Danny ChaiHave I mentioned I love the new David Crowder album? Love? SN. Somewhere down the line, people switched from calling them “albums” to “CDs”. But in this new iTunes world, are we gonna switch back to album again? Or something else? Anyway.
But yeah, love the album, pretty much been listening to it nonstop, almost to the detriment of my health and work, i.e. I stay up late listening to it and can’t concentrate during the day. So yeah, maybe need a break. But it’s a phenomenal work, I still get excited over every song. I can’t believe it came from Dave Crowder. Stunning.
Anyway, Ted was talking about how it’s a wall of sound type sound, and how he likes that. I’m of two minds about that. I like the wall of sound thing sometimes. But most of the time, I think I’m more about musical space. I’m fascinated by how just a few instruments can still sound full by properly partitioning the musical space. I’m reading Sting’s autobiography and he says much the same thing, that playing in a trio forces you to learn how to partitionl and fill space. The temptation is always to fill all the space with more instrumentation, but a lot of times, less is more.
So I love studying small bands like the Police and U2, especially live. Both manage to sound really full live, even though they’re just drums, bass, and guitar. (Although U2 does use some DAT live.) Figuring out how they do that is a study in technique, dynamics, and mixing, seeing how they play with the infinite grades between full on and nothing. Like Pride (live) is a fascinating study, because it feels really full for the whole song. But again, just three instruments.
So I find musical space a little more interesting than the wall of sound approach, just because the wall of sound varies dynamics more just by adding and subtracting instruments, whereas I like examining individual dynamics more. Also I hate what Phil Specter (I think he invented the term wall of sound) did to Long and Winding Road.
Boring.