I have no problem with people posting their work, but I find it both far from necessary, completly unrelaible, often subjective and unrelaible, and irrelevant to the content of a post. There are very few people here whose work I've heard at all, but I can tell after just a few posts if that person knows what they are talking about or not or if they are a person of integrity or not.
8 REASONS WHY I JUST DON'T BOTHER LISTENING TO SAMPLES:
1. If a post describes and explains it's point well enough, it shouldn't matter who it comes from, whether it's from Sir George Martin or from Joe Punchclock. It either will make sense or it won't. All posts are also subject to immediate peer review. As those who have been here long enough know well, if you say something absolutely goofy or even just make a small inadvertant error, it will be pounced upon and corrected soon enough. Whether or not one or all people in the thread have posted any MP3s or not is completly irrelevant to the process.
2. We are sharing advice here, not music. When we go to buy a camera or ask how to use it, do we ask the guy at Lion Photo if we can see his portfolio first? When we ask our neighbors or our photo club members for any general advice on photography, do we ask to see their portfolios first? Of course not. We get their advice and
we weigh it out with our own brains.
3. Being a good or a bad engineer is not a reliable indicator of being a good or a bad explainer or teacher. Mike Ditka was a good football player and coach, but he is questionable at best as a TV/Radio commentator. He has admitted himself that he'd be even worse in front of an Internet keyboard. On the other hand, very few football players and even coaches can analyze and explain football clock management and scoring options better than Al Michaels, even though the closest he ever got to being a pro football player was doing locker room interviews.
4. When did Isaac Asimov ever make it into space? Or Steven Speilberg act in a movie? There is nothing that says that one has to prove their body of work in order to be able to teach it, write about it or even direct it. If one does actually do it, all the better, of course. But actually seeing Asimov in space or seeing Spielberg play Hamlet is not a prerequesite to them going a good job or giving good advice.
5. Linking to one's work is only reliable when there is reliable provenance/attribution to indicate just what any one person contributed to the recording. I've seen plenty of indie people take engineering credit for, and play MP3s of, projects where they did little more than get coffee and wind mic cables.
Also, though not as bad as that, I've seen (and had as a mix guy myself) projects where the artists, tracking engineer and prodcuer did such a great job that vitually all the mix engineer had to do was bring up the faders at the beginning and fade the buss at the end. Does that make the mix engineer a great engineer? Maybe, maybe not. It actually means nothing other than the mix engineer, by using that as an example of his work, is getting much more credit that he perhaps deserves for that work.
6. "Peer" review on an Internet board is very often often biased. There have been at least two times that I have seen recently where someone posted MP3s for review to make just this point. One was from
this thread, where someone posted their CD for review. He got a long, detailed reply from someone who summarized with this statement:After which which the OP replied: They were completly inaccurate off base in their analysis.
There was another even better example from someone in the Pacific Northwest I think (I can't find it now, maybe the person who did it will recognize this and come forward), who posted a metal track for critique. The critiquer completly trashed the recording as sounding amateurish and awful bad for this and that reason. After that the OP revealed that the track was commercial material done in a world-class studio by Grammy-level performers and engineers, and not his own work at all. That proves two things; that someone else's opinions of one's work are pretty irrelevant inless it's a complete newb asking about obvious mistakes, and that it is easy for anyone here to be able to slip pro work by as their own.
In fact, there are those on this board who set the trap of trying to get someone to post their work just so they can sound authorative in trashing it regardless of how it actually sounds, because they know that a) auch analysies are purely subjective, and b) that they will be able to dazzle the newbs here with their bullshit.
7. When someone comes on without the ear, knowledge or experience to tell if their own tracks sound good, who are they to judge if your tracks sound good? Someone who thinks that mo' louder is mo' better, or who can't hear clipping (or thinks clipping sounds good) is going to think that a flat pancake that clips more than an east side barber sounds good. Does that make it so?
8. The main reason why most people link to their their work on this board is share/compare in an effort to improve. The majority, IME, say something alongthe lines of "my stuff is not all that great, I admit, but it'll get better being here." Not exactly stuff to use as a reference for authority, nor do they try to. And I think that's just fine.
OTOH, those that link their stuff for other reasons are doing it either to advertise/sell their band or their engineering, or for ego stroking. Are those that are here to sell their stuff or to stroke their egos people who are going to, on balance, give unbiased advice? Maybe some do, but it's certainly not something I'd base any quality judgement on, there are often ulterior motives afoot.
SUMMARY.
Give me any day of the week someone who knows their stuff pretty well, enjoys sharing it without belittling people in the process, and has the wits to share it in uncomprimising detail without feeling the ego hunger to need to brag about their own work all the time. You can keep your someone who brags about their shit and spends more energy lording it and their MP3s over others than they do actually constructively sharing real information. Having an MP3 or 100MP3s to "back up their word" is unrealiabe at best, and virtually meaningless at worst, for all the reasons given above. Giving the best advice on average is all that really counts in these forums.
Bottom line, people: Use your heads. Read, listen, absorb, consider, and *think* about thre responses you get. Do most people agree with it or is it controversial? Does the explanation make sense, or is there no explanation other than "I have MP3s, believe me." Either way, the way to know for sure is to try it out, not to blindly believe it based upon whether or not they have some MP3s to show you. You'll quickly find out who is worth talking to and who isn't.
G.
) sounded really intelligent I'd pay more attention, but not as much as if I heard your music and it showed you had real skill.
