What would you change about music today?

[Maya Clars]

What would you change about music today? Is there perhaps something that appears in many songs, something that, in your view, could be removed to make the music sound better? I know this is a very, very broad topic, but it’s so interesting to think about... For instance, I often, very often, hear similar patterns in drum beats, more specifically when a kick drum gradually increasing its frequency of hits, almost like a rhythmic build-up for dynamics (when a beat falls on a quarter note, then on eighth notes, then on sixteenth notes). It's used so often that it has become predictable.
So, is there anything in modern music that keeps recurring from song to song, something you think it would be better off without?

 

[DrewPeterson7]

I'd like to hear it less homogenous.

Not in the "oh, pop music all sounds the same to me" sense (though pop is guilty of this as well), but.... Like, it's awesome the way computers have changed and democratized the recording process, and I'm able to make music today that I could only dream of thirty years ago when I first picked up a guitar. Something like Superior Drummer, where I can write drum parts in MIDI and turn them into a shockingly realistic sounding drum performance, are absolute game changers.

But, they also make it too easy for production to become cookie cutter. If you want to, you can create an album by downloading a bunch of guitar VST presets, a bass preset, pick out a drum preset, slap a few EzMix presets on your vocal track, and have something that sounds release ready... and a lot like a thousand other releases with the same or similar presets.

It's easy to go on some "kids have it too easy these days" tirade, and I can't rule out that's just me being a grumpy middle aged man... but it also does make music sound pretty same-y. It's part of the reason I'm still committed to using real guitar amps even though I have decent renditions of my signal chain saved as presets in Amplitube 5, and it's a big part of the reason I want to use a live drummer next time around - I wanted to use a very "live" sounding drum kit, and even sending raw tracks from Superior into Reaper and mixing it from scratch there, I felt like my hands were a little tied because I had exactly two choices for room mic position, and neither of them was exactly right.

 

[Maya Clars]

I'd like to hear it less homogenous.

Not in the "oh, pop music all sounds the same to me" sense (though pop is guilty of this as well), but.... Like, it's awesome the way computers have changed and democratized the recording process, and I'm able to make music today that I could only dream of thirty years ago when I first picked up a guitar. Something like Superior Drummer, where I can write drum parts in MIDI and turn them into a shockingly realistic sounding drum performance, are absolute game changers.

But, they also make it too easy for production to become cookie cutter. If you want to, you can create an album by downloading a bunch of guitar VST presets, a bass preset, pick out a drum preset, slap a few EzMix presets on your vocal track, and have something that sounds release ready... and a lot like a thousand other releases with the same or similar presets.

It's easy to go on some "kids have it too easy these days" tirade, and I can't rule out that's just me being a grumpy middle aged man... but it also does make music sound pretty same-y. It's part of the reason I'm still committed to using real guitar amps even though I have decent renditions of my signal chain saved as presets in Amplitube 5, and it's a big part of the reason I want to use a live drummer next time around - I wanted to use a very "live" sounding drum kit, and even sending raw tracks from Superior into Reaper and mixing it from scratch there, I felt like my hands were a little tied because I had exactly two choices for room mic position, and neither of them was exactly right.

Yeah! Technologies changed a lot of things, I watch a lot of videos about analog, it's fun that you could spend 5 years to write an album, you had so much time to compose, right now you have to be really fast or you lose...

 

[TascamJimi]

Pretty much what Drew said !! While I use an ancient stand alone digital Tascam DP-02 , I treat it exactly like an old analog machine. No cut and paste, no copying and moving this and that around. I get it, it's almost TOO easy to do those things in a DAW, but man, everything is so ' polished' now because they make it so easy to do so. I LOVE hearing mistakes on all those classic 70's albums I listen too for inspiration. I've also found doing it the old fashioned way makes you a better player..... PRACTICE till you get the part right...don't rely on technology to correct it for you.....

 

[Manslick]

I listen to NPR and would not change anything

 

[DrewPeterson7]

Yeah! Technologies changed a lot of things, I watch a lot of videos about analog, it's fun that you could spend 5 years to write an album, you had so much time to compose, right now you have to be really fast or you lose...

Oh don't get me wrong, the album I'm just wapping up, I took ten years to write, and that has nothing to do with analog or digital.

I did get really fast at riding road bikes up mountains in that time, though.