Is digital music affecting your health? (Page 2 of 3)

33x3--You sound like me.  I've been a music collector ever since I had a tape recorder.
But I've never gotten into MP3.  Back in 81 or so I was reading how even CD's caused
the mind to register subliminally that something is amiss.  Since the digital music is
non-contiguous, that is, broken into bits, then the effect it has on you is not as pleasing
as analog music from a record or even from a magnetic tape. 
Now I'm kinda glad that I wasn't able to transfer my vinyl and analog cassettes into
CD format. Not to mention MP3.  Since it's broken into bits, that leaves some room
in between so you can slip your hypnotic message to entrain everyone that even
hears the music and they'll never notice.

Might find some good analog classical music out there from garage sales
from someoe who's put everything on digital media.  Trouble is, people
mostly listen to crap music which is filled with stupid memes that you can't get out of
your head, even in the shower.  That's why I only listen to instrumental music mostly.
Who needs somebody's silly little love song clanging around in your head when you
could actually be THINKING about something!  Sorry you American idol wannabees.
I ain't listening to your inane stupid egos anymore.  And all you rappers can all go
shot in a bar for all I care.  Trouble is, you're being programmed by idiots to say
idiotic things jus' so you can drive a white Cadillac and have all kinds of meaningless
women sucking up to you. Ah but these are the kind of women you deserve.  Empty,
pretty and unable to tune in anything in their minds other than glamour and hype.
I mean, I'm probably easy to hypnotize so I have to consciously avoid situations and
external inputs which entrain me to the zombie state.

Now, where'd I put my copy of Rachmaninov's Symphonic Dances...?

TP

Athenais--since you mentioned that people are losing their ability to recognize good music
I saw a perfect opportunity to post what a Real Musician has to say about Kenny G:

Pat Metheney on Kenny G
Kenny G is not a musician I really had much of an opinion about at all until recently. There was not much about the way he played that interested me one way or the other either live or on records.
I first heard him a number of years ago playing as a sideman with Jeff Lorber when they opened a concert for my band. My impression was that he was someone who had spent a fair amount of time listening to the more pop oriented sax players of that time, like Grover Washington or David Sanborn, but was not really an advanced player, even in that style. He had major rhythmic problems and his harmonic and melodic vocabulary was extremely limited, mostly to pentatonic based and blues-lick derived patterns, and he basically exhibited only a rudimentary understanding of how to function as a professional soloist in an ensemble - Lorber was basically playing him off the bandstand in terms of actual music.
But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again). The other main thing I noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, played horribly out of tune - consistently sharp.
Of course, I am aware of what he has played since, the success it has had, and the controversy that has surrounded him among musicians and serious listeners. This controversy seems to be largely fueled by the fact that he sells an enormous amount of records while not being anywhere near a really great player in relation to the standards that have been set on his instrument over the past sixty or seventy years. And honestly, there is no small amount of envy involved from musicians who see one of their fellow players doing so well financially, especially when so many of them who are far superior as improvisors and musicians in general have trouble just making a living. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of sax players around the world who are simply better improvising musicians than Kenny G on his chosen instruments. It would really surprise me if even he disagreed with that statement.
Having said that, it has gotten me to thinking lately why so many jazz musicians (myself included, given the right "bait" of a question, as I will explain later) and audiences have gone so far as to say that what he is playing is not even jazz at all. Stepping back for a minute, if we examine the way he plays, especially if one can remove the actual improvising from the often mundane background environment that it is delivered in, we see that his saxophone style is in fact clearly in the tradition of the kind of playing that most reasonably objective listeners WOULD normally quantify as being jazz. It's just that as jazz or even as music in a general sense, with these standards in mind, it is simply not up to the level of playing that we historically associate with professional improvising musicians. So, lately I have been advocating that we go ahead and just include it under the word jazz - since pretty much of the rest of the world OUTSIDE of the jazz community does anyway - and let the chips fall where they may.
And after all, why he should be judged by any other standard, why he should be exempt from that that all other serious musicians on his instrument are judged by if they attempt to use their abilities in an improvisational context playing with a rhythm section as he does? He SHOULD be compared to John Coltrane or Wayne Shorter, for instance, on his abilities (or lack thereof) to play the soprano saxophone and his success (or lack thereof) at finding a way to deploy that instrument in an ensemble in order to accurately gauge his abilities and put them in the context of his instrument's legacy and potential.
As a composer of even eighth note based music, he SHOULD be compared to Herbie Hancock, Horace Silver or even Grover Washington. Suffice it to say, on all above counts, at this point in his development, he wouldn't fare well.
But, like I said at the top, this relatively benign view was all "until recently".
Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong record, the track "What a Wonderful World". With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.
This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on "Unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him - and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.
But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, f*cked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.
His callous disregard for the larger issues of what this crass gesture implies is exacerbated by the fact that the only reason he possibly have for doing something this inherently wrong (on both human and musical terms) was for the record sales and the money it would bring.
Since that record came out - in protest, as insignificant as it may be, I encourage everyone to boycott Kenny G recordings, concerts and anything he is associated with. If asked about Kenny G, I will dissmis him and his music with the same passion that is in evidence in this little essay.
Normally, I feel that musicians all have a hard enough time, regardless of their level, just trying to play good and don't really benefit from public criticism, particularly from their fellow players. but, this is different.
There ARE some things that are sacred - and amongst any musician that has ever attempted to address jazz at even the most basic of levels, Louis Armstrong and his music is hallowed ground. To ignore this trespass is to agree that NOTHING any musician has attempted to do with their life in music has any intrinsic value - and I refuse to do that. (I am also amazed that there HASN'T already been an outcry against this among music critics - where ARE they on this?????!?!?!?!, magazines, etc.). Everything I said here is exactly the same as what I would say to Gorelick if I ever saw him in person. and if I ever DO see him anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.)

TP

X-zen, we're on the same page.
There were a few (but not many) good pieces of music post
1976, but they were far between.
I think it has something to do with the really strong sunspot
activity in the mid 50's (birth of rock n roll) and the revolutionary
planetary aspects of the sixties and early seventies that ignited
the great musical and art explosion of that era.  According to
an astrologer I subscribe to we are due for another giant leap
of musical art and general creative explosion in the next couple
of years.  There is really big stuff afoot and it's going to bring
all the closet artists and performers out to do their best.
The eighties and nineties were nothing but backwater eddies of
creativity.  But the tide is turning again.  Big time.
TP

holo--YOU may be in a creative upswing yourself.  But fascination
with fancy gimmicks can disguise mediocre melodies and lame
creations.  Not saying this applies to you, but I see many artists
who put more value in fancy special effects than they do the
real core of the music.  Yes, that's a purist pov but what the hell,
I'm a purist.

TomP & XZen, I definitely agree. You should've listened to my radio programmes

I've talked about this for years on radio, music lost "something" at the end of 70's. Being born on 1970, I had the chance to grow up with 80's music - half horrifiying, half excellent but when I began to research 70's progressive & symphonic music I felt like finding a treasure.

This thread is absolutely magnificent for me, I printed all posts & put in a dossier. Same things I've been saying for years plus many more and this time have some kinesiological background.

Thanks to all contributors.

ape-x, yes especially like Yes!

ELP is great, I especially like Greg Lake's vocals. I recently wrote to a web site about Fanfare for the Common Man "a gibe to us talentless mortals showing how a piece of music can reach to perfect state". 90's Black Moon is a great come back from ELP, I think. 

APP is another perfect group, especially Turn of a Friendly Card era. Such symphonic beauty & elegance. These guys surely were different - whether their minds or creativity or their self-expression, I don't know.

Just as Peter Gabriel's Genesis. Nursery Cryme has some finest moments of music history.

Does digital music also effects musician's self-expression way or talent? Maybe, I wouldn't be surprised to learn something like that.