I have spent about ten years working with computers and recording software. In '98 I got my first Mac. It was a 400mhz G4, the very first G4. I picked up a copy Protools and put my 4 track away forever. Those recording I made back then were utter and total shit! I have spent the last 10 years learning the fine arts of making my shit musical ideas sound polished. I have read article after article, applied every tip I ever read on line and now I can finally make a decent sounding track. I have only gotten to this point in the last few years, and I still constantly struggle to make my shit sound better.
Over the years I have learned quite a bit. I can explain how ultrasonic frequencies behave to my fiancée when she is confused about a question on a quiz for her sonography classes. I can walk into a room and yell and clap and tell you the best place to set up a guitar amp and mic. So when I was reading through this article on popmatters.com called How ProTools is Killing Music that I found on Audio Geek Zine, I got a bit upset. Basically the douche bag that wrote the article, Scott Oranburg, says that guys like me are ruining the music industry. Guys like me that sit at home with their measly $10K worth of gear and crank out music are putting shit producers out on the street because they can no longer afford to sit back and charge people to use their expensive sound boards and stuffy rooms.
Especially when guys like me will record and produce their friends for free. Especially when I can buy a mastering plug in pack for $400 bucks that rivals the sound of their single channel $6K compressors. I hate to break it to you but that is how this whole technology thing works guy. Sorry that I am free to sit in my room on my own time and be creative without leaches like you sucking off my wallet.
I know you probably crying in your cheerios over how unfair it is that you built up your career and now no one wants to pay you for all your hard work and expertise. Well, maybe if it wernt for the fact that nearly every musician in history has had to hang up their craft and get a day job because they couldn't afford to pay out the nose for services like yours, I might feel a twinge of sympathy. I am not talking about the guys that "hit it big", I am talking about everybody else that just wants to express themselves and share it with anyone that might enjoy it. Throughout history anyone with some paint and an easel can make something beautiful for others to enjoy, but a musican has always needed some wanker with a studio and money to spread his art. At the very least you need somewhere to play. And now that any average joe can build his own studio and learn to run it by spending his extra cash and time on the internet you feel like it is killing MUSIC!
Cheap recording is to music what cheap food is to an Ethiopian child. I have been starving for years for some decent music and no major label has satiated my hunger since the early '90s. The phat cats in the music industry have been rationing out "quality music" through their locked down avenues of distribution for so long I have never known anything else. These days I look to musicians that do it themselves. Mike Patton does not need a producer and neither does Trent Reznor. The utter bilged that has been passed off as music lately is enough to make me want to take it out of the hands of the majors. So please, spare me your sob story. And if you want to hear what Protools is really doing to music why don't you turn off the radio and MTV and get on the internet. Maybe then you might be able to pull your head out off your ass long enough to hear some music that still breaths with the passion of an artist making music for the love of the music.
