The way musicians "see" music vs. engineering a "song"

[joelpatterson]

Launching into a whole series of bass guitar overdubs last night on several songs for a hot folk/alt/blues/hootenanny group...

And I was struck by the "organic" way musicians relate to their songs, versus the way I work to juggle the multi-track "reality."

I was all "how far (like minutes and seconds style) do we need to go into the song to find the place you're talking about?"

And they are all, "it's past the first dum, be, dum, where it goes into the second part, about three or four measures into that."

Made me really wish that there was sheet music of all of it... but I kept defaulting to time codes, seconds and frames, what percentage into the song are we, while they kept hitting me with a-capella bass runs. Got it all sorted out, of course, but it got me pondering... to me, this is all data that exists, a skein of parts linked together... but to them it's more of a whole unitary creature.

[Dean Roddey]

One of the most amazing things, as a musician, is that, when it's all really hitting on all cylinders and everyone is really 'there', whereever 'there' is, the music takes on almost a physical form in the room. You can see it. It has a shape and all you are doing is just outlining the shape, and it's as inevitable as walking on a mountain path. You have no choice but to step into the right spot.

It's a really amazing experience when it happens. It doesn't require making 'guitar face' or getting all intense or having it down so pat that it's robotic or any of that. It just becomes almost effortless and just flows, but flows in a very vibrant sort of way.

Since I don't play with others a lot, it's not something I've experienced too many times. But back in the day when I was in various bands, I had some of those and they were pretty amazing.

I remember one night when it was all clicking, and just in between songs as everyone was just kind of checking their tuning and whatnot, suddenly there was applause. Later the light man (my cousin) said that it was just this really amazing freeform thing that happened, which none of us were trying to create, and he started the lights in response. We were all just fiddling around in between songs but we were all just so there that night that just tuning up come out really good.


That also reminds me of my mother's husband. He's a tree guy, worked for Davey Tree for a long time. Those guys, you ask them for directions and they say, well you head down here for about a mile, and you'll see this big oak tree and right beside it will be a poplar that's had some triming on the left. Take a right there and drive until you see this row of spruce trees with a japanese pine at the very end, go left there and it's right down at the end of that road under a big willow.

[rkopald]

I can relate to this. I've been in so many bands, and the only ones I've written parts for were the ones where the other musicians had some kind of formal training. Music is such an organic process, and I know when I'm writing, I'm never ever thinking about minutes or seconds, or measures.
I still have difficulty bouncing back and forth between the production aspect of my music and the music part. My attempts at doing everything have made me appreciate how technical the engineering side of it is. Bands I used to scoff at and loathe I now hear with a fresh and respectful perspective. Yeah, it's a weird thing, the creative process, but with music there's another side that I honestly didn't even think about until I began to do it all myself. You guys deserve the money you make. Playing aint recording. I honestly didn't think about mic placement unless it was "this doesn't sound right" and I'd move the mic a little. Now I'm obsessed with it. And mastering? Forget it. I fiddle, but when it comes time for me to release a cd, I'm going to pony up some cash for a proper ME. I kinda get it, but man it's way different than the creative process. Not in a bad way either. Not to labor the metaphors, but it's sorta like the difference between an architect and the project engineer. An architect may want a flying concrete slab, and the engineer may have to tell him "Yeah, that'd be great, but it's not stable. You need to do it a different way" That's the relationship. Musicians are creatures of impulse and whim (I am anyway) and engineers are very methodical and do not like surprises, and they know what can work and what may be an issue. That funky, rarified air that is the middle ground is where the details occur. How many recordings do we all own and cherish, and listen to over and over, and we have no idea who the engineers were, yet we listen to these records in our cars, our houses, at work, everywhere? It was a stone-solid engineer that made that happen. How does Led Zeppelin 1 sound so good on everything I play it on? Why do my Joe Pass cds work on all sorts of manky speakers? I'd wager that the musicians weren't focusing on that. They were more likely worried about proper chord extensions. Yeah, the music is definitely a Gestalt thing, but what engineers do to capture the performance for posterity is f*&kin amazing. Mad respect from this guy. thumbsup

[MTStudios]

When I'm working I always mark out the song sections with markers in Ptools and just jump around with memory locations, which I'm sure most people do. But I couldn't imagine thinking of the song as minutes and seconds or anything other than the song. I mean really, if I'm in there, and I'm NOT thinking in terms of the song, I probably shouldn't be working on it.

I try to shed the baggage of the technical side of my job as quickly as possible, so I can get on with the song.

[joelpatterson]

Yeah, that's kind of what I'm getting at-- you want to experience the song in its full emotional glory, but you do need to keep in mind which tracks are record enabled, which tracks are scratch and can be utilized for further instrumentation... the kinds of details the musicians have no idea about, but to the engineer, this is the song, as it exists in the machinery.

That's it! Machinery! The "song" exists prior to and independent of machinery, to a musician-- but not to me, that's for damn sure.

[vincentvangogo]

I think it has a lot to do with creativity/playing being centred in the right hemisphere of the brain and logic/engineering type skills being in the left. That's also why it's difficult to flip between the two (eg when recording yourself and you have to go from playing to having to patch in some leads.)
I think engineering can enter a right brain/zone type-state as long as you know the gear really well or have everything laid out so simply you don't have to 'think' to set it up.

[rkopald]

Again, this is why I have so much respect for the engineering side of it all.
A musician can often dismiss this part of it, but an engineer can't. It can be tough to pull of both sides of it. But then again, somebody here at GS should see if they could get an interview with Jack Frost, and see what he thinks about both sides in one brain...

[henryrobinett]

Aw. It's all communication and how we relate to the tools we use to communicate with those things. Musicians I work with think in terms of 1st, 2nd, 3rd, verses, choruses, bridges, or DS, DC, 1st or 2nd endings or rehearsal letters, including pitched and rhythm notes. Sometimes, if I'm not playing on the date, it helps if I have a guitar close by, just so I can identify the key and chords, so we can talk notes, if need be.

But the engineer today relates to minutes, seconds, frames, measures. The more we can share the language, the better communication becomes and the smoother sessions can go.

But there's ALWAYS juggling act to determine what language we're speaking. This goes for most people anyway. The streetwise student or a banking executive, jazz musician, goth, etc.. There's always a juggle.

I tend to set markers in song form, -- 1st verse, etc, as well as specific function, like singer missed note, or drums stop. The sooner I can enter these on the fly, the quicker we can identify what we're doing. Being able to establish agreements in sessions is pretty important to achieving a successful session. At least I think it is.

[rkopald]

Agreed. More and more people are being forced to understand the entire process. The more everybody shares a lingua franca, the easier it is. I think sometimes that the days of the tortured musician being pampered by the understanding producer/engineer are becoming a quaint relic. Too bad in some ways, but better in others.

[Hashbrown]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

That also reminds me of my mother's husband. He's a tree guy, worked for Davey Tree for a long time. Those guys, you ask them for directions and they say, well you head down here for about a mile, and you'll see this big oak tree and right beside it will be a poplar that's had some triming on the left. Take a right there and drive until you see this row of spruce trees with a japanese pine at the very end, go left there and it's right down at the end of that road under a big willow.

Ha! that made me laugh.

I think about music as a musician, think about writing a song and working on it as a channeling thing. I like to think that it comes from somewhere else, and i just pass it through my brain and body to get the sound out. Like when i sing, it just wants to come out regardless of how i do it (which led to me loosing my voice a couple of time until i learnt proper technique).

Then when i need to record it, i think of that as a documentary. The only thing else is trying to get a good enough take to be happy with it forever. Thats where it gets tricky. I find i get too overwhelmed with all the different factors of engineering, that i forget that the song just needs to breathe.

The sound i have in my head is what i'm learning how to get down on tape.

[joelpatterson]

Originally Posted by Hashbrown

... to be happy with it forever. Thats where it gets tricky....

And that's a whole 'nother angle: when everyone "fine tunes" (translation: overdubs) sections of their parts, we're getting ever further from the spontaneous explosion of joy that a "song" is supposed to be. No? It's becoming a race car that's getting ever more coats of polish.

Yet, also, everyone invests ever more of their own personal sense of "worthwhile-ness as a musician" in this Frankensteinian concoction in the machinery, and this is only natural: it will be the example of their work and proof of their genius.

So in that sense it's more like a beautifully painted house that everyone has chipped in on-- a magic moment that's been frozen, somehow... I'm not sure why all these ironies bedevil me, still, after all these years... but they sure do.

[Dean Roddey]

I don't find it hard to go back and forth between the two sides necessarily. I seem to be pretty bi-polar along that techno-geek/musician axis and feel pretty comfortable on either side. But it can be annoying when you are trying get your mojo working, so I mostly try to just do them separately, which you can do in various ways.

Sometimes, for the home recordist, who doesn't have the luxury of hearing all the parts together before starting, and therefore who may be kind of creating the parts as he goes, it's not necessarily a bad thing. You can be working out how each new part will as you go through the initial engineering phase of that part. That often suits both needs well enough, play it over and over, listen to how it sounds, listen to how it works in the song and correct each as you go.

When you find it, then just shut it down for the night and come in the next night and just be the musician.

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by joelpatterson

And that's a whole 'nother angle: when everyone "fine tunes" (translation: overdubs) sections of their parts, we're getting ever further from the spontaneous explosion of joy that a "song" is supposed to be. No? It's becoming a race car that's getting ever more coats of polish.

For me, though my situation is as far in that direction as possible, since every part is played separately, I don't feel like there's a lack of spontanaity or emotion, at least in me as I'm playing though maybe it doesn't yet get into the tracks as recorded yet. When I do each track, I'm feeling the mojo.

I think where it hurts us single home recordists is that, once you start getting further along in the piece, you start realizing, oh, I could have done this in the bass line and it would have reacted really nicely with what came afterwards. Or I could have done this here and it would have really built up nicely to this next thing.

As you write more songs I'm sure that becomes less of a problem, because you'll be able to see it more in your head from the start. But it takes a lot more up front head work, not just a create it as you go thing. Eventually hopefully you hit that Mozart level where it's just a matter of writing it down.

[joelpatterson]

The whole process of actually writing a song, the give and take between your inspiration and your sense of craft, exploring the possibilities at hand... there's a whole 'nother discussion....

[uncle duncan]

Back to seeing a song - Imagine this is a song, with the type characters representing the shape of the melody or the structure of the chords:

Verse: ----/----/----/----/----/----/----/----/

Chorus: ----/----/----/----/----/----/----/----/

Looking at it visually, the verse and the chorus are the same, which equals boring.

Here's another song:

Verse: ----/----/----/----/----/----/----/----/

Chorus: --- /__________/ ---/___/ ---/___/

The change up in the chorus creates contrast for the listener. If it's got an interesting melody, or a clever lyric, or an "emotional" chord (sus4 or Ma7 chords are interesting, in that they're unresolved, creating tension) it's memorable. It's a way to hook the listener.

With homegrown amateur songwriters, nine times out of ten, the verse and the chorus are virtually identical, with maybe a little change in the melody or a different chord thrown in. Being a songwriter myself, I know how that happens. You get that initial groove going for your song, and you're so enraptured with it, you carry it through the whole tune.

There's a difference between writing a song and songwriting. After the initial inspiration, it boils down to craft. Some people come by the craft naturally, or they assimilate it through their exposure to well-written songs. Some people laugh at the idea of craft in songwriting, as if it's a cop out. They see their initial idea as some kind of magical thing that must not be altered. In those cases, I compare inspiration to a boat. You can either climb in the boat and sit there at the dock, or you can push the boat out into the water and actually go somewhere.

I always encourage songwriters to read a few books on the subject, go to some NSAI seminars, anything to hone their craft. It's like expanding your toolbox. If all you have is a hammer, you're going to be very limited when it's time to cut a board in half.

Anyway, it's a lot more fun for the engineer if he's got well-crafted songs to work with.

[Dean Roddey]

There are bands for whom that 'riff as a song' is pretty fundamental to them and it works for them. It takes all kinds of song writers I guess to make a village. If you look at bands like Metallica, every song is pretty much a riff based song.

And there are bands for whom the highly repeated lyrical motif thing works well. I can't do it. I cannot bring myself to write a song that has a repeated lyric at all. It works, obviously, since it's been done a hundred thousand times or more now in very famous songs. But I just can't bring myself to do it. I'll instead do a variation on it or something, whereas some bands can do a great song with just a few lines effectively.

[river]

For me, I'm glad that I came into the production world as a musician. I think it's enormously helpful to me to be able to communicate with the players in the room in terms of song structure, the way certain chord inversions between instruments are working against each other, etc.....it helps to speak their language. It is, after all, about capturing the moment. I'm less inclined to attempt to manufacture the moment.