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Post by patril0mic on Jan 20, 2010 12:23:09 GMT -5
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Post by Tungus on Jan 20, 2010 14:25:43 GMT -5
Agreed 100%. ....bet thought I was gonna rant. I wouldnt be surprised if miley cyrus sounded like a bulldog when she sang w/o a mic. Sad but true overview of the crap were being force fed these days.
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Post by Stefvorcide on Jan 22, 2010 23:07:38 GMT -5
*nod with all this
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steve0
Still Wears Diapers
Posts: 23
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Post by steve0 on Apr 19, 2010 18:32:23 GMT -5
Just a couple of notes on this... I'll try to make it short. (Also... haven't been to IG in a while... this shit looks GREAT.)
(Keep in mind my use of the word "automation" means something completely different in a recording studio context. Here I use it to refer to automatic 'enhancements' to a musical performance.)
I think it's important to understand that this is what people should EXPECT in music. Why is anyone surprised by this?
There have always been arguments like the one against Autotune (used as a crutch for a bad vocal performance).
What the essential argument comes down to is "automation", by which I mean parts of a musical performance which are carried out mostly or completely automatically with machine precision, with no possibility of error or variance from performance to performance. Most studio technology, plenty of live sound technology, lip synching and autotune, among many others, rely on automated machines to enhance the recording or performance.
At which point it becomes "cheating" depends on who you ask. Is multitracking cheating? It's certainly automation. For example, a drummer records a performance of a song, which is on it's own tracks. From that point on the recording of the other instruments can continue indefinitely, trying take after take of say - rhythm guitars - without risking losing that first initial drum performance. The guitarists can try 700 times to lay down the rhythm tracks and, when they finally succeed with pinpoint precision, those tracks can be laid alongside the drum tracks, and the vocalist can then proceed to take as many takes as he needs to make a perfect lead vocal.
What is left after this process is a track full of perfect takes. The same band that made those perfect takes would be very unlikely to ever pull off the same perfect track if they were all mic'd up and laying down their tracks at the same time. Lets say that only 1 out of every 10 tracks from each performer makes it on the record (and this is a very conservative estimate - it can take many more than 10 takes to lay down a perfect track for any instrument). Now, take a rock band with 5 members. If they each only get it "perfect" one out of ten times, it would statistically take 100,000 takes of them all playing at the same time to find the one perfect take where they all play it perfectly.
THIS is why the days of a group of performers gathering into a room around a microphone and playing the song all together over and over and over are gone forever. (Although occasionally the basic tracks of a record are cut with everyone in the band playing together, many of those tracks will be recorded over individually later to capture a tighter performance).
This is the way most commercial records have been made since multi-tracking became widely available. Practically every metal album that is near and dear to the heart of the average metalhead has used this technique (usually a LOT of this technique). Is it cheating? Does it ruin that album for you to know that the song is a Frankenstein of performances that were never in the same room together? Probably not. We've learned to accept this technique in the name of tighter sounding songs with better mixes.
Same goes for compression (which essentially alters dynamics in ways that weren't controlled by the player) or noise gating (which can be used to make sloppy muting sound tighter).
Now take the general public with Autotune. Autotune (or variants of it) have been in use since the 90's. WIDELY in use. What Autotune gives the public is a vocal performance that sounds fantastic, at a minimum cost of time and effort to the people who produced that music.
The people never know, and if they do know they don't care. Hell... lots of people know very well that pop-singers lip synch, they don't care. They just want to hear that catchy song, which is what it all comes down to.
Catchy. Song.
You can give the general public an artistic 20 minute masterpiece of emotional, well composed music and stand it up against a 3 minute, overproduced, hook laden performance... and I don't need to tell you which one they want to listen to more. It's just the way of the world. There's a reason that there are such a huge number of metal listeners or prog-rockers who are, themselves, musicians. It's because musicians are interested enough to care about the deeply artistic side of music.
The rest of the public doesn't care. We can't expect them to care. They don't care about the "volume war", they don't care whether a performance is "genuine". They just want to hear the songs they like, and leave it at that. And perhaps there's something to this baser appreciation of music that we can all learn from. It's great if your band has a song that makes people think, but there's nothing like a song that makes a person "feel" something viscerally, without thinking about it.
You remember that first time you heard the first few riffs of "Master of Puppets" and it kicked your ass? Were you thinking about what Metallica was commenting on with that riff? Were you waxing poetic about the fact that the performance you were hearing from the band never happened as such? No. You were to busy getting your ass kicked by the riffage.
This is the way the "rest of the world" (non-musicians) at large listen to music. They just want to hear "Tik-Tok" on the dancefloor at a club while they get drunk, and there's not a lot you can do to blame them. Afterall the people who give a shit are most definitely in the minority.
The author of the above rant states "It sounds good, they believe it's truth." but the average listener knows better. They know perfectly well that pop-stars lip-synch. They know that Donnie and Marie Osmond have had massive amounts of plastic surgery. They know when they go to see a movie that enormous collections of beautiful model-esque people do not always gather together to save the world.
They know the models are photoshopped.
They know the Big-Mac doesn't look like it does in the picture.
They know that the singer has built a career on "Studio Magic" and the vast majority of the time, they just don't care.
And beyond just knowing the music is altered by a machine, they don't care if it's soul-less. They just want to hear that catchy song.
This is the way it has been for a LONG time, this is the way it will always be. There is a reason that Beethoven got sick of playing his Moonlight Sonata, and felt that people appreciated it more than his better works. Well... that song is a hit. It's a hook from start to finish. What can we expect? If people would rather hear it, what's wrong with them preferring it over our overblown symphonies and intellectual music?
You either play to the few who have the capacity to appreciate "honest" music with "real" performances. Or you play to the vast majority... and there's nothing wrong with that. Writing a catchy song within the framework of "pop" is an art in and of itself, and it's very very difficult to do well enough that people will really take notice of it.
People know what they're getting, and if they just don't care enough to know the difference, why should we expect pop-artists and producers of all people to do anything other than what sells?
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Post by Stefvorcide on Apr 20, 2010 11:35:46 GMT -5
Good post steve0 !!
That's a point of view we don't often think about ourselves (as musicians)
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Post by Torkin on Apr 21, 2010 11:15:31 GMT -5
I agree with what you say, especially about the majority of people wanting a hookladen short song that captures you the first time you hear it and then leaves you alone after 20 listens. But if applied to music I dig, let's say symphonic or folk or anyway classically influenced metal of all sorts, I'd say that I wouldn't give a damn about the amount of production used on records (and there is a huge lot, even compared to pop, because most of the songs are long, saturated with tracks, multilayered, orchestrated, with lots of vocal tracks etc). I (and any metal fan for that reason) would however be hugely disappointed if the band is not be able to back up the RECORD with a great LIVE performance. Most of the bands can. However, looking at some popular pop bands, that is not the case. Or I am just nitpicking. I would say that this indicates that metal bands put much more effort in tightening up their performance and technique through rehearsing to be able to replicate difficult elaborate songs with a lot of stuff going on live. I'd say if a band can play their stuff tight and with good sound live, it doesn't matter how much post-recording they do on the albums. In most of the cases, it is done to make the final result sound rich and generally, as perfect as it can sound. So whats wrong with that? Nothing
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Post by patril0mic on Apr 21, 2010 12:04:51 GMT -5
I agree with what you say, especially about the majority of people wanting a hookladen short song that captures you the first time you hear it and then leaves you alone after 20 listens. But if applied to music I dig, let's say symphonic or folk or anyway classically influenced metal of all sorts, I'd say that I wouldn't give a damn about the amount of production used on records (and there is a huge lot, even compared to pop, because most of the songs are long, saturated with tracks, multilayered, orchestrated, with lots of vocal tracks etc). I (and any metal fan for that reason) would however be hugely disappointed if the band is not be able to back up the RECORD with a great LIVE performance. Most of the bands can. However, looking at some popular pop bands, that is not the case. Or I am just nitpicking. I would say that this indicates that metal bands put much more effort in tightening up their performance and technique through rehearsing to be able to replicate difficult elaborate songs with a lot of stuff going on live. I'd say if a band can play their stuff tight and with good sound live, it doesn't matter how much post-recording they do on the albums. In most of the cases, it is done to make the final result sound rich and generally, as perfect as it can sound. So whats wrong with that? Nothing Exactly my view. I liked that blog because a lot of what Miah was whining/ranting about was that a lot of his time in his studio is spent fixing mistakes that, for the most part, could be prevented by better musicianship (this dude works like 36 hours straight sometimes on mixes). In our day and age, multi-tracking is standard, and there's nothing wrong with multi-layering tracks - it's just PLEASE, IF YOU RECORD IT, BE ABLE TO PLAY IT *cough*Dragonforce*cough*
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Post by Joel Wanasek on Apr 21, 2010 17:51:35 GMT -5
"why should we expect pop-artists and producers of all people to do anything other than what sells? " Damn right... just keep writing them checks. I enjoy "computer metalling" the hell out of everyone.... why, because I get to make damn good money doing what I love. When the trend changes, I'll go with it, until then I'll keep putting them bass drops in every break down so the kids can hardcore dance.
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n3r3m4c
IG Regular
Poop?
Posts: 195
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Post by n3r3m4c on Apr 27, 2010 16:07:12 GMT -5
Hell yeah. Humans shouldn't even be allowed to make music anymore. We have random midi sequencing programs that put your lame-ass painstakingly composed fugue to shame now. Microsoft sam can hit notes only your dog can hear baby. I've never heard guitar pro screw up live. More women want to have sex with ProTools than your nerdy musician ass. You like death metal? Iphone has an app for that! Cram your drum stick up your ass, my microwave keeps better time than you, and it heats up my food.
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Post by Stefvorcide on Apr 27, 2010 20:54:44 GMT -5
HAHAH THAT'S BRILLIANT BRO!!
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Post by Metal Dan on Apr 27, 2010 22:49:16 GMT -5
That last line was GOLD!
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Post by Stefvorcide on Apr 28, 2010 13:15:41 GMT -5
Yup. So we all stop playing guitar/music from now on?
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Post by thenotshredder on Apr 29, 2010 6:35:49 GMT -5
Yup, just compose everything on GP and sequence it out. You don't have to be able to play guitar to write metal now.
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Post by Stefvorcide on Apr 29, 2010 13:50:46 GMT -5
Nah we don't even bother to compose music !! ;p
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Post by Torkin on Apr 29, 2010 14:40:52 GMT -5
Many lonely guitarrists put their riffs into GP and arrange the shit out of them... Don't think there is anything wrong with dat.. I make some symphonic shit by request in GP, you don't really need a guitar when you are feeling creative. I know some dude who has put out whole electronica and new age albums without touching anything else than a keyboard and a mouse (and probably his penis).
However, to return to the earlier part of the thread, really, its the final product that matters. And if you can be arsed to back it up with a solid live performance, even better for ya!
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