This is my god...

There is a song that I like, that really speaks to me, that I would like to share. Anyone out there who listens to Triple J might have heard of Scroobius Pip & Dan le Sac, as "Thou shalt always kill" got quite a bit of airplay there. The one that really works for me, though, is "Letter from God to Man". The film clip is pretty cute, too. It's certainly not my intention to offend anyone with this, so if you do have very strong religious views that you don't like being challenged, navigate away now...

Here are the lyrics, if you have trouble making them out, or don't want to watch YouTube:

This is a letter, from God to Man, it says:

Hey There, how, how’s it going?
Long time no see.
I know I haven't been around much lately
But…it didn't seem like you wanted me to be
The last time I sent down a message you nailed it to the cross
So I figured I'd just leave you to it, let you be your own boss

But I've been keeping an eye on you, I have, and it's amazing how you've grown.
With your technological advances and the problems you’ve overthrown,
And all the beautiful art you’ve created with such grace and such finesse,
But I admit there are a few things I'm afraid have impressed me less.

So I'm writing to apologize for all the horrors committed in my name,
Although that was never what I intended, I feel I should take my share of the blame.
All the good I tried to do was corrupted when all the religion got into full swing,
What I thought were quite clear messages were taken to unusual extremes.
My teachings taken out of context to meet the agendas of others,
Interpretations taken to many different ways and hidden meanings discovered

Religion became a tool, for the weak to control the strong
With all these new morals and ethics, survival of the fittest was gone
No longer could the biggest man simply take whatever he needed
'Cause damnation was the price if certain rules were not heeded

Some of the deeds committed in my name just made me wonder were I went wrong.
Back at the start when I created this, the foundation seemed so strong.
See all the elements were already here, long before I began, I just kind of put it all together
I didn't really think out a long-term plan.

I made the sun an appropriate distance and laid the stars across the sky
So you could navigate the globe or simply watch the sun rise
I covered the earth with plants and fruits,
Some for sustenance and some for beauty
I made the sun shine and the clouds rain so their maintenance wasn’t your duty
I tried to give each creature its own attributes without making them enveloped
I gave you all you all your own space to grow and in your own way space to develop

I didn't know such development would cause rifts and jealousy
Cause you to war against each other and leave marks on this planet indelibly
You see, I wasn’t really the creator, I was just the curator of nature
I want to get something straight with homosexuals right now: I don’t hate ya
I was a simple being that happened to be the first to wield such powers
I just laid the ground, it was You that built the towers

It was You that invented bombs, and the fear that comes with them
And it was You that invented money, and the corrupt economic systems
You invented terms like just-war and terms like friendly fire
And it was You that didn't know when to stop digging deeper, when to stop building higher
It was You that exhausted the resources I carefully laid out on this earth,
And it was You that even saw these problems coming but accredited them little worth
It was You that used my teachings for your own personal gain
And it was You that committed such tragedies, even though they were in my name

So I apologize for any mistakes I made, and when my words misconstrued
But this apology's to mother nature, cause I created YOU

The slow death of sound quality.

Buy CDs where you can. Really, unless there is no other option, don't buy albums online as mp3s.

Why? Good question.

I was over at my dad's the other day, and we were talking about music and the amazingness of technology that allows us to store a thousand songs on a device not much bigger than a credit card. There is, of course, a trade off, my dad tells me, and he generally knows these things. The technology behind sound has been pretty much his life's work. 

The main problem is file size. A track taken from a CD is fairly substantial. To transfer that file to mp3, it is compressed considerably. Anyone who thinks that there is no loss of sound quality is deluding themselves. That extra information has got to go somewhere... A zipped document is compressed by taking out the white bits; something in the program remembers where they should be and puts them back when you unzip the file. There aren't any "white bits" in music, so when a music file is compressed, the program takes out what it considers to be extraneous material - most of it is not obvious to the casual observer, but it is there for a reason. That reason is something called soundstage. I can see your WTF expression from here, so let me explain:

If you have ever listened to a really good stereo recording, on a good stereo, through good headphones, you can "hear" where the instruments are around you. You can close your eyes and think "the drums are behind me, the bassist is off to the left and slightly in front, the lead guitarist is to the right, and the singer is straight ahead". I remember this happened to me for the first time when I was 12, and I was so astounded by it that I've never forgotten. This all goes away in mp3s - if you listen for directionality, all you will be able to work out is 'inside your head'. There is still stereo, so you get a bit of left and right action, but the rest of it gets lost in the ether. 

Don't despair, it doesn't mean that you are never going to enjoy listening to your iPod again! When dad told me about this, I thought "oh yeah, you're right!", but I hadn't realised it until he told me. I did an experiment, listening to the same couple of songs from a cd on a cd player, and then via Media Player (which is the same as listening to them through iTunes or similar). The difference is definitely there, but you do need to do a comparison to really hear it.

So why bother? If the difference is not that great, why worry about it? Trouble is, the vast majority of people are never going to know that the music they are listening to is slightly inferior in quality - they are listening to the song, not the minute nuances in the music (and considering some of the crap that the kids consider to be "music" these days... Kanye West and pals, I'm looking at you guys here), so they are never going to know. But, if everyone buys music online, then eventually that will be the only way to buy music, and then the opportunity to buy good quality sound will be gone for good. The saddest part about this is that, for the most part, no-one will even know.

Of course the other thing about cds - if your hard drive crashes, you still have all your music, you just have to go through the rather tedious process of uploading it again.

Mp3s are great - I have bought many of them, but if I want more than a single song by a particular artist, I will always buy the cd. Music makes life better, why should we try to make music worse?