The Death of Mistakes

[Nola]

this is a pretty old article but i just saw it today and thought it was worth sharing.

my observation is that it seems like digital has made everyone anal about small errors or things not aligned to grid (probably b/c it's so easy to fix and they don't have to splice tape or do anything too hard to fix them) so it was interesting to see an author write about it. I'm curious to hear what people think and if they agree or disagree with him.

The Death Of Mistakes Means The Death Of Rock : Monitor Mix : NPR

 

[Robus]

Personally, I think the lasting effect will be on vocals. A generation of listeners trained by autotune will hear Mick Jagger and think--the guy can't sing in tune. The art of expressive singing on and around pitch may be lost on these listeners.

Timing's a different matter. I can't believe producers of mainstream pop are quantizing everything to the grid. Fixing random mistakes is one thing, destroying the nuances of timing is quite another. I'm not buying it. All that music is groove-driven. Stuff like the placement of snare and bass in relation to the beat is Groove 101. Whatever you think of the music, those producers know what they're doing.

 

[Nola]

A generation of listeners trained by autotune will hear Mick Jagger and think--the guy can't sing in tune. The art of expressive singing on and around pitch may be lost on these listeners.

I wonder how true that is because those same people still go to live shows and have to deal with humans making "errors", right? Or are bands using autotune live now?
It's also possible autotuning improves so it's not so noticeable and can keep expression.

Something else I was reading about is that music fans now are hyper demanding/critical b/c a lot of them record at home. That's an interesting development, too. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out and if there is some revolt against it or people keep going down this path.

 

[Robus]

I wonder how true that is because those same people still go to live shows and have to deal with humans making "errors", right? Or are bands using autotune live now?
It's also possible autotuning improves so it's not so noticeable and can keep expression.

Something else I was reading about is that music fans now are hyper demanding/critical b/c a lot of them record at home. That's an interesting development, too. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out and if there is some revolt against it or people keep going down this path.

Judging by what I hear on the Clinic, home recorders are more likely to squash the dynamics out of their songs with excessive boosting and limiting than to kill the human feel by quantizing and tuning everything. "Murder by mastering" is the single biggest cause of ruined mixes that I'm hearing.

 

[fat_fleet]

Something else I was reading about is that music fans now are hyper demanding/critical b/c a lot of them record at home. That's an interesting development, too.

That depends on the situation and the listeners' expectations. Someone famous like, say, Jack White can get away with things that you will not accept from musicians who you consider to be "in your peer group" (non-famous). He's earned the right to "do it his way" by becoming famous. But between non-professional home recording musicians there's the notion that "if I can make my stuff sound slick and you can't, I'm 'better than you' ", which helps most maintain a sense of self-esteem by mashing all of music (performance, songwriting, recording, etc) into the same skill set, reducing it to being all about athleticism/technical skill. It's no different from what we all do in other areas of life every day. We practice and become good at things that are important to us.. then, when we are confronted with others that are better than us at the things we haven't prioritized, we consider them foolish for putting so much effort into unimportant things.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out and if there is some revolt against it or people keep going down this path.

Well I revolt, but I'm not famous. Therefore I'm just "wrong".

 

[miroslav]

"Mistakes" are also overrated quite a lot.

On the opposite side of the DAW "anal-precision" crowd is the "everything-is-gold" crowd, where just because they played it and recorded it, it needs to be kept no matter what.

The "happy mistakes/accidents"...the real keepers...are often far and few in-between the mistakes that shouldn't be kept.

Spending more time on improving the performances and the mixing will always yield more consistent results than hoping for "mistake magic"...IMO.
Of course, when you hear that happy mistake/accident, and it actually makes things sound better than they would if you edited it out...then just go ahead and keep it.

I think most of the classic Rock/Pop bands that recorded before the DAW age, where trying very hard to play as best and as perfectly as they could. I don't think anyone was thinking that sloppiness would enhance their performances and the recordings.


.

 

[Greg_L]

"Mistakes" are also overrated quite a lot.

On the opposite side of the DAW "anal-precision" crowd is the "everything-is-gold" crowd, where just because they played it and recorded it, it needs to be kept no matter what.

The "happy mistakes/accidents"...the real keepers...are often far and few in-between the mistakes that shouldn't be kept.

Spending more time on improving the performances and the mixing will always yield more consistent results than hoping for "mistake magic"...IMO.
Of course, when you hear that happy mistake/accident, and it actually makes things sound better than they would if you edited it out...then just go ahead and keep it.

I think most of the classic Rock/Pop bands that recorded before the DAW age, where trying very hard to play as best and as perfectly as they could. I don't think anyone was thinking that sloppiness would enhance their performances and the recordings.

All this ^^^^^^^

 

[miroslav]

Oh...and it's funny that the one video the author included in the article is now blocked by Apple.
Fuck you, Apple.

John Lennon's comment about the ending:

“I got home from the studio and I was stoned out of my mind on marijuana and, as I usually do, I listened to what I'd recorded that day. Somehow I got it on backwards and I sat there, transfixed, with the earphones on, with a big hash joint. I ran in the next day and said, 'I know what to do with it, I know... Listen to this!' So I made them all play it backwards. The fade is me actually singing backwards with the guitars going backwards. [Singing backwards] Sharethsmnowthsmeaness... [Laughter] That one was the gift of God, of Jah, actually, the god of marijuana, right? So Jah gave me that one."

I guess that's how mistakes happen.

 

[Nola]

"Mistakes" are also overrated quite a lot.

On the opposite side of the DAW "anal-precision" crowd is the "everything-is-gold" crowd, where just because they played it and recorded it, it needs to be kept no matter what.

i agree, but i never saw or heard of people making mistakes on purpose, so it doesn't seem like as big a problem. do people really mess up on purpose?? if people do that, then they're weird and taking up a lot of hard drive space with all their bad takes.

i think the best is to practice and be ready to go, but if shit happens and it sounds good just leave it, and if it sounds bad then redo the take.

 

[miroslav]

i agree, but i never saw or heard of people making mistakes on purpose, so it doesn't seem like as big a problem. do people really mess up on purpose??

No...not on purpose, I didn't mean to suggest that....but if they play with the notion that mistakes are OK...that they can make the performances more "real" or more "Rock and Roll"...then there is less effort to avoid them.

IMO...the best mistakes that you want to keep usually happen when you're trying hard NOT to make any.

 

[Massive Master]

If it makes anyone feel better, I've spent the last two weeks working on a bunch of *real* jazz recordings. Four or five people, in a room, playing at the same time. Sticky sax pads, piano pedal thumps, sympathetic snare vibrations - the works.

I personally find it wonderful to see that people still play music occasionally.

 

[gecko zzed]

Sticky sax pads, piano pedal thumps, sympathetic snare vibrations - the works.

I've always relished the sounds of music, the very things above ^^.

As for errors: Sloppy playing doesn't equal genuine playing, but genuine playing can get sloppy at times. Most musicians aim to play well and sing in tune.

A concert environment can create problems for musicians. In some cases they may have difficulty hearing themselves or each other, and that results in less-than-perfect performances. In most cases, punters at a concert won't mind. For one, the mistakes are often ephemeral . . . they happen, they're gone, they're forgotten. For two, sometimes the moment is all-encompassing, and mistakes are drowned in the excitement of the occasion.

On a recording, these two things are mostly absent, i.e. mistakes are not ephemeral . . . they are there forever, and there is no adrenalin-fuelled listening environment. The tendency is therefore to remove the blemishes. I note, though, that George Martin allowed many mistakes to stay. I recall him saying somewhere that he always preferred performance over perfection.

 

[witzendoz]

Some of my favourite albums are full of Mistakes, correction, Creative License.

Alan.

 

[Tadpui]

I've been to both ends of the spectrum (just today, even!). I think that Miro nailed it above. There's a culture of "if I mess up, I'll just fix it later, because...digital". I'm as guilty as the next hack when it comes to polishing a turd of a take. But there's no substitute for simply rehearsing the part and getting it right in the first place.

You can either spend an hour practicing and getting it right, or spend 2 hours cutting and pasting and autotuning to get it to sound awkward. I'm a tech geek, so I do admit that sometimes I do the latter...

 

[Nola]

You can either spend an hour practicing and getting it right, or spend 2 hours cutting and pasting and autotuning to get it to sound awkward.

That's so true. Everyone is probably guilty of trying that, but I think people who have good honesty with themselves come to that conclusion.

 

[gecko zzed]

There's a culture of "if I mess up, I'll just fix it later, because...digital".

It's very easy to remediate problems with digital, but we shouldn't underestimate how much remediation was done prior to digital. I recall being in a studio watching this guy with splicing tape, chalk and razor blades doing a whole mess of analog cutting and pasting to fix tracking problems.

But yes . . . getting it right in the first place is my preference (though I don't often succeed).

 

[miroslav]

I don't have a problem with fixing something in the DAW. That's what editing is about and no matter how much we wax poetic about "as-it-falls" takes sounding better, the studio is about production, and editing/fixing/changing is part of that production process.
That said...there's a difference between making fixes/adjustments to polish the production VS using the DAW to completely fabricate something.
Everyone knows when they are stepping over the line.

The OP of the thread isn't really about that as I read it...but rather to say that productions are way too polished and there should be more "mistakes" left in, and that doing that, will make the productions sound better.

I think that's really too simplistic a view by the author of the article in the link...the notion that "mistakes" make things better.
I also think it that view breeds the "don't care" attitudes...and will also actually lead people to DO more DAW fixing in the end when they realize all their left-in mistakes are more of a problem than a benefit.

Anyway, every take is different, and every production is different...so you really have to approach them on an individual basis and decide if leaving or removing a "mistake" is the best choice in support of the production.
I still think that the best keeper mistakes come from trying not to make any.

 

[Greg_L]

I fall somewhere in the middle. While I completely loathe fuckers that tweak and edit every single fucking beat and note to be perfect, I also despise sloppy fucks that celebrate slop because they think it's rock and roll. The happy medium has to be the happy medium, and that's how I approach it.

 

[CMolena]

I absolutely hate fixing bad performances. The problem is - and I guess Nola started this thread based kind on this - people are obsessed about playing and sounding too clean and polished. I do record bands around town here in Brazil and they do play like shit and still, they want to sound perfect. Like...there is a good underground "hardcore punk-rock" (and I'm fingerquoting it because they think they are punk-rock) in São Paulo, but most people doesnt have a clue about the aesthetic of the real hardcore punk-rock. They have neved listened to Bad Brains's "Bad Brains" or to Black Flag's "Damaged". They just think Ramones is the only punk rock band that ever existed and that pissed the hell out of me.

The guys from Washington DC 80's punk-rock scene didnt have proper recording conditions and neither do they played "accordingly", still they influenced dozens of bands and people (like me). Their recordings didnt sound...good at all to some people, still the condition they were in gave them no choice. They couldnt afford to record "accordingly". Do they kept their songs in their papers and hide them from the world until they sounded "ok"? No, they didnt.

The real "problem" with DAWs, IMO, is that, most of the times, it takes away the craft that is real recording. It made people believe that there is a right way to do music. Like recording itself isnt a musical process...it made it look technical and boring. And I can name a number of bands that sound like crap and still, they influenced A LOT of people that are considered well-known in the music industry (The Sonics, Bad Brains, Black Flag, The Descendents, Husker Du...just to name a few).

 

[mjbphotos]

I wonder how true that is because those same people still go to live shows and have to deal with humans making "errors", right? Or are bands using autotune live now?
It's also possible autotuning improves so it's not so noticeable and can keep expression.

Certainly singers are using autotune live all the time now. TC Helicon devices are everywhere.