So, How Bad Do We Suck?

  • Thread starter Thread starter crawdad
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Make music because it brings you joy. A synthesyzer and samples is just an instrument. It sounds different than other instruments, sure. So what? What makes them have to sound the same? Is an electric organ not an instrument because you can tell that it is not a pipe organ? Is an upright piano not an instrument because you can tell it is not a stienway? If I cannot sound like Pavaroti should I never sing?

Can one not enjoy watching a high school basketball game because the quality is so much lower than the NBA? Are all those players foolish idiots for wanting to play as well as the Pros even though they never will? Are they pathetic to be putting in that kind of effort towards an ideal that they will certainly never actually achieve?

Enjoy making music. Enjoy sharing it. I certainly will enjoy listening to it.
 
I LOVE THIS BOARD

I too would answer 2,4 and with a little #1 mixed in, not for fame and record sales but rather as sort of a glorified audition CD to get some guys to gig with down here. All the guys I've searched through are 20-somethings that only want to go multi platinum and tour the world. But all the guys my age that I've met who have day jobs, don't want to play heavy.

As far as critiques go, I'm one of those who would rather have it harsh and plain because its easy for me to discard the style of the suggestor's delivery (hard-assed-ness/whatever) and extract the info I need. And I need alot. On my first song post I was thinking I had a friggin 34 track masterpiece only to hear that, well, NO, this is bordering on Suck. Perhaps even certifiable Grade-A Suck....It was extremely valuable. Once I saw the comment , my own personal crap-meter flicked on and I'll never be the same ! I now have overhauled the tune: rearranged, re-tracked everything from scratch, also now with only one guitar part instead of 16 (coming back to post soon!) In this case I processed the comments as performance and composition issues rather than mixing tech. I love that. This forum can be all things to all of us I believe. (It is to me atleast)

Hopefully in future postings my tunes will be decent enough to get more comments about mixing than about perfomance & composition. I mean this is my goal....
I have a bunch of finished tunes just waiting to be recorded and now I can see I'm going to need overhaul them even before I start tracking. All as a result of the tough comments I got here. I wouldn't have it any other way.
 
Toki987 said:
There should be no issue with you being a 1 as well, you have the expertise, the material, and possibly the gear to pull it off up to a point.
I think I should not have used "fame" but maybe "commercial recognition" , which still equates to about the same in the long or short run providing the sales are there...

You know what? I just want to share my music and put it in the best light possible, which is where becoming more skilled, less sucky, less semi-pro comes in. I want it to be enjoyed on as many levels as possible. I can't be satisfied with a performance like my RAW thread when I know I can do better. IF I could pull together the wherewithal, the knowledge and the skills to put out pro quality recordings, I certainly would. I work towards that, not for fame or commercial success, but only to give the best I can give. I'd really like to achieve that and leave something great behind to be remembered by--for my family and friends. I have kids who need to set their sights higher. I want to be an example that proves that hard work and sweat can get you to a better place. Maybe I can record a few talented dreamers and make their dreams come true. God gave me a few gifts. Being social and culturally involved is not one of them. My music really does all my talking. Without it, I'm as good as dead. I don't expect fame or even commercial recognition. I mean, I'm 52 years old. There's not much of a market to market me to. The happening scene is what you see in beer commercials---gorgeous babes and GQ guys in packed bars dancing to DJ's. I'm amazed if anybody relates to anything I do, and I am thankful and grateful when anybody does. In the end, writing, playing and recording are the things I choose to do in this life. If I could only raise the quality of of those areas, that would be fullfillment for me. If music is your passion, the motivation and impulse to create never dies, no matter how young or old you are. The commercial opportunites may change, but the fire keeps burning regardless. A part of that fire and purpose, for me, is to learn how to capture the music in the form it was intended to sound like.
 
Alanfc--The thing is--a recording does not stand on its own just because Ed Cherney engineered it or Bob Clearmountain mixed it. While those two talents would be highly desirable, there are other things involved. First, the composition has to be good. The lyrics should be strong, as well as the melody and the groove. Second, the performance also has to be be strong. Whether its the drum track, the vocal or the guitarist, anything sub par call pull a recording down.

When you can get all the elements to be strong, its hard to not come up with something wonderful. Its the song, the performance, the engineering and the mixing. Oh, and then theres the mastering! My personal feeling is that this is also the order of importance. In other words, great mastering does not create a great song, and so on.

Anyway, I liked your post and point of view!
 
crawdad said:
You know what? I just want to share my music and put it in the best light possible, which is where becoming more skilled, less sucky, less semi-pro comes in. I want it to be enjoyed on as many levels as possible. I can't be satisfied with a performance like my RAW thread when I know I can do better. IF I could pull together the wherewithal, the knowledge and the skills to put out pro quality recordings, I certainly would. I work towards that, not for fame or commercial success, but only to give the best I can give. I'd really like to achieve that and leave something great behind to be remembered by--for my family and friends. I have kids who need to set their sights higher. I want to be an example that proves that hard work and sweat can get you to a better place. Maybe I can record a few talented dreamers and make their dreams come true. God gave me a few gifts. Being social and culturally involved is not one of them. My music really does all my talking. Without it, I'm as good as dead. I don't expect fame or even commercial recognition. I mean, I'm 52 years old. There's not much of a market to market me to. The happening scene is what you see in beer commercials---gorgeous babes and GQ guys in packed bars dancing to DJ's. I'm amazed if anybody relates to anything I do, and I am thankful and grateful when anybody does. In the end, writing, playing and recording are the things I choose to do in this life. If I could only raise the quality of of those areas, that would be fullfillment for me. If music is your passion, the motivation and impulse to create never dies, no matter how young or old you are. The commercial opportunites may change, but the fire keeps burning regardless. A part of that fire and purpose, for me, is to learn how to capture the music in the form it was intended to sound like.

very inspiring.... Keep the fires burning!! :)
 
crawdad said:
Alanfc--The thing is--a recording does not stand on its own just because Ed Cherney engineered it or Bob Clearmountain mixed it. While those two talents would be highly desirable, there are other things involved. First, the composition has to be good. The lyrics should be strong, as well as the melody and the groove. Second, the performance also has to be be strong. Whether its the drum track, the vocal or the guitarist, anything sub par call pull a recording down.

When you can get all the elements to be strong, its hard to not come up with something wonderful. Its the song, the performance, the engineering and the mixing. Oh, and then theres the mastering! My personal feeling is that this is also the order of importance. In other words, great mastering does not create a great song, and so on.

Excellent post Al.There is truth in every single word of it.
 
There's been a lot of excellent posts in this thread.......but you know what?.......you can overanalyze this stuff.
All I know is that I love to play and every night when it comes time to go to a gig or back into my recording room, I get excited and pumped up. That's really good enough for me.

I come here and get to hang out with others who love music and recording and that's good enough for me.

I've made some real friends here and that's good enough for me.

My recordings and my playing are the best they've ever been and that's good enough for me.

I'm not hungover this morning and that's good enough for me. ;)
 
Shoot, this thread has inspired some of the most heartfelt statements on music I've read in quite some time. Al put it beautifully (just like he does in his tunes).

'nuff said.

Chris
 
2&4 for me.

Everytime I get my mixes sounding a even a little better,I know it's because of the kind help and encouragement Iv'e gotten from the good people here.

When I first started out here,I really sucked at recording.
(Hopefully Iv'e gotten a little better.):D

But people here were very patient and positive.
Something to keep in mind when critiquing mixes.
Everybody has potential!

Pete

BTW-This thread is pretty cool,thanks Crawdad!
 
5. Before I entered this board I absolutely loathed mixing and you guys have made it somewhat bearable for me. I even like it these days.

:)
 
Great thread. Some random thoughts:

I love music. I think of myself as a songwriter and a guitar player. I can't sing, I can't engineer, I can't produce. I can't play bass, drums or keyboards. I can't tap dance, either.

What do I want? To create recorded music that is good enough (in every respect) that other folk can get an impression of what I hear in my head. I'd much rather have access to great musicians with great instruments, professional engineers and producers and studios, but I don't. So I need to do a bit of engineering, a bit of production, a bit of mixing. I need to use sampled drums, sampled pianos, autotune, too much compression, hundreds of takes, etc.

I've learned a huge amount about recording and mixing and performing and writing and being a human being from the folk on this board. I do my best to try and help other folk when I have the time (which isn't often enough) and the knowledge (which is hardly ever).

What do I want from the clinic? Initially it was amazingly encouraging to get a bit of back-slapping. I'd never really let other folk hear my music, and a lot of folk said a lot of kind things about my music. This directly lead to my continuing making music and keeping posting stuff for comments. Brutally honest opinions at that stage would have been enough to make me quit. I'm happy to accept that that's *my* failing, not anyone else's, but it's true nonetheless.

Increasingly, I want (not so brutal) honesty. I've even directly asked a few folk for criticism because I value their opinions and know they'll be honest in a way that helps me learn.

So I suppose what I want from critiques has changed over time, and will probably keep changing. I think the fact that so many folk are prepared to give their time and effort to helping each other out is just amazing.

Finally, sonusman's comments:

So I make these comments because I like to remind you guys that it IS that obvious, and most of you are a far cry from engineering something worthwhile.

and:

you start to appreciate just how far away from that "pro sound" you really are. I see post after post of how crap sounds "pro"

I think the key thing here is that sonusman is talking about the *engineering*, not the music. It's certainly true that from an engineering perspective, a lot of clinic stuff is far from "pro" sounding. And that's important.

But much more important, to me anyway, is the music, the art. I can honestly say that there are many tracks I've heard on the clinic that I prefer to the vast majority of stuff on sale. And more importantly, a lot of it means as much to me as my own CD collection. I could name folk, but they know who they are. I even asked a couple of folk if I could buy their stuff on CD - I liked it enough to pay for it.

A lot of the stuff I listen to and buy doesn't sound "pro" from an engineering perspective, although strictly speaking it *is* pro (i.e. the engineer was paid). For me that doesn't matter anywhere near as much as the music itself, the writing, the performance, the feeling it gets across.

The main point is that "pro" and "worthwhile" aren't the same thing. Is clinic stuff "pro" quality? Mainly no. Is it worthwhile? Mainly yes.

Cheers

AB
 
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