From: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org (alloy-digest) To: alloy-digest@smoe.org Subject: alloy-digest V11 #141 Reply-To: alloy@smoe.org Sender: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-alloy-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk X-To-Unsubscribe: Send mail to "alloy-digest-request@smoe.org" X-To-Unsubscribe: with "unsubscribe" as the body. alloy-digest Tuesday, May 30 2006 Volume 11 : Number 141 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: Alloy: Musical plaigiarism case? (Totally OT) [John McJunkin ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 08:12:45 -0700 From: John McJunkin Subject: Re: Alloy: Musical plaigiarism case? (Totally OT) All you need to know about this is that Rick Rubin produced both. There are some producers who practice a "hands-off" style (e.g. Steve Albini, with whom I've debated the pros and cons of various production styles) and there are producers who are very heavy-handed (e.g. Rick Rubin, or Robert John "Mutt" Lange--a friend of our dear TMDR, husband of Shania Twain, and backing vocalist on SBMWS.) In my mind, this is an example of a producer who, intentionally or otherwise, has so completely influenced the sound of these groups that they sound virtually identical. I'm only being partially facetious when I say that the new Metallica album, due out soon and produced by Rubin, will have a track that sounds like Petty and RHCP. Really. Happy Monday! jm On May 28, 2006, at 11:15 AM, Elaine wrote: > > This is between Tom Petty & the Chili Peppers. It's all explained > in the > clip. What do you think? > > http://www.wgmd.com/SOUNDS/FEATURES/051706-petty.mp3 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 11:48:50 -0400 From: Crackers Subject: Re: Alloy: Musical plaigiarism case? (Totally OT) John McJunkin wrote: > > All you need to know about this is that Rick Rubin produced both. The plot thickens. Crackers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 08:51:37 -0700 From: John McJunkin Subject: Re: Alloy: Musical plaigiarism case? (Totally OT) Good call Crackers. And considering that the vast majority of pop (and country and rock) songs are based on the ubiquitous 1-4-5 chord progression (or some closely-related variant) it's no small surprise that many songs sound very similar if not downright identical. jm On May 28, 2006, at 11:58 AM, Crackers wrote: > > Elaine wrote: >> This is between Tom Petty & the Chili Peppers. It's all explained >> in the >> clip. What do you think? >> >> http://www.wgmd.com/SOUNDS/FEATURES/051706-petty.mp3 >> >> > > Well, there is a thing called "the shotgun effect". We've got tens > of thousands of musicians around the world writing songs using the > western scale which has been used for centuries and only has a > finite number of chord progressions. It's not going to be too > outside the realm of the possible that two artists will hit the > same target. > > Personally, I don't doubt that when Tom Petty and the Chili Peppers > were writing their songs they were both being either consciously or > subconsciously influenced by "Sweet Home Alabama". > > Crackers ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 08:49:15 -0700 From: John McJunkin Subject: Re: Alloy: MP3s suck or not? Over my life, I have had my "stages" as well. The memory is clear of Supertramp's "Breakfast In America" album, engineered by my buddy Jeff Harris, played on a Gerard turntable, amplified by a beautiful Macintosh power amp, and represented by a pair of Klipsch LaScala loudspeakers at the home of my dear buddy Erik Hamm every day after school in the 10th grade. The fidelity was high, as was the volume. Also, my father had built, during college, a pair of Karlson Acoustic Transducer loudspeakers based on 12-inch triaxial University drivers. While his amp wasn't all that, he had a nice Gerard turntable, and I experienced everything from the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack to Judas Priest in high fidelity. I have also had the treat of hearing super-high resolution recordings of orchestras in the surround mixing room at Sony's W. 54th St. facilities in NYC (which nearly ruined me for life!) I have built various reproduction systems of varying degrees of quality (contingent upon that moment's budget) over my life, and now I think I have simply reached a relaxed Zen state in which I can live with whatever I have at the moment. For instance, I feed mp3s (in particular a 13-hour long grouping of new-wave music from the 80s) shuffled by iTunes, and reproduced by the crappy in-ceiling outdoor speakers above my poolside patio. I condition the signal a bit with some broadcast-style compression and limiting, so it sounds better than it otherwise would, straight-wire, but these are still 128kbps mp3s. Contrast that with certain music recordings I do, which are typically at 24-bit amplitude resolution with a temporal resolution of 96kHz (not to be confused with the mp3 standard of 96kbps.) A standard CD is 16-bit/44.1kHz, so you can see that these recordings are significantly more detailed, with a theoretical signal-to-noise ratio of about 144dB, and a Nyquist frequency (highest reproducible frequency of the system) of 48kHz, WAY above the range of human hearing (although Rupert Neve would debate that, as he and I have.) I monitor in my studio with two different systems--a Hafler 2.1 system (a pair of TRM 6.1s and a TRM10.1s subwoofer) and a Bag End system (a pair of M6s and an Infra-12 Pro subwoofer.) These are really good speakers, and my control room is a traditional live-end/dead-end design with corner- loaded bass traps. Bottom line, my studio sounds WAAAAAY better than the crappy 8-inch "exterior" speakers in my patio. If I gave a moments' thought to it, I would wind up driving myself nuts (and probably spending a lot more money than my sweet wife would want me to) in an attempt to have super high fidelity everywhere I go. Just not practical. Hence, I choose to just "live with it." When I was in Nashville, I worked in a studio that had spent millions perfecting every detail, and at home I didn't even have a stereo. I had an old beater 19-inch TV with a single 3-inch speaker and VH-1. Imagine the mental stress of THAT dichotomy! LOL Actually, I rarely listened to music outside the studio. 12-16 hours a day of music music music was quite enough. I took the advice of Messrs. Gore and Gahan and chose to "Enjoy The Silence." It's far too easy to get wrapped up in the quality of the delivery medium when what's far FAR more important is the quality of the song itself. It's like Bruce Swedien (who made Michael Jackson's incredible Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad albums, among others) once said (when asked about some new console he was using--a Neve, I'm pretty sure) "at the end of the day, no one goes home humming the console." I think he summarizes it nicely. There is a lower limit to the level of audio quality that the buying public will accept. Unfortunately, there appears to be no lower limit to the level of songwriting quality that the buying public will accept. Just look at Britney Spears' hubby! Sorry for the verbosity! jm On May 28, 2006, at 11:43 AM, Elaine wrote: > > Crackers, I think we have the same feelings about 'listening stages.' > There was a time (B.C. - before children) when I'd actually sit > down to > listen and enjoy music for its own sake. But in the last decade, I've > spent more time customizing my car to allow an mp3 player to > connect to > the sound system, and tweaking the playlist between kid music/my > music, > than I have sat & listened to my favorite artists for the enjoyment it > gives me. I wonder if, had I not discovered TMDR when I had more free > time, if I'd have delved so deep. I like to think so, but I've never > thought about it before. > > John -- I was quoting some clown on the Internet, I think it was at > Stereogum. It's dangerous to use Google to try and learn things > sometimes. :) Unless you have recording engineers and musicians > and other > artists at your disposal on Alloy, that is. Now that I'm thinking > about > this, I remember having a discussion here years ago, wondering why > my copy > of Aliens sounded a little harsh on my house system. I had so much to > learn. It sounds great on my current one! > > Melissa, I missed that interview -- how interesting. I wouldn't have > thought it would be possible for the artist to hear his own work and > dislike the output as sounding foreign. > > I appreciate all of your thoughts on the digital vs. analog debate. I > remember Joe Strummer was a big champion of keeping the moving air > alive..and I thought I understood why at the time, but now I'm really > starting to get it more. ------------------------------ End of alloy-digest V11 #141 ****************************