one state is against gay marrage and considers it an assult on the family while the majority in another state is against teaching creationism as science to school kids and considers it child abuse.
Back on topic: Best candidate for nerds? Probably Bloomberg though I wouldn't vote for him (great software company, a mayor for the higher income brackets).
Generations that grew up getting all their music for free don't value it that much. They write songs off the same templates and do as little as possible while trying to 'get famous'. See: Pop charts - 2007.
Support live music - much of what we still listen to (read: pre-1980) was created by players who cut their teeth playing live every night. Lots of great pop music was invented by cats (old guy slang) getting bored on the bandstand, whether it was Chicago in the 20s, Kansas City in the 40s, Hamburg in 1962 or the motor city. When you pay at the door, the artist (hopefully) gets a good taste. When you buy a beer at the venue, if the artist is smart, they get a percentage.
See you in 'meat space'
The great music of the 20th century was created by people who played live most nights of the week. As the 80s and MTV kicked into gear there were less gigs to go around, as protools came in you no longer had to be able to sing in tune. We now have a generation that thinks of music as something that they are entitled to. To make it, you recycle the moves of the past with your cheap home protools rig and look great. There is an almost unlimited supply of quality pop culture from the previous century, and best of all, it's all free.
If you want good music in the future, support live music. See bands, buy their disks at their gigs. There's still going to be music and musicians, it's the vast support employment engines that grew up around 20th century media that are going away. If you wanted to be a critic or a publicist, think again. And remember, your other skills are worth no more than anyone else in the world, you'll just pay higher rent.
As a long time pro, times couldn't be better. People still drink beer and when they dance they hook up and the species continues. And we sell in the EU, keep all the money, and go there twice a year at a large profit.
Above is nonsense. To historically understand ground breaking music you have to listen to the music before it. There would have been no Kinks, as they sounded, without John Lennon's early rhythm guitar. There would have been no Lennon without Chuck, but the styles are different.
...) and you pass directly through Meet The Beatles.
> it had no difficult content, it had no technical innovations, it had no creative depth. They wrote a bunch of catchy 3-minute ditties and they were photogenic
Proving he doesn't play and doesn't know any pop history. Draw a line from Words Of Love (or Johnny B Goode) to Waterloo Sunset (or Quadrophenia or
Above critic snobbery reminds me of some of the (third rate) modern jazz guys dismissing The Hot Fives and Sevens or guitar nerds in the 80s saying Hendrix wasn't 'clean' enough, or JS Bach falling out of fashion. Arguing with a music critic is like arguing sex with a virgin, if he was getting some, he might know something.
If you don't follow electronic music you wouldn't know.
Timbaland has ruled the beats on and off since the mid 90s.
IMHO the heaviest and most memorable pop artist of that decade (among an admittedly weak field).
His polyrhythms were very advanced when he first broke (still are).
youtube
at the point maybe
wetube
(mod redundant)