Why computers make bad musicians. Funny.

  • Thread starter Thread starter Talldog
  • Start date Start date
I will, once again, defer to the wisdom of Ani Difranco

Ani Difranco "Fuel" said:
People used to make records
As in a record of an event
The event of people
Playing music in a room
Now everything is cross-marketing
It's about sunglasses and shoes
Or guns or drugs
You choose
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The "music" industry isn't even about music any more. Sad.

I find it totally depressing that some of my favorite songwriters (big enough names to headline major festivles) such as Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes/Solo work, Adam Stephens of Two Gallants/Solo work, Will Scheff of Okkervill River, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, all of these guys are totally unknown to the vast majority of people today. Sad.

I was reading about John Steinbeck yesterday and his contemporaries. I was so sad. They had passion, something to write about, there was a community of artists that supported each other, that were doing something. Or look at Ginsberg, Kerouac, et all . . . same thing. I just don't see that today.

Sorry. On a tanget/rant .... on a tanrant. I'll now return you to your usual programming.
 
All y'all hating on tools, it's funny :laughings:

"If you can't do it without a computer, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

"If you can't do it without a click track, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

"If you can't do it without effects pedals, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

"If you can't do it without tape compression, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

"If you can't do it without amplification, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

I help produce a concert series where about half of the shows use no amplification. It always sounds better than acts that need amplification. It always sound WAY better than any recording, ever.

Get over yourselves, as soon as the tape deck was invented composers were playing it like an instrument. Music that needs a computer is no more of a crutch than a tape deck is.
 
Well, I suppose my title could have hated a little less....Sorry. I have nothing against using the tools that you have. It just seems odd that they wouldn't think that you play the whole song when recording.
 
Talldog said:
Well, I suppose my title could have hated a little less....Sorry. I have nothing against using the tools that you have. It just seems odd that they wouldn't think that you play the whole song when recording.
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I still find it funny how many people call me up asking my rate and when I tell them my hourly rate, they say "well, we only have four songs that are about 5 minutes long, so that would only be 20 minutes!"

I'm not sure that band is exhibiting poor musicianship as much as they are exhibiting a complete lack of understanding of the recording process.

This is an artform, there is no right or wrong way to go about something as long as the results are what was intended. It's way too easy to think that the way you do things is the one true way to do it, but that is obviously rubbish.
 
mshilarious said:
All y'all hating on tools, it's funny,,,
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tool: (noun.) One who lacks the mental capacity to know he is being used. A fool. A cretin. Characterized by low intelligence and/or self-esteem.
 
Talldog said:
Well, I suppose my title could have hated a little less....Sorry. I have nothing against using the tools that you have. It just seems odd that they wouldn't think that you play the whole song when recording.
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For the hell of it, spend some time talking with them and see where they're coming from. Some things are simply impossible to play in a single performance not because the musicians aren't good enough but because they can't be doing two things at once - the 90s brought us the on/off dynamic thing with clean verses and distorted choruses that was suddenly everywhere, and while it's usually possible to do that in a single take, it's quite a bit easier to cut the clean parts and the distorted parts separately, and if you want to do something like let the last distorted chord ring out while the clean guitars come back in, well, you need to track it separately. This is especially true if you're double tracking distorted rhythms, but don't want to double track clean parts, or want them panned differently.

I remember my first time in a "real" studio, before I'd even gotten into recording on my own, I was actually kind of surprised when the engineer wanted me to play the clean intro of a song and then just carry straight on into the distorted rhythm part, since just as a listener I could tell that most of the bands I listened to had pretty obviously recorded clean and distorted parts separately. It wasn't that I couldn't play the seque - I could, it was a song I'd been playing live all that summer - it just made more sense to record it that way, to me.

Anyway, if you'll take a piece of unsolicited advice - if you're going to record these guys, ask them to loan or burn you a couple albums with the sound they're after. Not only does "metal" mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, but odds are the sound they after is a LOT more processed than what it is you normally mix. Modern metal mixes tend to have everything EQd and reshaped with compressors to hell and back, and if you go in and do a more organic "rock" type mix they're probably not going to like it that much. Reading your posts, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you have the sort of ear where you can give an album a couple spins and then get a sense for the genre conventions, but trying to deliver a product to a band with no idea what those conventions are is a recipe for trouble, IMO.
 
Talldog said:
Well, I suppose my title could have hated a little less....Sorry. I have nothing against using the tools that you have. It just seems odd that they wouldn't think that you play the whole song when recording.
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It's not odd it's pathetic. :D
 
Hey Drew. Yeah, We'll be talking a lot and I am going to map out everything so they know what their getting into. I used to live in Slumerville over by Tufts. Did a bunch of recording at Soundtracks and Fort Apache.
 
Talldog said:
Hey Drew. Yeah, We'll be talking a lot and I am going to map out everything so they know what their getting into. I used to live in Slumerville over by Tufts. Did a bunch of recording at Soundtracks and Fort Apache.
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Oh, no shit. :D I'm on the other side, near Porter and the Cambridge line (and, unfortunately, the commuter rail tracks), but the Davis area is a short 20 minute walk, even shorter (feeling, anyhow) if I'm coming back from any of the bars out there. :D
 
mshilarious said:
All y'all hating on tools, it's funny :laughings:
....

Get over yourselves, as soon as the tape deck was invented composers were playing it like an instrument. Music that needs a computer is no more of a crutch than a tape deck is.
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It's not that anyone is ragging on making music with computers (though the title would lead you to believe such.) It's the fact that some of these young kids don't even know how to play through their own songs in a single take.

Sure, some bands/songs need extra instrumentation and things that can only be added in a studio with extra takes. COOL!!! But the heart of the song should still be performable in a take, then add shit. (With the exception being electronic based music I guess. NIN never really tried to sound like a band playing a song . . . . so there are exceptions) but mostly . . . just play the fucking song!!!
 
Drew. I was just outside of Davis. Is Redbones still there? Awesome BBQ. My wife lived near Porter when we met.
 
Talldog said:
Well, I suppose my title could have hated a little less....Sorry. I have nothing against using the tools that you have. It just seems odd that they wouldn't think that you play the whole song when recording.
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Meh, I never do. I don't even know what the song is until it's recorded. And after I'm done, I usually have no idea what I played. That's always been the case for me, whether on Portastudio or PC.
 
hm

mshilarious said:
All y'all hating on tools, it's funny :laughings:

"If you can't do it without a computer, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

"If you can't do it without a click track, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

"If you can't do it without effects pedals, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

"If you can't do it without tape compression, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

"If you can't do it without amplification, YOU CAN'T DO IT."

I help produce a concert series where about half of the shows use no amplification. It always sounds better than acts that need amplification. It always sound WAY better than any recording, ever.

Get over yourselves, as soon as the tape deck was invented composers were playing it like an instrument. Music that needs a computer is no more of a crutch than a tape deck is.
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There is a difference between amplifying a signal and not being able to play your own song.

Also, if a COMPOSER wants to try making a brilliant song using tape tricks thats a completely different thing than a bunch of dudes who cant play not knowing where the verse goes without the computer to tell them.
 
The Great Cobb said:
There is a difference between amplifying a signal and not being able to play your own song.

Also, if a COMPOSER wants to try making a brilliant song using tape tricks thats a completely different thing than a bunch of dudes who cant play not knowing where the verse goes without the computer to tell them.
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The OP is not to whom I was responded; reread farview's first post and then the response that includes my quote. It was not so qualified . . .

BTW, farview has produced many more real metal bands with actual talent than you or me are likely to lay down, digitally or magnetically. You ought to give the dude some credit.
 
I'm surprized that it's not come up whether the band play live.

As a slight deviation, one of the reasons the Beatles had such a torrid time during the "Let it be" recording sessions was that having been so immersed in studio trickery for the previous three years, and, in George Harrison's words around '68, never having played complete songs since stopping touring in '66, they had become dependent on the studio and it's toys. The album {originally to be called 'Get back'} was supposed to be a back to their roots thing of playing complete songs without edits and overdubs. But they couldn't do it. :eek:
It happens to the best of them ! They redeemed themselves somewhat on the rooftop gig, but interestingly, they abandoned any notions of the 'back to the roots' thing after. And next came "Abbey Road", perhaps the most 'produced' of all.
But I don't care. I still love their stuff. And if you like the end result, does it matter ? Peut etre oui, peut etre non...
 
The Great Cobb said:
Also, if a COMPOSER wants to try making a brilliant song using tape tricks thats a completely different thing than a bunch of dudes who cant play not knowing where the verse goes without the computer to tell them.
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Interestingly, when Jethro Tull recorded the "Benefit" album (in early 1970), the bass player, Glen Cornick, said it was a really difficult album to record because none of the band knew where the vocals were meant to be and where verses began and ended and choruses came in and what the tempos were......as he put it "You never knew where you were supposed to fit in the song". I know it's not quite the same thing but what I'm trying to show is in that popular music, from the moment Les Paul managed to succeed with 'sound on sound' recording [multitracking], that was the point that the door was opened that could never again be shut and all kinds of creations were possible and have continued to be and will continue to be. There's enough old school in me to raise an eyebrow at the band [in the OP] in question but artifice in recording {and by extension, songwriting} began with and was made popular, nay, indispensable, by the old school.
 
artifice

OK OK you got me.

Digital tricks it is!!
 
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Talldog said:
Drew. I was just outside of Davis. Is Redbones still there? Awesome BBQ. My wife lived near Porter when we met.
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Awesome BBQ, and an even better beer selection. I've almost never been in there when the place wasn't swarmed, I don't think they have much to worry about.

Come to think of it, it's been a little while since I've been... :D
 
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