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I'm always perplexed at self-described music lovers who seem to spend far more time fetishizing the medium over the content.

• tashi 10y ago
  Is that what you believe the author is doing? Because he's put a lot of hours into writing about specific works of music and even more into making his own.
  • lmm 10y ago
    In this article it's what he seems to be doing. If digital leads me to listen more to the notes today's equivalents of the Beatles are playing and less to the studio air conditioning, I can only see that as a good thing.
• jim-jim-jim 10y ago
  The medium does so much to shape that content though. When discussing songs we love, I'm not sure if it's fruitful to divorce some ideal form of "music" from its medium, any more than it makes sense to describe a guitarist's work in the form of pure music theory. It's usually not the notes in abstract that draw us to a piece, but rather its color and character. Understanding the medium and its associated recording techniques is valuable in a timbral critique of the work. It's also impossible to explore the history of influential artists like Conlon Nancarrow, Pierre Schaeffer, or the Beatles without understanding the impact that media like piano rolls, mangnetic tape, and multitracking played in their creative processes.
  • gagege 10y ago
    I agree. I only really enjoy the cassette tape copy of one of my favorite albums. The bass has a certain character that Spotify or any other digital format can't seem to (or doesn't want to) reproduce.
• omegaworks 10y ago
  The medium is the message. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_medium_is_the_message
• kpil 10y ago
  It's mostly old farts and occationally some retro-hipster that obsess over this. Looking at most young people they are content with streaming unknown quality streams through their brightly coloured headphones of questionable quality. Or worse, their phone's loudspeaker.
• leppr 10y ago
  It's the same with graphical arts. People will talk more about the tools used, the message or the concept, than the raw shapes and composition which in most cases are the core of the work and what the artist spends the major part of his time working on. I believe that being able to talk about the core stuff means you understand it well and somewhat match the artist's skills on some level, so it's no wonder people will rather talk about more approachable stuff.