the root of the problem- > the writer

[joaquin]

HI Jules. I believe that creative explosive minds tend to be more creative when under pressure. There's indeed cultural shift tours homogenization and close minded religious values, but in practice, that only make free spirits pay more attention and work harder.

[Henchman]

Originally posted by wwittman
Bob,

Did Diane Warren have any performing experience (SUBSTANTIAL experience)?

Bad example. She's the queen of elevatore muzak IMO. I honestly don't know how she was able to make such a name for herself. Every song of hers is generic, cookie cutter soulless pap.

Hmm.. Then again, look at the industry.

[amanitas]

"Music isn't really about recording, it's about performing. Great studios are for recording great performances, not for assembling Acid loops and posing in front of $10,000 microphones."


As a composer who uses Acid a lot, I've got to object to this statement. A program like Acid doesn't in any way necessitate that you are making bad music on it. It's kind of like a guitar. It's really easy to learn how to play a song on a guitar. It's really hard to play a guitar really well. I certainly see far more shitty guitar players than good ones, and for the most part they write shitty music.

Does that mean the guitar is the problem?

In the end, history will judge. Charles Ives composition teachers repeatedly criticized his work for being "too far out there." And nobody remembers who his composition teacher was. His willingness to break the rules and see things from a different perspective is what makes him stand out - in the same way, I feel like a lot of the people on this board could do themselves a favor by sitting down with a program like Acid or Reason or Fruity Loops or whatever and seeing just what they can actually do on it. **** around on it for a few days and see what things it actually does well. Because it can do a lot of stuff that you can't do on pro tools, and you sure as hell can't do on 2" tape.

I'm not talking about using the stock loops the program comes with, and stacking them in various geometrical combinations obvious. You can still have a great performance, recorded on great gear in a great room as your base material. Any engineer worth his salt probably has a huge library of cool sounds and samples and loops to work with that they've amassed over the years.

If you look at it as a boon to your creativity - a way to put cool bits of musical scrap together to form good compositions - rather than a bane to your existence - a stupid program designed to dumb down your chosen profession to it's lowest common denominator - you'll end up getting a lot more out of the program not to mention potentially a lot of teaching gigs with some of those kids that have learned how to use the program but don't know thing one about how to mix, engineer or anything else.

And for everyone lamenting the lost era when all the music sounded better, quit whining. The recordings from those eras haven't all been destroyed. There will always be upper end rooms for upper end clientele.

Great records and great sounding records will continue to be made, and if you really think we maxed out with DSOTM and SPLHCB, then perhaps you should be working in a different industry.

Engineering/Producing/Mixing is an art. But to say it can't be practiced competently, even excellently on anything but the highest of high end equipment is silly. I leave with a quote from Debussy:

"Works of art make rules, but rules do not make works of art"

[amanitas]

"Bad example. She's the queen of elevatore muzak IMO. I honestly don't know how she was able to make such a name for herself. Every song of hers is generic, cookie cutter soulless pap.

Hmm.. Then again, look at the industry."

Here is where the hipocrasy inherent in the rock world kind of gets to me. Why is Dianne Warren, a prolific, and successful songwriter, writing pap while, say, the rolling stones in their heyday were writing songs that were super profound?

I know critics that have praised particular songs that she's written, even critics that are aware of her reputation as a writer of soulless pap.

In the end, it all boils down to opinion. Which is why the world is crumbling around a lot of people who are used to charging incredible fees for their 'opinions' - I don't mean this to be directed at Henchman in particular, but more at a general attitude I see here - if you don't have some sort of logical reasoning to convince someone to pay 200% more for your room, when it only sounds 10% better TO THEM, you are gonna lose business. If you're trying to make money, the customer is always right.

Likewise, if you lash out at everyone who you don't like (thus far from Henchman alone, I've seen swipes at Alanis and Dianne Warren that have been largely unsubstantiated by any sort of reasoning further than 'that stuff is crap'), you run the risk of alienating potential customers that may think Jagged was the best thing since sliced bread.

God, I never thought I'd be defending Dianne Warren and Alanis Morisette on a bulletin board...

My point is that your opinion, like everyone else's, is guided by your own preferences and development as an artist/professional and probably most of all by the recordings that really inspired you. And that's cool. But not everyone is going to have the same conception of what constitutes "good music," and no matter what level you're on - whether it be master musicians and producers or total amatuers, people are going to have their benchmark recordings.

For example, I know quite a few people who look at the Wu Tang Clan's 36 chambers as a benchmark album. Landmark. Perfect "grimy" hip hop sound, whatever that means. Great rapping. "slammin" beats.

From a purely technical perspective, that album is enough to make any engineer cringe. But it communicates with people, enough that if you check out a hip hop production forum, every producer on there is gonna talk about the particular MPC model or SP-12 sampler or whatever pieces of gear were used on that recording. And those forums are just as busy as these ones.

My point is, why hate on other people trying to make art? Why not accept the fact that

a) it's possible to make a great album that doesn't sound 'great' - Sublime, for example, recorded 40 oz. to Freedom on what sounds like a 4 track cassette deck. Their fans, who are rabid, don't have lowered expectations of qualtiy - they just accept that sound quality as the reality of the situation - Sublime sounds lo-fi because they didn't have a huge budget when they made this record, but it's still ****ing awesome so who cares, end of story.

b) it's possible to make a horrible record that sounds great -
Ashley Simpson, Pieces of Me. I don't think this needs a whole lot of explanation.

and work with the changing times rather than against them?

[Henchman]

[i]Originally posted by amanitas
Why is Dianne Warren, a prolific, and successful songwriter, writing pap while, say, the rolling stones in their heyday were writing songs that were super profound?

Quantity doesn't always mean quality.

Neither does success. There's alot of stuff that is cookie cutter crap in rock (nickleback, creed) that has sold tons as well.

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally posted by wwittman
Did Diane Warren have any performing experience (SUBSTANTIAL experience)?

Did Carol King BEFORE she worte all thsoe hit songs?
How about Ellie Greenwich?

My understanding is that all had performing experience. They weren't recording artists turned writers but they had been in front of an audience or at the very least worked hand in hand with somebody who was regularly in front of an audience.

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally posted by amanitas
A program like Acid doesn't in any way necessitate that you are making bad music on it.

I didn't say it does. My point was that it doesn't require a studio while performance does.

Performance is important because it's the only way an artist can earn enough celebrity to earn a living from their own art rather than just what the people financing their celebrity want.

[Vermeer]

Wow,

Gearslutz definitly live on another planet...

Dianne Warren is a goddess and deserves your respect. She worked for years perfecting hercraft before she could even make a living off it. Then when she finally suceeds, guys like you crap on her calling her the "queen of elevator music"? As opposed to what? "Underpaid-waitress-waiting-for-her-big break-writting-songs-that-only- Gear-obsessed-guys-will-like"?

She's a professional songwriter and this means that if she gets too profound, Celine Dion an LeeAnn Rimes will *not* record her songs.

All the above-mentionned "elevator" artists understand something about the *real* purpose of music: to make (most of) us feel good and forget about our problems for a while.

I rest my case. You guys are so cruel...

Vermeer

[Henchman]

Originally posted by Vermeer

All the above-mentionned "elevator" artists understand something about the *real* purpose of music: to make (most of) us feel good and forget about our problems for a while.

I rest my case. You guys are so cruel...

Vermeer

Something none of those artists accomplish. Or any of Dianne warrens songs.

But that's just my opinion.

I'm sure Kenny G and Michael Bolton are high on your "must listen to" list

[bunnerabb]

Once upon a time, there was radio.

It was the connection to the music, and it played all of the music. You turned on the radio, and a friendly voice connected you to all the hits.

You could hear Deep Purple, Neil Diamond, Vanilla Fudge, Three Dog Night, Blood Sweat and Tears, Blue Cheer and The BeeGees.

In a row.

There's were no genres. there was no endless, dogmatic argument as to what was "The only COOL music". there was only the music. It flowed like honey from the crevices of that world next door that we called the radio.

The Fabs, the Supremes, blues from Long John Baldry, Desmond Dekker and the Aces checking in with what was a lot of white kids first taste of reggae.

Music. Tons of it. If you didn't like this song, another one would be on three or four minutes.. no worries. And the news at the top of the hour that no-one really believes, but that was over in ten minutes. Thank God.

Then they got back to the music.

All of it. Not just "heavy music" or "Hip music" or "Hippy music" or Motown music" or "chick music" or "Guitar music". THE music.

All of it.

Kind of hard to sell records to kids who have been stoked full of the idiotic notion that they must find allegience to one form or style and then vehemently defend it by attacking all others. They sort of.. you know.. burn out on the same old shit and stop buying records.

And sometimes, late at night.. when it's really quiet... I can look up to the ceiling and hear a faint echo of rock and roll radio...

And I can hear music, I can hear music, the sounds of the city, baby, seem to disappear, ohhh and, I can hear music.. sweet sweet music...

Kicking the crap out of somebody because they write songs you don't like?

God, what a bunch of girlie-men we've become. Snide and posturing and dismissive of anything we do not deem "worthy"... when the fact of the matter is, all of this.. this music... was here, and growing - not dying - and had more flavours than Baskin Robbins... well before we ever found the ON switch on the old radio.

[boody]

Bob Ohlson is right: it's all about the money. Big studios shut down because people don't see the need to pay their rates anymore.

People stopped paying huge amounts of money for music because for most of them mp3 will do, just like their small radio and cheap soundsystems: for most of them it's good enough. They can hear it and sing/dance allong: they don't _need_ more.

an analogy:

In the old days we had very big orchestras playing in very nice acoustic spaces. People payed to see them, and so they were everywhere. Then came the pop bands. Amplified. No need for acoustically optimal spaces; they were loud enough to play anywhere. Though not nearly as skilled as the musicians in the old orchestras, the brought us new exciting music: people would pay for that, so they would play everywhere. The orchestras and their musical theatres were out of fashion. They didn't disappear, but there weren't as much of them needed, so many disapeared.

Well; big studios are build to capture great performances.... for people who can afford big studios. Even an old cassete player can capture a great performance. It won't sound as good but you don't need a big studio for that.

As bands/artists have lesser money because people pay less for their music, they will not be able or willing to spend it on expensive studios. Today we have great tools to capture performances, accesable to almost everyone.

Big studios, like big musical theatres, will survive in smaller numbers, for the small elite that can afford them.

as for the statements that the writer is the problem, or that being a producer/engineer/songwriter/ artist is a god given talent... come one; we know better than that. True, some of us are pure genius, but genius can be found in every trade. We're not that special. Most of us are just working people with hopefully a big passion for what we do. And there will be as much of us around as the market allows.

regards,
Budy

[Jose Mrochek]

Originally posted by Henchman
Bad example. She's the queen of elevatore muzak IMO. I honestly don't know how she was able to make such a name for herself. Every song of hers is generic, cookie cutter soulless pap.

Hmm.. Then again, look at the industry.

I may be mistaken but didn't diane warren write "i don't want to miss a thing" or whatever it's called performed by Aerosmith for that movie ? To my understanding that is some kick ass song.

And now that I'm on my way of getting flamed at by our genious gearslut songwriters, I would also like to say that ashlee simpson's new single "la-la" is a kick ass song to. yes, ashlee simpson may be the behringer of artists, but I think that is a great upbeat cool pop rock song. if you forget about who ashlee is, and all the autotune and stuff I heard it today on the radio for the second time and I really really like the song, even with her singing it. So, ok.. I think there are some seriously shitty writers that caused a downfall on the meaning of music, but I do have to say there are some seriously good pop songwriters out there to. And Diane Warren happens to be one of them, as well as Ashlees songwriters who I have no idea who they are.

[Henchman]

Originally posted by boody
as for the statements that the writer is the problem, or that being a producer/engineer/songwriter/ artist is a god given talent... come one; we know better than that. True, some of us are pure genius, but genius can be found in every trade. We're not that special. Most of us are just working people with hopefully a big passion for what we do. And there will be as much of us around as the market allows.

regards,
Budy

Except that other trades people charge real money for their work. And get paid.

[boody]

Originally posted by Henchman
Except that other trades people charge real money for their work. And get paid.

tell that to a less fortunate worker in the third world

but seriously: some of us our underpaid, some are overpaid... just as in any trade.

we may determine what is art when we create it; other people will determine its value...

same goes for hard work

[Gregg Sartiano]

Originally posted by Jules
- 'is there always a place in your roster for a raspy voiced, Eddy Veder / Nirvana / Nickleback / clone / generic rock band' -

they all will manage to hiss the confession - "YESSSSSSSS"

Thats not very innovative though, it's just filling a marketing gap, the US LIKES raspy voiced rock.. plain and simple...it's not forward moving though...

Nickelback may have had a hit last year, but so did Linkin Park, and I don't see anybody who sounds/looks like EITHER getting signed right now -- myself being on "the scene" and getting stacks of upcoming CD's from major A & R's and listening to "tastemaking" radio stations like L.A.'s KROQ and (not very) "Indie 103.1" (fmr. Sex Pistol Steve Jones is a regular DJ).

The new Puddle of Mudd and the new Tantric both tanked last year. The demand in the American market has shifted. The established artists (3 Doors Down) are having their releases promoted, but new signings I see happening do not represent this sound.

[Henchman]

Originally posted by boody
[B]tell that to a less fortunate worker in the third world

we're not talking about the third world, we're talking here.

As someone said before, nobody questions a plumber when he hands them the bill. Or says, "we pay this on a 6 month billing cycle".

You don't have plumbers running around town, buying a van full of expensive tools AND a van, and the charging $10,- an hour.

tehre ar Entertainment lawyers making ridiculous percentage fees upfront beofre an Artist has even recorded a single note.

Yet it's the guys who have the experience on how to capture the stuff right, and make it shine that are being completely pushed to the back of the line.

THAT is what is going in in the Audio field. Because any nitwit who can soend $1000,- on an Mbox, is now an "AUDIO-ENGINEER". ANd people accept and believe it.

I guess it comes down to how much you value yourself, and hte profession you have chosen.
Right now, it seems that Audio-Engineers are cheaper than crack *****s, and are more than happy to say thank you while getting reamed with a barbwired condom.

Me. I'll pass, thank you.

[Gregg Sartiano]

I think it is important to note that we are shifting into what has been termed an "Experience Society" -- the next step beyond, say, an "Information Society" (no 80's jokes, please).

The reality TV boom is a symptom of this.

Basically, the proliferation of new media allows the heightened illusion of shared experience to the point that indulging in the media (internet, DVD's+features) is accepted as "being there" from an audience standpoint, so the presentation is obliged to become inclusive of the related experiences, not just what is traditionally appreciated as "product."

Another symptom of this is the change from auteur-oriented expression to artist-oriented expression. The 70's was not only the era of the super-producer, but the era of the super-director (movies) as well. Now, we have Clint Eastwood scoring his own (great, but ill-scored!) films and musical artists writing/producing who were better off letting other people handle those chores.

The audience identifies directly with the artist and instinctively wants to receive unfiltered expression from the artist. And, as in any industry, we "give 'em what they want."

[boody]

Originally posted by Henchman
You don't have plumbers running around town, buying a van full of expensive tools AND a van, and the charging $10,- an hour.

Our problem is everyone needs a plumber, but people who need an engineer are few. Yet there seem to be as many engineers as plumbers! So the price drops beyond reason... for some.

But:

most good engineers I know have a good life, because they are great in what they do and get paid good for it.

And:

the quality of high end studios depends on good engineers who know how to use high end gear. Some studios get a bad reputation because bad engineers mixed their stuf in there. Stuf gets heared and considered bad and people start saying: I can do that at home, the sound from that big studio is bad anyway.

So:

engineers and studios need to work out a solution that keeps them both occupied. They should work together and make a plan to atrackt more succesful home studio projects; give them smal facilities to work in and exchange experience. Give guidance and profit from the ones that are succesfull and will use the big console and an experienced engineer to upgrade their product.

Seeing small studios as the enemy is wrong: they exsist because there is no money to afford high end studio time.

The real enemy is (lack of) money. High end studios are expensive: I can pay 6 months rent for one day in a high end studio. Go figure

[Jose Mrochek]

Originally posted by boody


the quality of high end studios depends on good engineers who know how to use high end gear. Some studios get a bad reputation because bad engineers mixed their stuf in there. Stuf gets heared and considered bad and people start saying: I can do that at home, the sound from that big studio is bad anyway.

exactly exactly exacly

don't forget mr. mastering guy who also contributes to this problem!

[hdog]

Originally Posted by Henchman

Something none of those artists accomplish. But that's just my opinion.

are you kidding me?

carole king - tapestry album is one of the best things that has ever been recorded

great songs, great performances, great vibe. id strongly suggest you go and listen to it again

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by hdog

are you kidding me?

carole king - tapestry album is one of the best things that has ever been recorded

great songs, great performances, great vibe. id strongly suggest you go and listen to it again

Sorry, Carole King definitely doesn't belong in the list. And her own version of " Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?" absolutely slays the sugary sweet, but still classic version of The Shirelles.

[Kris]

Originally Posted by goldcoastrefuse

Bottom line is that none of those are gonna be in the "hot hits" rack at Best Buy. In my humble opinion, anyone who says the overall quality of music is bad- is just lazy. There will probably never be another Beatles, Stones or Who. They were from a time and a place that we unfortunately do not live in. But is it really that horrible to live in a time that has Wilco, Ryan Adams, Tom Waits and Lucinda Williams? I'm not complaining a bit.

thumbsup