Neither of my parents are musicians, but they are admirers of music. When I think back to my childhood there is always music playing; Manhattan Transfer while we cleaned the glass surfaces in the living room, the Amadeus soundtrack while I was doing homework, "Breakfast with The Beatles" every Sunday morning on the kitchen radio. We never had a single car ride without the radio on.
Only in the last few years have I been able to reflect upon how this has impacted my life, and who I became. I'm old enough now, and far enough along in my quest for a career, that I find myself searching for why I do what I do. And it all comes down to one object: The Beatles' "White Album," transfered to a cassette tape by my dad in the late 80s.
There's something so special about this tape that I can barely put it into words, but I'm going to try.
My parents divorced when I was in elementary school, and the easy answer would be that this is something left that my dad gave me before that happened. But that's not why it still speaks to me. I admit that I love my dad's handwriting, and I remember trying to write like him when I was a kid. Some letters are angular, and others are bubbly and smooth. But really it's what's in the cassette tape that matters. That magical magnetic tape that held such incredible sounds. I used to listen to this specific tape—what was called "The White Album" though really it was given no such name—on my walkman every night in bed for four or five years throughout middle school and high school. The Beatles were this untouchable musical force, so much so that regardless of what current music I was into at the time I still had the urge to listen. Now that I have a more biased ear from years of musical training in college I wish it was a different album. I recognize now that it was three solo albums spread out over two LPs and then transfered onto one magnetic tape, but even when I was 10 that wasn't what I was listening for.
The thing that stood out to me, even back then, was the way the music was presented aurally on the tape. How the studio had it mixed, how the channels were used, what instruments were grouped together. Though at the time I had no idea what any of that meant. But I did understand how those things were impacting my experience with the music. When I laid on my left ear, and the headphone was pressed up against my left side, I heard the rhythm guitar and vocals. When I laid on my right ear, I heard the lead guitar, vocals, and percussion. Though that was just "Back in the USSR." The next track, "Dear Prudence," had the lead guitar on the left, with percussion and piano, and lead guitar on the right channel as well. I remember being frustrated lying on either side when one channel or another disappeared. These days I sleep on my back; I think it was because I found the disappearing channels in my headphones so irritating that I made sure to sleep on my back and get both sides.
For "Back in the USSR," it was clear that they thought the lyrics were more important than the rest, so they put the singing on both sides. In "Dear Prudence," the lead guitar was important, so it got both sides. When you think about the differences between Paul and John it makes sense. John loved the sound of guitars; "Ticket to Ride" was an important song for him because the main attention was to that wonderful guitar lick that dominated the entire track. Paul found singing preferable to just about anything else; he quit playing trumpet when he was a kid because he wanted to sing instead. He also had no qualms switching from guitar to bass in the early days of the band; as long as he got to sing he was happy.
The psychological impact of this mixing on the way listeners interpret a piece is really interesting to me now as a music academic. Admittedly, the use of "one side" versus the "other side" is a concern when it comes to listening to mono tracks through stereo equipment. At the time "The White Album" was recorded, stereo sound technology was a dream more than a reality. Movie theaters were just starting to experiment with stereo speakers; casual listeners on car radios and at home on record players got one channel with all the layers played together. The music was recorded on multiple tracks for the sake of controlling the sound and mixing it together, but that had little impact on the placement of the sounds when someone listened. Now, with stereo sound, the channel placement is exposed in stereo separation of the tracks. Changing from one speaker to two changes the spatial array of the sound; once people figured this out, they paid careful attention to what instruments were put where.
Jimi Hendrix presents a great example of this. His live performances were dynamic; he'd cross the stage, left to right, playing his incredible guitar solos to eager ears. Studio engineers attempted to emulate this effect by panning his guitar solos from left to right and back on records, so that aural space was filled with "moving" sound. Yet when he played live the audience didn't hear the guitar change sides on the stage, they just saw it. Even though his guitar moved the speakers on either side of the stage played the sound equally loud, without bias. The sensation of movement was manufactured through an aural pan in that vast, empty space between our two ears.
The result is that listeners began to hear and experience music differently. By placing the instruments and voices in specific places in the stereo mix, the recording engages the visual imagination of the listener. And when I was 10, I couldn't help but hear that space. I might not have been able to physically see The Beatles playing their instruments to make the recording, but I subconsciously recognized that there was a bodied source of that sound at the time it was captured on disc. There was depth to the sound, each channel had a message, and each song had a different point of view based on what part was placed where.
It took until my doctoral studies for me to find out that this was the backbone of all the research I had done. And it took finding out that others had also focused on this phenomenon to realize it was something that really does have an impact. Most stereo recordings now place instruments equally in all places so that both ears of the headphone have all the sounds. So when a 10 year old today lays down in bed with their iPod they get all the components of a track regardless of which side of their head has the headphone pressed more firmly against their ear canal. The exposing of the aural array with the introduction of stereo speakers was, and still is, crucial to the way listener experience music. When The Beatles finally made their way to compact disc in the late 80s they didn't remix the songs for stereo, they left the channels exposed, porting the mono tracks to a stereo medium. The result was the sensation of those albums being live performances for the listener; that gap between the mind's eye and the actual eye was filled with instruments, some on the left, some on the right, some in the sinuses, some at the back of the neck. Such an interesting result, seeing as so much of their output was never performed live.
I study sound design now, particularly in television, but I can't escape its impact in everything I consume. And I've been that way since I was a kid. I have a particular affinity for the 60s, when all of this mixing and stereo exposure was new and exciting. Well, new and exciting for musicians and editors. The consumer technology to allow the stereo mixing to be noticeable wouldn't be in a majority of homes until the 70s, and television wouldn't get regular transmission in stereo until the late 90s.
Who would have thought one cassette tape could have such an impact on one person. You never know, do you ...
ek
Only in the last few years have I been able to reflect upon how this has impacted my life, and who I became. I'm old enough now, and far enough along in my quest for a career, that I find myself searching for why I do what I do. And it all comes down to one object: The Beatles' "White Album," transfered to a cassette tape by my dad in the late 80s.
There's something so special about this tape that I can barely put it into words, but I'm going to try.
My parents divorced when I was in elementary school, and the easy answer would be that this is something left that my dad gave me before that happened. But that's not why it still speaks to me. I admit that I love my dad's handwriting, and I remember trying to write like him when I was a kid. Some letters are angular, and others are bubbly and smooth. But really it's what's in the cassette tape that matters. That magical magnetic tape that held such incredible sounds. I used to listen to this specific tape—what was called "The White Album" though really it was given no such name—on my walkman every night in bed for four or five years throughout middle school and high school. The Beatles were this untouchable musical force, so much so that regardless of what current music I was into at the time I still had the urge to listen. Now that I have a more biased ear from years of musical training in college I wish it was a different album. I recognize now that it was three solo albums spread out over two LPs and then transfered onto one magnetic tape, but even when I was 10 that wasn't what I was listening for.
The thing that stood out to me, even back then, was the way the music was presented aurally on the tape. How the studio had it mixed, how the channels were used, what instruments were grouped together. Though at the time I had no idea what any of that meant. But I did understand how those things were impacting my experience with the music. When I laid on my left ear, and the headphone was pressed up against my left side, I heard the rhythm guitar and vocals. When I laid on my right ear, I heard the lead guitar, vocals, and percussion. Though that was just "Back in the USSR." The next track, "Dear Prudence," had the lead guitar on the left, with percussion and piano, and lead guitar on the right channel as well. I remember being frustrated lying on either side when one channel or another disappeared. These days I sleep on my back; I think it was because I found the disappearing channels in my headphones so irritating that I made sure to sleep on my back and get both sides.
For "Back in the USSR," it was clear that they thought the lyrics were more important than the rest, so they put the singing on both sides. In "Dear Prudence," the lead guitar was important, so it got both sides. When you think about the differences between Paul and John it makes sense. John loved the sound of guitars; "Ticket to Ride" was an important song for him because the main attention was to that wonderful guitar lick that dominated the entire track. Paul found singing preferable to just about anything else; he quit playing trumpet when he was a kid because he wanted to sing instead. He also had no qualms switching from guitar to bass in the early days of the band; as long as he got to sing he was happy.
The psychological impact of this mixing on the way listeners interpret a piece is really interesting to me now as a music academic. Admittedly, the use of "one side" versus the "other side" is a concern when it comes to listening to mono tracks through stereo equipment. At the time "The White Album" was recorded, stereo sound technology was a dream more than a reality. Movie theaters were just starting to experiment with stereo speakers; casual listeners on car radios and at home on record players got one channel with all the layers played together. The music was recorded on multiple tracks for the sake of controlling the sound and mixing it together, but that had little impact on the placement of the sounds when someone listened. Now, with stereo sound, the channel placement is exposed in stereo separation of the tracks. Changing from one speaker to two changes the spatial array of the sound; once people figured this out, they paid careful attention to what instruments were put where.
Jimi Hendrix presents a great example of this. His live performances were dynamic; he'd cross the stage, left to right, playing his incredible guitar solos to eager ears. Studio engineers attempted to emulate this effect by panning his guitar solos from left to right and back on records, so that aural space was filled with "moving" sound. Yet when he played live the audience didn't hear the guitar change sides on the stage, they just saw it. Even though his guitar moved the speakers on either side of the stage played the sound equally loud, without bias. The sensation of movement was manufactured through an aural pan in that vast, empty space between our two ears.
The result is that listeners began to hear and experience music differently. By placing the instruments and voices in specific places in the stereo mix, the recording engages the visual imagination of the listener. And when I was 10, I couldn't help but hear that space. I might not have been able to physically see The Beatles playing their instruments to make the recording, but I subconsciously recognized that there was a bodied source of that sound at the time it was captured on disc. There was depth to the sound, each channel had a message, and each song had a different point of view based on what part was placed where.
It took until my doctoral studies for me to find out that this was the backbone of all the research I had done. And it took finding out that others had also focused on this phenomenon to realize it was something that really does have an impact. Most stereo recordings now place instruments equally in all places so that both ears of the headphone have all the sounds. So when a 10 year old today lays down in bed with their iPod they get all the components of a track regardless of which side of their head has the headphone pressed more firmly against their ear canal. The exposing of the aural array with the introduction of stereo speakers was, and still is, crucial to the way listener experience music. When The Beatles finally made their way to compact disc in the late 80s they didn't remix the songs for stereo, they left the channels exposed, porting the mono tracks to a stereo medium. The result was the sensation of those albums being live performances for the listener; that gap between the mind's eye and the actual eye was filled with instruments, some on the left, some on the right, some in the sinuses, some at the back of the neck. Such an interesting result, seeing as so much of their output was never performed live.
I study sound design now, particularly in television, but I can't escape its impact in everything I consume. And I've been that way since I was a kid. I have a particular affinity for the 60s, when all of this mixing and stereo exposure was new and exciting. Well, new and exciting for musicians and editors. The consumer technology to allow the stereo mixing to be noticeable wouldn't be in a majority of homes until the 70s, and television wouldn't get regular transmission in stereo until the late 90s.
Who would have thought one cassette tape could have such an impact on one person. You never know, do you ...
ek
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