Tertiary Tech : joe meek

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Make Music not AutoTune porn

Forgive me for this rare expletive laced first line. What the fark is it with auto tuned voices being considered
the young hip sound? Would the inventor of this heinous product please stand up and into an open field to be properly dispatched by a firing squad?

Now, do not get me wrong, I am no musical purist pole sitting up on an ivory column denigrating everything but my own preferred genre, nor is this a screed against today’s youth culture.

I dove in head first to the late 80’s synth sound revolution that dispensed with natural instruments. I am also an obsessed fan of Raymond Scott, the 1940’s & 50’s jazz musician who used his hand-built mechanical synthesisers and relay based sequencers to create new, and to some -bizarre, sounds.

To be hone st vocal treatments of pop and not so pop stars has been a common practice since Les Paul first stacked recording heads and created multi-track and overdubbing. The process was subtle though, a minor tweak to vocals that could match the recording at live events. In this respect I see the value of auto tune in the same vein as outboard gear based on the work of Joe Meek. Similar to Raymond Scott, Joe Meek created his own equipment to process recordings to bring out new dimensions of the emerging rock music scene.

So, this experimentation and stereotypical overuse is nothing new but there is a greater abuse occurring with auto tune, something I am calling it the gallop effect.

Cindy Gallop is a brand marketing leader who has also developed several websites including the micro
action sites “If I Ran the World” and “Make Love Not Porn”. The latter is an attempt to upend the deleterious effects of porn as sex ed on the under 25 crowd, where acts like ‘the money shot’ are perceived to be normal and ‘whats supposed to happen’ by both genders. To be clear Ms Gallop’s screed is not anti porn, far from it. What it does fight is a grievous ignorance of the basic facts of sex akin to what 40’s and 50’s mass culture taught (or lacked to tell) their children and what Kinsey railed against - setting in motion a revolution. That cultural shift of openness and honesty eventually led us to a cultural confusion based on a tsunami of readily available media but no grounding in human sexuality from sex ed classes and more importantly parental honesty.

The shift in perception that abuse of tools like the now dreaded auto tune (and adult films) begin to alter what characteristics we find to be the height of beauty. Whether it is the cosmetically enhanced starlets of porn or the equally Frankenstein vocals, the ubiquity overwhelms our frame of reference and imperfections become magnified. When nothing but perceived perfection is acceptable, what happens when you encounter an actual human voice?

Which is why I will still take a warble prone alt-punk singer whose voice carries authentic character over the vocal equivalent of the movie LOOKER’s main foil Cindy, the 1980’s predecessor to S1m0ne, where perfection has deadly results.

Of course there is one use of this device that may just save humanity- Auto Tune the news, Bill and Ted should be so influential.

Sunday, March 7, 2010

The Birth of Modern Music, The Value of History- a mini tribute to Raymond Scott

Our time is one of daily paradigm changes in the technological, cultural and philosophical arenas, where today’s internet superstar product is granted 5 minutes of fame only to be usurped at minute 4.5- often by the same creator or venture capitalist. Despite the contributions to the revolution most of these individual –(and companies)- have made, they are destined to be remembered by only a few associates or researchers of the arcane.

I have been fortunate to have had many mentors –direct and incidental- who helped create or were involved from the onset in the early days of multi-image, AV and music recording. Most of their names would be unknown or, perhaps, considered irrelevant to current installers, content creators or even heads of companies in the industry, yet they practice or build on the architecture and processes that these folks established. I was also fortunate to have teachers in trade school who thought it was of great importance to at least expose us some of the history of the art and technology we were learning to handle. While much of the education in the glory of my ‘forbearers’ was somewhat erudite, I did get hands on training on split line RCA boards, refurbishing a Mellotron and the odd art of multiple projector slide shows. Much in the fashion of car restorers or mechanical archivist I was granted the oral history and hands on practical from these guys.

One of the many quirky personalities and remarkable innovators I discovered by association (and have loved to read about and explore his work to this day) is Raymond Scott. In a similar vein to the just as unique and visionary Joe Meek, Scott had a special relationship with music that helped change it forever. In fact he should be as well known as Les Paul for his contributions to music and the AV industry in general. Jazz musician, inventor of the sequencer and the person nearly every sound a vending machine, ATM or ring tone makes can trace its roots back to, in one way or another.

Like Alan Turing, Raymond Scott has posthumously developed a cult following for his remarkable insight and contributions. Turning may have saved the world and Scott may just have saved music. There are a number sites –which I list below – dedicated to the work and times of Raymond Scott, if you want a one example proof of his influence- chew on this. Mr. Scott had in his employ for some time a young electronics maven who he set to work helping finish and build circuits for his ' Electronium; that young man was none other than Bob Moog.

Even ‘dead’ technology has something to teach and knowing where things came from provides fodder for innovation and creative thinking. Are you teaching this information to your young wire guys and installers? Do you, or they, know about UNIVAC? Or why we call it a ‘ Bug’ when code is erratic?

I highly suggest finding the video collection of the ‘Connections’ series hosted by James Burke whose Scientific American essays the shows are based on. They may not answer the previous questions but it will start you on a path to thinking about ‘just how did we wind up doing it this way’ or ‘how anyone ever thought to do that!’

The past is not dead, we live it every day, we just have to where to look.