Talking to Mark D. Grozen-Smith ’15 is reassuring. Grozen-Smith, a singer for The Harvard Callbacks, is engaged and inspired by music just as much as the vinyl generation. He is a headphone wearer, but is clearly passionate about what he is listening to and treats music as a relaxant as well as a topic of conversation. He prizes his iPod and its enormous capacity, which allows him to survey new music effortlessly. “I have some music on my iPod, like musicals, that I’ve never listened to before,” says Grozen-Smith. “But it’s not really hurting me. I don’t have to hold a record. If I ever change my musical taste, it’s easy.”
Grozen-Smith rejects the values of music that vinyl supporters cherish. He is puzzled by the idea of buying expensive headphones: Skullcandy gets the job done. He doesn’t listen to complete albums, but cycles through artists every couple of weeks. He listens to music while doing homework, traveling, and working out. And when I ask him about the negative social effects that worried me, he sweeps them aside. “I’m not going to stop and talk to someone randomly on the street,” he says. “Music helps me focus and shut out distractions. I listen to music to enhance everything else I’m doing.”
Alec V. Guzov ’13 shares many of Grozen-Smith’s sentiments. Guzov is a pianist, violinist, and guitarist who DJs for Harvard Radio Broadcasting (WHRB) and mixes and samples for fun. His range of talents is boosted by his easy access to a variety of musical influences. Moreover, his computer allows him to mix easily and wherever he wants. “The MP3 democratizes sound,” he says. “Before, DJs had to lug around crates of records. Now more people can have access to music.” Although Guzov is more of an audiophile than Grozen-Smith, he is not put off by digital sound. “As processing power improves, the difference becomes negligible. Overall, the benefits of digital are a lot greater than anything you’d lose from it.”
From this standpoint, the MP3 allows greater exploration and increases the pubic musical vocabulary. The availability of music online has created new listeners to thousands of artists across genres among every generations People can still choose to listen to full albums on their iPods, or they can assemble smorgasbords of favorites and avoid the filler so common on pop albums.
45S AND FRIENDS
One explanation of these diverging viewpoints is simply a generational divide. For the people who grew up with vinyl, part of the ideal music is a certain physicality. That, and the crackle in the record evokes an easy nostalgia. Meanwhile, the children of the digital era view vinyl as bulky and archaic; they wonder why anyone wouldn’t use a system that requires no more than a push of a button. Is it then the case that vinyl supporters are motivated more by nostalgia than substantive differences in taste? If so, digital music will only increase its dominance until it, too, is outmoded. 50 years from now, a small set of crabby old people will be reminiscing about the good old days of first generation iPods.
Dan C. Cole ’14 doesn’t fit into this generational theory. A WHRB DJ, Cole is as much of a turntable enthusiast as some of the hangers-on who grew up with the technology in its heyday. I’m in Cole’s dorm room, where he is lugging around a crate filled to the brim with full-length albums and 45s. A turntable, connected to a Bose speaker, sits near his doorway. He begins rummaging through his albums and finds a 45 he wants to show to me. “If you look closely, you can see an engraved message in the center of the vinyl,” he tells me excitedly, holding it up in the light. “You can’t get this kind of thing with a CD or MP3 player.” He places the record carefully onto his turntable and guides the needle on with a pop.
Cole, though a member of Generation Y, collects records and appreciates the tangible aspect of vinyl. He backs Ackerman’s active listening theory, and, like Damroth and Ryan, views vinyl as promoting music as a bonding experience. “Headphones are a less communal way of listening to music,” he says. “If you can get a few people in a room listening to an album, there’s an energy there that doesn’t exist when you’re listening alone.”
Students like Cole are an important source of support for Planet Records and other record stores that have managed to stay afloat. While many teenagers embraced taking music as a daily supplement, Cole’s community believes in a connoisseurship approach.
NO MIDDLE GROUND
Rare are the hybrids: people who fully embrace both the proactive, tangible aspects of the vinyl and the accessibility of the MP3. The CD seems a logical choice for those stuck in between. The form looks and acts like a record, but is far more durable and easy to carry around. Professor of History Peter E. Gordon is an connoisseur of classical music who appreciates the CD’s versatility. He listens to music in his office, where a turntable would be impractical; on the other hand, he feels the MP3 can compromise the artistic intentions of the composer. “My iPhone seems to have a mind of its own for multi-movement pieces,” he says as we listen to the tiptoeing cello and piano of Beethoven’s Cello Sonata in F Major. “CDs do a better job of preserving the integrity of musical pieces.”
Gordon is a exception. The CD, a revolutionary piece of technology only 15 years ago, is quietly slipping into obscurity. To some, it is the worst, not the best, of both worlds. It reaches neither the intimate, tactile experience you get with a record nor the capacity and convenience of an MP3 player.
Does that mean there is no middle ground? The last authority that I turn to is Damon Krukowski. An expos teacher and indie rocker of bands Galaxie 500 and Damon and Naomi, Krukowski is in the unique position of having released records during the peak of all three listening media. When Galaxy 500 released its first record in 1988, it was engineered exclusively for vinyl. The switch to the CD necessitated a new outlook on process of making a record – there were less points of orientation to work with, and the increased volume range changed the way they approached mixing. Now, Krukowski often listens to his band’s mixes on MP3 and headphones before releasing them, to get a sense of how it will sound to a large population of his listeners.
“Things were made for different formats,” he says. “It’s a great experience to go back to the original formats. But there’ s lot of hip-hop, pop, and dance which was made for the MP3, and should not be heard on the LP.”
MUDDY AND FINE
The debate between the merits of vinyl and digital will rage on. Different music was made for different time periods, and different music players were made for different sorts of people. There will always be music lovers for as long as modern culture exists, and they will appreciate music in different manners and with different pieces of equipment. “It’s all about how music fits into your life,” says Grozen-Smith. Walking back from the Barker Center, I throw in my headphones and listen the insistent acoustic strumming that introduces Crosby, Stills and Nash’s Suite: Judy Blue Eyes. The bass is very hard to hear, and the harmonies are muddy, but the music sounds just fine.
—Staff writer Andrew R. Chow can be reached at andrewchow@college.harvard.edu.