Sounds About Right

With all the technology in the world well on its way - if not completely switched over - to digital form, I'm worried that the qualities of music. Yes, it is easier than ever to produce music neatly nowadays, and the effects you can play around with are as limitless as your imagination. But do we need producing a professional sound to be child's play? Artists like Kanye West and T-Pain love to use Auto-Tune, and it's becoming a legitimate instrument in the music business. Thank goodness singers no longer need to stay in-tune so much, as long as they're ok with sounding like a robot.

That is, until robots themselves gain sentience and begin recording albums themselves, with such pitch perfection that humans will never again grace the Billboard charts, as the era of our robot overlords is ushered in over the airwaves.

Ahem. Can't say enough for the dramatic.

While it's a purely qualitative aspect of music - which is in itself judged solely on personal opinion, of course - I think there is a significant difference found when you run any instrument through a computer versus an analog recording machine. It's razor-sharp, yes. It's very easy to manipulate, yes. But there's a certain warmth, a humanness, a je ne play quoi about an analog recording. Plus we might get to hear what these guys' actual voices sound like.


Listen up to maybe the coziest song ever recorded. Preferably on vinyl, if you can.
Tony Bennett - The Way You Look Tonight

*Apologies for the French pun earlier. I don't know what came over me. That's the LAST time I eat French toast before writing.