Science: Pop music louder, blander than ever
There's less to salute these days.
A long vacation can expose you to many things — sun, surf, expensive fuel prices and lots of music on Ye Olde Car Radio.
Maybe I’m getting old, but modern music no longer rocks my world.
Back in the day, I remember waiting outside Adam’s Music City in Valdosta for an album — what my little brother called “giant black CDs” after he found a trove of them in the attic — for a copy of R.E.M.’s “Fables of the Reconstruction.”
Now, there’s very few record stores left, my phonograph has needed a new needle for a decade, and I’m not sure there’s much new music worth waiting in line for.
Science, it seems, agrees with my assessment.
Researchers in Spain broke down the musical and lyrical content of a million songs released between 1955 and 2010 and came to what my ears believe is a non-startling conclusion: recent music is “too loud and all sounds the same.”
Reuters reports “songs have become intrinsically louder and more bland in terms of the chords, melodies and types of sound used.”
Scientists offered some lame advice for bands looking to sound “new and fashionable” — re-record classic songs with louder volumes and simpler chord progressions.
Whatever happened to being original and using dynamics to create rock-n-roll fury?
Computers, that’s what.
Modern musicians overuse what is known as a compressor, which makes soft musical parts louder and louder parts softer. I’ve dabbled a bit in home recording, and it is instructive to look at the volume graph of a modern pop tune (say Green Day) with a classic (like The Beatles).
Strangely, consumers seem to be getting used to mediocrity. Nielsen reports music sales are up 6% this year.
But it’s not just new music people are buying. For the first time, older music now outsells new music.
Seattle Weekly says vintage rock is selling so well because it is cheaper, as little as $5.99 for a CD.
And maybe, just maybe, the old stuff just sounds better?
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33 comments Add your comment
DeDe
July 27th, 2012
10:36 pm
I was just telling my friend that todays music is to boring. And Rap and HipHop remind me of Disco. Only 3 or 4 cords repeating. She said I sounded like our parents did when we were young. Ha, now I have vindication. Just can’t beat the 60’s, 70’s and some of the 80’s music.
Dirtybirdsin12
July 28th, 2012
10:47 am
Music is an art form, not a science. Yes, a lot of today’s music is awful. However, there are plenty of legit artists making excellent sounds. You just have to put more effort into finding what you want to hear than you did in the 60’s and early 70’s before the amount of music being produced watered down the average quality.
Jesus Christ crushes perverted NWO, DBMs
July 28th, 2012
12:33 pm
So now you know why our excellent music went the way of the Dodo bird and through deduction, we understand what happened to the excellent leadership that once upon a time roamed the fruited plains.
Amen?
Jesus Christ crushes perverted NWO, DBMs
July 28th, 2012
12:46 pm
Just in case you don’t get it, thirty six 36 years ago, the perverted New World Order integrationist crowd and their devilish black minions asked a serious question. I’m sure you can remember it. After trial and error they asked Americans if leaders are born or created.
For the most part, baby boomers and their parents etc said undoubtedly that leaders are born with God given ability. But it was not the opinion of the power elite. They were determined to reeducate those born after 1964 to believe that leaders are created. And that God given ability is no obsolete. The only thing needed is a sponsor with enough power to promote them and force their stupidity upon us.. As a result, leaders are created.
And because Americans have been “educated” to believe that leaders are created and not born, we no longer have the excellent leadership we used to have and benefit from in America. We no longer have leaders born with originality and that God given ability.
But we are condemned to suffer silently with the loud, plagiarized, copied, counterfeit leaders that have been created to mislead us.
Amen?
Pop Music Video Site » Blog Archive » All pop music the same: Study – Times of India
July 29th, 2012
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