Tall Order with easlern and ibleedburgundy

Thanks, man. I appreciate that. I sense that some on the forum have been annoyed by my comments on their mixes--well, they invited them! ;) I try not to be too rigidly idiosyncratic in my feedback. I do get genre. If I'm listening to a metal mix, I'm not going to suggest making it sound like Lawrence Welk. But I might ask, "don't you want a leeeeetle bit more separation in those guitars....?" I've gone through so many phases in my musical journey, from the Country that my parents listened to when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, the hard rock, punk, and New Wave of the late 70s and 80s, a long spell listening almost exclusively to Electronica and World Music in the 90s (I sat out the thrash and grunge era in disinterest), alt Country in the early 2000s (think Old 97s), rediscovering Motown and Funk in the last ten or fifteen years, even a year or two in-between listening to almost no music at all. The cool thing about getting a bit older is that we stop defining our personal identity in terms of the musical genres and cliques that we swear allegiance to, and by extension the styles of music that we are obliged to hate, or pretend to. It broadens everything. At this point, I just want to write songs and exercise my creativity while it lasts. Whatever comes out is what comes out. If you keep listening to the songs Nick, Dave and I have in the queue, you might be surprised at my lack of concern over genre in the songs I am writing. Though I think those aesthetic values I mentioned will be present in all of them.
 
Robus said:
The cool thing about getting a bit older is that we stop defining our personal identity in terms of the musical genres and cliques that we swear allegiance to, and by extension the styles of music that we are obliged to hate, or pretend to. It broadens everything.
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or so rational, mature people might do. :D

Ray is definitely one of the more liberal musicians around here, in terms of musical tastes.
 
heatmiser said:
I think that makes my feedback for others a little less reliable in a way...
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I wouldn't consider any feedback unreliable. Someones impression is their impression. You can learn things from critiquing music and mixes just as you can from doing them, I believe.
 
The last handful of posts were fun to read. It's nice to see "talking shop" with genuine interest and discussion.

Agree with andru that we can learn from listening and critiquing other mixes. Even if it's just learning what not to do...

Agree with Robus and the philosophy of less is more when it comes to compression/limiting and the low mids ruin mixes. There's so much compression on mixes in the clinic, and by the results I don't think many of the people even know how to use the compressor (the clue is the harshness and piercing volumes). At that point no compressor is better than bad compression.

Space can go either way. Some songs just don't sound right when they're wide or sparse and some need exactly that (heitmeiser implied this; that it's fun to explore various moods and soundscapes). Robus does space well and seems to write his songs around that concept. I've done that before, and then I've also done the opposite and just wanted to obliterate the audio signals with density or effects. It depends.
 
Robus said:
As far as my personal philosophy, I value clarity, openness, definition, and space. If I hear a human voice singing, I assume the lyricist had something to say. I want to hear it, every word.
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Robus, you would hate Polvo's Core Crane Secret. You should listen to it just to see how low they mixed the vocals. It's pretty amazing.
I really love that album despite the low vocals, and mostly because you can hear enough of the vocal to know it's a good melody. I feel melody is more important than the lyrics (e.g. the Mmbop guys had nothing to say yet we heard them clearly).
 
Nola said:
Robus, you would hate Polvo's Core Crane Secret. You should listen to it just to see how low they mixed the vocals. It's pretty amazing.
I really love that album despite the low vocals, and mostly because you can hear enough of the vocal to know it's a good melody. I feel melody is more important than the lyrics (e.g. the Mmbop guys had nothing to say yet we heard them clearly).
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Thanks Nola, but don't get me wrong--the values that I mentioned are ones I apply to mixing my own music at this particular point in my life. I'm not insisting that others adopt them. And while I think many if not most of the mixes I hear would improve if more people paid attention to them, other people have their own values and that's cool. If I realize that you are operating with a different aesthetic--say you are out to achieve the world's lowest vocal level while still being audible--then I'm not going to tell you to turn up the vocals. I might tell you, "pan those guitars wider...you might be able to get that vocal even lower!" But I think many people who post mixes for critique do embrace some of the same values, whether they have articulated them or not. They are just having trouble realizing those values. Articulating them is the first step toward realizing them. They have a vocal and cool lyrics that they want heard and understood. But they also like armies of scooped metal guitars, and loud drums with a machine-gun double kick, and they want those to be heard too. And they like throbbing base lines, thin, ethereal synthesizers that weave in and out of the soundscape, pounding honky tonk pianos, a chorus a background singers, a delicate flute solo... And they don't understand why they can't get all those elements working together in their mix. So I suggest they prioritize, make choices, clarify their own aesthetic, and mix purposefully. If my suggestions are helpful, I'm glad. If not, well it's just the internet.

"Hate" is not a term I often use when discussing any kind of music. I'll go farther than that. When I hear someone use it, my default assumption is that I am not hearing an authentic response to the music. I am listening to someone who is using genre allegiance to define his or her personal identity. "I am a METALHEAD, and we metalheads HATE Country music, therefore I HATE Country music."

Is melody more important than lyrics? Not for me. It is the union of the two. Like that line from Eddie and the Cruisers: "words and music." Sure, there are counter-examples. But for the most part when you think of the music you found powerful the first time you heard it decades ago, and that will stay with you for the rest of your life, wasn't there a voice saying something meaningful?
 
Robus said:
But for the most part when you think of the music you found powerful the first time you heard it decades ago, and that will stay with you for the rest of your life, wasn't there a voice saying something meaningful?
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For my part, no. One of my earliest musical memories was sitting on the floor of the living room while my parents played magical mystery tour. I am the Walrus seemed like the coolest thing I'd ever heard. Just the tone of John's voice over that music...it sounded like some kind of controlled aggression I'd never heard before and it always got to me. I had no idea what he was singing about, nor did I care.

I tend to listen to vocals as another instrument, and I often mix accordingly. If the tone of the voice is pleasing, and so is the melody, I kind of don't care what they're actually saying? I mean, really awful lyrics could still ruin it, and some amazing phrase could elevate it further, but for the most part, I don't care so much about the message. I tend to impart my own message to others' work I think. There are exceptions of course.

And btw...I didn't mean to imply earlier that you were somehow rigid or narrow minded with regard to genres or anything else. Just that you have specific qualities that you strive for in your mixes, and that informs the feedback you give others, and it helps to know that when receiving feedback from you. As a point of contrast, I was saying that I don't have any preconceived qualities that I'm going for in my own mixes. I think all of the qualities you listed can be good, but I also sometimes prefer other qualities too that conflict with those. Because of this, I'm not sure my feedback for others is informed by any particular aesthetic, which made me wonder if it is less helpful, because it can be so random. That's what I meant I think?

And yes, I of course agree with everything about learning through listening and critiquing others. That's part of why I'm here! lol
 
heatmiser said:
I tend to listen to vocals as another instrument, and I often mix accordingly. If the tone of the voice is pleasing, and so is the melody, I kind of don't care what they're actually saying? I mean, really awful lyrics could still ruin it, and some amazing phrase could elevate it further, but for the most part, I don't care so much about the message. I tend to impart my own message to others' work I think. There are exceptions of course.
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That ^^^^
 
I get you, though I don't find "I am the Walrus, coo coo cachoo" meaningless at all in the context of that song. The mistake so many people made was trying to interpret it as a kind of code, or assigning it a literal meaning rather than reading in a language of poetic association and imagery. Now "the Tropic of Sir Galahad," that I find meaningless! ;)
 
Greg_L said:
That ^^^^
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So you say, but I doubt you write songs that way. I read the lyrics of your song "Walmart at Midnight" that someone posted recently. While I wasn't able to hear the song, the lyrics were clever. Would you have been satisfied singing gibberish? People who really don't care about lyrics tend not to write good ones, because that takes effort.
 
I really respect you guys' opinions and agree they made some fantastic melodies. But the beatles sang about submarines and anthropomorphic hammers, it ain't van dyke parks we're talking here. Most of it's basically raffi on acid, I never got the appeal personally.
 
John told the story that Paul really wanted Maxwell's Silver Hammer to be a hit--which it was never going to be, given the theme. So they wound up spending more time on that song than any other they ever recorded, which pissed off the rest of the members. That was toward the very end I believe, so they weren't getting along already. Anyway that was John's side of it. Lennon and McCartney were an incredibly talented pair with more ideas than they knew what to do with, able to write songs that were serious in one moment, silly and playful the next.
 
Robus said:
So you say, but I doubt you write songs that way. I read the lyrics of your song "Walmart at Midnight" that someone posted recently. While I wasn't able to hear the song, the lyrics were clever. Would you have been satisfied singing gibberish? People who really don't care about lyrics tend not to write good ones, because that takes effort.
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I write songs that are entertaining to me. Some of them are funny, some are punny, some are just dick-ish and mean, some are unquestionably stupid. All I have to do is be happy with my own creation, and then it's good enough for literally anyone else. If someone else likes them, cool. But that's not my goal. If they don't like them or understand them, I'm fine with that too. I'm not so self-absorbed and pompous with my lyrics that my "message" must be heard and appreciated. Many of the songs that I've really liked for years, decades even, I have no idea what some of the words are. Don't care. It could be gibberish but it doesn't matter because lyrical content isn't that important to me. If I like the way the vocals are delivered they could be singing about anything and I don't care. I talk about "Surfin Bird" all the time. I really do think that's one of the greatest songs ever. Three chords and a bunch of gibberish, and it's awesome.
 
Greg_L said:
I talk about "Surfin Bird" all the time. I really do think that's one of the greatest songs ever. Three chords and a bunch of gibberish, and it's awesome.
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I know, problem with that example is the words for that really are fantastic.
 
fat_fleet said:
I know, problem with that example is the words for that really are fantastic.
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Yeah. They are. Genius. Or "The Witch" by The Sonics. Great fucking song to me, and I have no clue what the words are. They're delivered in a way that just works for me, and they're all distorted, and the chords and melody are awesome, it's just cool.
 
I think clunky lyrics can totally ruin a song.. but in the case of Surfin Bird, it's like the words just grew there.
 
I'm not making the argument that lyrics need to be profound. Just that if someone is singing, I want to hear what they are saying.
 
Robus said:
I'm not making the argument that lyrics need to be profound. Just that if someone is singing, I want to hear what they are saying.
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That's cool. I was just agreeing with heatmiser and saying that if someone is singing, I don't give a fuck what they're saying.
 
Hmmm, I'm somewhere in between. I don't normally care at first about lyrics, I just hear a song and see if I like it. But then if I check the lyrics and they're awful it can really put me off.

Greg, here's a good example, take Pulling On The Boots from the Romper Stomper soundtrack, it's a great Oi! Punk song, but it's got really racist lyrics, so while it makes sense in context you wouldn't exactly want to sing along with it.
 
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