[BC] Making music worth listening to

[Rick Heil]

I think the listener fatigue plays a great role in this... it's becoming
more and more apparent to me that even some of the indie labels are taking
the "big label" approach to mastering.

Out of our entire "indie" rotation (it has a few big name bands), the Foo
Fighters new album is the ONLY one I can't "set and forget" - the chorus
comes up a bit with added instruments, the introduction is softer... there's
a similarly organized band that I played right before them and their "soft"
acoustic guitar intro was only a tiny fraction below their full band playing
the song... wasn't even worth touching the fader.

I wonder sometimes if, as Cowboy said, this homogenization of hits is why
people are so reluctant to purchase music.  Why buy an album that you can't
stand to hear more than three or four tracks of?  In the mean time, I'll be
playing Led Zepplin III on vinyl until it wears holes through (technically,
not the "best" or most cleanly produced of albums, but still pleasant to
listen to).


Rick

On 10/22/07, Cowboy <curt at spam-o-matic.net> wrote:
>
> On Monday 22 October 2007 04:21 pm, Robert Orban wrote:
>
> >  I often wonder if this kind of sound is what unconsciously impels
> >  people not to buy CDs. Yet the illegally filed-shared MP3s have been
> >  subject to the same mastering and this doesn't keep people from
> >  downloading them. So I'm not ready to say that current mastering
> >  practices are what are driving people away from paying for music.
>
> In this business, some of us are well aware of the subliminal reasons
> people do things, like tune out.
>
> It's not unreasonable to presume that a "good" cut might be worth
> something, say $12 or $14 for the CD, BUT.....
> squash it and crush it to death, now the same cut is worth maybe $3
> but only because the listener still likes the song in spite of, not
> because
> of, the over-processing.
>
> It just seems like too much of less is more.
> Much less quality is much more costly.
> What's the point ?
>
> --
> Cowboy
>
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-- 
Rick Heil
Operations Manager
90.9, WONY Oneonta