Producers and engineers call this "the loudness war," and it has changed the way almost every new pop and rock album sounds. But volume isn't the only issue. Computer programs like Pro Tools, which let audio engineers manipulate sound the way a word processor edits text, make musicians sound unnaturally perfect. And today's listeners consume an increasing amount of music on MP3, which eliminates much of the data from the original CD file and can leave music sounding tinny or hollow. "With all the technical innovation, music sounds worse," says Steely Dan's Donald Fagen, who has made what are considered some of the best-sounding records of all time. "God is in the details. But there are no details anymore."
From the archives:
"I finally tested positive for Pro Tools," said Steve Earle.
The people in those bands can't write, play, or sing. They make them sound good with pro-tools, because if they sing out of tune, they can just say, "Oh, punch a button. Put it in tune." Which is very frustrating to people like me, who spent, you know, 30, 40 years learning how to sing in tune in the first place. It is partly their own, you know, greed and, and lack of taste, but it's also partly a condition that's endemic in the country.
The current ethos in the United States of America is all to do with surface and nothing to do with substance. It doesn't matter that Britney Spears has nothing to say and is about as deep as a birdbath.
You've seen the Nissan Altima commercial where jungle brothers Ming + FS record the sound of doors slamming and windows going up and down, then run the sounds through ProTools to make a techno song.
Though it appears Kim Deal isn't keen on a new Pixies LP, fans of her melodious songcraft and cherubic rasp can rest assured; the Breeders' forthcoming LP, entitled Mountain Battles, will arrive stateside April 8 via 4AD. The record, the follow up to 2002's Title TK, was predominantly recorded with Steve Albini at Chicago's Electrical Audio studio with longtime members Mando Lopez (bass), Jose Medeles (drums), and sister Kelley Deal (guitar/vocals).
Discussing the record with VenusZine, Kim Deal said, "the songs are just songs. But for instance, one song Kelley and I did live. She played stand-up bass and I played acoustic guitar while we sang." She added: "Steve Albini taped it live like that. Yet another song has Kelley playing bass and Mando playing rhythm guitar. I'm playing the lead and Kelley and I are singing throughout. One song has Mando playing a lead guitar, which Albini then backward masked. One song has three, count 'em, three basses on it."
Since the release of "Title TK" back in 2002, Kim Deal has been part of one of the most highly successful and warmly received music reunions of all time, getting back together with the rest of The Pixies for a series of exhilarating live shows in 2004 and 2005. After that, Kim headed back to Dayton, Ohio to start writing a new record.
Mountain Battles is the result. It's an album which captures all the bittersweet electricity of classic Breeders records like Pod and Last Splash, and which breaks new ground at the same time; classic-sounding, yet as relevant and exciting as ever.
The Breeders will be playing live all over the world in 2008. Their schedule includes performances at Canadian Music Week and SxSW, plus full tours in the USA and in Europe. The Breeders are also set to play a UK tour in April to mark the release of the album.
This is a digital age, one in which a wealth of accessible information empowers you, the citizen-consumer. But where is the information coming from? How accurate and unprocessed is it, really? Ask yourself this: how empowered do you feel debating a television screen or a newspaper?
Our task is to move the discussion away from talking heads and talking points, and give it back to you. That is Big Think's mission. In practice, this means that our information is truly interactive. When you log onto our site, you can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with todays leading thinkers, movers and shakers. You can search them by question or by topic, and, best of all, respond in kind. Upload a video in which you take on Senator Ted Kennedy's views on immigration; post a slideshow of your trip to China that supports David Dollar's assertion that pollution in China is a major threat; or answer with plain old fashioned text. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or heck, throw your own question or idea into the ring.
It takes a little while to get going, but I found the last half rather interesting. The political angle didn't sell the article for me ... but I enjoyed the part about how Brin, Page, and Schmidt work together to run the company.
On Tuesdays, Brin, Page, and Schmidt hold product-strategy meetings, which are dominated by engineers. I was permitted to attend one, on the condition that the product, and the engineers, not be identified, but the tenor of the meeting was clear enough: Page and Brin had wanted an upgrade of an existing product, and they were unhappy with what they were hearing from the engineers. At first, they were stonily silent, slid down in their chairs, and occasionally leaned over to whisper to each other. Schmidt began with technical questions, but then he switched roles and tried to draw out Page and Brin, saying, “Larry, say what’s really bugging you.”
Page said that the engineers were not ambitious enough. Brin agreed, and said that the proposals were “muddled” and too cautious.
“We wanted something big,” Page added. “Instead, you proposed something small. Why are you so resistant?”
The head of the engineering team said that the founders’ own proposed changes would be too costly in money, time, and engineering talent.
Schmidt—the only person at the meeting wearing a tie—tried to summarize their differences. He noted that Brin and Page wanted to start by deciding the outcome, while the product team focussed first on the process, and concluded that the engineering would prove too “disruptive” to achieve the goal.
“I’m just worried that we designed the wrong thing,” Brin said. “And you’re telling me you’re not designing the optimum system. I think that’s a mistake. ... I’m trying to give you permission.”
As the primaries start in New Hampshire this week and roll on through the next few months, the erratic behavior of voting technology will once again find itself under a microscope.
Enormous quantities of data go unused or underused today, simply because people can't visualize the quantities and relationships in it. Using a downloadable programming environment developed by the author, Visualizing Data demonstrates methods for representing data accurately on the Web and elsewhere, complete with user interaction, animation, and more.
How do the 3.1 billion A, C, G and T letters of the human genome compare to those of a chimp or a mouse? What do the paths that millions of visitors take through a web site look like? With Visualizing Data, you learn how to answer complex questions like these with thoroughly interactive displays. We're not talking about cookie-cutter charts and graphs. This book teaches you how to design entire interfaces around large, complex data sets with the help of a powerful new design and prototyping tool called "Processing".
Used by many researchers and companies to convey specific data in a clear and understandable manner, the Processing beta is available free. With this tool and Visualizing Data as a guide, you'll learn basic visualization principles, how to choose the right kind of display for your purposes, and how to provide interactive features that will bring users to your site over and over. This book teaches you:
* The seven stages of visualizing data -- acquire, parse, filter, mine, represent, refine, and interact * How all data problems begin with a question and end with a narrative construct that provides a clear answer without extraneous details * Several example projects with the code to make them work * Positive and negative points of each representation discussed. The focus is on customization so that each one best suits what you want to convey about your data set
The book does not provide ready-made "visualizations" that can be plugged into any data set. Instead, with chapters divided by types of data rather than types of display, you'll learn how each visualization conveys the unique properties of the data it represents -- why the data was collected, what's interesting about it, and what stories it can tell.
Visualizing Data teaches you how to answer questions, not simply display information.
These wonderful images were selected from the MRS "Science as Art" competition held at the 2005, 2006 and 2007 MRS Spring Meetings. You may download these, courtesy of MRS, to use as computer desktop images, or for a slide-show screen saver.
The time had come for me to decide what to do with my life, and where to do it. The choices I faced were confusing.
By the summer of 2001 I had produced a draft ... a stripped-down, utterly minimalist love story of a young Pakistani man in New York who is troubled by the notion that he is a modern-day janissary serving the empire of American corporatism.
People often ask me if I am the book’s Pakistani protagonist. I wonder why they never ask if I am his American listener. After all, a novel can often be a divided man’s conversation with himself.
