Myths

[CoolCat]

These days being an artist means you have a cool haircut, or youre all "tortured" and you spend half your music video acting like youre all complex and cool.

.

you left out grabbing your crotch 30 times each song...

so what was your Myth Buster I missed it?
...but fhkng hell anyway, I could feel the heat from your post thru my monitor...damn J..go after it!

 

[fraserhutch]

Fuck you all im so sick of your dumbass fucking debates about recording equipment when you dont even know about how subdominant chords are used in songwriting or any of the other devices that ARE THERE TO HELP YOU NOT SUCK. Yet you still would rather just spin in circles on your guitar center credit cards like morons.

Speak for yourself, asshole.

No one can deny even one of these statements, but im sure youll ALL be pissed as shit.

Um, we might have a chance to agree if you had a point.

Your recordings suck because you suck as a musician. Im sorry. Either realize or suffer.

Again, speak for yourself.

In case you hadn't noticed, this is homerecording, and not all recording engineers know music theory, last I checked, it was not a prerequisite.

Don't like the debates about gear and how it is used? Get you fat ass outta here.

You're nothing special, I'm sure. Just another anonymous coward hiding behind an internet alias, who, by virtue of the fact may have head the term "subdominant" in a passing conversation, thinks they're all that.

Sheesh, give me a break.

 

[c7sus]

Hell yeah it's complicated. I've been fucking around with this stuff since I was 9 years old and I still haven't figured out 2% of it.

I feel blessed that I know HOW to listen to music. That took half my life to figure out. Nobody is there to teach this stuff. I was lucky I had a 6th grade teacher that made us sit through orchestral pieces and taught us the voices of the different instruments. It opened an entire new universe. I'm 46 but Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman blew my mind when I was a kid.

But Pete Townshend made me want to play a guitar.

I've been to the alter hundreds of times. I've watched Phil Lesh and Tony Rice and Peter Rowan and Rick Danko and PT and tons of others do things in front of thousands of folks I will NEVER be able to do. I don't kid myself about that. Those guys are my heros.

I wish I knew all the theory. It's not that it's rules. It an entire other language!

I guess I'm slow but every time I pick up the guitar or plunk away on whatever other instrument is here I'm doing something I never did before.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I can't make it go.

And the best times I ever had playing there wasn't a soul but me to hear it and there ain't no tape either. I'm not sure it would work any other way.

To be entirely honest I'm kinda intimidated by this beast I have built here in the living room. The manuals are probably a foot thick. My wife thinks it should somehow make money or something.

IT'S A HOBBY.

A SELF-INDULGENT HOBBY.

I know I'm never gonna be able to afford a Corvette or a girlfriend in an apartment.

So I bought a Moog Voyager instead. With all the goodies.

When the spirit moves me I play "Boogie On Reggae Woman" until the whole house vibrates.

I may not get much recorded but I'm having a blast figuring out all the stuff I grew up listening to. Mott and the Dead and old blues. I've been playing Randy Newman tunes like Birmingham and Rollin' and just about wet my pants every time I play the "he was born in Tuscaloosa-- and he died right here in Birmingham!" line on my old SG with a slide.

I know if I learned all those scales and could play them backwards and forwards at 120bpm and knew which augmented chord to walk up in every key I might even understand what I'm playing.

But honestly I'm just seduced by melodies. Some tunes I have figured out--- once I figured out the secret of them they lost their sheen a bit. And mastering just a single instrument physically and dynamically in itself is a lifetime learning curve IMHO. I've been trying to make my guitar sound like 100 different instruments for the last 20 years. I go to bed at night hearing entire new tunes in my head. I hear them all day long. I can't seem to translate them to media. Not because I can't play them.

They're etherial.

And I'm not an AE! The theory behind recording all this mayhem is an entire other lifetime. Like Jerry Garcia said about pedal steel.

Listen to Phil Lesh. He has it down cold. His band can turn on a dime on a good night. Everything eventually melts into the goo and then they somehow resurrect it in another form. The energy doesn't get used up-- it transforms into another kind of energy. Phil makes it obvious with his jams that all great music comes from the same place. I'd love for someone to explain to me how Phil does what he does. It's beyond theory. It's waves and physics and endorphins. It's Zen. It's dropping the bomb! It's just like he says-- completing the circuit.

 

[Synkrotron]

Please keep the myths coming... and perhaps cut down a little on the rants

To be entirely honest I'm kinda intimidated by this beast I have built here in the living room. The manuals are probably a foot thick. My wife thinks it should somehow make money or something.

IT'S A HOBBY.

A SELF-INDULGENT HOBBY.

I'm with this person...


in the meantime, I'm here to learn and perhaps even gain some valid experience along the way


so hats off to the experienced guys who give up their time to help us noobs out from time to time


andy

 

[chessrock]

Myth: Anthing with the name "Behringer" sounds like shit, is built like shit, breaks down, blah blah blah.

You know, it's also a myth that my butt smells.

Here's a FACT, not a myth, Behringer (as well as most other notable low-end consumer brands) offer MORE THAN enough in way of quality and bang for the buck for 90% of people out here and will for years to come.

I will agree that Behringer offers more than enough quality for 90% of the people ... who really dig crappy gear.

(These are probably the same people who agree with me about my butt not smelling, by the way)
.

 

[lpdeluxe]

C7sus, that's a point that needs to be made, over and over. Music scratches an itch. Forget all the guys who want to scream in your ear about how you ain't nothin' and there's only a tiny 1% (which you are NOT part of, obviously) that's any good.

They don't get it. Music (and art -- my wife and I are artists, too) enriches your life. That's all the excuse you need for it.

Thank you Fletcher, for your provocative posts.

 

[Creamyapples1]

98 percent of musicians suck..

I wish I knew every single musician, so I could get on teh internet and bash them all lol

FYI: 84% of statistics quoted on the internet are random numbers generated by a person to appear as if they have a particular knowledge of a subject in which they know nothing about. QQ

 

[Dani Pace]

Damn guys, I'm dissapointed. Am I the only one around here who has heard the greatest myth of them all about recording or even in music. The simple statement, "YOU CAN'T DO THAT." If it wasn't for experimentation there would be no progress. The second greatest myth, "DON'T WORRY, WE'LL FIX IT IN THE MIX." Anyone who believes that one has access to more and better gear than most of us do (and some that hasn't even been invented yet.) Third on my list, "WITH TALENT LIKE THAT, YOU CAN BE A STAR." We all know it's more about production/promotion and packaging, pretty faces sell records much faster than raw talent. And don't forget "LOUDER IS BETTER." If it's not muddy sounding enough, just crank it up a notch or two, that will surely fix anything that got missed in the mix.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

In case you hadn't noticed, this is homerecording, and not all recording engineers know music theory.

I'd like to split this sentence in two for a minute. And since this is my post , I'd like to take the second part first...

"Not all recording engineers know music theory."

The good ones do. Hell, most recording musicians do not know music theory. But the good ones do. I'm not talking your basic delta blues son of a sharecropper who wouldn't know what "inverted seventh" means and doesn't need to, I'm talking a "recording musician" whose focused goal is to lay music on disc.

Jillchaw goesn't quite get that this is an engineering-centric board and not a music-centric board, and that's why everybody talks about compressors instead of the circle of fifths.

However, having an at least passable aquaintenance with or understanding of music theory is just one more ingredient that seperates the signal from the noise on both sides of the signal chain.


"This is home recording."

This statement keeps being used on this board as cover for someone not being an expert, because it's only a hooby for many. While that may often be true, to be honest, I have a couple of problems with this.

First off, what does "home recording" mean? Does it mean "hobby recording"? Yes, for some it does. Does it also mean "pro engineering in the home"? Yes, for some it does.

The age of the big label/big studio is fading and the age of the independant production is here. As such, for many "home recording" doesn't mean a whole lot different than "studio recording" does. So we have this clash on this board of the hobbiests who just wish to "scratch an itch" - which is fine, BTW - and those who actually try to scratch a living out of this racket - which is also fine, BTW.

In this day of shareware digital multitrack editors, freeware multiband compressors and $99 LDCs, home recording is now full-fleged, pro technology (if not always pro quality) in the hands of all. This isn't just Junior playing around in the garage with his portable cassette anymore. There's more to it than that for many of us.

So I guess that's kind of busting the myth of "home recording".

G.

 

[Creamyapples1]

I have to say, I fell victim to the whole "YOU CAN"T DO THAT" thing. When I got my first ADAT I thought that it was black or white, no in-between, just right or wrong, even after talking with people and reading what I could about it. I joined a band with a guy that had his own way of doing just about everything, and through non-conventional methods I learned that the only real rule is, if it sounds good, do it, and I'll stick to it!

 

[mshilarious]

In this day of shareware digital multitrack editors, freeware multiband compressors and $99 LDCs, home recording is now full-fleged, pro technology (if not always pro quality) in the hands of all. This isn't just Junior playing around in the garage with his portable cassette anymore. There's more to it than that for many of us.

Herein lies the problem! The availability of gear means that it's hard to be a hobbyist!

MYTH: You need a $99 LDC to record at home

I remember the first homerec I heard, it was a friend in 1986 who picked up a four-track (shockingly expensive in those days) and did Zappa-esque stuff all by himself, bouncing frequently. I did my first homerec on similar gear (sans bouncing, too much pressure!) in 1990. In 1997 I bought my own Tascam and a 57.

All of those recordings, by any standard, sound like ass (waiting for analog board people to kill me--it was my fault, not the gear, I swear!!!)

Before the DAW revolution, nobody really cared. You'd pass around mixdowns done from the 4-track straight to a stereo deck (no "mastering" involved, most people didn't even have a compressor or multieffects unit, although some did), and pass it around the dorm. Good times.

Now I'd be ashamed to post anything that didn't have the full treatment It definitely slows down the creative process

 

[iratecaller666]

You can't record a band with two mics.

This isn't so much of a myth, but me solving a brain fart issue.

As a home recording enthusiast, having read thousands of posts, numerous documents on mics, compressors, the whole shebang, I made a fatal mistake.

I'm a musician, in a original band. When we practice, we take a part of our schedule and dedicate it to creativity and new material.

Despite having all the equipment necessary to handle a pair of microphones (preamp, sound card, laptop, 58's, limitter), I shyed away from recording our jams for the last 2 years. (We used a pair of whiteboards and gave our segments fancy names as a memory inducer ... it doesn't always work.)

We all know that inspiration comes and leaves in a blink of an eye, and it doesn't take more than a few hours for the material to be long forgotten.

In the back of my mind, there was simply no worth to recording the practice with a simple pair of mics. Come on, I need 3 mics for my mesa boogie monster alone!!

The bottom line is that it's better to have the recording button ENGAGED at all times when practicing. Leave your home recording knowledge behind while you are a performer, and just hit the damned recording button!!! Would it kill ya to hit RECORD??? Just hit the button and forget about tone and mics and all that nonsense, you're a musician!!!

Now I'm proud to say, in the last month, we've recorded a mountain of new material and we're completely hot.

Now the stuff doesn't sound great but I managed to target the mics such that all 4 musicians are picked up with ease. (Drums, bass, guit, keys)

A few EQ cuts, tightenning up the bottom end, easing off on the high end, and voila: A mediocre clip that will serve our memories well.

 

[lpdeluxe]

Now I'd be ashamed to post anything that didn't have the full treatment

Well, that's the blessing and the curse of the internet. You're not in Kansas any more, you're out here in the jungle with us! So you can either proudly post your recordings to dazzle the unwashed...

...or you can just lie about how good they are.

But this is a great resource for learning about software, hardware, techniques, and so on, and you have to take the good with the bad. For every pro who takes the time to post, there are 20 or 30 14 year olds screaming about it's their RIGHT to steal software, and there's a lot in between.

To address another question that has come up, I don't know that my lack of need to make a living from recording makes me inept, any more than the fact that someone else is struggling to pay the bills with a studio necessarily makes him or her a genius. I'm going to do the best I can, regardless (and we have released a CD from my studio, with more to come).

I'm more interested in Fletcher's original thesis, which is that the information we gather (here and everywhere) needs to be run through an industrial-size BS separator before it's fit for consumption.

 

[mshilarious]

I'm more interested in Fletcher's original thesis, which is that the information we gather (here and everywhere) needs to be run through an industrial-size BS separator before it's fit for consumption.

It varies with the board--the farther down you go on the list, the more reliable the advice

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

the information we gather (here and everywhere) needs to be run through an industrial-size BS separator before it's fit for consumption.

Ahhh, I think that's what the human brain was designed for.

The funny thing about many myths is that they're accepted becuse they sound plausabe at first blush, they are easy and conveinent, and usually can be expressed in very few words ("all studio monitors are flat", "tube is good", "the higher the RMS the better", etc.) But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to blow them apart; all it takes is just taking a few seconds to actually think about them, and one can usually see just how ridiculous they are.

The brain is the world's best BS seperator. It's a fantastic signal processor that's fast, free, and works on all platforms. Best of all, everybody owns one.

It's a shame they are usually left out of the signal chain from ear to mouth.

G.

 

[EDAN]

You know, it's also a myth that my butt smells.



I will agree that Behringer offers more than enough quality for 90% of the people ... who really dig crappy gear.

It NEVER fails. I checked out your website and some of your sample productions and you make my point for me. It's a shame with 16 years experience and with what I'm guessing is some quality gear (due to your gear snob attitude) you aren't producing better recordings. You could use some advice on recording acoustic guitar for one as well as mixing. I'm too busy producing demos on my trusty ole Tascam TSR-8 (along with some lowly Behringer gear ) that seriously outclasses your "work" to help you out right now.

 

[Love & Light]

Ouch......

 

[XLR]

It NEVER fails. I checked out your website ... outclasses your "work" ...

Bad form, man.

Tim

 

[Creamyapples1]

I won't say bad form, but uneccesary comes to mind.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

If you kids don't stop fighting in the back seat, Fletcher is going to turn this thread right around and take us all back home again.

G.