Bob Dylan: Modern Music Is Rubbish
Then buzz it up
August 23rd, 2006 at 15:00 by Stuart Heritage
Getting old is a lot of fun because you get to look back on the past and declare it all to be uniformly better than it is now even though there were no computers back then and everyone died of dysentery at the age of 36.
Bob Dylan is the latest old man to be exploiting this right. Even though he makes a lot of money broadcasting music from a radio studio up into space where it's bounced off a satellite back into a few million handheld digital devices, Bob Dylan has had it with technology. For example, in a new interview with Rolling Stone magazine Bob Dylan says that every piece of music made in the last 20 years has been "atrocious."
Bob Dylan has gone though something of a career renaissance over the last few years. His iconic curly hair, overworded songs and goosey harmonica noise has been re-evaluated as timeless, and Bob Dylan himself seems dangerously close to accepting the praise for once. Bob Dylan's memoirs sold millions of copies, Martin Scorsese made a cripplingly long Bob Dylan documentary, Bob Dylan now sells CDs exclusively through Starbucks and early Bob Dylan poems go for $78,000 at auction. And, thanks to all that, Bob Dylan is now such a star that he has his own radio show.
While Bob Dylan never gets more animated than making cryptic references to Blur during his radio show, he obviously relishes the chance of being The Voice Of A Generation every now and again. It's just a shame that it's now the generation that complains about immigrants, hoodies and how this all used to be fields. Speaking to Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan said:
"I don't know anybody who's made a record that sounds decent in the past 20 years, really. You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like … static… Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded 'em. CDs are small. There's no stature to it."
Goodness, we think Bob Dylan's really onto something here - music on CDs are bad because CDs are small. Why didn't we work it out earlier? It's exactly the same as the way that mobile phones aren't as good as they were 20 years ago because they're smaller now, and the way that Bob Dylan's poncey moustache looks so shit because it's quite small.
Now, part of us thinks that the only reason why Bob Dylan thinks small CDs are evil is because they're harder to pick up if you've got a touch of rheumatoid arthritis, and part of us thinks that the existence of Prince, Boards Of Canada and most hip-hop - to name but three - instantly disproves Bob Dylan's theory.
Of course, part of us also wants to take Bob Dylan by the hand, lead him to his comfy chair and tell him that a) nobody really buys CDs any more and b) he's made eight albums in the 20 years since all music instantly became terrible, but we don't really have the heart.
Read more:
Bob Dylan Says Modern Recordings "Atrocious" - ABC
[story by Stuart Heritage]
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August 23rd, 2006 at 3:57 pm
No, this is what Bob was referring to, and he’s right - he just didn’t state it very well.
http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/weekly_article/imperfect-sound-forever.htm
(I’m not a Dylan fan, but agree with him on this subject.)
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Nobody really knows what Bob is talking about, but that’s what
makes him interesting. I’ve heard an awful lot of good music in
the last 20 years, including a lot of stuff he’s done. So I wont
get too excited about taking Bob literally. But the public always
takes him literally, from this statement to his lyrics. I just figure,
just like his lyrics, Bob is throwing out a banquet of ideas for us
to feast on. Take what you want and discard the rest.
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:08 pm
Dylan didn’t say that modern music was atrocious.
He said that the recording process destroyed the qualities of the sound, making it sound atrocious.
It sounds bad on cd.
“Dylan says modern recordings make music sound atrocious” is less catchy but a true headline.
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:16 pm
For the most part, I agree w/Mr. Dylan. And, I think that perhaps you missed the point about CDs. Being “small” bespeaks of the fast-food nature of them. It’s easy to spit out poorly-made digital recordings of uninspired & badly arranged songs, performed by a marketable face and figure. The art of song & music writing is becoming an endangered species. This is what Dylan is speaking about.
However, you are correct in pointing out his own “selling out” behaviors. It’s sad to think that perhaps the most prolific serious songwriter of our lifetime has to stoop to cheap sales techniques to be heard.
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Bob is right, a digitized audio recording cannot beat the subtle nuances achieved via a vacuum-tube analog recording. The present digital technology won’t allow it. Sorry
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:23 pm
Why don’t people read what’s written. Stuart & others–he wasn’t talking about artists or songs, he was talking about the quality of sound recording. Please, get it right!
August 23rd, 2006 at 6:15 pm
I heard an advance copy of his latest, and it’s atrocious. Even if it were on vinyl, it would still suck. He’s lost what he had in the beginning. He should know when to quit.
August 23rd, 2006 at 6:27 pm
I think that a number of your commentors have already hit the nail on the head ( CD’s sampling rate, frequency range, etc. combined with the way most modern recordings are processed and compressed ) make CD’s a dubious “advance” in technology.
But I think that the most interesting think that I have read coming from this “news” tidbit is RJ Eskow over on Huff-Po:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/what-dylan-said-plus-_b_27811.html
You can read my response to his musical challenge here:
http://www.thisdamnblog.com/rjs-musical-challenge-and-what-dylan-said.php
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Just one question, how does Mr Dylan record his music and how is it distributed? I’d wager to bet it digital. NUFF SAID!!
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:21 pm
Mr. Dylan is mostly right. CD standard digital music does a decent job of capturing the music fundamentals, but it does a bad job of capturing the harmonic structure of the music. The simpler and lower in volume the better the sound from CD’s. When CD digital music gets complex or loud it loses resolution - there are only so many bits to go around and loudness and complexity uses up the available bits (so to speak).
Also, in the first ten years of digital music many mixer boards (i.e. Sony) were not actually capable of passing 16 bit signals and this resulted in digital truncation distortion. Many popular music sound engineers are also guilty of recording at a volume level that exceeds the digital limits - this overdrives the signal and also results in digital truncation distortion. In addition, NO mass market CD player was capable of actually performing at 16 bits with complex music until the mid-90’s - this also resulted in truncation distortion. And finally, many mass market CD/DVD players have been, and are still, plagued by sever jitter distortion - timing distortion. Jitter distortion IS the Achilles heel of digital music. Jitter causes the sampling points to be irregularly spaced when it reconstructs the sound wave form - a distorted wave form is the result. Both truncation distortion and jitter results in a hard, harsh, and bright sound.
August 24th, 2006 at 4:19 am
He is dead on. You cannot compare the recordings of the analogue era with the digital recordings designed to sound optimali in an MP3 player. Just listen to golden era vinyl recordings on a high end stereo and tell me I’m not right.
Unfortunately, this trend is irreversible.
August 24th, 2006 at 4:31 am
Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon For the wheel’s still in spin And there’s no tellin’ who That it’s namin’.
For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin! :^)
August 24th, 2006 at 8:12 am
[...] Heckler Spray: Bob Dylan: Modern Music Is Rubbish. [...]
October 2nd, 2006 at 6:34 pm
To clear this up in my head:
1. Bob Dylan records on analog tape which is converted into digital on CD’s or MP3’s
-analog is a physical magnetic recording of waves onto tape that has a “warmer” or “more forgiving sound” for many reasons
-digital is cut into binary code which is 0’s and 1’s that have tiny inaudible spaces between lines of code which give the sound less distortion (considered a warm sound in analog) and less room for error
2. Modern Times is good.
3. He is wisely elusive in his word choice, take what you will.
4. Don’t be stupid
October 25th, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Lets get the story straight Rolling stone took what he meant out of context what he really meant was there has not been a decent song recorded in the last 20 years thanks to digital recording
June 25th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
you git, he’s talkin’ about recording technology and the quality of distributed music and he is absolutely correct
listen to your elders for once
there is nothing elusive about anything he has ever said
take off the headphones
get the ipod outta yur arse
and
LISTEN
thank you
great site
September 28th, 2007 at 4:06 pm
A bit late on this one, but anyway.. -Your actually all wrong. Bob Dylan´s album “Modern times” and the one before called “Love and theft” was both recorded digitally using protools! So there you go..! If he is happy with that situation or is completely in the hands of his engineer Chris Shaw is a mystery though. What he is reffering to is the CD mastering with no dynamics and compressed sound. Maybe he was dissapointed with how Greg Calbi mastered it at Sterling?! Anyway I think he should go back to top of the line tape recorders like the Studer A80 Daniel Lenois recorded his grammy awarded album “Time out of mind” on. Listen to the first track “Love sick” and compare that to any of the tracks on his two latest albums, and you´ll know what I´m talking about. -Life!
December 13th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
The writer of this article is a fucking idiot. Obviously has no knowledge of modern recording processes and how they destroy the dynamics of music in the studio.
January 27th, 2008 at 4:15 am
What Dylan was referring to is the quality of modern-production, not the content.
Engineers have been bitching about this for the last 10 odd years - google search “loudness wars” and you’ll get a fair idea.
Dylan may be in fact old - but he is entirely correct. Modern cds are mastered now with a average rms volume of about -9 db. In laymans terns folks that means their is little if any dynamics left. Modern music gets compressed during tracking, then again in mixing, yet again in mastering … and of course again when it’s broadcast.
The simple indisputable fact is: modern music is squashed beyond recognition from the artist’s original intent in order to accommodate a trend that was started by the AnR at labels. Rather than turn up the volume dial - they elected to start requesting mixes to be “hotter”. This was done under the false belief that a louder disk by a newer artist would be perceived as better than the competition. Like most things in the music business: perception isn’t always reality.
The unfortunate side affect of allowing marketers rather than engineers to dictate technical trends is the crap we listen to now . Don’t believe me? Put in a disk from the 70’s or 80’s and follow it with a contemporary disk. Better yet, even both disks to the RMS levels with any commercial editing software and you get the picture - Modern music has zero dynamics while older stuff is pumping and thus: louder by default. Most disks now could just as easily be recorded in 8 bit with the exact same dynamic results.
I could on with the explanation … but suffice it to say that Dylan is right.