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Comment by brookst

2 hours ago

You’ve mixed up a few different stages as well as the reason some people prefer vinyl.

There’s composition, where music is written. A drum track may be a boring repetitive loop quantized to 4/4 beat positions, or it may have fills or polyrhythm or free time or who knows what.

There’s performance, which may be a sequencer just outputting notes at the right time or may be a human drummer of varying skill, imparting sloppiness or brilliant micro timing.

There’s recording, which today is virtually always digital, but which can theoretically be analogue tape or other exotic forms.

There’s storage medium, where we get vinyl or FLAC or MP3.

And there’s playback, where your choice of system components matters.

You can digitally record, mix, and master a bunch of drunk teenagers who don’t know how to play, and I promise it will be gloriously analog. And you can take music that was composed on an sequencer with pure quantization and no human feel at all, record/master/mix digitally, and store it on vinyl and play it in a good system and the sound will have analog warmth even while the composition and performance do not.

There’s more artistry in music today than there ever has been. More music is release every single day than was released in any entire year before 2000.

You just have to find the good stuff. If you’re hearing boring corporate crap, that reflects a need to improve discovery skill to match this new world.

What’s your current process for discovering new music?

  • Find your local music venues -- the smaller the better. Listen to the artists that are coming to play. When you find something you like, see where they are touring and look up the other venues because a lot of them specialize in different types of music. Rinse and repeat.

  • (I know you didn’t ask me)

    I think a willingness to listen to unfamiliar albums and unfamiliar genres is all you really need. I look for “best of X” lists, which get posted everywhere from actual newspapers to niche sites nline forums, Twitter, and personal blogs. Type in different values for “X” and you get exposure to more music.