George Martin got it right when he said in a Newsweek interview:
How has technology affected the way music is produced?Today's music is missing something, with all the technical capabilities, it's missing the human soul. When I hear those electric drums I get a headache; they make me anxious and angry. I don't want to dance; I want to turn it off. I prefer the imperfections and emotions of a live drummer. Part of it is that I'm just very kinestetic; my entire body reacts to things in a hyper way.
We couldn't have done a project like this 40 years ago. I used to work with bits of tape, a razor blade—flying by the seat of my pants. Nowadays, you can take music like a bit of dough and squeeze it into different shapes. The manipulation of sound in digital form is fascinating. It makes things easier because you can press a switch and get the sound effects you want. But technology takes away human elements and it doesn't help the creation of new music. Laying down a bass line and adding bits on top is not the same. I've done it myself but I don't think it's the way to go. In the old days, you had to be disciplined—each track was the band performing as a unit, like on a radio show. It gave you much more heart and soul.
I'd like to hear that new version of the Beatles, which is the main topic of this interview.
2 comments:
I recently wrote the following to respond to a larger issue on the Blog in Dm:
We live in a world today where everything can be processed, packaged, and redone artificially, and music is no exception. We can now digitalize everything, to make voices sound like guitars; our modern-day electronic keyboards have drums, bass, brass, flutes, guitar and just about any other sounds coming out of them, besides the usual piano and/or organ sound. There are many people that feel that things have gone a bit too far...
That is why I prefer simple Negina, authentic Jewish music without all of the artificial flavorings.
I agree with you.
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