Journey of My Ear!

Okay, maybe it's no accident that since we have a new CD to sell, I am now advocating buying CDs over buying MP3s!


Yes, MP3s have changed our world.  Music is now delivered in small compact files; easily copied and easily transported.  For example, I am currently working with my cousin on a musical project.  He lives in Arizona.  We haven't actually played together in a room for many, many years.  But with MP3s we are able to collaborate on songs together.  We trade tracks via e-mail.  I've been adding guitar parts to his basic tracks.  It's pretty cool.  


But you know, MP3s are also a degraded source of music.  I think about the Journey of My Ear in my lifetime:  from transistor radio to 45 RPM vinyl platter to 33 RPM Long Player to 8 Track tape to cassette tape to CD to MP3.  I started with that tinny little transistor radio, (that really was when I got hooked on music), and ended up with MP3s playing on a little iPod through tinny little earbuds.


When push comes to shove, I must say it was those big vinyl platters spinning on a real-deal turntable, powered through a large amp with massive, killer speakers that was and is the pinnacle of sound for me.  Some of those old records can not be beat in terms of sound.  It's probably the analog nature of the experience. Going digital made everything a little slicker and cleaner.  No skips or pops or crackles. But analog to digital loses a little undefinable something.


Now I do think that CDs made today have gotten close to that vinyl LP pinnacle. And I do buy CDs.  And occasionally LPs too.  My last vinyl purchase was Neil Young's La Noise which on high quality vinyl sounds just superb.  The information encoded in your typical off the shelf CD is of a higher quality, packed with more information than an MP3. The MP3 condenses and eliminates (samples) the spectrum of sound.  It is the essence of sound, but not the whole thing.


Think of the LP or the CD as pure, fresh-squeezed orange juice.  And think of the MP3 as orange juice from concentrate.  Yes, you get the basic essence of the thing.  But not the whole, complete thing.  Yes, you can get used to concentrate, so used to it in fact, that you think it's the complete thing.  But of course it isn't.  Just another small way we fool ourselves into thinking we have it all, when we really don't.