Today's music has gotten a bit sterile. Since everything went digital all those years ago, we've been hoodwinked into thinking that we can make everything as perfect as possible. Artists have embraced chop-and-paste as standard practice taking studio sessions from creative and open environments to a series of play-throughs that will yield complete songs, with the best-played version of each part painstakingly inserted to the track. Vocals are cut and chopped and auto-tuned to perfection. I've even heard of artists going back to do 'breath tracks' to literally breathe at the start and end of phrases because the track has been chopped to death.
I've written about chasing perfection before, bit today something hit me that sparked a desire to talk about it again... I was driving home from work with my wife and listening to the 'Classic Rewind' channel on Sirius XM. Alice Cooper s 'Schools Out For Summer' came on and I began to rock out and sing along. We got to the part that goes
"Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes"
and it hit me. This is a classic song. People have known and loved this song for decades, and it makes no excuse for its lack of a perfect rhyming line.
When you listen to music that was recorded before digital, you can actually find a lot of little errors, string bends that aren't going up to the actual note they were trying to hit, squeaks from fingers gliding along acoustic guitars, vocals that aren't perfect but 'just right'... I'm not just talking about one or two songs, but many of the heavy hitters and big songs that have endured through the years and still stand strong.
Then after walking my dog I saw it. 'imperfect' tells the whole story. it says directly to your face, I'm perfect. No need to twist and toil and fix and chop. If you can't record the song from start to finish and get a good cut, you should be in a different industry, maybe!? Maybe Rock and Roll can make a comeback if we make it less 'perfect'...
So can we just play music that really is 'good enough' and enjoy the fun without forcing everything into the current ideal mold of 'perfect' and really call the imperfect what it is, PERFECT!
I've written about chasing perfection before, bit today something hit me that sparked a desire to talk about it again... I was driving home from work with my wife and listening to the 'Classic Rewind' channel on Sirius XM. Alice Cooper s 'Schools Out For Summer' came on and I began to rock out and sing along. We got to the part that goes
"Well we got no class
And we got no principles
And we got no innocence
We can't even think of a word that rhymes"
and it hit me. This is a classic song. People have known and loved this song for decades, and it makes no excuse for its lack of a perfect rhyming line.
When you listen to music that was recorded before digital, you can actually find a lot of little errors, string bends that aren't going up to the actual note they were trying to hit, squeaks from fingers gliding along acoustic guitars, vocals that aren't perfect but 'just right'... I'm not just talking about one or two songs, but many of the heavy hitters and big songs that have endured through the years and still stand strong.
Then after walking my dog I saw it. 'imperfect' tells the whole story. it says directly to your face, I'm perfect. No need to twist and toil and fix and chop. If you can't record the song from start to finish and get a good cut, you should be in a different industry, maybe!? Maybe Rock and Roll can make a comeback if we make it less 'perfect'...
So can we just play music that really is 'good enough' and enjoy the fun without forcing everything into the current ideal mold of 'perfect' and really call the imperfect what it is, PERFECT!