Usually SS guitar amp vs valve guitar amp discussions are totally subjective, and that is part of the reason why it is hard for people on one side to take the other side seriously.
I'm not sure if I can help to change that, but I'm going to give it a try. I'm going to try and show you some data that might, at least, give us all something to think about (rather than just argue about, or dismiss politely.)
The normal way an audio engineer or tech tests an audio amp is to apply a sine wave input at various frequencies, measure distortion, frequency response, clipping threshold, et cetera. IMO, these tests are excellent steps for evaluating a Hi-Fi amp. Unfortunately, they tell us very little about the things we actually like about the sound of guitar amps.
Recently I started thinking about ways we might use LTSpice circuit simulation software to give us a little more insight into guitar amp designs. The signals from a guitar playing music are anything but static, with constant jumps in amplitude, frequency, and waveform. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I have come to believe that the way these jumps in amplitude are treated are part of the reason why valve amps so often sound better than SS amps.
To test this hypothesis in LTSpice, the first step I took was to concoct (in LTSpice) an input signal that wasn't completely static like the traditional continuous sine wave test tone. I can't simulate a real guitar signal, but at least I can take one step in that direction - I can make the amplitude vary with time, in a manner that at least crudely mimics the guitar-pick (or finger) hitting the string and triggering a new note every so often.
The attached image shows how I coaxed LTSpice into spitting out what is sometimes called a "tone burst" signal - still a sine wave of fixed frequency, but the amplitude jumps between a short loud burst, and a longer quieter stretch between bursts.
The first attached image shows how an op-amp (in this case, a simulated TL072) behaves with this tone-burst input. The upper purplish-blue trace is the input. The green trace is the amplified output.
The op-amp does exactly what 50+ years of brilliant electronics engineers worked very hard to achieve: the output signal is a virtually perfect copy of the input signal. This is a very good amp. This is exactly what we want for Hi-Fi, and for virtually every other audio application except e-guitar.
If you understand how op-amps came into existence, and how they work, this nearly perfect behaviour will not come as a surprise. This is exactly what makes op-amps the technological miracle they are: tiny, cheap, yet almost perfect amplification.
The second image is a closer zoom into the waveforms of the first image. We see nothing new - the output signal is still a perfect copy of the input. Again, this is a very good amp to any audio engineer.
-Gnobuddy
I'm not sure if I can help to change that, but I'm going to give it a try. I'm going to try and show you some data that might, at least, give us all something to think about (rather than just argue about, or dismiss politely.)
The normal way an audio engineer or tech tests an audio amp is to apply a sine wave input at various frequencies, measure distortion, frequency response, clipping threshold, et cetera. IMO, these tests are excellent steps for evaluating a Hi-Fi amp. Unfortunately, they tell us very little about the things we actually like about the sound of guitar amps.
Recently I started thinking about ways we might use LTSpice circuit simulation software to give us a little more insight into guitar amp designs. The signals from a guitar playing music are anything but static, with constant jumps in amplitude, frequency, and waveform. As I mentioned earlier in this thread, I have come to believe that the way these jumps in amplitude are treated are part of the reason why valve amps so often sound better than SS amps.
To test this hypothesis in LTSpice, the first step I took was to concoct (in LTSpice) an input signal that wasn't completely static like the traditional continuous sine wave test tone. I can't simulate a real guitar signal, but at least I can take one step in that direction - I can make the amplitude vary with time, in a manner that at least crudely mimics the guitar-pick (or finger) hitting the string and triggering a new note every so often.
The attached image shows how I coaxed LTSpice into spitting out what is sometimes called a "tone burst" signal - still a sine wave of fixed frequency, but the amplitude jumps between a short loud burst, and a longer quieter stretch between bursts.
The first attached image shows how an op-amp (in this case, a simulated TL072) behaves with this tone-burst input. The upper purplish-blue trace is the input. The green trace is the amplified output.
The op-amp does exactly what 50+ years of brilliant electronics engineers worked very hard to achieve: the output signal is a virtually perfect copy of the input signal. This is a very good amp. This is exactly what we want for Hi-Fi, and for virtually every other audio application except e-guitar.
If you understand how op-amps came into existence, and how they work, this nearly perfect behaviour will not come as a surprise. This is exactly what makes op-amps the technological miracle they are: tiny, cheap, yet almost perfect amplification.
The second image is a closer zoom into the waveforms of the first image. We see nothing new - the output signal is still a perfect copy of the input. Again, this is a very good amp to any audio engineer.
-Gnobuddy
Attachments
Now let's take a look at an LTSpice simulation of a valve amplifier, fed the same signal, but bigger (because an op-amp only has +/- 15V rails, it cannot handle the big input signals that valves can work with.)
Look at the first image. Once again, the purple trace is the input, the green one the output. But this time, the output is anything but an identical copy of the input! Instead, the ancient and primitive valve circuit suffers DC bias shifts when that big initial burst of signal hits, and then recovers slowly as the cathode bypass and coupling capacitors discharge. The gain drops when the big signal hits, and climbs when the signal level drops - so there is much less dynamic range in the signal. The valve amp also acts like a compressor, smoothing out dynamics and increasing the sustain of the guitar.
There's more. Look at the second image, which is a zoom into the first one. Notice how the duty cycle of the output signal varies as the bias shifts and recovers? Mathematically, this has the effect of altering the harmonic spectrum of the signal. Though the input tone-burst only has one frequency in it, the output of the valve amp contains additional harmonics that alter the timbre - and the timbre shifts over time, lending movement and life to the notes from the guitar.
This means that instead of a steady bumble-bee buzz, we hear a little more subtlety and movement in the timbre, closer to a "proper" musical instrument like a saxophone, where the timbre varies continuously with the players blowing force, lip shape, et cetera.
These are, of course, only simulations, so take them for what they're worth. The valve simulations are certainly imperfect, they're only as good as the mathematical model representing the valve in LTSpice. Still, simulation warts and all, we can actually SEE differences in behaviour between the solid-state preamp, and the valve one.
To clarify a point: the much older and more primitive valve amplifier is a bad amplifier. It fails to accurately reproduce the input, which is the goal of all amplification to almost any audio engineer or tech. But as so often happens with the aesthetic arts, it is the imperfections that make good art. In this case, the imperfections of the valve amp extract better sound from an inherently flawed instrument (solid-body electric guitar.)
You could draw a crude analogy with a paintbrush - an imperfect means to apply paint to a canvas, since it leaves brush strokes, applies a non-uniform coat of paint, et cetera. A paint roller does a much better job of applying a flat, wide, uniform coat of paint. But which one is better for making great art? What would Da Vinci's Mona Lisa look like if he had used a few paint rollers to apply uniform, even layers of paint, with no brush strokes, no translucency, no gaps in the paint, no variations in thickness, lustre, opacity, sheen?
You may or may not find any of this compelling, or even interesting, but at least we can see that there is more to the discussion than just claims of magic hearing or "golden ears". The old, primitive, imperfect valve circuit does (technically bad) things to the signal that the modern, precise, accurate, nearly perfect op-amp does not. And paradoxically, at least in my opinion, the only way to make a good guitar amp is to make a bad amp that flatters a bad instrument in a good way.
There is a corollary: IMO, it is ridiculous to try to make a Hi-Fi amp using valves. Solid-state circuitry is vastly better at accurately reproducing the input signal - and that is the goal of Hi-Fi.
Amplifying e-guitar is something else entirely. The input signal sounds bad; we don't want to reproduce it accurately, we want to wrestle, mangle, squash, pummel, and massage it into something that sounds more musical. And ancient, faulty, valve technology happens to be quite good at doing that.
-Gnobuddy
Look at the first image. Once again, the purple trace is the input, the green one the output. But this time, the output is anything but an identical copy of the input! Instead, the ancient and primitive valve circuit suffers DC bias shifts when that big initial burst of signal hits, and then recovers slowly as the cathode bypass and coupling capacitors discharge. The gain drops when the big signal hits, and climbs when the signal level drops - so there is much less dynamic range in the signal. The valve amp also acts like a compressor, smoothing out dynamics and increasing the sustain of the guitar.
There's more. Look at the second image, which is a zoom into the first one. Notice how the duty cycle of the output signal varies as the bias shifts and recovers? Mathematically, this has the effect of altering the harmonic spectrum of the signal. Though the input tone-burst only has one frequency in it, the output of the valve amp contains additional harmonics that alter the timbre - and the timbre shifts over time, lending movement and life to the notes from the guitar.
This means that instead of a steady bumble-bee buzz, we hear a little more subtlety and movement in the timbre, closer to a "proper" musical instrument like a saxophone, where the timbre varies continuously with the players blowing force, lip shape, et cetera.
These are, of course, only simulations, so take them for what they're worth. The valve simulations are certainly imperfect, they're only as good as the mathematical model representing the valve in LTSpice. Still, simulation warts and all, we can actually SEE differences in behaviour between the solid-state preamp, and the valve one.
To clarify a point: the much older and more primitive valve amplifier is a bad amplifier. It fails to accurately reproduce the input, which is the goal of all amplification to almost any audio engineer or tech. But as so often happens with the aesthetic arts, it is the imperfections that make good art. In this case, the imperfections of the valve amp extract better sound from an inherently flawed instrument (solid-body electric guitar.)
You could draw a crude analogy with a paintbrush - an imperfect means to apply paint to a canvas, since it leaves brush strokes, applies a non-uniform coat of paint, et cetera. A paint roller does a much better job of applying a flat, wide, uniform coat of paint. But which one is better for making great art? What would Da Vinci's Mona Lisa look like if he had used a few paint rollers to apply uniform, even layers of paint, with no brush strokes, no translucency, no gaps in the paint, no variations in thickness, lustre, opacity, sheen?
You may or may not find any of this compelling, or even interesting, but at least we can see that there is more to the discussion than just claims of magic hearing or "golden ears". The old, primitive, imperfect valve circuit does (technically bad) things to the signal that the modern, precise, accurate, nearly perfect op-amp does not. And paradoxically, at least in my opinion, the only way to make a good guitar amp is to make a bad amp that flatters a bad instrument in a good way.
There is a corollary: IMO, it is ridiculous to try to make a Hi-Fi amp using valves. Solid-state circuitry is vastly better at accurately reproducing the input signal - and that is the goal of Hi-Fi.
Amplifying e-guitar is something else entirely. The input signal sounds bad; we don't want to reproduce it accurately, we want to wrestle, mangle, squash, pummel, and massage it into something that sounds more musical. And ancient, faulty, valve technology happens to be quite good at doing that.
-Gnobuddy
Attachments
Thanks for the speaker tips. I've got a pair of Jensen C8R on their way now. I've found a source of cheap MOD 8-20 as well for future projects.
That's a testament to a good design / build right there. Sounds great!
I have a question regarding the Marshall 12 schematic:
I plugged it into LTSpice with the RC4558 model from Ti but found that the output clips real bad even with low input (<50mV).
I found that the second stage gain is too high? R9 at 220 ohms was too low and the gain pot didn't seem to make a difference - if I raised R9 to the 10k+ range, the output normalised. Is the gain resistor R9 connected to the correct side of the gain VR1 on the diagram?
Haha this was my 2 year old the other day - he was walking around and singing with a cardboard box on his head
With regards to SS vs Tubes. I've read that in music reproduction, the 'tube sound' is liked because of the higher distortion in (primarily) second harmonics. Is this also true of guitar valve amplifiers? Do they exhibit similar characteristics with regard to harmonics? Would a pair of guitar valve amplifiers as monoblocks sound as good as a comparable pair of 'hi-fi' valve monoblocks? I wonder if there are fundamental differences between the two.
question do you think that the transfer characteristics and distortion profile of a tube stage could be emulated via DSP? and would applying this "new" algorithm to solid state make it better?
with the supposition that solid state "sucks" because it's too perfect just how far from "ideal" are tubes supposed to be? (not a troll question. the statement hopefully invokes some speculative thinking)
and not that i know the full nuts and bolts differences but solid state and tube distortion are different and one favours odd over even, no? wouldn't that be the primary difference?
Leo Fender admits to having simply ripped off the RCA tube manual for some his first designs was RCA making bad amps?
with the supposition that solid state "sucks" because it's too perfect just how far from "ideal" are tubes supposed to be? (not a troll question. the statement hopefully invokes some speculative thinking)
and not that i know the full nuts and bolts differences but solid state and tube distortion are different and one favours odd over even, no? wouldn't that be the primary difference?
Leo Fender admits to having simply ripped off the RCA tube manual for some his first designs was RCA making bad amps?
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That's along the lines that I was thinking (I just don't know enough yet!) - I wondered if it would be possible to 'inject distortion', as it were, to perhaps the output of the first preamp stage to make it more tube-guitar-amp-ish.
Yes, you've read that. It's an utter misrepresentation of what's going on, endlessly repeated by the press; well-meaning engineers and lying marketers.
All distortion is bad, but some distortion is less bad than others.
An amp which produces second harmonics will sound "smooth" on single instruments but will sound muddy and muddled on massed choirs or orchestral music (due to the IM).
An amp which starts to distort with second harmonics (via compression) will sound "smooth" on musical peaks for single instruments (and will sound muddled on massed choirs peaks).
An amp which distorts by hitting a brick wall (i.e. just about every high feedback amp ever made, SS or valve) will sound like "pants" every time it clips. If you're lucky, that clipping will upset your bias settings (see Gnobuddy's post) and mess up the music for quite some time. If you're really lucky you'll get some short term HF oscillation to boot.
So an amp who's flaws are limited a LF response and 1% 2nd at rated power may sound much better than a 0.00001% amp with 10x the power which clips hard. Especially on uncompressed recordings of small jazz combos. Not so on "doof doof" music.
The point of low feedback valve amps in HiFi is to use the most linear devices ever invented (e.g. 45s) and have clipping behaviour which doesn't sound "like pants". This is neither easy nor cheap but it can be done
A number of designers have taken similar (non conventional) approaches to solid state amplification, in various flavours. (e.g. ME, AKSA)
This is not news. The seminal articles are:
Crowhurst, N. H., (1957) Some Defects in Amplifier Performance Not Covered by Standard Specifications, Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 5(4)
Hamm, R. O. (1973). Tubes Versus Transistors-is there an Audible Difference. Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, 21(4), 267-273
Both can be found online.
Re-read Gnobuddy's post.
Re-read Gnobuddy's post. Chalk and cheese.
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Clever engineers working for big manufacturers have been trying to do this for at least thirty years, maybe more. Roland, Fender, Line 6, Digitech, Zoom, there is a long list. IMO, for most of that time, the results have ranged from awful to mediocre by way of "meh".
But computing power per dollar keeps going up, modelling algorithms are getting more sophisticated, and I think the DSP/ modelling approach is getting much closer these days. Some straws in the wind:
- Atomic Amps Amplifire: YouTube
- Boss Katana 100: YouTube
What kind of guitar do you plan to use, and what kind of music do you plan to play? (Also not a troll response, but a serious one.)
As an example: jazz players with expensive carved archtop guitars are happy enough with a perfect SS amp. Their guitars sound great as-is, and the complex chords they play would only be muddied by additional distortion. So if they want a valve amp at all, it's likely to be one that is nearly Hi-Fi clean (i.e., nearly perfect.)
The same thing goes for electro-acoustic guitars, like my Yamaha dreadnaught with an onboard piezo pickup and preamp. The signal at the output jack is already "pretty", so all I have to do is feed that into a perfect SS amp and a flat-response, full-range speaker. A small accurate P.A. system or keyboard amp would work fine; I actually use an Acoustic AG30, which is basically a powered wedge monitor speaker with a mic input and some useful FX (reverb, delay, etc).
Moving away from jazz and acoustic, we venture into surf, country, and pop. In Leo's time, all those genres used very clean guitar amps, nearly op-amp perfect. Leo reportedly loved surf music, and spent years telling his amp techs to hone his amp designs to sound good for surf: big, clean, very little distortion, lots of treble, lots of reverb.
Nowadays country music often incorporates fair amounts of distortion, often bright and "crunchy". I'm not sure if the typical Nashville country guitarist gets that distortion from an amp, or from a pedal; either way, the signal emerging from the amp is considerably different than the input, so to a Hi-Fi engineer, the audio chain is definitely very imperfect.
Next up is the blues. Some would say the Fender Bassman, a failed bass-guitar amp, turned out to be the quintessential electric blues guitar amp. Bluesmen wanted long sustain and a singing, "vocal" tone out of the amp, rather than the thin metallic "ping" produced by their actual guitar. The guitar amp had to produce that transmutation - the ideal blues guitar amp is a very, very bad amplifier from the audio engineers point of view, and the output looks nothing at all like the input!
It just goes further downhill from there. We have blues-rock, classic rock, metal, and heaven knows what other forms of even more distorted sounds. The corresponding guitar amps moved further and further away from op-amp perfection, and ended up being gigantic distortion boxes, spitting out an ear-splitting nearly square wave in response to a gnat's wing brushing a guitar string.
At those really extreme distortion levels, I can't really hear any difference between valve and SS amps. To me, they all sound like power tools grinding on a corrugated-iron roof: harsh and nasty and painful. (But millions of people who grew up with Metallica or Slayer love those sounds.)
I have read this sort of statement before, but I think it's way too simplistic to be anywhere close to the truth. Most distortion circuits, SS and valve, actually generate both even and odd harmonics...but the actual spectra are usually different, and IMO most importantly, the SS circuits tend to produce a constant and unvarying buzz, while valve circuits can have a much more varied and "live" response to picking dynamics and other player input.
Yes and no.
Keep two things in mind: One, the RCA amps were never designed to be overdriven, and when not overdriven, they only produced a few percent distortion. Two, a few percent distortion is considered appalling in Hi-Fi today (you can easily buy an amp with 0.001% distortion) - but in 1940, a few percent THD was not bad at all, and quite good enough to be thought of as "Hi-Fi" - or, as Merlin Blencowe put it, "Adequate-Fi". Consider some of Les Paul's (the musician, not the guitar) recordings from the 1950s - he liked his amps squeaky-clean in guitarist parlance, i.e., nearly perfect in engineering parlance. The resulting sounds are unlikely to be enjoyed today. Take a listen to the instrumental guitar introduction to "How High The Moon", circa 1951: YouTube
Would you want Les Paul's guitar tone today? I wouldn't. (I would love to have his technical chops, though; he was a fabulous guitarist!)
So Leo didn't intend his amps to be overdriven, and when not overdriven, they were fairly "good" in audio engineering terms.
Then those blues guitarists came along, got drunk, lost all thought of restraint or subtlety, turned all the knobs to eleven, and whaled on their guitars, trying to make the loudest sounds they could. And guess what, the amps distorted, and the sound coming out changed - no longer like "How High The Moon", and more like B.B. King's famous blues tone.
I'm not much of a historian, but it seems the blues scene was evolving on America's East coast, while Leo stuck with his squeaky-clean West Coast surf music and clean amps. As his early Tweed amps evolved into later Blackface models, he and his tech kept trying to make his amps more and more Hi-Fi clean - very little distortion - though he did discover that a flat frequency response didn't sound great for guitar, so they put a whopping huge notch into the frequency response of those almost-totally-clean amps.
-Gnobuddy
He might grow up to like a Vox AC4-TV, then.Haha this was my 2 year old the other day - he was walking around and singing with a cardboard box on his head
-Gnobuddy
Just wandered completely down the wrong stack and discovered Brian May's Deacy Amp
The two linked articles are a fascinating read: particularly the forty odd page manual for the replica and their struggles to reverse engineer the thing without taking it (esp PCB and driver) apart
All you need to know is the CRO screen shot from p26
For those under the age of fifty, this is the likely circuit architecture:
(from UK Vintage Radio repair
The two linked articles are a fascinating read: particularly the forty odd page manual for the replica and their struggles to reverse engineer the thing without taking it (esp PCB and driver) apart
All you need to know is the CRO screen shot from p26
An externally hosted image should be here but it was not working when we last tested it.
(From DeacyAmp)
For those under the age of fifty, this is the likely circuit architecture:
(from UK Vintage Radio repair
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all vary succinct points thanks for sharing, as a soundman i've had my trials and tribulations with distortion and performers who think if "some" is good "more" is better it's nice to talk to a guitarist who has a rational perspective about it, it's so uncommon to hear "they all sound like power tools grinding corrugated tin roofs"(i know you said iron but i think tin adds a mental connotation of further nastiness!) this is getting OT to avtech23 thread but is a topic i'd love to discuss at length!
always needed more info to understand the performers perspective, and find a better way to influence young players understanding that distortion is a "power tool" and the roof doesn't need anymore holes in it!
always needed more info to understand the performers perspective, and find a better way to influence young players understanding that distortion is a "power tool" and the roof doesn't need anymore holes in it!
Hey, you found my cave!!!
I moved from a posh Parisian style Buenos Aires neighbourhood to a NOISY tourist/artistic/commercial street , surrounded by a mix of crumbly tenements where Tango was born and shipyard related shops and warehouses to be able to test 300W Bass amplifiers at 3 AM and nobody complaining
I can power-saw wood all day round, spray paint 50 amp panels in a sitting (you know you can smell a car body and paint shop half a block away) or fill the block with contact cement fumes ... no problem at all.
That
Of course, and that´s the point.
Rock guitar amps are *designed* to clip.
Modern high gain Tube amps, even more.
What do you thing a guitar signal will look like through a 3 cascaded 12AX7 gain stages (JCM800) to 4 stages (Soldano/Dual Rectifier) to 5
(Peavey 5150?) ? Peavey über gain became so noisy that they were forced to add a diode circuit chopping the *lower*
part of the wave (not the peaks but all the area near 0V) to minimize noise?Like a very crude, poorly adjusted noise gate?
Marshall Lead 12 mimics a (tube) JCM800 preamp clipping, go figure.
FWIW this is what a Musician called Bob Spencer posted in SS guitar, from a very popular Australian band (multi platinum in their peak): "my backline Marshalls are just props, not used at all, Guitar sound is from an SS 15W 90's Japanese made Squier amplifier, driven balls to the wall, with an SM58 stuck against front grill, almost touching the 8" speaker cone, sitting inside a padded drum case in the back of the stage, reamplified to stupid high levels through the stage monitors and sidefills ... I much prefer SS snappier fast attack sound than slow muddy Tube overdrive".
User name: "one bald bloke", ... maybe it helps identify him in this video
YouTube
funny thing: the *rhythm* guitar player uses a tube Marshall amp.
I guess I expected the clipping to occur at the final stage when pushed, rather than interstage at normal operating levels.
I've just started down the 'instrument amp' path from the likes of BJT and MOSFET HIFI amps and have to say that these guitar amps really are a different creature altogether!
It does challenge the thought process when my previous learning was 'clipping = bad for the sound and amp' to 'clipping = fundamental to the sound of the amp'!
Thanks for helping me understand a little bit more each time!
JM what's your take on "front half/ back half" distortion, and by that i mean developing distortion in the preamp and passing it on or keeping the pre clean and overdriving the output stage?
seems many guitarist's are adherents to one or the other, i'm just trying to understand what the differences and influences/characteristics are?
seems many guitarist's are adherents to one or the other, i'm just trying to understand what the differences and influences/characteristics are?
Thank you, I truly appreciate that comment.
The flip side is that a rational person will never be a truly great musician. Great musicians make the audience think they hear devils and angels and rainbows and sunsets flying out of their instrument - and the audience certainly won't think that unless the performer does, too. And anyone who thinks devils and angels are flying out of their instrument is pretty drastically irrational, maybe just this side of certifiably insane!
At the risk of wandering even further from avtech's original topic, I have a hypothesis about this. Bear with me for a moment while I set the stage:
I was listening to classical music one day, and the soft notes from an English Horn ( YouTube ) reminded me of sounds I'd heard in wildlife documentary films. The English Horn had a timbre that sounded like the lowing of cattle, the baa-ing of sheep, or the noises made by a lost calf looking for mommy.
That made me think about the fact that most of the classical musical instruments, and much of the classical music repertoire itself, were intended, at least to some degree, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, to imitate the sounds in nature, which surrounded everyone in those pre-industrial days. Animals, birds, gurgling streams, rustling leaves, the wind sighing through a field of tall grass, that sort of thing.
Tchaikovsky's "Song Of The Skylark" is one crystal clear example - we don't need to imagine what the composer intended, as the title of the piece itself tells us it was to mimic the sounds of nature. Or consider Vaughan William's beautiful 1914 piece "The Lark Ascending" ( YouTube ).
But what if you were born in urban America in 1970, rather than in rural England in the late 1800s? What are the ambient sounds you would hear every day around you? Not lowing cows and singing larks, but rather, the heavy harsh growl of big truck engines; the deafening metallic clanging and banging of metal dumpsters being picked up and emptied; the ear-shattering monstrous chatter of jack-hammers tearing up concrete; the painfully loud grinding screech of rusty metal train wheels on metal rails; and so on.
So when those young people grew up and began composing their own music, what sorts of sounds would they, quite unconsciously, put into their songs? Yup, the sound of power tools grinding on tin roofs; mechanical heavy harsh growls; ear-shattering monstrous chattering; grinding screeches; et cetera. All the sounds made by the machinery that surrounded them in their childhood, because nature had already been mostly destroyed and the last traces of it banished to distant places. Does not the very word "metal" tell us about the unconscious source of inspiration behind this music?
And so I don't think that we can influence those young people to discover their music sounds loud and harsh and metallic - those are the comforting sounds of youth to them, and that's what they want to hear. The softer sounds of nature are as alien to their sub-conscious as the harsh metallic sounds are to those of us who grew up actually hearing cows and birds and streams and the wind blowing through the trees.
That's my hypothesis, anyway. I have no idea how you would test this, so who knows if I'm right or not. But I think it's at least an interesting possibility.
-Gnobuddy
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