An interesting video about today's music and who writes most of the modern stuff.
In some ways I agree with the narrator and still love the 60's early 70's music and the bands and groups that wrote played and sang their own music.
There are a few still worthy musicians today I do believe , but generally most are not so good IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVME_l4IwII


Allan

Technology is one of the greatest things today for inspiration and experimentation providing you use it as a tool, but if you use just the pre-sets, loops, etc. that comes with it (Rather than making your own) then the technology is effectively controlling you, which is one of the worst things that can happen to musical development.

The loudness war has been talked about for a couple of decades (Remastered discs are normally the original discs dynamically compressed) and is why for those that appreciate music, hi-res downloads have become available (Typically 24/96 rather than CDs 16/44) and are unfortunately also used as an excuse to charge a fortune for them, whereas in reality the only difference is that they use the masters before dynamic compression giving the user a much wider sound range. (The increased sound range is well within the capabilities of 16/44 CDs (24/96 is not required except in recording) but people get conned into believing bigger is better so that record companies can secure their back pockets to replace the money they lose through streaming)

Think about this, in the old days when electronic organs ruled, you had to learn to play bass, left hand, right hand, registration and expression, but with the advent of easy play features all you needed was a single finger in each hand to sound great, as the machine (Automatic organ backing) did the rest, the arranger keyboard has taken this easy play to its logical conclusion, in that with one keyboard you can press a button and pretty much everything is done for you, all the player needs to do is trigger the chords and play a simple melody. (In the old days if you wanted to increase your repertoire you learnt a new song, (Bass, left hand etc.) nowadays people just ask other users have they got a style for so and so song so that they can effectively play along to it, thus requiring minimal effort)

These days we live in a society that wants easy gratification without needing to work at it, and one of the casualty’s is unfortunately musical inspiration.

Bill

In many ways you are so right Bill, but that is not the only thing that has suffered. It is the quality of the originality of the timbre and tone of the instruments that are recorded in the studio in the first place that is suffering now.

Yes we can use a simpler way to produce a sound or even songs that make our lives feel grander; but it is the quality of that sound that this video is saying that is suffering. Like maybe our playing choices too, people are accepting( or being made to accept) a lesser beast than we used to have/ love and enjoy.

I remember when I played a quality acoustic mandolin, it was beautiful to my ears, with sweat tones and trills to make my skin tingle. Now you don't here that very much you get electric guitars trying to imitate it and it can grate on the nerves ( just as an example).

But, I must agree that "society wants gratification without having to work for it" more and more these days.

Allan