These are some thoughts I had while driving around the S.F. Bay Area the last few days: how closely a style of music matches the technology of the time. That is that music created at a given time and given culture tends to match the musical technology available. This, of course would seem obvious, but it can give clues to why recreations of early music sometimes fail, and where music will go in the future. Here are some examples, in roughly chronological order:
- “Primitive” (stone-age) music - drums and voices.
- Gregorian Chant - massed voices in cathedrals.
- J.S. Bash - organ, massed voices, and small orchestra.
- Haydn and Mozart - Court orchestras.
- Beethoven - the piano and larger orchestras.
- Italian Opera - Bel Canto singers, castrati, orchestras, opera hall acoustics.
- Caruso - strong vocal on early disk and cylinder recordings.
- Popular jazz (1920s) - 78rpm disks, horn speakers.
- Swing jazz and “crooners” (1930s, 40s) - AM radio, 78rpm disks, dynamic speakers in open-backed cabinets.
- Extensive releases of recorded classical music (1950s) - FM radio, LP disks, later stereo disks and tape.
- Rock & Roll (1950s, 60s) - Electric Guitars, AM car radios, 45rpm disks, later stereo LPs.
- Pop and Fusion Jazz (1970s to present) - Multi-track recording, solid-state playback.
- “Techo” (1980s -present) - synthesizers, samplers, drum machines.
Many more categories could be added. What is going on is a two-way phenomenon - the music requires the given technology, but the technology is complemented by the music. In other words, the music is optimized for the technology and results in enjoyable music. This is why vintage 78s played on original equipment can actually sound good and at least convey emotion, or why 12th-century chants sung in a cathedral can be so uplifting. One of my favorite examples of this technology match are the 1930s and 40s recordings of the crooners - Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, etc. By todays standards, the songs are simple, the dynamic range is limited as is the frequency response. However, when played in the wood-cabinet consoles of the time through octal-tube electronics (typically with a single-ended pentode output with no feedback), the crooner’s voice comes alive and the emotion is palpable. Play the same recording on a modern solid-state stereo, and it just sounds like a scratchy old recording.
This same effect happens when 1920s or 30s 78s are played on a Victor Orthophonic record player. This is an acoustical playback system but with the correct exponential folded horn system designed by Western Electric engineers. Despite the primitive recording technology, the emotion and presence comes through.
Listening to a live concert, whether classical Indian music, western classical music, jazz, or rock can be a deep emotional experience - at least if the performers are talented and the venue decent. The problem with recording live performances is how to recreate the emotion during playback. One school of thought is to recreate the sound as accurately as possible - the Absolute Sound concept. However, difficulties in miking, mixing, and playback, as well as the sonic fingerprint of the technology used can keep the experience from coming alive to the listener. Perhaps some of the coloration of “warm” tube amp systems is what makes them appealing to listeners of jazz, since the colorations enhance the emotional impact.
An example of a music/technology mismatch is baroque music played on historically correct “period instruments”. First, no one really knows if these instruments really did sound like the ones from 400 years ago. Second, they were listened to in small rooms or chambers at close range. When these pieces, typically full of cat-gut violins and a harpsichord, are digitally recorded, then played back on a red-book CD through a solid-state system, the results are dreadful - screeching violins and jangling harpsichord. It brings to mind Benjamin Britten’s quote that harpsichords sound like “two skeletons copulating on a tin roof”.
An interesting question is what todays new technology will do to music? Digital recording at 96/24 to hard-disk, MP-3 playback to iPods, bitorrent and swapping - what will this lead to? We are clearly ripe for change - our pervasive popular music - rock & roll - is getting tired. When you start hearing “Purple Haze” in the supermarket aisles, and toddlers are brought up on 40-year old rock tunes, something new is bound to happen - we just don’t what it is yet.
My partner Karna (the namesake of the amplifier) has often commented that music changed after transistors came in - that rock-n-roll got hard and aggressive, and the Fifties style of singing went out. I think she’s on to something here: that some kinds of technology can play along with some kinds of music, but not with others.
Imagine rap or heavy-metal on 1930’s radios - it just wouldn’t work. Similarly, movies made with all-analog all-vacuum tube technology - Casablanca, Gone With The Wind, all of the 1950’s CinemaScope and Todd-AO 70mm Technicolor movies - really don’t work with modern THX and Dolby Digital sound. At the least, they need vacuum-tube amplification to deliver the emotional intensity that’s an integral part of these movies, otherwise they come off as flat and over-acted.
And it’s a mistake to think of early technology as “primitive” - one of the most powerful pieces of classical music I ever heard was at the 2004 European Triode Festival, where we heard one of the first stereophonic recordings ever made, Furtwangler playing in Berlin in 1944. This recording, made at the height of the war (made only a month before the Berlin Symphony Hall was destroyed by Allied bombers), was a musical and technological triumph, one of the most beautiful recordings I’ve ever heard on any system.
The musical and emotional effect has more to do with the depth of artistry - technological, musical, and the understanding of the medium - than the “advanced” qualities of the technology itself, which is merely the means to an end. Although we can’t always see it clearly, the “new” technology may have deep esthetic flaws that might take decades to uncover, and the “old” technology may have unappreciated virtues that may also take a long time to discover.
There could be another factor to the pattern here, which would be the invention of new instruments like the electric guitar and the synthesiser. Both had a big impact on music. But for example the huge amount of artificial base that modern music has (since 1980’s?) like in house music and rap would not be possible without the introduction of solid-state amps, since they excell in this domain.
Let’s suppose that there is such a relationship (and I agree that there seems to be one), is there a fundamental reason that a modern system would be unable to reproduce music from each era in it’s best form? Could the EQ on modern home-theatre sets that let you select the sound by choosing a category like Jazz/Classical/Pop/etc be seen as a (poor) attempt to do so?
I mean, if we were to cripple the frequency response, would it make a 50’s recording sound better, more like the original? If not, why and what would it take?
Funny thing, I just remember that a couple of months ago, I was wondering if the unpopularity of classical music (I’m talking about people of my generation and I was born in 1970) could be due to modern hifi stereo’s that make it sound like crap? I know I never cared much for classical music until I heard it played life for the first time. The beauty of the tone of the instruments and the composition realy moved me.
Arend-Jan: Yes, I think that modern equipment can be made to optimize the music of particular eras, at least for electronic eras. When playing back music through the equipment of the time, the emotional impact seems the best. Part of the effect of old equipment is frequency response but another major part is the sonic effects caused by distortion. Different harmonic contents at different signal levels and frequency can markedly change the tonal quality of music, even if the THD remains the same. This one reason tube electronics is preferred by jazz and classical listeners - the harmonic fingerprint is different than the standard solid-state sound. It would be interesting to build a preamp that had for its “tone control” a switch that would select different tonal qualities. This is already done for guitar effects processors using DSPs. I’ve heard one, and it really does work!
On the other hand, there are certain musical experiences that are still virtually impossible to recreate in the home - such as listening to choral music in a cathedral or listening to rock music in a Woodstock-like live environment. It doesn’t mean that it could never been done - but it needs a lot more work.
One of the problems in recreating these difficult sonic environments is that people working on solutions to this (such as 5.1 surround-sound, Dolby, etc.) stick to using imperfect technology (i.e. crappy solid-state amps, cheap D/A and A/D converters, or mediocre lossy compression) that mars the experience. This is why I can get hair-raising emotional realism on my 2-channel all-tube phono playback system that I don’t get on a 5.1 surround-sound system.
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Felizmente, o KoL parece ter aprendido com a estrada. Tocando durante o p r- do- sol literalmente o hor rio de ouro do festival e liderados por Caleb, a fam lia Followill (tr s irm os e um primo) fez bonito, caprichando nos hits ( King of the Rodeo , T…