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Should we be buying cameras instead of microphones? Is YouTube completely swamping audio recordings? We at least have to ask the question. Had a wake up call today. One of my bands decided to cover Hickory Wind. Standard thing now - pass around the links to a bunch of YouTube versions to get some ideas. So the http://www.youtube…"]Tuttles[/]="http://www.youtube…"]Tuttles[/] start bouncing around. "Who the hell are these guys?" "I like that version better than Gram and Emmylou." Not sure I agree, but it doesn't matter. A bunch of kids with a simple three camera video shoot got a bunch of musicians to sit up and notice. How do you do that with audio? Touring? I don't think the Tuttles have been to Blacksburg, VA.

Thinking...thinking...

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KurtFoster Wed, 03/06/2013 - 19:45

Video Killed the Radio Star

much more of the human brain is dedicated to vision than to hearing. it's just how we a built.

i remember when i was a kid listening to The Drifters, i would visualize a great big softly lit room where Ben E. King was standing and singing .... "Under the Boardwalk ... that's where I'll be......" and thinking that's where the sound of the reverb came from.

little did i know. it was probably some tiny dead dingy utilitarian studio like they had back then with room with tiled or hardwood shellacked walls with a speaker and a mic in it. the truth was probably nowhere as glamourous as what i imagined.

none of that now days. i don't think people know what they are missing out on not using their imaginations.

hueseph Wed, 03/06/2013 - 22:22

Video killed the radio star.

Audio is as dead as books. There will always be listeners as there will always be readers. There are still people who care more about the music than the image. They are not the majority but they are growing again. It goes in waves. It will likely never be as big as it once was when stereos were the largest appliance in the living room but there are still listeners out there.

anonymous Thu, 03/07/2013 - 01:05

audiokid, post: 401855 wrote: I have no idea Bob. I keep thinking its time to get out of it all and enjoy life. I'm giving a year to either go nuts at it or sell what I don't need and buy a rototiller and a bigger boat.

said in my best Ronald Reagan voice... "There you go again.." ;)

You don't have to chuck it all in to enjoy life, pal.

pcrecord Mon, 03/11/2013 - 11:08

As long as it's illegal to watch movies while driving, I'll listen to music without images. So to me, audio is not dead.
Actually, unless we all go deaf, I feel audio will never die. Can you picture 100 persons looking at a big screen while dancing in a club? Nah, boys prefer looking for the next girl to bring home instead of a plastic made artist he'll never touch.
Dam I must sell this idea now, dance in a 3d video disco bar. Bring me a Hollowdeck mister data !! (for the star trek fans)

Video is a great marketing tool but filming a string will never give you the same result as the sound a violin or a guitar produce...

After all my blattering, I guess, the question is more; is quality dead ?? Since the streaming limitation of youtube and the poor stuff you can find online, a lot beeing film with an Iphone... Another question, is: will the next generation still hear the difference between mp3 and wav ? (or is the actual one do?):biggrin:

hueseph Mon, 03/11/2013 - 14:11

Assumptions that people still listen to musicians though. There aren't many musicians in the scene anymore. Fewer at least than the plethora of DJs and "producers". I think I understand how farmers feel now when they ask kids where heir food comes from and they answer "the grocery store". Kids don't connect music with musicians anymore. It's the DJ or the "producer". As if the music magically happens on the vinyl as it spins or on the laptop.

Thomas W. Bethel Tue, 03/12/2013 - 03:28

Here we do both audio and video production. It has been that way for the past 6 years. More and more of our clients want music videos done to compliment their audio recordings. We do a lot of on location recording and lately this has meant both audio and video recordings are needed of the event. The recording world is changing and either you keep on top of the changes or risk being left behind. We do multi-camera shoots of all the concerts we record and that means we have to do a lot of post production after the fact. Some of our clients seem to think that video should be as cheap as audio and don't understand that we have big upfront cost as well as the time spent in post production. More and more people are doing all of their audio themselves and really don't need professionals to help them. I can see that pretty soon, with the advent of cheaper and cheaper cameras and DVWs, that people will also be doing all their own video work and what we provide, as professionals, will also no longer be needed. The time of the DIYer has arrived and everyone wants to be the next Steven Spielberg or George Lucas but if what I see on YouTube is any indication they have a long way to go.

We live in interesting times...

BobRogers Tue, 03/12/2013 - 04:56

hueseph, post: 402021 wrote: Assumptions that people still listen to musicians though. There aren't many musicians in the scene anymore. Fewer at least than the plethora of DJs and "producers". I think I understand how farmers feel now when they ask kids where heir food comes from and they answer "the grocery store". Kids don't connect music with musicians anymore. It's the DJ or the "producer". As if the music magically happens on the vinyl as it spins or on the laptop.

But this is only completely true in a genre like Electronic Dance Music. Dance music has always been an odd niche from EDM to Disco to James Brown to...Strauss Waltzes. It's beat driven not melody driven. (I almost said "not music driven," but the drummers would have killed me.) It doesn't want to distract the dancers from the serious business of moving in the most erotic way allowed by local custom without stomping each others' feet. Since subwoofers became widely available, dance music has gotten simpler and simpler. When you start a "song" with 40Hz quarter notes being pumped out at 95 dB SPL there isn't much room for musicians.