An old idea… a new perspective

Few piano teachers talk about the extremely subtle mechanics of playing the instrument. Perhaps the reason we don’t often see these issues addressed is because they are very personal; every hand is different and everybody interacts with the piano in slightly different ways.

One big and, in retrospect, obvious issue is the basic physical construction of the keyboard: the white and black keys occupy very different topographies. This can be a good or a bad thing. Good in that it makes scales such as B major easier to play because the position of the black keys fits the structure of the hand very naturally. Bad in that it necessitates constant awareness of the angle of the hand to transition smoothly between white and black keys.

I can elaborate a little bit on this by using Bach’s E minor Toccata as an example. In the first four notes in the left hand three white keys and one black are played (E-D#-E-E). The potential technical issue here is that if the fingering 1-2-1-5 is used (a natural choice), then the size of the thumb and the physical position of the D# can conspire to produce some unevenness in execution. If the wrist is kept straight, as one would do when playing E-D-E, then the leverage exerted on the D# will be different than on the E, thus making it harder to control the volume of the note.

If one reflects for a moment on the physical problem at hand, it is easy to see that by turning the wrist slightly to the left one alters the angle of the thumb and brings the 2nd finger into a more advantageous position. This immediately allows for a more even execution and a greater sense of security in the passage.

The above is a very simple example, but the principles found here can be expanded to any passage in which a combination of white and black keys are used. Of course the level of complexity can increase greatly, but the underlying solution is often the same or very similar.

Reading through the most recent issue of International Piano, I came across an article describing the latest Van Cliburn competition. Naturally the focus was on the controversy generated by choosing a blind pianist, Nobuyuki Tsujii, as one of the gold medallists and also on the fact that all the winners are very young (19, 20 and 23 to be exact).

I listened to one or two of Tsujii’s performances online and thought he sounded excellent. Of course being able to play that well without seeing is incredible, and I can see why the jury might gravitate towards him otherwise. He’s got the pianistic skills required and he’s got a great story that people will find interesting and inspiring.

No major problems so far, but then I get to this little nugget of wisdom, courtesy of no less than “Cliburn president Richard Rodzinski”:

[...] the jury are instructed to look “for someone who can best fulfil the three years of tours rather than someone who will be a big name.”

Argh! The Cliburn competition is one of the biggest and most famous piano competitions in the world. Here is the president of the organization saying in effect that it’s not about the music or the artistry. Rather, it’s about finding someone who can stand being on the road for three years and won’t cancel concerts or play too many wrong notes. This is just so aggravating. The whole reason I’m a musician is because of the creativity, originality and insight one can absorb from an extraordinary performance by an extraordinary artist. I don’t want to hear somebody show up on time and hit all the notes in the right order. You might as well just put someone doing their taxes on stage and call it performance art.

The sad reality for concert promoters is that great artists tend to also be a bit unpredictable. Gould was a maverick and gave up playing in public entirely. Horowitz retired numerous times, including once for a stretch of 12 years. Michelangeli was highly unreliable. In this day and age, Martha Argerich is well-known for canceling performances. In my view you can have only one of two things: you can have great art or you can have the pianist equivalent of an accountant crunching numbers on stage. Attention managers and competition presidents! The safest route is almost never going to be the most successful one.

I don’t want to come across as being too harsh here, but I’m very passionate about this. To hear that the head of such an “important” cultural event as the Cliburn competition is more concerned with contracts and dependability than music and art really makes my blood boil.

My next recording project is most likely going to be the third volume of Liszt’s Années de pèlerinage, written in the last decade or so of the master’s life. An oft-overlooked but incredibly important aspect of Liszt’s personality and art was his deep religious devotion. He had a strong connection with Catholicism even in his youth, which found its most obvious musical expression at that time in the Harmonies poétiques et religieuses, a set of pieces that evolved between 1834 and 1851.

Années de pèlerinage, Book III was published much later, in 1883, with Nos. 5 and 7 dating from 1867 and 1872, respectively. By then Liszt was writing in a very harmonically advanced style that was unprecedented for the time. We find final cadences on single notes, chords based on 4ths, tritones, and stacked 3rds, whole-tone scales, and a surprising reliance on the very lowest register of the piano, creating effects that sound experimental even today.

Each of the seven pieces that make up the set are more or less overtly spiritual in nature. The first, Angélus! Prière aux anges gardiens, is inspired by the Latin text of the Angelus, a devotion in memory of the incarnation of Christ. The second and third pieces, Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este I: Thrénodie and Aux cyprès de la Villa d’Este II: Thrénodie, are not based on any specific religious themes, but the underlying currents of philosophical meditation are clear. Despite the reference to cypresses, neither work depicts nature; rather, the prevailing tone is highly introspective and expressionistic. 

Probably the most famous piece here is No. 4, Les jeux d’eaux à la Villa d’Este, a stunning work of Impressionist beauty. While there is again no superficial reference to Catholicism in the music, the composer himself referred to the Gospel of John when writing about Les jeux d’eaux: “But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”

Closing out the set is a trio of some of the most modernist works that Liszt ever wrote: Sunt lacrymae rerum/En mode hongrois, Marche funèbre (in memory of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico) and Sursum corda. The title Sunt lacrymae rerum is taken from Virgil’s Aenid, where the hero Aeneas laments the Trojan War with the words, “Here, too, there are tears for misfortune and mortal sorrows touch the heart.” Liszt’s musical interpretation of these feelings is written around the so-called Hungarian Mode, which features two exotic-sounding augmented seconds.

The following Marche funèbre contains some of the darkest and thickest sonorities found in the entire piano literature. It ends with a stark apotheosis that one could imagine being played by an orchestral brass ensemble. Finally, Sursum corda brings us full circle back to texts from the Mass, similar to those that inspired Angelus! This time Liszt took his inspiration from the opening of the Eucharistic Prayer: “The Lord be with you/And also with you/Lift up your hearts/We lift them up to the Lord.”

What is most striking to me about the strong spiritual and religious threads that run throughout these pieces is that Liszt presents a highly unsentimental view of faith. Sursum corda is not a particularly uplifting piece: it contains some extraordinarily dissonant harmonies and unusual chord progressions. The same can be said of even something as lovely as Les jeux d’eaux. Looking below the surface, one finds a somewhat discomfiting message and a reminder of earthly suffering, something that Liszt was acutely aware of late in his life.

This is not music with easy answers to life’s most profound questions. Rather, Liszt explores an expressionistic style that is ultimately inconclusive. One has a sense of the composer’s deep faith, but at the same time there hovers an atmosphere of Universal indifference to human struggles. The ending of Sursum corda sounds triumphant, in a way, but there is also something open-ended about its final crashing chords as they fall almost outside any traditional rhythmic frame of reference.

I don’t think Années de pèlerinage, Book III is necessarily to everyone’s tastes. It is very personal music and it requires some study and insight to really get a feeling for what Liszt was expressing. For me though, the process of exploration is fascinating and very rewarding!

I’ve finally gotten around to shuttering my online store and migrating all my recordings and sheet music to external vendors. From now on all my albums will be available digitally from iTunes and Amazon and my compositions and transcriptions can be found on Scribd.

This should make things easier for everybody. I won’t have to maintain what was becoming a very large and complicated online store, with all the associated payment and delivery difficulties, and people interested in my music will be able to find my work much more easily. After all, everyone has either an iTunes or Amazon account (or both) and I’m pretty sure Scribd will become extremely popular soon (although right now their service is relatively new).

Thanks to the ubiquity and global reach of services like iTunes, I’ve been able to find an audience for my music without having to do any advertising. My recording of Satie’s Gnossienne No. 5 (track number nine on Interconnections) is proving to be popular already, with purchases in the US, Europe and the UK!

The more I observe and experience various aspects of life, the more I’m attracted by the idea of serenity. Glenn Gould described one of his life’s goals as a “gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.” I think we function best in all areas of life when our minds are relatively at peace. Speaking from a musician’s perspective, any time you over-think things or let adrenaline or emotions overtake you, then your performance will inevitably suffer. I’m sure the same is true in most other pursuits as well. Even an athlete that is expending huge amounts of energy is not doing so in a chaotic or unfocused way.

Does getting to this state of mind involve exerting control? I don’t think so. Trying to control things is an analytic process. In performance, if one is trying to control what’s happening one is constantly thinking: how did that passage go? Not so well? Okay, try and do better for the next part. What does this have to with music? Such thoughts only lead to more such thoughts, and away from serenity.

In a way it’s like meditation: the goal should be the absence of analytic thought and a sense of living in the moment. For better or worse this is very difficult to do, but it’s also one of the most worthwhile things any of us can work towards. I think we’ve all experienced moments when everything just seems to be flowing with complete naturalness, whether in music or sports or conversation or something else.

The question is: how hard do we have to work to get to this wonderful state? Does it take 4 hours of struggle to get ten minutes of serenity? Not to knock any achievement, no matter how small, but I think the ratio might be a little off in that case! Perhaps our goal should be to find ways to minimize the amount of work it takes to get our minds into an ideal place. To make the process more efficient, as it were. I think some people are more naturally gifted than others when it comes to entering into intense concentration. One need only watch performances by Gould or Karajan to see what incredible focus some people can attain.

Despite all the progress humanity has made in science, medicine and quality of life in the last hundred years, I sometimes wonder if music wasn’t perfected a long time ago. Sure, there have been a lot of “developments” in the modern era, but has new music ever really transcended that which was created hundreds of years ago?

It seems to me that there are certain eternal laws that govern music, but many composers these days ignore the rules in favor of being experimental and trying new things. To help remind us of the true essence of Western music, here are three videos of very old music: a Norwegian song from the 13th century, a work of consummate polyphony from the Renaissance, and a traditional Norwegian fiddle tune.

I’m very pleased to announce that my latest album, Interconnections, is now available worldwide on iTunes! The album features the world-premiere recordings of Eric Moe’s Legend of the Sad Triad and Arthur Gottschalk’s Fakebook II, as well as three of my own transcriptions of Fauré songs, two fun sonatas by Muzio Clementi and a few lovely short works by Liszt and Satie. If you have iTunes installed you can click here to go directly to the album page.

He uproar about Yo-Yo Ma, et al. performing with a backing track at the inauguration reminds me of the Club Silencio scene from Mulholland Dr. Lynch’s vision makes a profound statement about art, but unfortunately the real life version ended up being pretty banal.

The final arrangements have been made and my latest album, Interconnections, will be available through iTunes, Amazon and other digital music retailers in a few weeks. I’ll post again when the tracks actually go live; in the meantime, here’s the final version of the cover art!

Almost two hundred years ago, Liszt himself was dealing with the exact same phenomenon that I described in my last post. The following is taken from Kenneth Hamilton’s book Liszt: Sonata in B Minor:

The only record we have of a performance of one of [Liszt's early] sonatas is a concert in Bordeaux in 1826. With hardened cynicism, Liszt told the audience that the piece was by Beethoven, and laughed inwardly as his listeners fell into raptures over its sublime merits. A few years later in Paris he pulled a similar trick, swapping trios by Beethoven and Pixis. Pixis himself could not suppress a smile when he saw his own fairly pedestrian music mistaken for that of Beethoven and eulogised accordingly. Needless to say, the real Beethoven piece, labouring under its false identity, was found to be dull and vapid.

Plus ça change…

Quite a while back the classical music press was beside itself with praise over a large number of recordings supposedly by British pianist Joyce Hatto. The truth soon emerged however, and it turned out that most if not all of the tracks were stolen from other pianists and altered just enough so that they wouldn’t be immediately recognizable.

I’m probably the last person in the world to pick up on this story, but I want to add my own take on the whole affair. Let me start off by saying that I have no idea why Hatto or her husband or whoever thought this was a good idea, and that I don’t think it’s a very nice thing to do to the pianists who were ripped off. I also don’t think that the originators of the scandal had the goal of making a grand mockery of the musical press, but as it happens that’s the unintended side-effect of the whole thing that interests me the most.

A lot of the online publications that reviewed Hatto’s CDs have left their reviews up (albeit with disclaimers). One in particular compares “Hatto” and Hamelin in their respective Chopin-Godowsky releases. The author states that Hamelin “scores [...] through control of voicings” in his version of track #3. The comedy becomes apparent when one learns from another site that it is in fact the very same Hamelin recording in the Hatto rip-off! Therefore this reviewer is comparing the exact same recording and saying one has better control of voicings than the other. Of course the Hamelin has been messed with a little bit in the “Hatto” version, but I gather not so much as to alter the general conception of the interpretation.

Later on, from the same review:

More inner voicings are to be heard with Hamelin in 12, but Hatto is more poetic in 13 and employs the more effective rubati. I felt this in 21 as well – her playing is really alive and the mercurial magic that informs so much of her Chopin playing certainly courses here. Towards the end of the first volume one finds that Hamelin’s speeds pick up; before they were evenly matched and in maters [sic] of articulation there’s little between them. This works to Hatto’s advantage in 23; she is more metrical and hence funnier, bringing real wit to this study in a way Hamelin sometimes shies away from. It’s a personal matter but I did find him inferior to her in 24 – a touch monotonous.

Surprise! Hatto is once again Hamelin in tracks 21 and 24! That is, the exact same recording with just a little bit of reverb and EQ (and maybe some time stretching?) escapes the “inferior” and “monotonous” nature of the original.

What a joke! Of course this is embarrassing for all concerned (which is the reason I didn’t source the name of the author of the review), but if one can take away one lesson from this it’s that music critics often have no idea what they’re talking about. The level of subjectivity is incredible, especially when it comes under the guise of so much supposed objectivity.

My main problem with reviewers like this is that they love to pronounce things as being objectively good or bad, and sometimes even go so far as to give numerical ranks to the recordings they write about. Of course in a free society they have every right to do this, but at the same time they tend to wield a lot of (undeserved) influence in the marketplace. I object to the role of the music critic as a self-ordained gatekeeper of good taste, celebrating that which pleases them and trashing that which doesn’t. Maybe with less editorializing and more reliance on facts we’d all be better off. Who cares if a reviewer thinks that one of the latest recordings of Bach’s Partitas is a 10 out of 10, whereas another only rates an 8.5? Why not write about what makes them different, or what similarities they may share? Say for example that one version was recorded in a more resonant space. Fine, write about that, but leave out the bit about the “spacious sonics being far superior.” Maybe the greatest and most noble sacrifice a critic could make is to withhold value judgement altogether, except perhaps in the most extreme of cases?

I think we can all stand to use the Hatto affair as a learning experience. Critics can take it as a humbling reminder that their opinions aren’t as educated or infallible as they’d like to think. We, their readers (and fans of music in general), can get a quick look behind the curtain to see that those who aspire to shape public opinion really aren’t deserving of an unquestioning and uncritical following.

The new CD is done! What a nice way to close out 2008! In the next week I’ll be getting the tracks sent out to iTunes, Amazon and possibly eMusic. It will take a few more weeks after that for everything to appear in the stores. The final track list (order subject to change) is:

Muzio Clementi

Sonata in G major, Op. 1 No. 2 – 1. Spiritoso
Sonata in G major, Op. 1 No. 2 – 2. Allegro assai
Sonata in E major, Op. 1 No. 6 – 1. Moderato
Sonata in E major, Op. 1 No. 6 – 2. Rondeau. Grazioso

Franz Liszt

Consolation No. 1 in E major
Consolation No. 2 in E major
Consolation No. 3 in Db major

Eric Moe (winner of the 2007 music+culture International Competition for Composers)

Legend of the Sad Triad (Ballade for piano)

Gabriel Fauré (all songs, arranged by myself for solo piano)

Le Secret, Op. 23 No. 3
Les Berceaux, Op. 23 No. 1
Clair de lune, Op. 46 No. 2

Arthur Gottschalk (winner of the 2008 music+culture International Competition for Composers)

Fakebook II – 1. Corea
Fakebook II – 2. Tatum
Fakebook II – 3. Brubeck

Erik Satie

Gnossienne No. 5

Well, the hard part is finished! I spent many hours on the 22nd getting a good amount of takes recorded, so now the only thing left to do is sort through them and find which ones I like the best. I’m taking a little break for about a week for the holidays, but I’ll finish the editing and such when I come back in early January.

At long last, I’m finally going to have the chance to sit down to record a new album! Included will be the winning works from the last two music+culture composition competitions, as well as a selection of some of my favorite pieces by Clementi, Satie, Liszt and Fauré. All the tracks should be completed by the evening of the 23rd, and will officially be available in January 2009.

I’ve been longing to do this session for several months, but life and work have conspired to keep me busy with other things. I’m very excited by all the repertoire, especially since the program includes a lot of lesser-known (or completely unknown!) gems: the music+culture winners, Eric Moe’s Legend of the Sad Triad and Arthur Gottschalk’s Fakebook II, are both extraordinary and accessible contemporary works, and the two early sonatas by Clementi that I have in mind have probably never been recorded before!

Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about learning some lighter Classical/Baroque repertoire to balance out the heavy, Romantic song transcriptions I’ve been working on. My first thought was to look at some Scarlatti sonatas. I’ve learned a couple in the past, and of course I’m familiar with Horowitz’s many recordings of them. However, after reading through a few that looked appealing I was reminded why I haven’t done more Scarlatti: the music just doesn’t work for me on a deep level. I will often love the way a particular sonata starts, and then find a few bars here and there that I can’t get enough of. But, overall there’s something that I just don’t “get.” Maybe it’s structural, maybe it’s harmonic, maybe it’s textural. (Probably a bit of each, really). I respect Scarlatti’s brilliance and originality, but at least at this time in my life it doesn’t seem like he’s a good fit for me. I like to be totally convinced by whatever I’m playing, otherwise why play it, right?

So, this conclusion left me wondering what else I could learn that would be a similar style. I considered Rameau and Couperin, but then I remembered that I played two Clementi sonatas about ten years ago. I went to read through them again and I’m in love! For me, Clementi’s piano music is vastly superior to Mozart’s. It’s so perfectly written for piano and is totally elegant, charming and formally sophisticated. I’m excited to get back to work on these wonderful pieces!

I just listened to Ligeti’s Chamber Concerto, written in 1969. I know I’ve come down hard on Ligeti before, but for me this piece is one of his better ones. It’s purely experimental and there are a lot of very interesting sounds, created using only thirteen instruments. I do admire the creativity it takes to make such unusual and interesting effects, and Ligeti also manages a certain amount of dramatic flourish, at least more so than usual.

As usual, the score is dense with notes and explanatory remarks. While I haven’t analyzed the music (nor will I!), I’m sure it’s very rigorously thought-out and mathematically exacting. Yet, the impression for the listener is for the most part one of randomness. It’s a very polished and “professional” kind of randomness, but that’s how it sounds all the same. In fact, at several points I was reminded of a couple of King Crimson’s more experimental moments: the opening of Exiles and the second half of Moonchild. For me the musical aesthetic of King Crimson and Ligeti is almost identical in works like these. What exactly is the artistic difference between a massively intellectual recreation of randomness and true, improvisational randomness? For me they both have the same merits and drawbacks. On the plus side, the listener gets to experience some interesting sounds and feel the effect of a truly chaotic sound world. On the other hand, this kind of music can get terribly boring, as it has no inherently audible structure.

Maybe Pierre Boulez should have his Ensemble InterContemporain do some King Crimson numbers, for a nice crossover between the ivory tower and the pop avant-garde…

Yesterday I had the pleasure of hearing Fauré’s song Les Berceaux in a recording by Gérard Souzay. Stunning! There’s something about the sound of 70s recordings that I identify with so much: Horowitz’s second recording of the Liszt Sonata, Karajan’s second traversal of the Beethoven Symphonies, Gould’s Grieg and Sibelius recordings. And it’s not just classical music: The Doors’ first album is for me one of the greatest sounding things ever. The three words that I might use to describe what I like about these recordings are resonance, warmth and realness. All qualities that I find are often missing from more recent all-digital efforts!

Horowitz’s Variations on a Theme from Bizet’s Carmen is a classic of the virtuoso piano repertoire, and that’s despite the fact that it’s never been published in sheet music form! Over the years, several enterprising people have made transcriptions after listening to Horowitz’s own recordings and watching videos of his performances. There are now a number of versions floating around out there for pianists to learn the notes from. I find that they don’t quite get everything right, but of course there’s no way of getting a final definitive version anyway.

Now, on to the comparison: a ton of pianists have performed the Variations and it’s easy to find a lot of different versions online. I’m very interested by other pianists’ approaches, especially compared to Horowitz’s 1968 Carnegie Hall performance (which is my favorite version). So, to start off, here’s the glorious original:

What more can you ask for: riveting intensity and ridiculous virtuosity! What he does at the end is absolute magic. Not only is it a superhuman feat of accuracy, but it’s unbelievably exciting.

Okay, the next version we can take a look at is Leonid Kuzmin. Overall I like it quite a lot. He’s a little more impetuous than Horowitz, but I don’t think it detracts from the music. The ending is a letdown though (which I think we’re going to find is a common criticism in all the videos we look at here).

Next! Carlo Grante:

Grante presents a pretty laid-back account. He’s accurate and keeps a plenty fast tempo, but his phrasing choices make it sound a bit less driven than the last two videos. I don’t really like this approach, but it’s a legitimate interpretative choice. But, ah, the ending… Not exciting at all, just cautious!

Now we have one of the few pianists that can probably match Horowitz technically, Evgeny Kissin:

Wow, that is fast. Part of the appeal of Horowitz’s own version is that it’s a little bit elegant and has a lot of subtle musical touches. Kissin is just using the piece to show off and eschews subtlety and wit. But, he does manage the ending with flying colors and completely goes for broke. It’s just too bad what came before doesn’t progress naturally up to the climax.

Moving on to Valentina Lisitsa:

She gets off to a great start. The opening pages are restrained and very clearly articulated. Things start to fall apart about halfway through though, as Lisitsa gets farther and farther away from what Horowitz plays. I also don’t care for the ultra-fast interpretation of the section before the the big finish. As for climax: she makes a valiant effort, but the ever-so-slight holding back of the 16th notes robs the passage of its excitement. At first I also didn’t like her elaboration of the last few bars, but the more I listen the more I think it’s fun and in keeping with the spirit of the piece.

Last but not least, here’s a version by Yuja Wang (with unfortunately slightly desynchronized audio):

Very impressive! Her opening tempo is perfect, her musicality is wonderful and she keeps a tight lid on the excitement until the right moments. I can’t think of anything I would prefer to hear differently (well… the last few bars are a bit rushed for my taste). Overall, a really excellent interpretation, and the only pianist in this group to get close to Horowitz’s masterly playing of the climax!

There are plenty of other videos of the Variations on YouTube, but I think this is enough to compare for today. It’s fascinating to hear how many different ways such a deceptively simple piece can be played. It really does require a special something: I think it’s one of those pieces that can’t fall back on its musical strengths in order to be effective. Like it or not, this is a piece purely about virtuosity and nothing else. Non-virtuosos need not apply!

LA’s very own resident music critic, Alan Rich, tends to make odd pronouncements about odd things, but his most recent article really takes the cake. I’m all for colorful and interesting writing, but there’s a point when things just become incomprehensible. Take the following passage about the Khachaturian Piano Concerto:

It was – and is – made up entirely of  spare parts: Borodin-plus-hootchy-kootch, good writing for fast moving fingers. The only recording I owned, I think I bought because the names were so right: Moura Lympany, Anatole Fistoulari — say them aloud, over and over. Sixty years later,  Khatchaturian’s [sic] greasy concerto has practically disappeared from the catalogs; a single Russian recording remains.

To this I say: huh?

First of all, what on earth is "hootchy-kootch?" I’m scared to Google it, but I’m reasonably sure nobody has used such an expression since 1940 at the latest. (Ah, I couldn’t resist: apparently it’s a style of dance that originated in 1876. The term may still be in use today, somewhere, by someone. Has Alan Rich really been around since the 1870s?)

Secondly, "greasy?" How can one possibly apply the word greasy to a piano concerto? Greasy hair, greasy hamburger, greasy bearings, greasy frying pan, sure. Greasy piano concerto? Does not compute. After thinking about it for a bit it still doesn’t make any sense, but it does sound vaguely insulting. "Hey Aram, nice try writing a concerto, but it’s just too greasy, man!"

Finally: there are seven different recordings of the concerto currently available on Amazon MP3. How could Mr. Rich be so clueless as to miss this simple fact? Is it because he misspelled "Khachaturian" by adding a "t?" He makes the mistake over and over again. I mean, if you type in Bethovan, you won’t find much either…

I hate to be so picky, but really, if the role you choose for yourself is that of a public music critic, you owe it to your readers and to the artists you discuss to be as accurate and as probing as possible. Suffice it to say, the Khachaturian Concerto is one of the great piano concertos: exotic, exciting and dramatic. Never mind Mr. Rich!

It seems to be human nature to want to make technical things complicated, and even to enjoy them more when they are. I’m always having a problem with that though, since I prefer things to be efficient and streamlined. Of course I’m interested in the techniques and tools of the trade, but only insofar as they let me get on with the creative process.

One area where I always get into trouble is in the world of high-end audio. There are so many options out there, and so many conflicting opinions on how best to do things, it’s almost paralyzing. Should you use a $500 AKG microphone, a $1000 Neumann or a $10,000 Telefunken? Ribbon, tube or solid state? Once you decide on the mic, then were do you put it in relation to the sound source? And what kind of preamp do you hook it into? Do you record to hard drive or tape? EQ or not, and if so, how much? Reverb? What kind? Of course there’s an art to all this, and experience plays a big role, but at the same time there are simply too many options, most of which don’t make any appreciable difference to the sound.

Still, in the end it all boils down to one simple question: how does it sound? I think everybody has a slightly different criteria as to what sounds good, which is why there are so many choices out there. Everyone wants to create something to match their own taste, and we all need slightly different tools to achieve that goal. I think the problem comes when we try to extract universal principles out of personal preference. It’s one thing to be aware of the choices, but it’s another to be told quite forcefully that A is better than B, only to turn around and have someone else say that, no, B is better than A and C is better than either one. I guess some people enjoy the debate, but ultimately “better” is relative!