No I have watched producers who say they make a cut everytime...why wouldnt they sort it out in the tracking stage if they were making that cut everytime?
I dont agree with the second statement....it just comes across as something my granddad says
there is more bad music because there is more music....but great records are still being produced and at a higher rate than in many previous decades imho
The possible Low cutting could be due to the fact that ...the music ends up as an MP3 being played on an ipod with cheap little ear buds.
Knowing where the music will end up has a lot to do with how one would produce it. Don't you think?
Again KC can you hear over 10k?
Joe Schmoe's uneducated ear can hear an entire octave below 50 hz.
They're producers, not writers or communicators. Maybe they say they make the cut every time not realizing their own thought process. I gaurantee that if cut #28 sounds bad, they hear it and remove the cut. Nobody would keep a bad cut just because they cut everything.
I didn't say new music was bad or even sounded bad. I love many new recordings and many new recordings sound great. They just don't sound as great as what came out 15 years ago.I dont agree with the second statement....it just comes across as something my granddad says
there is more bad music because there is more music....but great records are still being produced and at a higher rate than in many previous decades imho
But does that really validate the need to cut lows automatically across the board...???
I'm not going to be cliché and say "all music today sucks"...but at the same time, I do think it's possible that some sort of "trend" has emerged and people tend to follow it for awhile before coming up with their own approach.
Also...many of the guys making money are also part of the new/young wave, and I have to say, many of that wave became producers/engineers just by being associated with some band/artists or by simply assuming the role.
I've been in studios and seen bands come in with some "friend" tagging along who they introduce as their "producer". The guy never produced shit before, but because he has an opinion about how it should sound...he is allowed to produce and even make engineering decisions...and from there, it just mushrooms out.
If the band has a hit record...he then has clients as he is now a "pro".
Much of the "cut the lows" started with mics and low-end rumble from stands/floors etc...and the need to cut lows for vinyl...add to that the viral nature of the Internet, it's easy to see how something like that can turn into a "rule".
Sure...there are times when you need to cut the lows...but I just don't see the major benefit of doing that "blindly/automatically" and before ever hearing the mix.
There are a lot of things that just don't really have very much low energy in the sub 80Hz area where most low-cut filters seem to center and below.
Maybe people just feel that because of that there is no need to allow anything in that range to come through...???
what ever frequency my wife speaks is beyond my hearing spectrum...and that took years of ear training to block that frequency
That still sounds backwards. The pros who make the money and put out the tutorial videos first had to learn to live with the low stuff. They had to understand it. They had to work out in their own head what the benefits of a cut were Vs any pitfalls. A broad policy of "cut below here" carries more risk than a policy of "don't do anything". The easy road to a clean mix is to not touch anything you don't understand. 10,000 cuts is a radical approach that requires a deep level of comfort with the conventions you are ignoring.
Can there even be rules of thumb in leading-edge music aimed at young people? Grandpa expects a rule of thumb. Kids want surprises.
Why does that need to be followed by anything at all? That should be the end of it. You know what the answer is, but you just don't want to accept it (and I don't mean that in a mean way). Now you're just looking at genre-narrowing as a gambit to try and skate by without ears. Trust me, you're not the first one to play that gambit
. I thought you were in this for the hobby aspect of it; i.e. you're here to make music, not to make money. Trust me, these days those are two entirely different things. More on that in a minute.
); the *sonic quality* of the average commercial production release peaked sometime in the late 80s and has generally been declining since then. This is not a commentary on the music - of any genre - but rather on the general trend of production values. More than half of the production decisions made on any given popular release album these days, from who actually gets to make an album and what budget they get to things as esoteric as the tone of the guitar and the RMS of the album are made not with an eye towards the music at all, but rather with an eye towards how manipluative that can be with an aim to getting the money of the 14-19 year old demographic. There's a whole lot more marketing science than audio engineering science thrown into that equation.The point is, KC, the ear training should start before even taking up the idea of self-recording and self-mixing. Asking someone who doesn't have at least some modicum of analytical listeng skills to mix and master music is kind of like asking a color-blind person to decorate the interior of a nice house.shit Im lucky if my ears even find anything under 50Hz anyway...so if thats the same with 90% of the world then training your ears for years (
This IS the music world, KC. Everybody here is either a musician or a music engineer or both. And a few of us on both sides are even in the music business end of it and earn our livings making or producing music. You're talking about the *mu$ic busine$$*world, which is something else altogether, and is probably the last place to go to get good advice on how to make and record music. They have things so programmed down that all the music is squeezed out of the important parts of the equation.
Why does that need to be followed by anything at all? That should be the end of it. You know what the answer is, but you just don't want to accept it (and I don't mean that in a mean way). Now you're just looking at genre-narrowing as a gambit to try and skate by without ears. Trust me, you're not the first one to play that gambit
Genre is irrelevant. In fact I just got a test file this past weekend (an incomplete mix) from a buddy of mine that does nothing but analog synth emulation work. If you're familiar with Jean Michael Jarre, you know exactly what this guy's track sounds like. Well, he has stuff going all the way down to 23hz and sub harmonics below that happening in his track, so electronica is no protection against having to worry about the sub-bass region.
Here's the deal: Someone somewhere along the line before you even got here put the idea in your head that this racket was not a discipline, but rather was a walk in the park that anybody could do with just a few hundred bucks and a few days of effort. What I'd really like to know is who or what really puts that idea in your guys' heads. I've asked that many times of many newbs and have never gotten an answer.
I know you don't like to hear what we're saying, because it adds a dimension of complexity to the hobby that you didn't bargain for. I'm sorry about that, but I'm not going to lie to you just to avoid that - that's what got you into this position to begin with. It's those guys that misled you at the beginning that you should be conflicted about.I thought you were in this for the hobby aspect of it; i.e. you're here to make music, not to make money. Trust me, these days those are two entirely different things. More on that in a minute.
And we're - or at least I'm - not talking about the quality of the music, that's a whole different subject altogether. We're talking about the quality of the production. So please put away that tired, "you sound like my grandpa" ageism baloney. I've got a music catalog in my head and personal experience that reaches across all generations and ranges from ragtime to classical to space/synth to hip-hop and most genres in-between, ranging from 1910 to 2010.
There is one undeniable fact (though I'm sure someone will deny it
One of the goals there is to have a high turnover in the hits list. A "hit" has to have enough sonic appeal to male it to the top of the list, but also cannot that enduring, otherwise the track will stay popular for too long, and the label will not be able to sell you the next #1 record that they want to replace it with.
Now, with all that in mind, do you really put that much credence in the completly manipulated consumer's opinion? And if you do, then the question is if they are doing such a good job producing today's music, why has consumer interest in "professional" music actually been steadily declining since 1990?The point is, KC, the ear training should start before even taking up the idea of self-recording and self-mixing. Asking someone who doesn't have at least some modicum of analytical listeng skills to mix and master music is kind of like asking a color-blind person to decorate the interior of a nice house.
But you (and a million others) have been lead to believe by someone that anybody could do it, no skilz required. Don't get conflicted with us for telling you that it *does* take just as much work to get this part of it done well as it does to get the instrument playing and singing down good. The one or ones you should be asking questions of where those who misled you about that to begin with.This IS the music world, KC. Everybody here is either a musician or a music engineer or both. And a few of us on both sides are even in the music business end of it and earn our livings making or producing music. You're talking about the *mu$ic busine$$*world, which is something else altogether, and is probably the last place to go to get good advice on how to make and record music. They have things so programmed down that all the music is squeezed out of the important parts of the equation.
Look at it this way; would you go to a record label producer for advice on how to learn to play the guitar, or would you go to a guitar teacher? Then why go there for advice on how to learn to record it instead of the real people here to teach that?
G.
