Does the average listener really care if its analog?

[GaryG]

It doesnt matter what the listener cares about, it matters what the artist cares about.

Yep.

The listeners won't give a hoot with their crappy earbuds most of the time so the only consideration is really if a piece of gear inspires you (the artist). Bit like a guitar, cheap ones still sound great in a mix but a custom/vintage one may inspire you to play better.

[Tronam]

The question is meaningless unless the music is being played on vinyl.

[wonshu]

The question is meaningless unless the music is being played on vinyl.

You mean unless it (the question) is being played on vinyl?

[noiseboyuk]

The average listener wouldn't understand the question.

Yes, and if you explained it to them, the look on their face would answer the OP's question.

Love that.

So the argument came round to "if the artists need it, its worthwhile", which is fair enough. And so logically if the artist doesn't need it - no consequence whatsoever.

[Armadillosound]

They couldn't care less.
If they like the tune, they like the tune
It's as simple as that

[Tricky-Loops]

This question is similar to what designers hear all day. "Why do I need to pay you when all you do is change the font and move that paragraph a bit to the right?"

Back at design university one of my teachers had created a new fountain pen for pupils, which was then manufactured by a company that wasn't exactly successful in that market. To most people it would look like every other pen. Yet, while no-one could put in words why they would prefer one pen over the other, this pen swept the competition away within a year. It won all the awards, in some countries it became the fountain pen that was supplied to pupils by the state.

Subtle things can make differences. Designers know and musicians know as well.

Just my 2c albeit strongly biased ones.

- Urs

FOR THE ARTIST it's surely more fun (and needs less time!) to write a hit song with Diva than with 20 instances of Synth1 and loads of effects. But for the AVERAGE listener only the end result is important, not how it was produced. If the music sounds good, it is good.

Or in your example: If the pen is useful, it's useful. But the AVERAGE user of the pen won't care about whether the pen is built by huge automatic machines in Austria or with manual work in China...

[arkmabat]

GaryG is spot on

[Sendy]

The average listener may not care, but on the other hand, the minute you care about whether THEY care, you've lost the game, you're in mediocre "me too!" city.

A large body of people are trying to completely remove the journey and the context from electronic music. Only the end result counts. Really? Maybe in the most naiive reading of the situation. The truth is, how you feel when you write that music will rub off on it. Working with tools that you have a deep connection with is more satisfying, and how you feel IS IMPORTANT as you create. It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it.

We are not automatons or black boxes spewing out products in a vacuum.

[Tricky-Loops]

The average listener may not care, but on the other hand, the minute you care about whether THEY care, you've lost the game, you're in mediocre "me too!" city.

A large body of people are trying to completely remove the journey and the context from electronic music. Only the end result counts. Really? Maybe in the most naiive reading of the situation. The truth is, how you feel when you write that music will rub off on it. Working with tools that you have a deep connection with is more satisfying, and how you feel IS IMPORTANT as you create. It's not what you do, it's the way that you do it.

We are not automatons or black boxes spewing out products in a vacuum.

Well, the question was about the average LISTENER, not about the artist. The artist might have high standards regarding the style, purpose and quality of her/his music but for the listener only the end result counts. If you work half a year on a piece of elaborated music, and then nobody listens to it because it sounds too experimental, what's the sense of it? Okay, that you feel better as artist and you can call it "masterpiece"...

(And I don't mean your music in this case...)

[Phase47]

A large body of people are trying to completely remove the journey and the context from electronic music.

Two highly important aspects of electronic music if you ask me.

[jancivil]

The people that love my music either believe it is live music or they know it is me ITB and are amazed it comes across that way, 'warmth', and 'grit' and live; human, feeling like human interaction of musicians.

"Analog" is this thing people argue about on KVR and one supposes, Gearslutz. There is distortion and movement we older people took from the days when 'analog' was what there was. If you can't get this character in the box, you have to have teh analog thingy itself, I say you're weak in some way, you haven't cared enough to obtain that area of chops in one way or another. So I don't even know the things in the OP, they're analog or are they emus? I don't care, the argument is a sad waste of time IMO. A lot of these things didn't sound great to me to begin with. (That said, I would buy Monark, totally. Don't need it, but like it, would be convenient. And fun.)

But I think, I hope if you're listening to a T and the U-F track you're taken away on a trip; or at least somewhere better than 'is this analog', even as my audience is not made up so much as 'average guy' but of people involved in music.

[Sendy]

Well, the question was about the average LISTENER, not about the artist. The artist might have high standards regarding the style, purpose and quality of her/his music but for the listener only the end result counts. If you work half a year on a piece of elaborated music, and then nobody listens to it because it sounds too experimental, what's the sense of it? Okay, that you feel better as artist and you can call it "masterpiece"...

(And I don't mean your music in this case...)

There's still a bunch of expectations, idioms, customs, and probably a whole bunch of other stuff that musicologists can name and measure, that plays into the listener's experience of music.

And yes, a lot of genuinely great art, musical and otherwise, just falls by the wayside, never to be heard by more than 10 people - often to be rediscovered when the artist died, only to make a bunch of other people tons of money. Van Gogh was considered a total looser in his time, it doesn't change the fact that he was a visionary.

I get what you're saying, what's the point in making something nobody enjoys or benefits from - and I see that - but art is something, in my humble opinion, deeper than that, it's a coping mechanism. The best art is created in such a manner that you get the impression the artist had no choice but to create that art. It's not done for entertainment, but out of neccecity.

Where does the "value" of art come from? Where does the "meaning" in a lyric or text lie? Pretty much everywhere and nowhere.

[jancivil]

The truth is, how you feel when you write that music will rub off on it. Working with tools that you have a deep connection with is more satisfying, and how you feel IS IMPORTANT as you create.

I feel like crap all of the time, though.

No, I get it. I do quite some sound design at the beginning of anything, the sound guides me, it's the same as a screenwriter creates backstory and conflicts between characters based in what they bring to the situation and they speak. There is such a thing as 'writing' more or less in the abstract but I want the sound world first.

We are not automatons or black boxes

A lot of Product seems to come from these, though.

[jancivil]

Well, the question was about the average LISTENER, not about the artist. The artist might have high standards regarding the style, purpose and quality of her/his music but for the listener only the end result counts. If you work half a year on a piece of elaborated music, and then nobody listens to it because it sounds too experimental, what's the sense of it? Okay, that you feel better as artist and you can call it "masterpiece"...

Sendy already brought it, Van Gogh made things that are today acknowledged as masterpieces, that people pay outlandish sums for, probably knew they were what they are, and almost nobody cared at all at the time. Not enough for his brother Theo to make any sales, anyway.

This is not an unusual situation. It indicates that the people you expect should govern what the artist does could well be the wrong people.

Your rhetorical question actually states that the only 'sense of it' is defined by acceptance, and the context here is 'the average listener'. I think that's very sad.

I make music that I want to hear rather than expect someone will make it or something just like it. I keep my ears to the ground and curious and hopeful and I find great music that breaks ground quite often. But through a life of creating music I have things I want to happen, whether or not that corresponds with anybody else's preference.

[lectrixboogaloo]

Not sure how analog plays into this, but amazingly somehow the average 'stupid' listener has some arcane ability that can sort things into 'real sounding' and 'fake sounding stuff'. They may very well like computer generated stuff, providing it sounds 'good'. On the other hand, they also have this weird technique of sorting music into 'good' and 'bad' music, in general. That's something producers sometimes have trouble with. Confounding.