“Vinyl stands out like a sore thumb in today’s culture of music consumption which is what makes it so intriguing that new vinyl sales continue to increase world-wide. You can’t listen to vinyl in your car or on the train, or as you bustle and shove your way through the underground on the way to work. You can’t get vinyl for free if you know the right websites and it doesn’t all fit compactly into your pocket. It’s heavy, it’s cumbersome, it warps, skips, and scratches, and it’s expensive. But yet still more and more people each year fall back in love, or even in love for the first time, with vinyl.”
“What music formats that plead convenience do is undermine what music means to billions of music fans world-wide. Music becomes something that needs to be squeezed in while you do something else. It ceases to become a ritual, a sacred thing that one might make time for. Music is something to be multi tasked to, something enjoyed on low quality headphones or on the speakers of your phone, laptop, or iPad. Something to be listened once to and then thrown away.
What vinyl does is create space and time for the music that lies within its grooves. As soon you bring a record into your house, it demands attention. It’s heavy, so you need special shelves for it, especially if you’ve got thousands. You need a turntable, good cartridge and stylus, an amp, and speakers that will all do the record justice, and you need to set up your room for maximum listening pleasure. You need a great chair to collapse into, low lighting and posters of your favourite records. If you’re so inclined you need a bottle of good whiskey and an ashtray too.
You also can’t put a record on and then walk away because it’ll need to be turned over in 17 minutes if you’re playing an LP and 6/7 minutes if it’s a single. Vinyl forces you to sit down and indulge. To give the record the time it deserves to be listened to with your full and due attention. You can’t ignore it, and it refuses to be disrespected.
The amount of listening involved in making a record is colossal. From the writing stage (that can take days), rehearsal (months), to the demoing and recording stage (months, sometimes years) which itself involves recording, mixing, and mastering. It’s very possible that the artist might have listened to each song on that album at least a thousand times before it hits the pressing plant.
When you buy a song on iTunes, the file you download, if it’s a mp3, is typically 4mb. When a record company sends that same song to the CD pressing plant that file is typically just under 30mb and when it gets sent to the vinyl pressing plant, the file is typically double that again. The audio information in a vinyl record pressed from 24 bit WAV files is typically 15 times that of an mp3.
Vinyl reminds us that good music demands our time, space, and full attention. You wouldn’t buy a new film, put it in the DVD player, dim the lights, make the popcorn, pour the beer, and then walk out of the room. In the same way as you wouldn’t spend ten pounds on a great steak, season, marinade, let sit, heat the pan, drop the steak into the pan—and then walk out the room and do something else.
Vinyl reminds us that there is something not quite right about the way that we are encouraged to listen to music via the devices on offer. Music sales are down globally year on year and there must be a reason for this. Convenience is clearly not the answer.”
—Tom Williams
Tom Williams’ mini-album, “New Guitar” is available now.
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PHOTO: MIKE MASSARO
