Vinyl. Is there anything more quintessentially “analog” than the LP? It’s the first thing that comes to mind when we think of the term, most obviously because of the technology itself. A stylus in motion interacts with a groove to create electrical impulses that are amplified as sound — or something like that. It’s all magic to me. But there are other qualities associated with the long play record that resonate with us in peculiarly analog ways, and it is these things, I think, that make records iconic of the analog experience.

I’m a writer, so for me, LPs are the books of the music world. I like rummaging through used record stores in exactly the same way I rummage through a used book store, searching for treasures or curiosities. Records engage our senses — sight and touch, as well as sound. As objects, they are artifacts, filled with the resonance of bygone days in the way that something in digital space can never be. When we pick up a tattered album, turn it over in our hands to read the liner notes, take the record out to place it gently on the the turntable (for it has to be handled with care) and set the stylus as carefully on, we are engaging in a ritual that connects us, not just to the music, but to its moment in time. LPs are a direct conduit to the recording studio, the moment when sound was captured and encapsulated, with all the imperfections that make it beautiful, that make it art — that make it human. It is our specificity that makes us real. And if you auto-tune it all away — what do you have? A perfect, soulless thing.

Take, for instance,The Beatles:

…in some cases, The Beatles intentionally made a recording flawed. Geoff Emerick, the band’s longtime engineer, explained how it worked in the book Here, There and Everywhere. “When someone made a mistake and the others liked it, we’d often make it louder [during mixing] to accentuate it.”

On the Abbey Road album, you find an example of what Emerick was talking about on “Polythene Pam.” In the middle of that track, which was part of the Side Two medley, Paul McCartney made a mistake playing his bass part.

Though he planned to correct it, Emerick and others (including, presumably, Paul’s bandmates) insisted he keep it in the song. And the record went out with that mistake on it…

Producer George Martin was in on the joke, too, Emerick said. And the Grammy-winning engineer said he and his colleagues looked for ways to make mistakes more prominent. “Sometimes we’d double-track the mistake with different instruments so it would be even more obvious,” he said.

So why were The Beatles going around highlighting flubs in their recordings, you ask? “It was all about playing a joke on the fans,” Emerick said. “Giving them a treat, something to talk about.”

The Mistake The Beatles Purposely Left in the ‘Abbey Road’ Medley, www.cheatsheet.com

This is about experimentation, about that magic that can only come from interacting with the moment. But it’s also about relationship, among the creators of the music, and ultimately between the musicians and their fans. It’s part of the magic that we feel when we pick up a record, magic that travels up through our fingers, straight to our imaginations — along with the photographs, the nicked edges and rubbed off text, the cardboard that has been handled by scores of hands before yours in hundreds of other moments. Those moments are also recorded in the physicality of the album cover, as surely as grooves on a vinyl disk.

These are physical objects, specific, flawed, and real — just like us.

I love the liner notes, with their combination of snapshots and text, often in-depth analyses of music and culture. This is especially rich on old jazz albums where the artists held forth in great detail about their creativity, their philosophy, taking their time exploring the subject with the understanding that we too would take our time.

Paul Hindemith often expressed his disbelief in abstractions in music. Music should concern the making of music, not the speculative transcending of its limits. “The ear,” he said, “should remain the first and last court of appeal.”

The songs of Joao Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Johim came to America like a breath of fresh air. Their music arrived here at a time when anemia and confusion were becoming noticeable in our music to anyone who knew enough to be concerned…

Stan Getz, liner notes Getz / Gilberto, featuring Antonio Carlos Johim

In the space of a few short sentences, we’ve already speculated on the proper philosophy of jazz music, quoted ancestors in the musical pantheon, and placed the work in its historical context. Depth, resonance, specificity, context — here is an analog work in audio, physical and textual form.

Peace is a beautiful feeling.

To understand and be understood is a kind of peace.

I find great peace in real communication with another person. Getz is a person I understand, and who understands me even through we speak different langues. I would say that even if we could not exchange a word, the love that we have for music would be enough to make us friends…

Joao Gilberto, liner notes Getz / Gilberto, featuring Antonio Carlos Johim

Gilberto starts with poetry, then proceeds with an intimate portrait of friendship. We’re invited into his private world, just as the recording itself invites us into the physical space of the studio. This specificity is captured by the words of one of the producers:

No recording I’ve heard captures his sound as well as this one, just as no previous recording has captured Joao’s sound like this. Part of the reason is that the recording was made at a tape speed of 30 inches per second, instead of the usual 15. Notice, too, how beautiful the sound of Johim’s piano is reproduced.

Gene Lees, liner notes Getz / Gilberto, featuring Antonio Carlos Johim

Real moments captured in real time. In this case, March 18th and 19th, 1963 in New York City with recording engineer Phil Ramone and Director of Engineering Val Valentin at the helm. Over fifty years ago, and yet every time I put the record on, I am in the room with them. This is the magic of vinyl.

The physicality of the LP experience, then, is even richer than it first seems. It is a function of the object itself with its various attributes, but also of the relationships associated with the object — among the musicians, between musician and fan, and even among the fans, who are bound together by dint of the former relationships. We’re all in the living room together, and the very imperfections and idiosyncrasies of the recording anchor us there — in physicality, in reality. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, they wear and tear of having been handled, loved, worn out over time, make us real.

This intimacy is beautifully expressed in the liner notes from Johnny Cash’s album, Ragged Old Flag:

I got so excited writing the songs in this album that you’d think I just started in the music business. It’s something I always wanted to do, write an album of all my own songs and for some reason, I just never go around to it. One reason, I suppose, is that I have so many friends that are good song writers and their songs just kept on coming along….

Johnny Cash, liner notes Ragged Old Flag

Cash presents us, personally, with a work of particular significance to him. He then includes us in the creative process as he talks about a special song:

There was one of them, “Ragged Old Flag,” that I didn’t even have any control over. It came out faster than I could write it down. You’ve heard of people who write songs in ten minutes. “Ragged Old Flag” was one of those songs. Then I recorded it at a Columbia luncheon at the House of Cash and the applause is from the Columbia Record people who were in convention there. Chuck Cochran arranged the most unusual orchestration (and Earl Scruggs played the banjo)…

No wild, weird sounds, no extra icing, I recorded them the way I felt them. And I recorded them for you, making believe that you were one of those sitting down to dinner with me when I took my guitar to the supper table.

Johnny Cash, liner notes Ragged Old Flag

I can’t end on a better note than that.