Oh The Moral Implications,..

[Lt. Bob]

I tend to have recording anxiety. I can play a part perfectly during rehearsal, then when the red button is on I'll mess up the simplest thing! Used to I wanted to play through every part perfectly so that when I listened back my ego got masturbated knowing I flawlessy played my songs. I would get extremely discouraged and waste alot of time starting over everytime I messed up. It took the fun out of recording! I've since given myself an attitude adjustment. I realized that I'm trying to release something professional. That's alot to swallow. Now I sit at my computer and relax. I play through the whole song. If I mess up I just laugh at myself and continue playing instead of getting pissed. I then listen back and punch in over my errors. I'm happier knowing that I've then captured a perfect performace. Punching in is so easy to do well on DAW's. It's brought the fun back into recording. HOWEVER, I won't cheat and use little tricks to record something that I couldn't play if you asked me to. For example, slowing a song to half speed and playing the part an octave lower only to speed it up an appear to be a better guitar player than Jeff Loomis. Or getting a sample of my kick drum only to paste it on a grid to get that machine gun double bass part. If I couldn't make it through the part on my own, I'd drink another red bull and try again.

for me it can vary. But for the most part what I'm interested in is the final totallity of the piece. How I arrived at it doesn't matter much to me although I do understand being concerned with those aspects of it. Art, of any kind, is such a personal thing that the ways we appraoch it are all over the place.

For me, I tend to get more excited by the cool things that happen unexpectedly ..... often mistakes and such can take you somewhere new that you'd never have come to on your own.
I love those moments most of all ........

 

[tonesponge]

I think quantizing is fine for fixing mistakes and making loops, but I would try to avoid using it on everything all the time. Some songs are going to benefit from a temporal ebb and flow that defies your DAW's grid. These are the same songs for which loops can't be used effectively. You'll know it when you encounter it.

 

[Greg_L]

Then, you must be facing your own moral conundrum right now, haveing read it..

Except that I didn't read it. I just skimmed a few seconds and realized that it's not worth reading. Like your posts.

 

[kcearl]

next person to post gets neg repped with the mighty stick lol

 

[LDS]

IMHO, probably 'ethical' would be a more accurate word than 'moral.' It absolutely depends on the style of music and what you're trying to say.

If your intent is to make a groovin' tune that people will like (I know, that's the intent with every song, right?) then it really doesn't matter.

If your intent is to showcase a musician's talents and abilities, then overdubbing, slicing, sliding, quantizing, etc., if used to make the performer sound better than they can on their own would probably verge on the unethical.

If you're throwing together backing tracks to showcase a performer's talents and abilities, go for it, it really doesn't matter. But if that performer can't play a specific instrument and you're featuring that instrument and making them seem like a virtuoso? Probably not cool.

EDIT:

next person to post gets neg repped with the mighty stick lol

Great, I start typing, get busy working, finally hit post and find out I've run afoul of the 'mighty stick'...

 

[kcearl]

take that

 

[stevieb]

Except that I didn't read it. I just skimmed a few seconds and realized that it's not worth reading. Like your posts.

I know your post are not worth reading, before I even scream past them at 100 mph. (Ya wanna get pissy? Fine, we get pissy...)

 

[Greg_L]

I know your post are not worth reading, before I even scream past them at 100 mph. (Ya wanna get pissy? Fine, we get pissy...)

Um, are you really just gonna repeat what I say?

 

[benherron.rrr]

Boo!!!!!!!!!

 

[diggy_dude]

Anyone ever heard the saying "fix it in the mix", Is that a do or a don't, I forget

If you're doing your own mixing.

 

[kcearl]

trainwreck ahead woo woo!

 

[Chibi Nappa]

There is no moral question here. It is simply a question of the song sounding bad. In order from bad to good:

Dude who can't play
Dude who can't play cut up and quantized
Dude who can play cut up and quantized
Dude who can play

Put your morals to rest because your ear will point you in the direction of "good player without edits" anyway.

 

[grimtraveller]

Wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door.....

I simply don't care.
Whether 'impossible' things are there or not. Queen could never do 'Bohemian Rhapsody' live properly because it could not be done by 4 voices, a piano, a gee~taw, a bazjita and druuuurrrmzzzz. So when they got to the tricky bit, they played the record !
Ridiculous.
But I love the single. It's a masterpiece. There are many songs like that. They contain all manner of 'jiggery pokery'. When I'm listening to them, sometimes I'll sport a wry grin at the audacity of those knaves. But I still love the songs. Do I care that "Strawberry fields forever" is actually a splice of two totally different versions recorded at different times in different keys and cannot ever be repeated ? Nope. I love the song. There are songs that have the drummer simultaneously tapping out a rhythm on the ride, hi hat and snare. Do I care ? No, it sounds great. And yeah, I will record things like guitars, mandolins and instruments I'm lousy on 3 times slower and in sections so that the final result would cause Jeff Beck/Yehudi Menuin/Wynton Marsalis to come looking for me........
My point is that when I stick on your song, I don't really give an 'auld lang syne' how it got there. So, you didn't play that bass ? Well, I still love the song !
As I said in a different thread, much of the time, we'll try to get a piece done in one pass. But it doesn't always happen. I've long dug reading about the history of recording because I soon realized from the instant Lester Paul nudged things in the direction of multitracking at the end of the 40s or maybe early 50s, studio trickery and jiggery pokery has been far more the norm, the rule rather than the exception. It may only be a little thing here and there but rare is the recording that hasn't had something.
Human beings don't sing with natural compression !
It's a bit like the effects in films. I know people don't fly or swing through cities on webs or dive off express trains travelling at 120 MPH/160 KPH. And knowing all that won't stop my enjoyment of the film, nor, if I were a filmaker, would I cease from trickery to get the desired effect. I think the purist way is valid. And I think jiggery pokery is valid. Recorded music of every shade contain both.

I have a book on my shelf called "The music's all that matters". Is it ?

 

[Lt. Bob]

I simply don't care.
Whether 'impossible' things are there or not. Queen could never do 'Bohemian Rhapsody' live properly because it could not be done by 4 voices, a piano, a gee~taw, a bazjita and druuuurrrmzzzz. So when they got to the tricky bit, they played the record !
Ridiculous.
But I love the single. It's a masterpiece. There are many songs like that. They contain all manner of 'jiggery pokery'. When I'm listening to them, sometimes I'll sport a wry grin at the audacity of those knaves. But I still love the songs. Do I care that "Strawberry fields forever" is actually a splice of two totally different versions recorded at different times in different keys and cannot ever be repeated ? Nope. I love the song. There are songs that have the drummer simultaneously tapping out a rhythm on the ride, hi hat and snare. Do I care ? No, it sounds great. And yeah, I will record things like guitars, mandolins and instruments I'm lousy on 3 times slower and in sections so that the final result would cause Jeff Beck/Yehudi Menuin/Wynton Marsalis to come looking for me........
My point is that when I stick on your song, I don't really give an 'auld lang syne' how it got there. So, you didn't play that bass ? Well, I still love the song !
As I said in a different thread, much of the time, we'll try to get a piece done in one pass. But it doesn't always happen. I've long dug reading about the history of recording because I soon realized from the instant Lester Paul nudged things in the direction of multitracking at the end of the 40s or maybe early 50s, studio trickery and jiggery pokery has been far more the norm, the rule rather than the exception. It may only be a little thing here and there but rare is the recording that hasn't had something.
Human beings don't sing with natural compression !
It's a bit like the effects in films. I know people don't fly or swing through cities on webs or dive off express trains travelling at 120 MPH/160 KPH. And knowing all that won't stop my enjoyment of the film, nor, if I were a filmaker, would I cease from trickery to get the desired effect. I think the purist way is valid. And I think jiggery pokery is valid. Recorded music of every shade contain both.

I have a book on my shelf called "The music's all that matters". Is it ?

well said ......

 

[kcearl]

well said ......

+ 1

 

[moresound]

+ 1

+ 2

 

[mcmetal]

It's a bit like the effects in films. I know people don't fly or swing through cities on webs or dive off express trains travelling at 120 MPH/160 KPH.QUOTE]

They'll fly if they jump off that 120 mph express train!...For a few seconds anyway...Then splat into a billboard ad!

 

[Shadow_7]

What is this morality ya'all keep speaking of?

When I go on a cruise ship, there's a guy at a bar kind of playing one instrument, sitting aside a laptop. What I hear is a full orchestra and a cover of someone else's work. The original artists was not him. The original song lasted five minutes or less, this one lasts twenty. Am I being cheated? Never mind the $5+ and auto gratuity per beer. $120 cases of coors light in a can. Living high on the holler I tell ya.

As a software guy, if I fix someone else's code and the company no longer gets 500+ irate customers a day calling in. Which results in some CSR(s) losing their jobs, was I evil? If that ultimately loses me my job because the system is fixed, is being denied unemployment moral?

If I use a C chord (any of them) in a song and don't attribute it to the original inventor of said chord(s)?

There is a line in there somewhere. If you're passing it off as a representation of you as a musician, and you can't do it, not even one out of ten times? If you're passing it off as representative of you as a recording artist?

Almost all performances I've seen live were never as good as the CD. And some we've seen on broadcast TV weren't even musical performances, just choreography while lip syncing to a recording. Ashlee Simpson? Milli Vanilli are not unique or a thing of the past in that regard. In some form or another, they've become the industry standard. How about Ms. Hudson singing the national anthem to a midi track at the super bowl? In 4/4 time no less (the DoD version is 3/4). Maybe I should have read the credits, performed by intel and national electric, vocal track provided by...

 

[Todzilla]

This is pretty silly.

Reminds me of a discussion w my Mom decades ago. As I described multi-tracking techniques, she replied "That's cheating" and went to proclaim that the goal of recording should be the faithful documentation of a live performance.

I think loop overuse leads to bad music, but there's nothing immoral about it, unless someone is using someone else's work without agreed upon compensation.

 

[aaronmcoleman]

Morality is based on social mores, or society's set of accepted norms. I think we as a musical society have accepted it as a "norm" to loop, punch in, and edit the hell out of music (look at Britney Spears or basically any pop album and tell me how much of that is raw and unedited). People outside of the recording community probably have no idea how much editing and slicing and dicing goes on, but it's what they've grown to accept as the "norm" as far as sound.

Now, when we get to milli vanilli and ashlee simpson, they just got caught doing what a lot of artists do. So i guess the immoral thing is getting caught!

Oh, and I guess I'm guilty of it too, but this thread is a little silly (which we've all said, but obviously found it entertaining enough to read/skim some of it).