Sometimes you only have to look for something to find it… One of the reasons for writing this blog is to clarify my thoughts, to allow my mind to show me where it wants to go. As a result, I’m always looking for inspiration – and today I found some serious inspiration in an interview with Brian Eno. I’ll be exploring some of his concepts further in future posts, but one mind blowing metaphor he expounded on was the idea of “painting with sound.”
If you’re a musician, or a recording engineer or producer, there is the sacrosanct idea that great music is the result of a powerful alchemy that occurs when a group of like-minded musicians, united in purpose, make some noise together in a room. It is then the responsibility of the recording engineer and/or producer to capture this magic on some recording medium, creating a (somewhat) permanent artifact of this event, to be listened to and marveled at from that point on. And indeed, this is how most great music has been created – recording musicians playing together become the accepted universal paradigm. There were certainly exceptions to this, particularly post Beatles up until the early 1990’s or so. The idea of using the recording studio to create something that couldn’t be reproduced by live musicians (for popular consumption, outside of academia) probably started with Joe Meek in England in the early 1960’s. “Good Vibrations” by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys in 1966 and Sgt. Pepper’s by the Beatles in 1967 were touchstones for illustrating Eno’s idea of “painting with sound.” For 30 years or so, untold fortunes were generated by album sales. Touring was simply a way to promote the albums…
In the late 1990’s, the music business began to fall apart, a victim of it’s own greed and shortsightedness. As a result of the collapse in the sale of popular music, it soon became obvious that the only way for musical artists to make any money was to play live. Today, as a salable commodity, music is virtually worthless. Touring and playing live is the only possible way of generating any meaningful income. This environment has effectively killed innovation in recording and creating music that is not meant to be played “live.” From a commercial perspective, what would be the point?
Except there is a point. A very big and very important point. And Mr. Eno reminded me of this with his brilliant mind. If music’s worth is based on sales, then the game is over. BUT IT ISN’T… and it never was. Many of us were just tricked into thinking so. Music is art. Let me repeat that, for my own reinforcement. MUSIC IS ART. It’s worth is not based on sales, it’s based on its ability to move and communicate. Van Gogh’s art wasn’t worthless because he didn’t sell any in his lifetime (except to his brother.) It just took a while for it to communicate…
Eno’s background was in the arts, so for him the idea of creating music as one would create a painting seemed very natural. And I thank him for reminding me of this – for this has been the way I have approached creating and recording music for most of my life. But in today’s environment, at least here in the U.S., not only is recorded music worthless, the idea of recording something that can’t be “played” live is exponentially worthless. Here in America, if it has no financial worth, it must be useless. What a load of shit! If even I am susceptible to this kind of thinking, how can I be surprised of it’s ubiquity?
But enough of this rant – I want to think more deeply about some of the things Eno spoke about…