Beck Reveals Sesame Street Rap Connection

First off, I suppose I should admit that this title may be somewhat (deliberately) misleading to the casual reader. The Beck in question is probably not the one you’re thinking of – I’m actually referring to a comment made by Beck ‘Analog Partisan Raider’ over at Home Recording…

He observes in this discussion thread that American rap was greatly influenced by intercity kids’ exposure to Sesame Street and other favourite PBS children’s programmes: “I can still hear Big Bird and “The Count” in rap/hip-hop to this day.”

The thread began with an interesting observation regarding the origins of rap, where scratching vinyl was used as a substitute for (unaffordable) drum kits, and the new percussive style was essentially (as is so often the case) invented out of necessity, as well as a burning desire for self-expression. These roots are just about as analog as music can get without cutting the power entirely, and the issue raised here is how the digital age is limiting the listening experience – in more ways than one. Beck goes on to express a feeling that modern recordings cause a sense of unease in the listener:

One thing in particular that has been a point of interest to me for a few years now is how digitized sound affects the listener emotionally. Of most interest to me are segments of the population that are unable to identify the source of the stress, but feel stress nonetheless. It appears there are others that are more sensitive and are able to identify digitized sound as unpleasant.

Regular readers of this (and other music technology sites) blog will probably tie these symptoms in with the loudness war and the steady diminishment of dynamic range in digital recordings over the past ten to fifteen years. Beck seems to think that the digital path is itself the culprit, and although technically this may not be the case, there are a lot of producers who still insist on doing most of their work on analog equipment. A further interesting consideration here, however, is whether the prevalence of digital equipment is harming the creativity and expressive essence of certain musicians at the source…