One of the questions that I’ve been asking lately is what is better, old school music or today’s music. Many people I personally asked answered “old school music” 3 to 1. The music back in the day was recorded and performed with live musicians. Their creativity was unparallel. And many of our past artists had a true desire and love for the artistry of music. So how do we adopt some of the qualities that artist and musicians had from the past and incorporate them to today’s music in all genres? And when I ask this I don’t mean by sampling tracks or remixing older songs. I mean going back to the grass roots of originality and creativity.
Some of the solutions I came up with is so simple yet difficult to. We have to take it back to live recordings with live instruments (this pertains to mostly hip-hop and R&B) Maybe even go back to having listening groups like Barry Gordy did when he invented Motown Records. Another thing that changed is the lack patience when it comes to making good music. In the past, artists didn’t really have a choice due to getting all of the musicians together, recording the music no matter how many takes they had to do (remember there was no autotone or Protools in those days), mixing and mastering the album, and then wait for distribution which was vinyl. Could it be that artists today just don’t take the time necessary to make a good album or is it the record companies that are trying to rush the entire process?
One good thing that is happening is that independent artists are at an all time high. Due to the advances in technology, independent artists can get as much exposure if not more than the artists that are with today’s record labels. This allows the indie artists to have more creative control with their music in regards to originality and timeliness. Some artists are even leaving their record label to become indie artists so that they can have more control of not only their creativity, but also their intellectual property and royalties. No matter how it is done its going to be interesting to see if we can get back to the quality of music that we grew up on and be able to once again enjoy good music.
