One of my favorite things is seeing a band perform for the first time and discovering that it sounds nearly dead-on to its studio recordings.
I caught Foster The People, one of my favorite new acts known for their “indietronic” (indie rock meets electronica) single “Pumped Up Kicks,” on “Saturday Night Live.” I smiled brightly as the band began to play and sounded like a proper live music act despite the technologically experimental elements to its music. Sadly, it”s becoming less common for bands to perform material without the aid of technology to improve their sound.
As technological innovations have improved our lives throughout the years, so too have those innovations revolutionized the music industry, for better or worse.
Most bands used to record songs as a group either in the same room or separated rooms onto analog tape, commonly known as recording “live.” This technique has largely been abandoned with the rise of digital audio recording programs, such as Pro Tools and Cubase. These programs allow musicians to record their parts one at a time. The engineer later layers the musical parts on top of each other, creating multiple “tracks.”
Back in the early 1960s, the Beatles recorded its early career hits onto two- and later four-track analog tape recorders that severely limited the complexity of the songs. The lack of multiple tracks allowed for little overdubbing, resulting in songs that were recorded “live.”
Even in the 1960s, technological advances allowed for music to become more complex. By the mid to late 1960s, the rise of eight-track audio recorders allowed for more overdubbing and musical experimentation in the studio. It”s no coincidence the Beatles stopped performing live as their music became more complex: It would”ve been nearly impossible to perform songs such as “All You Need Is Love” or “A Day In The Life” without the aid of numerous other musicians (studio experimentation was a key component to the Beatles).
Accordingly, technology has advanced to the point where you can have nearly an infinite number of tracks available in digital recording software. This allows bands to overdub any part multiple times. A single vocal part can become a gigantic chorus of “people.” Many different guitar parts can be going simultaneously, making it hard to discern the main riff. The software can also correct a singer”s pitch so that they can hit notes they couldn”t pull off in real life. The technology is awesome but it feels like cheating.
And don”t get me started on the “auto tune” trend that”s ransacked pop music for the worse.
I”ll admit some super-overly produced pop songs are so well-done that I can”t help but be seduced by their pulsating rhythms and scintillating synthesizers. But it”s becoming increasingly rare for music acts to record without succumbing to the digital aid of software.
I know it”s infinitely cheaper to record to digital instead of on expensive analog tape. I don”t front bands for that. But I do think it is fairly unethical for a band to record so many overdubs it has to use a backing track or numerous touring musicians to play its songs in a live setting.
I can understand musical experimentation for the sake of experimentation. But if you present your band as a delegated number of people who play their own instruments, you better be able to pull it off live.
Kevin N. Hume can be reached at kevin.n.hume@gmail.com or call directly 263-5636 ext. 14.
