Damon Krukowski is a musician, poet,
and publisher who has written a book exploring the ways that the
move from analog recording and distribution of music to digital has
effected the way in which music is experienced. In The
New Analog:Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World
(The New Press, 2017, 224 pages, $24.95/15.48) he examines, in some
detail, the history and development of transmitting both print and
recorded versions of sound to make it available to those wishing to
reproduce and hear it. From printed notation to player piano rolls,
wax cylinders, records, CDs, to broadcast from radio signals to
streaming digital, he examines copyright issues as well as the
complex nature of sound and its reproduction. Along the way, he
discusses copyright issues as they affect those wishing to make a
living from recording (musicians, writers, engineers, recording
companies, sound distribution) providing the most cogent explanation
of “mechanical royalties” I've ever read.
I'm not a techie. I haven't understood
what's meant when my more knowledgeable friends talk about the
compression or lifelessness of CD's as compared with earlier vinyl
recordings. I've even suggested double blind listening tests to
determine whether even highly sensitive listeners can actually tell
the difference, but I've never read or heard of any being conducted.
Krukowski, almost talking in two languages, techno speak and fan,
makes these issues clearer for me. He writes about context, signal,
and noise in ways that make sense to me. Krukowski is able to make
most technical issues clear, only loosing me a few times. Written
with an eye to clarifying certain issues in recording and hearing the
distribution of those sounds, The
New Analog helped me to understand much of what I have been
missing, in trying to understand this revolution.
According to Krukowski, human beings
hear in stereo sound. Having two ears allows us to make the minute
mental distinctions placing us in space and providing context for the
world around us. He describes a woman bike rider falling down while
riding a bike with earbuds because, focused on the sounds being
delivered to her ears, she was unable to integrate other cues. Our
stereo hearing is remarkably accurate at providing context for what
we hear while our brains separate signal from noise.
Signal is the foregrounded sound we are
supposed to concentrate on...the music. Noise is the supposedly
unnecessary sound that interferes with our being able to focus on
signal. The role of the technology in separating signal from noise
gives us the purer sound that comes to us through digital
transmission, eliminating noise. But is music without noise what we
really wish to hear?
The studio itself becomes a character
in this dichotomy. A wooden studio provides a warm, wood-like sound.
But a completely baffled and sound-dead studio, for a listener inside
it, is still filled with sound, as one's internal functioning –
respiration, heartbeat, blood flowing in the veins – can be heard.
There is no silence. But the digital studio seeks to eliminate noise,
while increasing and layering signal. The work of the studio
technician is to take a series of signals, layer and sequence them,
and create a larger complex work that turns out to be all signal with
no differentiation about what to foreground or background – no
sense of context. Loudness has become a substitute for subtlety.
Along with the changes in sound have
come a change in the delivery system of those sounds. The invention
of file sharing, though Napster, while only lasting for two years,
spelled the end of record stores and will soon sound the death knell
of the compact disk as a means of distributing music. All our music
will be downloaded to digital devices to be heard through ear-buds
simulating stereo sound, but actually have no separation and
providing no contextual cues. Furthermore, those features record
lovers, and even CD purchasers no longer have available the kind of
information once provided by liner notes. Planned noise has been
substituted for by social media, a very noisy place. However, the
algorithms of FB, Twitter, Snap Chat, Goodreads, etc) quickly limit
exposure to only the noise you wish to hear, increasing isolation and
tribalism. We are not fully exposed to the range of noise that once
took place in the record store, or other gathering places where
people discussed and debated the values of content. However, the
algorithms of FB, Twitter, Snap Chat, Goodreads, etc) quickly limit
exposure to only the noise you wish to hear, increasing isolation and
tribalism. Older mail lists, for instance, were relatively
unfiltered, providing more choices of what to consider for the
receiver. Who decides what the noise surrounding the signal will be?
Damon Krukowski
Damon Krukowski is the editor/publisher
of Exact Change, an independent publishing house, along with Naomi
Yang, with whom he performed as David & Naomi. He has been a
member of rock band Galaxie 500, a 1980's and early nineties indie band, as well. He attended Harvard University and lives in
Boston. He blogs at International Sad Hits.
The
New Analog:Listening and Reconnecting in a Digital World
(The New Press, 2017, 224 pages, $24.95/15.48) by Damon Krukowski
examines the physiology, acoustic science, and effect of the changes
from analog to digital sound in the rapidly changing media
environment. By placing our audio experience of recorded music into a
larger context of how human beings interact with the world, he offers
a more nuanced view than many who decry the emergence of digital
music as it's experienced through devices like head phones and iPods.
He recognizes that digital delivery of music has been responsible for
the loss of community represented by the teeming record store where
people could hang out and discuss the music, as well as the quickly
developing death of the CD as a means of delivering music. He calls
for the re-introduction of the noisy environment once surrounding
music, which would lessen the isolation with which people now
experience it. While he sometimes gets caught up in the tangled weeds
of detailed technology and psycho-physiology, he nevertheless
delivers a thoughtful and readable examination at how rapid
technological change leads to unanticipated social disruption. I
received the book at an Advanced Reviewers Copy from the publisher
through Edelweiss.
I read it on my Kindle app.
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