High Fidelity

“Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of the radio, believed that sound waves never completely die away, that they persist, fainter and fainter, masked by the day-to-day noise of the world. Marconi thought that if he could only invent a microphone powerful enough, he would be able to listen to the sound of ancient times. The Sermon on the Mount, the footfalls of Roman soldiers marching down the Appian Way.” 

 ~ Hari Kunzru’s White Tears

Space and sound: the 700 square foot storefront at Sun Studios, the Ryman Auditorium, the low-ceilinged basement at Motown's Hitsville USA, the Royal Albert Hall, the movie theater where Willie Nelson recorded Teatro, the Echo Chambers at Capital Tower, Abbey Road, the humid cellar of Villa Nelcotte in the south of France where The Stones recorded Exile on Mainstreet, Carnegie Hall, the concrete eyesore that is Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, RCA Studio B, WMGM’s Fine Sound Studios where Miles Davis birthed cool, Sound City Studios, the old church that was turned into Columbia Records 30th Street Studios, Stax Records, Trident Studios in London where Ziggy Stardust landed, 210 South Michigan Avenue, the Sydney Opera House, the stairwell at Headley Grange where John Bonham record the drums for “When the Levee Breaks,” Electric Lady Studios. You get the point. I’m obsessed with sounds produced in specific spaces at specific times.  

When you play a song live, there’s no intermediary between you and the sound being produced. I am spellbound by acoustic sounds. Vibrations that emanate from instrument or mouth, produce waves that jangle air particles, pierce our ears, and are perceived, without filter, by our brains. Principally, sound is the process of setting air to motion. The physics of sound is waves and pressure and velocity; it’s reflection and refraction and attenuation. But sound is also a sensation: a way of perceiving a motion we cannot see. Sound is an experience — a beautiful marriage of the physical and mental — that can be appreciated purely in only the space and at the time where and when it is being created. 

Sure, you can record sound. You can amplify it. You can digitize it and translate it into binary. But, all recordings, analog or digital, never fully capture the space in which it was made. The recording and transmission of sound is ultimately a fool’s errand. A shadow on the wall of Plato’s cave. An approximation. Further, compressed digital files like mp3s are altogether an alien language; they’re sonic pulp, a computerized bastardization of human-made sound. Digital sound is not, by design, human sound. Direct-to-disc (what was once the green dragon of high fidelity vinyl recording) is as close as you can get to capturing live sound. The wave movement of space is captured directly onto the grooves of the record. (Grooves are not 0s and 1s). But still. You put that ultra high fidelity record on, and you’re in a different space. You’re in your living room (a spot where you’ve planted, like a flag in the ground, your obnoxiously big turntable, amp, and speaker setup despite your wife’s protestation). It’s still not the same as being there when that note was played or lyric was sung. 

There are some songs I play over and over again in my little basement music room. When I’m flipping through my Big Binder of Songs, I always seem to stop at Ryan Adams’s “Hard Way to Fall.” I keep playing it, first, because it’s a brilliant song, and, second, because I am trying to fully capture the essence and performance of the song this time. I am trying to achieve a certain sound — in this space at this time. Sometimes I get pretty close. Most of the time I just “cover” it and move on. I guess what I am trying to confess here is that I am aware of and in awe of the potential in that magical space I’ve procured for myself in the underground part of my house. There’s a way, I know it, to move that air with that song in such a particular way that transfiguration is possible. That space, as somewhere to reach for the sonic and emotional absoluteness of a song, is holy to me. 

You know that central image on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam? That narrow but infinite space between the finger of god and the finger of man? That’s what I am going on about here, folks. There is something about live, acoustic performance that is holy and something about recorded performance and digitized music that is forever and ever a simulation. It’s the outline of the thing and not the thing itself. As someone who takes the recording of song very seriously, this truth is devastating. 

So what do we do in the face of this reality, that music in its purest form — as a live performance — cannot be accurately recorded or preserved? Most people say, “Close enough. Stop all this ranting, Baker. This isn’t good for your health.” To those I offer: “You’re right. And don’t worry; I’m fine.” Practically, however, what I am trying to do now is reframe my approach to recording. 

I am heading back into the studio, and this time I am going to try to prioritize the space. I am going to try to capture as close as possible the way instruments and voices sound in space. I am mulling over hard engineering questions. (A thing I am in no way qualified to do which is why producers and engineers are so important in the process). How can I make this highly orchestrated, technical, and digitized process more visceral, more live, more reflective of the space and time in which the air was shaped to wave? Acoustic performance is one way, and by acoustic performance I don’t mean just acoustic guitar. I mean capturing the actual sound waves produced by a real piano, a real amplifier, a real voice. The ideal: no direct to console recording. No synthesized sounds. No MIDIs or plugins. No recording that’s not done in real space in real time. 

Of course! I am going to break this promise as soon as I get into a studio chock full of amazing technological innovations. But the aim remains fixed. Or, at least this intention will become the touchstone for the conceptual sound of the record. 

This is getting technical and silly and all too theoretical. For those still reading, bless you. But, I hope what is coming across here is the pursuit of an ideal. For what is art if not the attempt to depict and capture ideal Forms? There is no higher Beauty or Spirit than the art of Song. This futile quest to preserve Song in its purest is no less absurd than other quests. It, at the very least, offers me a direction to journey.