Organic Sounds
My record player packed up. The turntable didn't work anymore, so I couldn't play vinyl records. Luckily a friend gave me a replacement.
Got it ready: power on, speakers plugged in, needle OK, turntable turned - great. Then the record - started to play - 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' by Steely Dan...and then a few seconds later I thought...funny, that must be Steely Dan's older (simpler) uncles singing! It wasn't as if it was really slow, sluggish, but just wasn't right - they didn't sound like those two young musical wiz-kids, Becker and Fagen, who were the core of Steely Dan, in their element with a powerfully brilliant song. It was too late, Rikki had lost the number! I tried different records to see if I was hearing right. Bob Dylan's song 'Dark Eyes' was up next, but it didn't sound like him at all - it could have been anybody - took all the nuances of his voice quite out. The turntable rotating speed of 33 1/3 seemed more like 27 1/2!
I couldn't, and didn't, leave it there and tried different experiments, but the turntable was just wrong...until some time later when it suddenly worked perfectly. Despite all sorts of theories, I don't know why.
Anyway, hearing Steely Dan as older etc. people, and Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney as some other characters made me think about the whole way we hear things.
What would it be like if our artists got older, and what would those songs sound like then. I wasn't thinking along the lines of them re-recording the songs, or having them technically updated - all things that have happened. For instance artists decide to do a 2007 version of one of their old hits, or there have been dead stars and people have subsequently got hold of the recordings and added instruments or even vocals, to give the impression that for example, they duetted on the song.
What I was thinking more, was the recordings being like an organism, and then evolving. So, say the recording was made in 1997 and now it's 10 year's old and has grown in some way. Technologically I'm sure something could be done along those lines - for instance, put in an approximate age factoring so that every year the voice on the recording appears a little older, or rather maturer. But I was thinking more of a science fiction direction: that the voice on the recording actually does mature, sort of naturally (organically). You could also extend this to the instruments developing so that in 2007 they've become whatever is contemporary - but I think the development of the voice, and and therefore that of the person behind it, is most interesting.
Taking this further - what will become of the voice. Will it become gravelly? Will it deteriorate, or mellow and resonate? It might grow in a manner that we are not currently familiar, in a pleasant way or take a harsh direction. How long would the organism live for? It might develop an ailment, falter and disappear or grow and mutate for many years - possibly over a hundred years. The point is, that in this imaginary world of organic sound, the sounds would grow naturally in whatever way that particular organism evolved.
Of course, each recording would have its own life - so that a single artist might have hundreds of recordings, each one with a different character and lifespan. What would have become of recordings by Enrico Caruso (1873 - 1921) the Italian operatic tenor, and to those made by Elvis Presley (1935 - 1977), or those by The Beatles. And, what will become of Mika's ' Grace Kelly'?!
Got it ready: power on, speakers plugged in, needle OK, turntable turned - great. Then the record - started to play - 'Rikki Don't Lose That Number' by Steely Dan...and then a few seconds later I thought...funny, that must be Steely Dan's older (simpler) uncles singing! It wasn't as if it was really slow, sluggish, but just wasn't right - they didn't sound like those two young musical wiz-kids, Becker and Fagen, who were the core of Steely Dan, in their element with a powerfully brilliant song. It was too late, Rikki had lost the number! I tried different records to see if I was hearing right. Bob Dylan's song 'Dark Eyes' was up next, but it didn't sound like him at all - it could have been anybody - took all the nuances of his voice quite out. The turntable rotating speed of 33 1/3 seemed more like 27 1/2!
I couldn't, and didn't, leave it there and tried different experiments, but the turntable was just wrong...until some time later when it suddenly worked perfectly. Despite all sorts of theories, I don't know why.
Anyway, hearing Steely Dan as older etc. people, and Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney as some other characters made me think about the whole way we hear things.
What would it be like if our artists got older, and what would those songs sound like then. I wasn't thinking along the lines of them re-recording the songs, or having them technically updated - all things that have happened. For instance artists decide to do a 2007 version of one of their old hits, or there have been dead stars and people have subsequently got hold of the recordings and added instruments or even vocals, to give the impression that for example, they duetted on the song.
What I was thinking more, was the recordings being like an organism, and then evolving. So, say the recording was made in 1997 and now it's 10 year's old and has grown in some way. Technologically I'm sure something could be done along those lines - for instance, put in an approximate age factoring so that every year the voice on the recording appears a little older, or rather maturer. But I was thinking more of a science fiction direction: that the voice on the recording actually does mature, sort of naturally (organically). You could also extend this to the instruments developing so that in 2007 they've become whatever is contemporary - but I think the development of the voice, and and therefore that of the person behind it, is most interesting.
Taking this further - what will become of the voice. Will it become gravelly? Will it deteriorate, or mellow and resonate? It might grow in a manner that we are not currently familiar, in a pleasant way or take a harsh direction. How long would the organism live for? It might develop an ailment, falter and disappear or grow and mutate for many years - possibly over a hundred years. The point is, that in this imaginary world of organic sound, the sounds would grow naturally in whatever way that particular organism evolved.
Of course, each recording would have its own life - so that a single artist might have hundreds of recordings, each one with a different character and lifespan. What would have become of recordings by Enrico Caruso (1873 - 1921) the Italian operatic tenor, and to those made by Elvis Presley (1935 - 1977), or those by The Beatles. And, what will become of Mika's ' Grace Kelly'?!
posted by Barrie Gordon at 6:32 PM
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