From another thread:

It is kind of interesting.

Let's do this.

Thomas Kuhn described scientific progress as a succession of revolutionary paradigm shifts. This understanding can be applied to other things as well. Such as music production. A system can seem very stable and resistant to change, but just beneath the surface new discoveries and advances are constantly challenging its stability. Ultimately another paradigm shift takes place and for a while things move very fast.

Arguably in music production this kind of shift happened at some point in the late 80s or the very early 90s. Suddenly very few people really gave any shits about analog synths and just wanted the new Korg M1, which was pure and digital and sounded like a piano, horn section and the seinfeld bass. It really was all about the new digital stuff.

So why do we now seem to care so much about this "vintage" stuff again?

Mark Fisher described capitalist culture as increasingly incapable of creating new memories. Only the immediate now is privileged. For example, media stories tend to dominate national or even international attention for a day or two and are then never brought up again. Simultaneously we do not seem to be creating any new authentic novel lasting value. Because we fear the future and cannot remember the present we turn backwards. Our culture is increasingly nostalgic towards the times it still could generate authenticity.

People in the 70s were not nostalgic for the 30s, 40s or the 50s the same way we seem to be nostalgic for the past.

Conversation starters:

- What do you think the next music production paradigm will be/look like?
- Do you think we will ever start generating new memories again?
- Is this just complete horseshit?
- Sorry about the title.

 

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be, that's for sure!

Yes they were, actually.
I asked everyone!
But seriously, my grandparents in the 70s would talk of the 50s a lot.

D-50 first, c'mon!

We won't be able to discuss that here.

 

Sure, nostalgia, let alone older people talking about the good old days has always been around. One of the top grossing films of the 70s, Grease, played directly to the then generational nostalgia for the 1950s. It has been said to be one of the first of this kind of movies.

On the other hand if we look at the top grossing films of the 2010's:



It is quite striking to say the least. Only three films in the top 15 (Frozen movies and Furious 7) can be said to originate from the 2000s. And two of those are sequels. Rest of them are remakes and franchises that go back at least to the 90s.

Maybe it could be argued that top grossing movies don't really reflect the wider culture, but it seems we have quite a shift here. With music the trend isn't as clear though.

Oh no, I think I said a naughty no-no word.

 

And the 5 Marvel are from comic books from the 60s!
Nostalgia too.
You are making very good ponts here...

 

Great post - with no right-wrong answers - room for many perspectives.
I know you started with 'music production tech' but you quickly expanded it to music culture generally - so I'll comment there.

That's a very dense question with dozens of interpretations.
So, just one perspective...

In our music culture we have never stopped developing new memories and are doing so faster than ever before,
but we can discuss why we might feel that's false.
Here's some rambling about that.

Firstly, we note a huge difference between
1) people that only consume music, and
2) people that consume and make music.

Group 1) consumers first... (in cartoon-like description)
Generation boundaries are fluid and ill defined but even so, every generation is really intense about music consumption during their teens and early twenties. Whatever is the sound track for that phase of their life gets imprinted as 'amazing'.
So, consider 3 Generations J - K - L
Generation-K, in their teens, knows for a fact that their generation invented music (and sex and denim) and that their music is amazing. They also know that pre-cursors to real music, the stuff liked by their parents Generation-J, is just silly stuff to be sneered at.
Then when Generation-L arrives, they in turn sneer at the music liked by Generation -K.
Generation-K, now getting older, is convinced that music culture is totally falling apart and they cannot understand why Generation-L is listening to pure garbage instead of real music.

A bit of the above farce is in all of us.

Group 2) Many (but not all) of the people that engage with actually making music come to realise that, surprise surprise, every previous generation has produced amazing music too.
So then (with luck) they realise that it's just dumb to limit themselves to exploring only one era of music.
But even with this more enlightened attitude, it can still be hard to shake off the (utterly false) feeling
that music is somehow always going downhill from what it used to be in the good old days
Hence our misplaced pining for nostalgia.

That feeling gets reinforced by the very real phenomenon where today the quantity of stuff being produced is vastly greater than ever before. And so it's sometimes hard to believe that today there really is much more good music around than ever before. It's harder to see that reality because the good stuff is buried amongst mountains of pure shit and so you have to be quite proactive to find the good stuff.

So, it's worth recognising that...
- Good music has always been around (for centuries) and is always growing
(an endless accelerating stream of new memories)
- Garbage has always been around too - and is growing even faster.

Which is better...?
a) 10 pieces of great music surrounded by 90 pieces of shit
or
b) 100 pieces of great music surrounded by 900 pieces of shit.

For authentic musicians it is still (and more than ever before) an infinite treasure trove of possibilities,
especially if you divorce yourself from any sense of belonging to any one era or any one genre.

 

Last edited: Sep 30, 2021

This movie list is unrealistic.
1. Asia has opened up to cinema in only recent 10-15 years or so, so movies that were released prior to a much bigger market earned a lot less.
2. Promotion. Much more people see trailers and other promotions due to the internet being so available, so more people go to the cinema.
3. There are movies that were made for 1mil $ and made 50 mil $ dollars or more and they are not on the list, you calculate the ratio and such movies were more succesful.
4. Nilishm and ADHD syndrome in masses due to constantly being glued to their smart phones, they need a circus to pay attention, due to fried brains, they can not follow deeper stories, kind of like junkies and alcoholics.
5. Inflation, older movies that made as much money are not on the list but if you calculate the gross with an inflation calculator you will see they made even more.

 

Well there's been some pretty good technical improvements,
but maybe they passed inadvertently/gradually enough as to not be considered Paradigm shifting..

Things like, Oversampling and Linear Phase processing, Convolution and IR modeling,
a certain capacity for analog circuitry response Emulation, things like Autotune or Melodyne Dna.. (will think more examples..)


-One thing that almost was Paradigm shifting was surely Melodyne DNA,
when the Promo spot came out it looked like Impossible voodoo magic from the next century..

But alas, to a point it was!

The original spot/teaser where the guy modified full acoustic guitar chords on the spot with absolute Pristine results,
happened to be just a mere "representation" of the concept, etc..

Then the stuff came out and it wasn't exactly as Pristine/capable,
good stuff, but just a little/gradual improvement over what Autotune was already doing..


-Another thing that almost was paradigm shifting was, Kemper Amplifier,
when it came out and showed its capabilities of profiling real amps/rigs with such accuracy..
the sky dome seemed to be about to crack lol

But yeah then we kinda got used to it, just as we got used to the super Deeply Modeled stuff like Axe-FX,
or perhaps Bias Amp kinda stuff..


-I guess one of the reasons why some stuff doesn't get to be significant enough as to be paradigm shifting,
is the fact that things evolve steadily and progressively/gradually..

Modern fully featured/massive Kontakt instruments of today would have been Impossible 20 years ago,
but sampled instruments already existed back then.. the incredible instruments of today are just a direct,
logic and gradual Evolution of what we had back then..


-Oh and since we're at it, a Paradigm shift to consider were the 3DFX Voodoo cards..!
It wasn't completely new, stuff.. afterall if it existed is because thanks to Silicon Graphics collaboration OpenGL was made.

But suddenly we got in our homes 3D graphic capabilities that would only have been possible in Cinema or Industrial/Tech design,
just a year before that!

I mean everything they did on those early movies with 3D graphics, (the lawnmower etc..)
you could have almost perfectly done with a couple of Voodoo 2 cards, and given enough time to render..

Arguably Jurassic park type stuff was also on the reach,
but that tyrannosaur was made with such a detailed and technical approach, only serious engineering level work could have obtained..

But in broad terms, the Sudden surge of OpenGL based graphics in our homes was pretty much paradigm shifting,
both in Entertaiment, and professional applications like CAD, 3DMax/Maya and all that stuff..

 

Last edited: Sep 30, 2021

Nobody is nostalgic about being in a war.

Ask an Italian what he remembers most fondly after coming home from a world war.

He gon say "My friend give me this peperonis and I never seen these peperonis"

 

I know sound engineers from the industry who were working on those things in the 90s.
Just saying.

Well put. Same but different! Better.
My W-30 had multi layers of samples for a piano sound in 1990 or whenever it was.
Just not as deep as EXS or Kontakt.
EXS24 is deep, you know?
And we've had that since the 90s!
Most powerful sampler at the time, even in comparison to hardware.

 

Nostalgia ain't what it used to be - is both funny and true - We (humans) have a strange and necessary ability to subconsciously filter and edit our memories, and yes we often "remember" things not as they were but as we want them to have been. So when someone says "Ah the past - the only home an Italian / Frenchman / Englishman ever knows" its probably true to a greater or lesser extent, and this is something that is fed by people selling things - be it political views, films, music, fashion - whatever, and yes it is kind of lazy but it works.

The biggest paradigm shift in music for me has been the evolution of electronic music, someone older may say the birth of Rock and Roll, someone else may point to something else - which raises a question - what have been the paradigm shift's in music for you? As for the next - who knows, I'm just glad I was around to witness something as amazing as "Rave culture" being born...

final thought - I guess a paradigm shift can never happen in isolation it's always an evolution. An evolution that most may be unaware of as @Ŧยχøя suggests, but still an evolution. For example - would the double helix have been described by Watson and Crick were it not for Rosalind Franklin?

 

Last edited: Sep 30, 2021

We live in the now digital age, technology has always changed society. See steam engine, car and the invention of plastic. Some people get scared. Whole populations are controlled with fear, this happens through the publicly accessible media. The internet means more freedom for people. Those in power would like to control the internet too. But they don't make it. They cannot turn it off because there are many million jobs attached to the internet and billions of euros are made with it. The analog (hardware) is transformed into the digital (software).

For a great many people this means access to knowledge and information as well as education. Technology is bad as well as good.
When people are confronted with this whole flood of information from the computer, it scares them or they are overwhelmed. Then some people take refuge in old "programs" and ways of thinking. It is then called nostalgia as you described. But it is a fashionable term that says nothing and the real problem of excessive demands is not solved with it.The solution lies more in psychology and learning the new technology.

Everyone wants the Internet and connected with it is the opportunity to play and try out software instruments for free. Access to music is also made easy with free music offers from YouTube, Soundcloud and Spotify. Then there are a thousand radio stations where everyone can individually listen to the music they like. The old ways of thinking and habits change with the digital, this is called progress and we become and are part of progress.

 

Hmm. Yet we also have the ability to constantlty remember something from the time it happened onward, and not change the memory.
I don't subscribe to memeories being false or changing over time.
If so, that person is lying to themselves and not truly awake.

Agreed though.
People consciously like to fill in the gaps and smoove things over, usually for re-tell purposes, I've noticed!
Poetic justice, I guess.
But then they start believing it and forget the original occurence fully!
Reprogamming themselves.

Hey @MarkyMW
I used to know a guy at school called Mark Watkins.
Was into graffiti and Hip Hop.
Used to call him Marky W, pronounced Marky Wer!
Wouldn't it be amazing...?

 

Last edited: Sep 30, 2021

and yet there you go... your memory just warped the lyrics;
the original was sung as "wouldn't it be nice...?"

 

It would.... but no sorry, thats not me, honestly no, not me... uh hu no...

As for memory its not always 100% not everyone has perfect recall. But yes some people do and everyone is different.

I guess when it come to nostalgia I talking about the individual but more about the ideas that grow out of the group and then become lies that people tell themselves. For example "I remember when no one used to lock their front door and everyone used to pull together" implying that there was no crime and everyone was altruistic. The harking back to a time or rather an idea of a past that never really existed. Or to put it another way "looking back with rose tinted glasses".

or to put it another way "everything sounded better in the 70s and on vinyl - and thats a FACT"

but yes I get what you mean about being AWAKE

 

No; I get on with my neighbours! lol
Oh God. Don't be talking Beach Boys...
Vintage vs. Digital vs. Nostalgia
<Fight!> lol

 

My memory's faded
Was it just Good Vibrations? or Then I kissed Her? - God Only Knows - I Get around!

 

These lists are not worth a damn. If I take The Empire Strikes Back as an example, a ticket cost an average of 9DM back then. 9DM is 4.60€ in today's currency (not adjusted for inflation). A ticket of the same value today costs 9-10€. More people in the world have access to cinemas, etc.. So it's only normal that movies make 'more money' today. After all, they cost more. What is more interesting is the number of tickets sold in relation to the number of participating cinemas.

 

- bollox man... Japan has had a film industry since the 20's at least.

 

Wahoo... this is a fun diversion for old (young) farts like me, 53yrs, know quality productions from trap-crap *_^

 

Music and cinema can be accused of wallowing in / selling nostalgia. But as computer games overtake cinema in terms of profitability / market size - when do we think the computer game market will be awash with "retro" / nostalgic tat...?