El cantante de Abba que lleva tecnología a la música
Björn Ulvaeus fue componente del grupo sueco Abba.
foto para ilustrar la nota
LUDOVIC HUNTER-TILNEY | FINANCIAL TIMES
Actualizado: 10/03/2020
"Me gustan las visiones. Me gusta cuando puedo decir: Así va a ser en el futuro", dice una voz con acento sueco al otro lado de Skype. No es una voz cualquiera, sino la de Björn Ulvaeus, cantante de Abba.
El también compositor fue miembro de uno de los grupos con más éxito de la historia del pop que llegó a convertirse en un emblema de los años setenta. "La música siempre ha ido de la mano de la tecnología", opina. En 1978, los miembros de Abba compraron un sintetizador Yamaha GX-1 por el que entonces ya pagaron 130.000 dólares y que se convirtió en un elemento clave del sonido de sus composiciones. "Probábamos cualquier equipo que fuera nuevo", recuerda Ulvaeus. Abba fue la piedra angular de la industria de la música moderna sueca. El país que vio nacer a Ulvaeus es ahora uno de los principales exportadores de pop del mundo y un centro tecnológico. Skype, desde donde habla Ulvaeus, fue creado por un sueco, al igual que Spotify, el servicio de música en streaming. Ulvaeus, de 74 años, está muy implicado en los últimos avances tecnológicos de la industria musical de Suecia.
El compositor participa en un programa de software llamado Session que tiene por objeto facilitar los trámites en el complejo mundo de los derechos musicales. Su socio, Max Martin, que ha compuesto algunos de los singles con más éxito de EEUU, con permiso de Paul McCartney y John Lennon, es otro inversor. Session fue creado por el compositor y productor sueco Niclas Molinder. Desde el principio contó con el apoyo de Ulvaeus, con el que se reunió en la celebración del 40 aniversario de Abba en la londinense Tate Modern en 2014. A Ulvaeus le interesó el potencial del proyecto desde el principio. Seis años después del encuentro que tuvo lugar en la Tate, Session ha despegado. Su función es registrar la aportación individual a las grabaciones en el momento de la creación. Los músicos se descargan la app en sus móviles y la activan cuando llegan al estudio.
Cuando tocan su parte, la aplicación lo registra. El software de estudio compatible hará lo mismo: la sesión se incorpora a Pro-Tools, un programa de grabación de uso generalizado.
Los metadatos recopilados durante la sesión de estudio pueden incorporarse a los servicios de streaming de forma que sea posible buscar a los músicos en las bases de datos de canciones. Los compositores y los ingenieros de sonido también pueden utilizarlo para asegurarse de que estén bien acreditados.
Ulvaeus usa como ejemplo una de las canciones más famosas de Abba. Grabada en 1975, Fernando abre con la cantante Anni-Frid Lyngstad en el papel de una veterana soldado cantando Can you hear the drums, Fernando? a un excompañero de armas.
El tambor era Ola Brunkert, un habitual en las canciones de Abba. "Si hubiera existido la tecnología, Ola habría tenido un smartphone con la app Session descargada", explica Ulvaeus. "Habríamos trabajado con Pro-Tools, donde está integrado Session. La canción ya estaría en Session, y la aportación del productor y del ingeniero estarían registradas. Lo único que quedaría es grabar a los músicos, y la verdad sobre Fernando quedaría registrada", concluye.
https://www.expansion.com/economia-digital/innovacion/2020/03/10/5e66c307468aebf12d8b4632.html
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How Abba’s Bjorn Ulvaeus helped develop Session, an ingenious new app for the music industry
Technology is the name of the game for the Swedish star of one of the most successful groups in pop’s history
Björn Ulvaeus in a recreation of Abba's Polar recording studio © Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP
“I like visions. I like it when I can go: ‘OK, that’s how it’s going to be. That’s how it has to be in the future,’” a Swedish-accented voice says, speaking over a Skype connection.
The futurist is none other than Abba’s Björn Ulvaeus. The co-songwriter and performer in one of the most successful groups in pop’s history may be stamped into popular consciousness as a beaming emblem of the 1970s, the decade of discos, cheap package holidays, rising divorce rates and solid gold Abba hits. But he has form as an innovator, too.
“Music has always been driven by technology,” he says. “Benny [Andersson, his Abba co-songwriter] and I used to be, ‘There’s a new synth, we have to get that.’” In 1978, they purchased a rare and extremely costly Yamaha GX-1 synthesiser for SKr300,000 (about $130,000 in today’s money), which became a key element in their sound. “Any equipment that was new in the studio, we tried it,” Ulvaeus recalls.
Abba were the bedrock of the modern Swedish music industry, building their own recording studio in Stockholm and using compatriots as session musicians rather than foreigners. Ulvaeus’s homeland is now one of the world’s leading exporters of pop. It is also a technological hub. Skype, over which Ulvaeus speaks from Sweden, was co-created by a Swede. The streaming service Spotify was devised in Sweden.
Ulvaeus, 74, could have chosen to be a distinguished founding father observing all this from the sidelines. But he is involved in Sweden’s busy music-tech scene as well. He has partnered with a software programme called Session that aims to smooth out the complex and often contested area of music rights. His fellow Swede Max Martin, the chart-pop maestro who has written more US number one singles than anyone bar Paul McCartney and John Lennon, is another investor.
Abba in 1976, from left, Björn Ulvaeus, Agnetha Fältskog, Anni-Frid Lyngstad and Benny Andersson © RB/Redferns/Getty Images
Session, formerly known as Auddly, was dreamt up and developed by Swedish songwriter and producer Niclas Molinder. He won Ulvaeus’s support when they met at a celebration of Abba’s 40th anniversary at Tate Modern in London in 2014. Ulvaeus was instantly struck by the project’s potential.
Six years after the Tate encounter, Session is up and running. Its function is to register individual contributions to recordings at the moment of creation. Musicians download it on to their phones and activate it when they arrive in the studio. When they play their part, the app logs that they have done so. Compatible studio software will do the same: Session is embedded in Pro-Tools, a widely used recording programme.
The metadata gathered during studio sessions can be incorporated into streaming services so that individual musicians become searchable on song databases as well as named performers. Songwriters and studio engineers can also employ it to ensure they are credited properly — a minefield for the music industry.
Ulvaeus illustrates its use through the example of one of Abba’s most famous singles. Recorded in 1975, “Fernando” opens with singer Anni-Frid Lyngstad taking the role of an old soldier, singing plaintively “Can you hear the drums, Fernando?” to a former comrade-in-arms. In the background, a military tattoo rat-a-tat-tats its beat. Yes, Fernando can hear the drums.
Abba were scrupulous about crediting their session players. ‘It was a collaboration and their input was incredibly valuable’
The drummer was session player Ola Brunkert, a regular on Abba’s songs. “Had the technology been around, Ola would have had a smartphone with the Session app downloaded,” Ulvaeus says. “He would have walked through the doors of the studio that morning. We would have been working with Pro-Tools where Session is integrated. We would have written the song already, so that’s already in Session, the producer is there, the sound engineer is there. The only thing now is to record the musicians and after that the truth is there about ‘Fernando’, everything.”
In the 1970s, of course, there were no smartphones or apps. Back then, proof of Brunkert’s appearance required paper documentation. Abba were scrupulous about crediting their session players. “It was a collaboration and their input was incredibly valuable,” Ulvaeus says. “We used the same musicians almost all the time.”
Others have not been so conscientious. In the 1960s and 1970s, session musicians had fewer legal rights than they have today; it was not unknown for their names to be left off the credits. Other times, human error has caused confusion in the form of misspellings and wrong details. Then there is the problematic question of apportioning responsibility for a hit song. Success has many parents.
“You get the conflicts of someone saying ‘I played that,’ and another person going, ‘No you didn’t, I played that,’” Ulvaeus groans. “All the emails, all the phone calls, all the information getting distorted along the way. So it’s detective work to find out afterwards. If you have 15 songwriters and 10 musicians on a song that becomes a hit several years after, it’s impossible to work out who played what and who wrote what. It ends with a conflict and the money ends in a black box and no one gets paid.”
In contrast to collapsing sales of music, revenue from rights is growing. The UK collecting agency PPL, which has linked up with Session, collects fees for musicians, songwriters and record labels whenever music is broadcast by media or played in public. In 2018, performance rights accounted for $2.7bn of the $19.1bn global recorded music revenues. Session is designed to streamline and improve the accuracy of the information required by the likes of PPL to understand who is owed what.
Abba on stage in 1976, with Björn Ulvaeus left © Peter Bischoff/Getty Images
“I always thought that our industry was quite opaque because of its complexity. I’d like it to be much more transparent,” Ulvaeus says. He has been back in the studio himself, for Abba’s surprise reactivation in a mysterious new project under development involving digital avatars of the foursome, aka “Abbatars”, singing old and new material. Two unreleased songs have been recorded; although not, it turns out, using Session.
“No, because it wasn’t quite ready,” Ulvaeus says. “We recorded them quite some time ago, actually one and a half years ago.” So will other new Abba songs, yet to be recorded — a final twist in the tale for this most celebrated of bands — be made using Session? “Yes, absolutely!” Ulvaeus says brightly, disclosing a tantalising, albeit opaque, glimpse of Abba’s future.
https://www.ft.com/content/db73d5f4-5f95-11ea-b0ab-339c2307bcd4
