Sunday, November 13, 2011

THE TOOMUCHNESS OF TODAY’S CD’s CONTENTS

Rainbow Studios-Oslo,Norway

by Claudio Botelho 
One thing I miss about vinyl records: they couldn’t last more than some forty-five minutes or so. The 80 min. recording capacity of CD has been hard pressing musicians into “filling it up”all the time and surely this has been detrimental to the quality of their art.
Rarely do I listen to all the songs of a CD in one take: the quality is often at stake and boredom always prevails at some instance: seventy or eighty minutes of inspiration is a bit too much… For them, if you gather what I mean…
To make it double is jeopardize still further. I never buy a double CD, even if my excuse is the flimsiness of their jewel cases or the awkwardness of their cardboard enclosures. I always find a reason not to do…
Music is not grain, salt or sugar, which are quantity valued; music is art and five minutes of subliminal inspiration certainly is much more treasured than eighty minutes of a lesser effort. So, the artist would better invest in quality as opposed to quantity, but, it seems to me, they’ve been much obliged to write lots of songs each time they decide to make a new work.
I count not the number of unlistened last-songs CD’s I possess. This is aggravated to some extent If one takes into account that (it seems to me), other than an inaugural carefully chosen songs (mostly in faster tempi), the remaining are arranged at random. So, I would not be lying if I said I have some very secret treasured canned songs at home. You know, I’m included in the bunch of their non listeners…
The tried and tested method of distributing the songs in CD’s is to alternate slow and fast tempo ones; there’s no mistake and it’s no use trying differently, as this is in accordance to human nature which, you may know, will never change.  Otherwise, boredom arrives and, in a short time, the listener finds himself indulging in other things…
So, please, musicians, producers and sound engineers: don’t overstuff the product of yours. You’d better reshape the good into turning it better; the better into turning it excellent and the excellent into turning it exceptional. Those of us – mere humble consumers – will thank you forever!

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