What I've Learned

In January of 2009, I wrote about the sorry state of modern popular music, laying much of the blame on the volume wars that started in the 1980s.

With the advent of CDs, record producers, in an effort to get their songs noticed, began upping the volume. Instead of having some instruments loud and some soft and some in between, thus creating a pleasant, musical mix, they cranked up the level of every instrument to just short of distortion. This, they found, would make a recording sound louder and fuller than competitors' recordings.

Soon, so not have their songs sound weak on the radio, all producers began doing this, opting for volume at the expense of beauty.

To continue my thoughts from that earlier column: A loss of dynamics is not the only thing plaguing modern pop music. Songs are produced with a machine-like precision that makes them sound perfect. This, however, sucks the life out of them, making them less pleasing, instead of more.

Here's how it's done. In studios, songs are not recorded "live," with everyone playing and singing at the same time, but rather one or two instruments are recorded at a time. The voices are added later. Each part is recorded and re-recorded until the best possible performance is captured, then the parts are mixed so it sounds like everyone played together.

The drums are usually recorded first. Drummers no longer let their innate sense of tempo guide them; they play along to a click track. A click track is a ticking metronome that the drummer can hear in his headphones. This allows--forces--the drums to be played at the correct tempo throughout a song, exactly on the beat.

Many times a real drummer is not used at all. The drum parts are produced on an electronic drum machine.

For vocals, multiple takes (recordings) are done. Then the best parts of each take are pieced together--a few words from this one, a few from that--to produce what sounds like a single good performance. Any little out of tune bits are forced into tune with electronic tweaking.

The overall results, though perfect, are musically boring and without soul. If boring and soulless songs are played enough times on the radio, boredom and soullessness become the norm--even the expectation. And that is what has happened.

Many of the great recordings of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s are being remastered, raising the levels of every instrument, killing their lovely musical balance, making them sound as if they were produced in the 90s and beyond.

This is evil.

In 2009, I recommended a movie that I will recommend again. It's called "Before the Music Dies" and can be viewed for free on line. It will open your ears to what I'm talking about.

So will Dead Man's Bones.

In 2005, actor Ryan Gosling met a fellow named Zach Shields, and the two discovered that they both enjoy ghost stories. They wrote a play about ghosts and created a batch of creepy songs to serve as a sound track.

When staging the play proved too expensive, they decided to record the songs.

What followed is almost too wonderful for words.

They asked the Silverlake Conservatory of Music Children's Choir to join them in the recording studio. Ryan and Zack played all the instruments, learning ones they didn't initially know how to play. No click track was used. And they made it a rule to perform no more than three takes of each song, then use the best one.

The resulting CD, called Dead Man's Bones, is refreshingly original. It has 12 ghoulish songs performed in Doo-Wop style that are recorded not perfectly, but with an amazing amount of life, considering the name of the album. Some critics have complained that the CD sounds amateurish, but that's because they are used to listening to boring, perfect, soulless music.

My favorite song is "My Body's a Zombie for You," the title phrase of which the children belt out with wild enthusiasm.

Another favorite is "In the Room Where You Sleep." Ryan sings:

"I saw something

sitting on your bed.

I saw something

touching your head.

In the room

where you sleep.

In the room

where you sleep.

Where you [musical pause] sleep."

The children then break into the wonderfully rhythmic:

"You got me runnin'; you got me runnin' hard.

You got me runnin'; you got me runnin' hard."

If you're looking for a Christmas gift for the music lover (or ghoul) in your life, I highly recommend Dead Man's Bones. Its production defies the stupid trends of modern pop music, and it's great fun to listen to.