DIY ethic and Casette culture

The DIY (Do It Yourself) ethic came about in the late 70’s and early 80’s as a response against the prevalent corporate music culture. It was especially popular in more underground genres of music such as punk and industrial music. The advent of affordable cassette recording and duplicating equipment enabled any band with a 4-track recorder to record and distribute their work outside the traditional means of distribution. This enabled artists to have the utmost creative control over their work, at the cost of sometimes questionable sound quality. Generally budgets were low and cassette tape has never been a medium known for its fidelity, with the problem of noise and a limited frequency range (lacking in the high end) being the main issues. Equipment would generally not be up to professional standards, and the recording “studio” might be nothing more than someones basement, garage, or bedroom. The goal was to break the reliance on others to produce work, and for artists to learn to become their own producers and engineers so they would have complete control over their work at every level. To advertise their work, compilations tapes containing the work of numerous artists were distributed. Artists involved in cassette culture worked together with independent magazines (zines), to create a fully independent means of communicating to their audience. The nature of cassette culture was generally anti-capitalist, with the emphasis being on bringing the music to the audience as opposed to earning profits or attaining the best sound quality possible.

With the advances in technology in the 90’s, other mediums of independent distribution and production arose. CD burners became affordable enough to allow artists to distribute their work using CDs as opposed to tape. CDs have several advantages over cassettes for independent distribution. CDs do not degrade as quickly as tapes (although they are prone to scratches), have a superior frequency range and lower noise-floor compared to standard cassette tape, and are much easier to copy. Tapes degrade with each generation of copying (one of the biggest factors in the low quality of cassette culture) while CDs, being a digital technology, are in theory supposed to retain their quality with each copy made. Advances in computer technology have also given artists unparallelled power when producing music, with a typical computer being able to handle much more tracks than the 4-track machines of the earlier generation of DIY production. Some might say this is a bad thing, as the limitations of earlier hardware forced artists to use creative means to create their work. Computers are also much more complicated beasts, requiring a large amount of time invested in learning to use the various programs to reap the maximum potential of computer recording. Still, simple yet powerful programs such as Garageband (available for free with any new apple computer) and the versatile Ableton Live have all but replaced the venerable 4track. The standard DIY computer setup is generally a fast desktop or laptop computer, a recording interface (either internal or external), perhaps a small mixer, powered studio monitors (which have come down greatly in price in recent years), affordable microphones, and depending on the needs of the band, a midi interface. Some of the more popular companies for affordable computer based equipment are M-audio and Behringer, who offer a variety of monitors, interfaces, and midi controllers at low cost. While the quality of equipment aimed at the DIY production market generally does not compare well to products designed for expensive studios, the price is an order of magnitude lower. Computers have also become powerful enough to replace the need for most external effects processors and synthesizers as well. Most software packages have all the basic effects needed for the mixing process such as reverb, delay, compression, chorus, etc. Again, some complain that computer based recording sounds lifeless compared to older analog equipment, but it is generally much more affordable, and low cost is one of the most important factors in the world of DIY production.

The most recent evolution of the DIY style of music distribution is through the Internet. Beginning with sites such as MP3.com, artists and bands now have the ability to host their music for free using websites that rely on advertising banners for their revenue. Although this is not a truly pure means of “anti-capitalist” distribution, since most of these sites are owned by large corporations, it is never less one of the most popular and effective ways of distributing DIY music. Probably the most popular site right now for free music hosting is Myspace, which is also well known for its blog hosting. Myspace presents a simple yet effective means to get music out to large amounts of people. It also includes features to notify fans of shows, communicate with the band using a comments system, and host blogs written by bands. There are also search features for users of the site to discover new bands, and extensive networking features for bands. Again, sound quality suffers, with all the audio available on the site being compressed in the MP3 format (which adds digital artifacts and decreases high frequency response among other problems). Also, the lack of recording knowledge will always hamper sound quality regardless of the excellent hardware now available at low prices. Although DIY music generally doesn’t have the same sound quality as professional (and much more expensive) recordings done in studios, the gap in quality has become more narrow.

Despite the plethora of technology available in this day and age, cassette culture still has its followers. There is a certain “raw” and “real” aesthetic to cassettes. Some artists reject the current trends in music technology and have re-embraced cassette culture as the DIY distribution means of their choice. Many also appreciate the simplicity and imperfection of analog equipment. Also, in an ironic twist, Myspace is now owned by one of the biggest media enterprises in the world, Rupert Murdoch’s News Media Corporation. In essence, one of the biggest sites promoting DIY distribution of music has become just another limb of the corporate media empire which the DIY and Cassette culture movements were originally fighting.

This article is based on an essay I had written for sound recording 1 at Concordia University, the subject matter of which was on a historical overview of a topic related to sound recording.