I was fortunate enough to be able to see three of the giants of electronic music together on stage last week. I'd never seen Depeche Mode in concert before, and I'd decided that this unforgivable sin had been left to fester for far too long. The concert (the second of three they would perform at the venue) was held at Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles, the home center of the L.A. Lakers and the L.A. Kings. I'm sure that, as a sports venue, sound wasn't necessarily what the designers were primarily concerned with when planning and building the joint, but surely the future owners and backers of the center had to know that it would undoubtedly become a hub of arts and entertainment. Well, if it had been designed for sound, that fact was almost completely lost on me, the unfortunate audience and victim of whatever the hell was going on between the stage and the speakers on Sunday night. Was it the venue? Was it the mix? Or was it something else?
As was to be expected, DM had an opening act, in this case Canadian band Crystal Castles. Beyond their single "Not In Love," featuring Robert Smith of The Cure on vocals, I'd never heard a note of their music. Strangely enough, by the end of their set I had still yet to hear a note of their music. I'm sure that if I were a fan prior to this show and had been familiar with their music, I would've been able to pick out something vaguely resembling notes in the wall of noise that was hitting my ears Sunday night. I listened to quite a few of their songs on YouTube later that night when I got home and discovered that they're not too bad. They're not the kind of group I'd become a die hard fan of as an adult, but they've got some very catchy and moody tunes. I'd buy a record or two. The point is, they are infinitely better than they sounded when I saw them onstage. I turned to my friend halfway through their set and said, "Whoever is in charge of the mix clearly hates this band." I certainly couldn't dismiss their music, because, well, I couldn't hear their music! I knew as a musician that it was the mix and possibly the venue that was the problem. My friend said to me, laughing at how overtly annoyed I had become, "Maybe they wanted it like that." She could be right. They're a young band, and young bands are often victims of the ridiculous landscape the music industry has thrust them into. Granted, live music inevitably just doesn't sound as good, unless you're talking symphonies and operas, which usually sound better live. But as to contemporary forms, if you want great sound, you buy the song or the album and listen to it right from your computer or iPod with what are hopefully decent ear buds or headphones. A concert is meant to be an experience and the music is only part of that. By no means is it the whole.
It was halfway through Crystal Castle's set that my friend and I popped out to find a guest services booth and get ear plugs. Doing that makes me feel old sometimes. But I'm not old yet, I'm just not dumb anymore. When I was a teenager the loudness didn't bother me in the slightest (what teenager doesn't want the music louder?) Now in the final year of my 20s, I just don't feel like going home with my ears ringing, and this has becoming increasingly important to me as music has become more and more the focus of my entire life and work.
After Crystal Castles, I sent a prayer to God and all the muses that Depeche Mode's set wouldn't sound as terrible. It was a genuine concern. I'd been to a Rob Zombie concert a few years prior and it sounded horrible. (But because of the nature of a Zombie show, the music is only 25% of what you go for). At the recent Alice Cooper/Marilyn Manson concert, I finally found a way to have ear plugs resting in my ears in a way that only blocks the sharpness of the sound, instead of sticking them all the way in and muffling everything, causing the whole show to sound like a passing car with the bass turned up too loud. We went back to our seats just before Depeche Mode took the stage, and it was... almost good. They were on fire, they played beautifully, and Dave Gahan was at his best, wooing the crowd with his voice, his spins, and of course his hips. But there was still something quite off with the sound.
Depeche Mode is primarily electronic music, and electronic music has become notoriously identified with thumping-loud bass lines, heavy synthesized kick drums, and low frequencies. But even as they've grown with the times and continued to pioneer their way through a music scene that looks up to them, but often mistakenly looks back on them, Depece Mode never succumbed to trends that didn't fit their music. Oh sure, the bass is louder now, but it's not remotely like listening to the heavy EBM and industrial songs that make up a lot of what is played in the same clubs that play Depeche Mode.
Believe you me, I love me some thumping-loud bass. I love listening to it, I love dancing to it, and I love composing it. But over the last two decades or so, the bass disease has continued to grow and spread across the music industry. Everyone thinks the bass needs to be loud. I even remember when CD players and stereos started coming with "bass boost" buttons. Now most headphones, ear buds, and the simpler CD and mp3 players don't even give you the option: they boost it for you whether you like it or not. And suddenly you find yourself thinking: Did Cat Stevens mean for "Can't Keep It In" to sound so much like a dance track? Well, maybe he did, but I'll leave that to him to say. Again, I love that loud bass, but when you turn it up so loud that it drowns everything else out, why bother listening to music in the first place? Why not just sell tracks of the bass line and the kick drum? How about a Tchaikovsky symphony with only the cellos, basses, trombones and tuba? In fact, why don't you just put your ear to the ground and listen to giraffe calls?
The entire mid-range of Depeche Mode's brilliantly crafted and executed music was lost to the low end, and the only thing that contended with it were the sharp higher frequencies, which often pierced the ear like a gunshot. And that brings up the second problem. It's not just that the bass is loud, it's that everything is loud. So loud that it would be a miracle for anyone not familiar with the music to pick out a song in that mess of sound waves. I'm a big Depeche Mode fan so I already had the rhythms and melodies in my subconscious before I saw the show. It was no problem for me to the fill in the gaps with my memory. Not so with Crystal Castles. Crystal Castles was just a sweeping wave of overwhelming low frequency pulsing and tribal-esque thumping with the odd screech from singer Alice Glass coming out on top. The only other time her voice remotely competed with the music was when she was singing through a vocoder.
Everything in music today is wired for loudness. Live shows are immensely louder than they need to be, and studio recordings are mastered for loudness. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails recently released two different master versions of his new album "Hesitation Marks." He explained on his website that the reason he did this was so that the listeners would be able to have a version that most closely resembled what he and his team heard in the studio. Mastering for industry-standard, maximum radio-friendly loudness had sacrificed some of the bass on the album, and although Trent was very diplomatic about it, denying that one version or the other was superior, to have the low end in the exact balance that he had intended it, the record had to be mastered not for loudness but for artistic precision. In my opinion, this is all representative of the fact that we are sacrificing some of the quality and purity of music today for something comparatively arbitrary: loudness.
The goth clubs I've enjoyed going to most over the past few years have recently switched venues. I noticed something in the new venue - the music is louder. I'm guessing it must be the better sound system which has enabled the DJs to boost the music even more. Well, when I'm dancing to that music, I do indeed like to literally feel the rhythm. But you know, when you've created your own additional percussion track in the form of a
rattling speaker, I've got news for you: the music is too fucking loud.
You're doing the audience, the artist, and your own ear drums a
great disservice. In fact one of the DJs posted on her Facebook page awhile back about her ear fatigue. Ear fatigue means you're supposed to turn the music down, not up. Maybe it's just me, but I love music so much that one of my single greatest fears is to lose my hearing. Were I ever to go deaf I might just put a gun in my mouth. So I'm careful to preserve it. I want to hear those notes until the day I die. When I'm a grumpy old fart (as opposed to the grumpy young fart I am now), I want to sit down and hear Tchaikovsky's 6th played by a live orchestra at the appropriate volume without an ear piece, and I want to be able to dance around my walker or spin in my wheelchair to Depeche Mode.
What exactly is the problem? Why has the music industry succumbed to this trend? Or is it the listener's fault? What started it all? Are we so lazy that we simply don't want to turn up the dial on our own? Or is metal's fault? Must everything go to 11? The joke of Spinal Tap lives on in the all too often unacknowledged fact that everything will eventually reach a ceiling, and let me tell you - music has reached it. Any louder and you really won't be able to hear anything. Ironically it seems no one listened to Pete Townsend.
You know what my real beef is? Playing music with the low frequencies so loud in the mix, and the mix so loud as whole, is detrimental to the experience of listening to music. It is an insult to the art of music itself. It cheapens the craft. If I go to a concert I want to at least be able to pull a melody out of the air. Turn it up, hell yes, but if the building is shaking and I'm getting nauseous from the vibrations in the floor, then I'm not really hearing the songs, and the whole thing becomes merely spectacle. Now, of course spectacle attracts. Hell, the only reason I bought my first Slipknot album was because I saw Shawn Crahan (Clown) playing drums with his head. But you know what? Once I actually listened to the record I found that Slipknot was worth far more than the spectacle. There was method to the madness. And that's what has sustained me as a fan of Slipknot to this day. Crahan's head drumming was beautiful and it roped me in, but it wouldn't have kept me coming back if the music hadn't been good.
I suppose a lot of it is merely salesmanship. Indeed, the most efficient way to attract is to be bigger, louder, and more colorful. And if you want people to listen to your music, you need it to be as loud or louder than everything else. You need to be the peacock with the biggest tail or the gorilla with the loudest chest slapping. The trouble is that these trends always have a backlash. Alice Cooper started shock rock, Marilyn Manson took it to it's logical extreme, and then subsequent bands pathetically scrambled to be as shocking and over the top, but now we just laugh and yawn at them. For Manson and Cooper it was art, gimmicks and salesmanship, certainly, but still art. In these other groups of imitators and trend riders, we see merely succubi and desperate cries for attention. Such is the case with loudness. With music being as loud and big as it is, the next thing that is going to attract the most attention is going to be a more effective use of silence or something similarly antithetical to the mainstream. In a sea of noise, the ear will find the quiet spots, like the eye of a hurricane, and be attracted to them. (Mind you, everything that attracts enough attention will become mainstream; that's how loudness got to be where it is. And whatever comes next will fall prey to that very cycle. But I believe that the shift is likely to come soon, and for a time it will be beautiful before it becomes the norm).
When I see a show as a fan, and when I'm performing on stage as an artist, I don't want the damn music to be at 11. I want it to be at 8 or 9. I want people feel the music in their feet, I want people to be washed over in sound, but just as importantly - I want people to hear the fucking song! However, the cruel irony of it all, the great cosmic joke on me, is that I have play the game their way. For now, anyway. As I work on the mixes for The Lazarus Gene, I have to bear in mind that I need it mastered for loudness and that the places where I want my music played will be turning it WAY up and boosting the bass WAY up, so I have to ease off the low frequencies myself in the studio and create a decently balanced mix that pleases both my ears and the ears of whoever usurped music and made it into the degrading shouting match it has currently become.
