For those who start at the beginning, the growth of popular music's complexity is apparent: while there were early experimenters with structure and harmony such as Orbison, most early rock and roll tunes were based on cookie-cutter formulas derived from simplifying older forms of pop music as well as rhythm and blues. Then the Beatles opened the floodgates to a whole host of experimentation by using the recording studio as an instrument in and of itself.
Ironically, the Beatles turned inward to the recording studio because it was a superior technology to that era's underpowered and generally god-awful equipment that prevented them from being heard during their live performances. The interplay between technology and music is a subtle (and perhaps unintended) subtext of the book: while music grew more complex as recording become more sophisticated in the 1960s and 1970s, the perfection of synthesizers and drum machines in the early 1980s ushered in an age of simplification: because that equipment sounded so good simply by pushing a few buttons, or holding a simple chord shape on a keyboard, pop music in general became simplified and clean-cut. The return in popularity of hard rock, via such guitar-based bands such as Guns and Roses, and Seattle's grunge acts, was in direct response to this.
If you'd like to read how artists and their producers have used the recording studio as a composing and arranging instrument, turning simple three minute songs into a complex art form, Inside Classic Rock Tracks certainly makes for a fun read.
Article comments