The most musically important 'invention' of the century

The rise of the 'who needs a studio when you've got a laptop' MySpace generation. This might not be the most musically satisfying invention so far this century, but it's the most important.

In fact, you could pin this right down to Miami, in 1999/2000. Miami was the place for to record at that time and everyone was moving from big, expensive studios to DAWs and back room recording. Big studios can't survive that kind of competition now.
 
The move away from big studios to the bedroom laptop lash-up worries me.
On the one hand it has been truly enabling in the way it allows talent to transcend financial and space constraints. My concern is with the output quality. Ok, you can argue that production standards have ben falling over the years ( I probably would) but as people who care about sound I fear we can only expect things to get worse.
 
Basil said:
How would you record a Brahms symphony on such a set-up?
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Big bedroom.........

But no, don't take bedroom literally.
Perhaps low budget, small scale production outfit is a better description.

Your Brahms example still escapes safely.
 
Basil said:
How would you record a Brahms symphony on such a set-up?
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You go to the concert hall. They don't come to you. In fairness, unless you were heading toward Studio One at Abbey Road, you'd struggle to fit an orchestra into most studios anyway.

A bigger concern is with the record companies no longer seeing huge profits from pop recordings, they cannot afford to fund less commercial ventures like classical recordings. Naxos does well by having roving tonmeisters with estate cars full of gear pitching up at the Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky State Orchestral Municipal Enjoyments Arena or the Ngoc Tran Mountain Assembly Halls. But the old star system is fast eroding.

Without the larger companies promoting classical events and recordings, classical is in something of a nosedive, sales-wise. Especially in the US; earlier this year, Hilary Hahn's Bach: Violin and Voice CD hit the top of the Billboard classical chart with a mighty 1,000 recorded sales. Less than 200 sales of a classical CD will put you in the Billboard Top Ten these days.

Orchestras are starting to taking hold of their own destiny by self-publishing. This works for the LSO and the Hallé in the UK and similarly top rank orchestras around the world, but a second-tier orchestra will struggle to keep afloat. Especially if it only sells 50 discs.
 
RobHolt said:
Big bedroom.........

But no, don't take bedroom literally.
Perhaps low budget, small scale production outfit is a better description.

Your Brahms example still escapes safely.
Click to expand...

Not sure about budget but Ken Christianson of Promusica here in the USA has produced several excellent recordings using basically a small remote setup.

http://www.truestereo.net/
 
Live Orchestra

"Live Orchestra "or was it actually miked and amped as so many err so called "live " classical venues are?

Oh, no, you mean most people, possibly even most hifi designers probably haven't even heard a reference live orchestra and are trying to design or put together a hifi to sound like what, exactly - a miked and amped venue etc. etc.? :MILD:

dear, oh dear
 
Cable Monkey said:
That is a very white, English speaking list, most of the black artists have qualified themselves by selling a huge number of records. It is not untypical that the non English speaking world is ignored in these polls but it does frustrate more than a little when, for example, Spanish language records account for such a huge proportion of music sold in North America and yet is nicely segregated into a hispanic music chart and ignored. All that a list of this nature demonstrates is how little of the music out there they have actually listened to!
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were racist even in the love of music why not leave it out Spanish and foreign music does`nt have such a popular place because we cant understand the lyrics and such hence the apeal is not thier although I have to admit I love Spanish guitar
 

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