The Menace Of Mechanical Music, Early Electrical Recordings & The Future Of Live Performance

[Geezer]

Part 1: It's Alive!

"It is the living, breathing example alone that is valuable to the student and can set into motion his creative and performing abilities." John Phillip Sousa - The Menace Of Mechanical Music

As a gigging musician, one of the questions I am constantly thinking about is: "Why is (popular) music like this?"

Over time, playing on the streets and on the stage, I have learned that a lot of modern music does not translate well into solo performance.
I have a theory to why this is: multi-tracking music.

For nearly 80 years, if you wanted to record an album, you used a single recording point. This was a horn in the acoustic recording era & transitioned into a microphone when electric recording became possible. This resulted in a culture of creating incredibly good live performances which had to be done for real.

When multi-track tape machines came around, artists could now create music they didn't have to perform live. This, combined with drugs, spurred new experimental music which had no basis in live performance. Fast forward to now and most music is created with editing, over-dubs, & quantizing.

Part 2: Lee Morse

"When a mother can turn on the phonograph with the same ease that she applies to the electric light, will she croon her baby to slumber with sweet lullabys, or will the infant be put to sleep by machinery?" John Phillip Sousa - The Menace Of Mechanical Music​

Miss Lee Morse was a performer from a small town in Idaho who left her family and young son to move to New York City and pursue a career in show business.
She is notable for being one of the first singer-songwriters, singing her own composition while accompanying herself on guitar.
An early recording she made is "Lee's Lullaby" (1924) a heartfelt song written to her son trying to explain why she isn't home and how much she misses him. This is an acoustic-era recording and it shows from the quality. Compare it to a song like "I'm An Unemployed Sweetheart." (1931)
Electrical recordings are much more sensitive and don't demand loudness which made crooning possible. If you listen to her final recording "Don't Even Change A Picture On the Wall" (1951) you will probably notice that recording fidelity did not increase as drastically over those 20 years than they did in the 7 years between the acoustic & electric eras.

What is notable, to me, is that all three would be considered "live" recordings now.

Part 3: Monkey Hear, Monkey Play

Children are naturally imitative, and if, in their infancy, they hear only phonographs, will they not sing, if they sing at all, in imitation and finally become simply human phonographs -- without soul or expression? John Phillip Sousa - The Menace Of Mechanical Music

People want to sing like auto-tune and play like drum machines. In most studios I've haunted, an artist that does not do a "perfect take" does not keep doing takes until they get a satisfactory performance, they just "fix" it in post-production.
This is the musical equivalent of the unrealistic beauty standards that photo-editing produced and was rallied against. It is not just a man-versus-machine, John Henry-esque situation though, people want the machine music. A lot of solo cover-artists that work in similar bars as me are using tablets and backing tracks now. This is basically karaoke plus a guitar and no one but me seems to care at these gigs. These guys make a killing.

I even saw one who had the main vocals in his backing track, he was mostly lip syncing.

Most audiences just want to hear the same pop songs they could hear on any robot-ran radio station. No one cares or notices since music-making is basically arcane to them. We've reached the time Sousa foresaw:

"The child becomes indifferent to practice, for when music can be heard in the homes without the labor of study and close application, and without the slow process of acquiring a technic, it will be simply a question of time when the amateur disappears entirely, and with him a host of vocal and instrumental teachers, who will be without field or calling." John Phillip Sousa - The Menace Of Mechanical Music

The average American's musical literacy is so low that most people prefer karaoke over real live performance (for this I blame singing competitions, but that's another tangent). Backing tracks are ubiquitous now.
These tracks never get drunk, don't talk back & play the same every night. Post-Covid, there's fewer venues and the guarantees are smaller, not enough for most to fund a full band. All of these factors are driving us toward karaoke.

Part 4: A Return To Form​

There are plenty of genres which haven't succumbed to this epidemic of mediocrity. Notably live jazz & folk-punk which have genre-defining features which resist this trend. It's hard to justify a backing track if your genre is dependent on group impovisation & playing acoustic instruments.

There are still single mic sessions as well, trying to record in the traditional style.

If you made it this far, thanks.

Feel free to debate the ideas I have presented or post some music you think is relavent to the discussion.

I would like to take some time to add some resources if you are interested in anything presented here:

Spoiler: RESOURCES

John Phillip Sousa's The Menace Of Mechanical Music has not only a banger title and a lot of good points, but personally (as someone who grew up with the internet) I dislike his take on copyright. But he makes a lot of really good points otherwise.

If anyone is interested in early electrical recording, I cannot reccomend American Epic enough. It is a three-part documentary exploring that time period historically, economically & cultutrally. It gives a good primer on the basis of electrical recording. The series is currently on the biggest video streaming platform: EP1 EP2 EP3 EP4

DW Fearn, creator of very nice-sounding and expensive tube pre-amps, has a great lecture on traditional recording and it's future with modern equipment.

This video has some good information 50's style recording.

This video has information on acousitc recording.

Here are some coo traditional recordings I like a lot:

Aileen Stanley and Johnny Marvin - Red Lips - Kiss My Blues Away [1927].

Giggling Gertie - Vaughn De Leath

Thanks for reading the whole thing.

 

[charlie]

I'm going to have to read that Sousa paper; what prophetic observations. Also, I'll be listening to much more Lee Morse, and probably adding her to the Jane radio.

There are plenty of genres which haven't succumbed to this epidemic of mediocrity. Notably live jazz

On the point of Jazz maintaining the artisanal quality that music writing, playing and production once held, I'd posit that most live jazz performances you hear, are approximations of what we think of as good recordings. 95% of "jazz improvisations" you can find these days, are ignorant of harmony, melody and timing, and not at all comparable to the once standard quality of improvisation. The teachers have simply gone, and there are no more amateurs. The top schools (Berkelee, Julliard and Columbia) are churning out, year after year, hundreds of "qualified jazz musicians", who do not know how to play the music that they are striving towards --- all the while, they don't realize they are hurting its reputation and its history.

All you have to do is, listen to a modern recording, and then an old one, and you will hear it too.

Spoiler: Note:

I was going to find a comparable old recording but I think this one recording is illustrative. The rhythm section is very good, and emmet is a very skilled pinaist. He plays the head almost perfectly, and listening to the recording while the singer is sings and scats, makes u want to get up and spazz, but when emmet begins his solo, you can hear the quality of the music degrade, almost at an instant.... the musicians take some turns soloing, and the moment they stop, the quality of the music comes right back.

"Jazz musicians go and play, and it's like you say, 'Man!'. You can't dance to it or nothin... and all we did was dance to jazz. That's the only way I learned about Jazz was dancin'. I know a lot of you have never heard of dancing to Jazz. You know when we went to hear Charlie Parker, we went to a Dance Hall. When we went to hear one of the big bands, we went to a Dance Hall. When we went to hear Stan Kenton, we went to a Dance Hall. People danced to the music. You want to hear Duke Ellington, you have to go to the Dance Hall. Count Basie, Dance Hall, Charlie Parker, Dance Hall, Dizzie Gillespie, Dance Hall. See? We danced to the music. Jazz musicians are getting away with murder. They don't have any people dancing to the music, they just do anything they want to do --- and you couldn't dance to it if you wanted to --- bad as some of 'em sound. Then they go out on you.. "Avant Garde". You all may as well realize, right now we are in the Dark Ages" - Barry Harris, Lecture at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague between 1989 and 1998

All hope is not lost though. I have gained much from Barry's Teachings, and I even had the pleasure of joining one of his workshops over covid while he was still alive. I know him to have preserved the core of what once was, and he was not only capable, but actively teaching others and passing it down... so i continue to watch his lectures over and over, and listen to the things his students have learned from him, and how he's changed the way they think and play.

but yea,, i'd say we've been cooked since multitrack recording. thankfully acoustic instruments still exist

one of the best piano players alive
I would highly recommend anyone who's ever played with Rita Payes, Andrea Motis or Alba Armengou. They're singers and musicians out of Iberia, and I think they were students of Joan Chamorro.

---

On the point of technology, I find myself wanting to just hear people like emmet cohen transcribing the solos of the greats and playing those, but I suppose that would take away from the future of the form and would be akin to just playing back recordings I like --- i'd take that over a bad solo though. It may be obvious though that we don't fully understand what all was being played in the 40's/50's, so we best study up.

 

[Geezer]

The teachers have simply gone, and there are no more amateurs. The top schools (Berkelee, Julliard and Columbia) are churning out, year after year, hundreds of "qualified jazz musicians", who do not know how to play the music that they are striving towards --- all the while, they don't realize they are hurting its reputation and its history.

This is a great point. Since Jazz canonization (looking at you Real Book), it's been more academic and less of what Jazz really (secretly) is: a type of folk music. "Quoting" is largely equivalent to the Folk/Blues tradition of "Floating Verses" and functionally a shibboleth and also a way to draw inter-textual relationships with previous works. So much work has been put into what Jazz is at this point, that deviation mostly comes in instrumentation or things that sound "ugly."

listen to a modern recording

I agree with your assertion about the solo. I think it's kind of a holistic mindset thing. Many of my heroes were trying to make new music where a lot of acts now are largely paid to recreate the past.
I got an offer recently to play in a Nu-Metal tribute band of which the original band IS STILL TOURING. The tribute band makes more per gig than I do in three gigs doing original material. People and venues are willing to pay for a copycat of a band rather than new tunes.

Spoiler: Tangent

That Cyrille Aimeé is distractingly attractive. I got way too transfixed on watching her the whole time.

one of the best piano players alive

Great clip. A guy like that could only be produced in a culture that values live performance. It feels like he wanted to go a bit slower to draw out the ballad more.

On the point of technology, I find myself wanting to just hear people like emmet cohen transcribing the solos of the greats and playing those, but I suppose that would take away from the future of the form and would be akin to just playing back recordings I like --- i'd take that over a bad solo though. It may be obvious though that we don't fully understand what all was being played in the 40's/50's, so we best study up.

If you haven't seen it, you should check out the documentary It Might Get Loud. I think it's one of the greatest movies about art and particularly the electric guitar. It has Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), The Edge (U2), & Jack White (White Stripes). Jack brings up a point in the movie that has always stuck with me, where he was enamored by early rock & punk music and he wanted to know how they played like that, so he studied who taught them: bluesmen.
If one studies their heroes, they will become a successor to them. If you study your heroes's heroes you become akin to a peer to them. It was the older traditions the bred the heroes, so you know they work for teaching. This my excuse for blasting 20's/30's internet radio all the time.

 

[charlie]

Jack brings up a point in the movie that has always stuck with me, where he was enamored by early rock & punk music and he wanted to know how they played like that, so he studied who taught them: bluesmen.
If one studies their heroes, they will become a successor to them. If you study your heroes's heroes you become akin to a peer to them. It was the older traditions the bred the heroes, so you know they work for teaching. This my excuse for blasting 20's/30's internet radio all the time.

SO MUCH THIS

This is why Spasm Cafe exists.

I haven't actually seen It Might Get Loud, but I've seen some clips, and heard that exact Jack White quote, and I think about it so much. It's so important to learn from "primary sources", cause you really can learn so much more seeing how others interpret them.

Spoiler: Tangent

I remember the first time seeing this recording. Cyrille's voice is great, but she's also great at scatting. It might be some kind of natural melodic quality. or she just has a good ear, but i'd suspect if you can hear the changes, it wouldnt be too hard to come up with some kind of melody that follows them. there's some great videos of barry harris teaching singers how to scat in key... somewhere, i think it's in practicing the blues with the horns part 2

Edit: Note, the guy playing piano in that ballad video is polish, and i've noted some really good polish players, so maybe they know something others don't over there

 

[Geezer]

I haven't actually seen It Might Get Loud

Well I linked the entire movie, so you if you have some time check it out.

Cyrille's voice is great, but she's also great at scatting

This session, for some weird reason reminded me of this cover by Tamar Korn and Friends doing a cover of a song I frequently do called "When You Wore A Tulip" Though her scatting has no where near the complication in this version. My favourite version she actually does is this one as a duo, I love when she's vocally doing the washboard part while Meredith solos.

Rita Payes

This was great. I love how well their voices mesh. The trombone has a such a good timbre in this arrangement.

Andrea Motis

At first I was like "Do we need 2 guitar players?" then hearing the solo, I was like "that was clean as fuck."

Alba Armengou

I have trust issues, those vocals sound TOO GOOD to be real. Those vocals are as tight as a virgin on prom night. That first sax player has great "Sax Face." Second sax was smooth. Love how gentle the piano player is.

Joan Chamorro.

That was groovy.

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Going to Barry Harris's point on "Dance Hall music," modern jazz suffers from what Star Trek used to suffer with: It's designed for nerds. Until Star Trek started dumbing down their shows, it was really known for being "for nerds" but because I'm a nerd I actually liked quite a bit of that. I hope that's not the trajectory we're on now or something more sinister like you're implying where players are using "complication" as a way to seem avante-garde and disguise what it really is which is "ugly." Traditional Jazz was for the proles (not a commie, I swear), and it shows. Modern Jazz is for the nerds with the bread to buy it.
I can barely imagine a situation in the states like the Andrea Motis, you could have world class players in front of people nowadays and they would still be scrolling their social media feeds. It's just not a culture that encourages excellence. The apprentice I have I try to shield from this buy encouraging he focus and only care about the opinions of other musicians he respects.

 

[charlie]

Now!? A word from our sponsors:
Alba Armengou

And back to our regularly scheduled programming