For Those Who Write Original Music...

[11top]

Listen to, say, an old Hollies tune where the pitches were so impossibly high on the harmonies. Unnatural, overly bright, right? Guess why. You can HEAR it.

I always assumed Graham Nash was a eunuch.

 

[Draconomics]

I always assumed Graham Nash was a eunuch.

I wonder...what does that make Geddy Lee then?

 

[László]

I always assumed Graham Nash was a eunuch.

Nope. He had children. One of them is Jackson Nash, who's an actor.

Then there were the cars...

OK, he didn't make cars.

 

[László]

I wonder...what does that make Geddy Lee then?

A good bass player?

 

[alantig]

Thanks for that ear worm.

And now the whole damn bus is cheering.

 

[alantig]

Thanks for that ear worm.

And by the way, if you're going to criticize, don't just do it once. Don't do it twice.

Knock three times.

 

[Draconomics]

Um...well...maybe don't be so quick to judge.

In your day (and mine) there were plenty of technology tricks to solve musicians' problems having their records sounding the way they wanted. Just like now, only the tools are different.

"Those days" were "these days" then, as young bands without much experience compared to the session cats and session vocalists, started recording their own material.

One such tool was the Varispeed tape machine. These started to appear in the 60s and 70s. Remember that two tape machines were often employed in track bounces for submixes, because machines had limited tracks available.

The engineer would, for example, slow down a tape machine so the guitar solos would be faster when brought up to speed. You'd be surprised how many solos were done at a slower speed on the machine, with the guitar tuned lower, so they were blazing fast when brought up to speed and pitch. Even the Beatles used this trick.

Then there was the issue of vocals. Backing vocals were often slowed down so the singers could reach pitches that were otherwise impossible for them to sing due to their limited vocal ranges. Listen to, say, an old Hollies tune where the pitches were so impossibly high on the harmonies. Unnatural, overly bright, right? Guess why. You can HEAR it.

Serious pitch issues were sometimes also fixed by varispeeding the vocals.

I should add that my own pro machines (16 track analog and three track mastering deck with center track time code) had varispeed back in the late '80s and early '90s, and...um...yeah. Good tool.

Farther back, in the 50s, they started relying more heavily on echo chambers, because echo tends to hide pitch issues.

Don't like drum machines and loops? Back in the day, LOTS of bands had their drummer replaced by an experienced, older, session drummer . LOTS. Same with bass. Same with guitar. These people functioned as the 'loop' or 'machine' in their era.

The 'wrecking crew' in LA would often BE the band behind the singer, and the 'name' band would be sitting with their thumbs up their asses until they actually learned how to play their instruments.

Auto-tune came into vogue in the late '90s, and it got used on nearly every record that came out of LA. So it's been 25 years or so that the "kids" started using it. Those kids are middle aged now...

I guess it's time for my "modern music stinky" rant.

I agree, tech and studio tricks have been in use for ages. Some examples that surprised me was that Tomorrow Never Knows was a drum loop (sometimes even cited as the granddaddy of looped electronic beats). George Harrison's 12 string solo on a Hard Days Night was sped up. Stayin Alive was a drum loop. Most of Steely Dan's Gaucho album was a drum machine. I'm a fan of tech innovations in music myself, and use many of them! If it wasn't for vst programs and midi controllers, id never be able to realize my more ambitious ideas. I live in a cow town. Theres no music scene here, our greatest feat of art is a tractor pull.

I think music suck comes out of a combo of lackluster talent and ease of production, not tech being at fault...well not directly. Back in 2008, I wanted to try recording some of my ideas but didn't know where to start. That's when I saw an m-audio recording package for sale in a guitar center ad. I took a chance and bought it. Being able to record and edit music on my crappy computer was eye opening. Anyone could record polished music for very little money, even me! However, the other side of the coin...ANYONE could do it regardless of talent or skill. Oh no...

I find the music scene today akin to comparing Rembrandt to "Finger Doodlin Timmy". To paint something in the style of Rembrandt takes skill; years of working at the craft to understand complexities of shading, color, etc. Timmy smears around colors in photoshop, and can produce vast quantities of "art" in short amounts of time. Tech has kinda made it possible to produce low effort material with ease, and it seems that is what's been selling most...i suppose because it's being made by the same age demographic that buys it. Technology will always be that double edged sword, I suppose one must take the good with the....meh.

 

[László]

I guess it's time for my "modern music stinky" rant.

I agree, tech and studio tricks have been in use for ages. Some examples that surprised me was that Tomorrow Never Knows was a drum loop (sometimes even cited as the granddaddy of looped electronic beats). George Harrison's 12 string solo on a Hard Days Night was sped up. Stayin Alive was a drum loop. Most of Steely Dan's Gaucho album was a drum machine. I'm a fan of tech innovations in music myself, and use many of them! If it wasn't for vst programs and midi controllers, id never be able to realize my more ambitious ideas. I live in a cow town. Theres no music scene here, our greatest feat of art is a tractor pull.

I think music suck comes out of a combo of lackluster talent and ease of production, not tech being at fault...well not directly. Back in 2008, I wanted to try recording some of my ideas but didn't know where to start. That's when I saw an m-audio recording package for sale in a guitar center ad. I took a chance and bought it. Being able to record and edit music on my crappy computer was eye opening. Anyone could record polished music for very little money, even me! However, the other side of the coin...ANYONE could do it regardless of talent or skill. Oh no...

I find the music scene today akin to comparing Rembrandt to "Finger Doodlin Timmy". To paint something in the style of Rembrandt takes skill; years of working at the craft to understand complexities of shading, color, etc. Timmy smears around colors in photoshop, and can produce vast quantities of "art" in short amounts of time. Tech has kinda made it possible to produce low effort material with ease, and it seems that is what's been selling most...i suppose because it's being made by the same age demographic that buys it. Technology will always be that double edged sword, I suppose one must take the good with the....meh.

I’m friends with a number of artists. My brother is one of them. We’ve had this discussion. But before I digress…

This is a large oil painting my brother did. His work is currently part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Perhaps you’d agree that my brother knows how to paint and create art. You might agree that he knows his way around the art world, especially having been head of the Fine Arts department at a university.

And yet, my brother has a lot of respect for art done by people you’d call Timmy.

There is good stuff and less good stuff being done in all styles, and in all media.

Does it matter in the end that it took Wagner forever to write and orchestrate an opera, or that Bob Dylan was able to do a song in a day with a few cowboy chords? Does one fact outweigh the validity of the other?

EDIT-

I'll ask in a different way, and really it's rhetorical, because there probably is no single answer:

Does art have to be difficult to create in order to be appreciated, or even good?

 

[11top]

I’m friends with a number of artists. My brother is one of them. We’ve had this discussion. But before I digress…

This is a large oil painting my brother did. His work is currently part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Perhaps you’d agree that my brother knows how to paint and create art. You might agree that he knows his way around the art world, especially having been head of the Fine Arts department at a university.

And yet, my brother has a lot of respect for art done by people you’d call Timmy.

There is good stuff and less good stuff being done in all styles, and in all media.

Does it matter in the end that it took Wagner forever to write an opera, or that Bob Dylan was able to do a song in a day? Does one fact outweigh the validity of the other?

Amazing painting.

 

[László]

Amazing painting.

I'll pass that along to Robert. He'll appreciate your saying so!

 

[11top]

I'll pass that along to Robert. He'll appreciate your saying so!

I showed my artist/painter wife. She said, “Wow!!!

 

[sergiodeblanc]

Amazing painting.

Absolutely. I’d be proud to have anything he’s done hanging in my home.

Unfortunately my investment is in the macaroni art medium.

 

[Draconomics]

I’m friends with a number of artists. My brother is one of them. We’ve had this discussion. But before I digress…

This is a large oil painting my brother did. His work is currently part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian.

Perhaps you’d agree that my brother knows how to paint and create art. You might agree that he knows his way around the art world, especially having been head of the Fine Arts department at a university.

And yet, my brother has a lot of respect for art done by people you’d call Timmy.

There is good stuff and less good stuff being done in all styles, and in all media.

Does it matter in the end that it took Wagner forever to write and orchestrate an opera, or that Bob Dylan was able to do a song in a day with a few cowboy chords? Does one fact outweigh the validity of the other?

Beautiful piece! Your brother is an incredible artist.

To digress, I get what you're saying. When I say "Finger Doodle Timmy", Im not talking about comparing Wagner to Dylan. If our Finger Doodlin fiend is Lil Pump, to me that's a very different comparison. It's not so much about time spent making your music, it's more about the lack of effort put in and the low quality result. Hope that makes sense.

 

[jxe]

Absolutely. I’d be proud to have anything he’s done hanging in my home.

Unfortunately my investment is in the macaroni art medium.

if you use the right glue you can eat it when you’re out of money.

 

[László]

Beautiful piece! Your brother is an incredible artist.

To digress, I get what you're saying. When I say "Finger Doodle Timmy", Im not talking about comparing Wagner to Dylan. If our Finger Doodlin fiend is Lil Pump, to me that's a very different comparison. It's not so much about time spent making your music, it's more about the lack of effort put in and the low quality result. Hope that makes sense.

I started discussing this issue with my brother and a few other artist friends one day about 20 years ago. It all started because we'd attended an exhibition of Keith Herring's work together at an art museum.

The particular piece I thought was nonsense was a bunch of cheap, out-of-the-package plastic toys like you'd find in a random bag in a dime store, stapled to a wall. Literally. That was it. No paint. No artistic skill I could discern.

By this time, my brother was painting some pretty spectacular works, similar to the piece I posted. And I said, "How can this stuff be remotely compared to your work, which takes years of training and persistence, and a large amount of skill and talent?"

Well, you know, you hang out with a bunch of artists, and you hear lots of points of view, but not one of them felt the way I did about the piece I was complaining about.

As you might imagine, we got into a pretty wide-ranging discussion about art (including music) and talked far into the night. After a while of back and forth, I at least understood the other side of the coin. Doesn't mean I came to like the Herring work, or that it somehow defines the answer to the above question as far as my appreciation goes, let alone the merits of such work. But it did make me think.

Of course, the question of what exactly art IS, was the essence of the discussion.

One of the things that the artists seemed to agree on was that art can often be about intention, about simply creating something deliberately designed to make us think, or to demonstrate an idea. We might react positively or negatively, but if we think, in some cases (not all) the artist's intention has been achieved.

That, in turn, made me think about Picasso's 'found object' series, especially the bicycle seat and handlebars mounted on a canvas too look like an ox, something I thought was interesting and clearly designed, not to show off artistic skill, but to demonstrate an idea. I'm NOT saying Herring is a Picasso. But the whole discussion intrigued me.

Anyway, let's take your rapper, Lil Pump as an example.

About ten years ago I was asked to do a few rap pieces for a series of ads for a tire company. I was nonplussed, but heck, I wanted to make the dough, so I said, "sure."

Turned out it was hard to do and have it sound good! The lyrics the ad agency gave me were incredibly lame, even though they rhymed. I created a backing track, and that went OK, though doing it authentically took me DAYS, and then I hired a singer who said he could rap to perform it. It went...badly.

So I reached out to some friends in the hip-hop community, and found a rapper to work with. In the course of our day, he rewrote the lyric to sound really cool, and then performed the tracks.

You know what? It occurred to me that he was like a skilled actor doing a voice-over performance. He brought the thing to life in an amazing way. If you've never sat in on a voice-acting session, do yourself a favor. A line can be delivered a million ways, just like the vocal on a song can be delivered a million ways, and it takes skill! You will have new respect for voice-over talent.

I was so excited at the end of the day that I couldn't believe it. It's kind of like a poet performing their work. Sent shivers up my spine. At the end of the sessions, I was so excited I wanted to do more, just for the sheer fun of it.

I no longer dismiss musical styles. Doing any style of music well often seems a lot easier than it is. One of life's lessons for me, tucked away.

You might say, "Well it may be poetry, but it's not music."

To which I answer, hmmm...there's a backing track with rhythm, melody and a bass line, and there's rythmical vocal inflected a certain way over the backing track...and while it's not singing per se, who's to say it's not music? If it isn't, then please define for me exactly what music is...

Of course, there's the matter of "do we like it?" I confess that rap listening isn't a thing for me, but neither is heavy metal. All kidding that I do about metal aside, however, to do it really well takes skills.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

Absolutely. I’d be proud to have anything he’s done hanging in my home.

Unfortunately my investment is in the macaroni art medium.

Fusilli Jerry???

 

[Deleted member 5962]

I assure you that as with any music writing activity, creating a competitive, market-ready pop song is a serious creative process. I don't think many here can do it - but if you can, get your ass out to LA and have them show you the money!!

(Edit) You know Les, I used to be cute for a redhead with freckles, but I just don't have "the look" anymore, that they are looking for to make into a star. My looks, what little I had to work with, are long gone. Thanks for reminding me!

 

[Draconomics]

I started discussing this issue with my brother and a few other artist friends one day about 20 years ago. It all started because we'd attended an exhibition of Keith Herring's work together at an art museum.

The particular piece I thought was nonsense was a bunch of cheap, out-of-the-package plastic toys like you'd find in a random bag in a dime store, stapled to a wall. Literally. That was it. No paint. No artistic skill I could discern.

By this time, my brother was painting some pretty spectacular works, similar to the piece I posted. And I said, "How can this stuff be remotely compared to your work, which takes years of training and persistence, and a large amount of skill and talent?"

Well, you know, you hang out with a bunch of artists, and you hear lots of points of view, but not one of them felt the way I did about the piece I was complaining about.

As you might imagine, we got into a pretty wide-ranging discussion about art (including music) and talked far into the night. After a while of back and forth, I at least understood the other side of the coin. Doesn't mean I came to like the Herring work, or that it somehow defines the answer to the above question as far as my appreciation goes, let alone the merits of such work. But it did make me think.

Of course, the question of what exactly art IS, was the essence of the discussion.

One of the things that the artists seemed to agree on was that art can often be about intention, about simply creating something deliberately designed to make us think, or to demonstrate an idea. We might react positively or negatively, but if we think, in some cases (not all) the artist's intention has been achieved.

That, in turn, made me think about Picasso's 'found object' series, especially the bicycle seat and handlebars mounted on a canvas too look like an ox, something I thought was interesting and clearly designed, not to show off artistic skill, but to demonstrate an idea. I'm NOT saying Herring is a Picasso. But the whole discussion intrigued me.

Anyway, let's take your rapper, Lil Pump as an example.

About ten years ago I was asked to do a few rap pieces for a series of ads for a tire company. I was nonplussed, but heck, I wanted to make the dough, so I said, "sure."

Turned out it was hard to do and have it sound good! The lyrics the ad agency gave me were incredibly lame, even though they rhymed. I created a backing track, and that went OK, though doing it authentically took me DAYS, and then I hired a singer who said he could rap to perform it. It went...badly.

So I reached out to some friends in the hip-hop community, and found a rapper to work with. In the course of our day, he rewrote the lyric to sound really cool, and then performed the tracks.

You know what? It occurred to me that he was like a skilled actor doing a voice-over performance. He brought the thing to life in an amazing way. If you've never sat in on a voice-acting session, do yourself a favor. A line can be delivered a million ways, just like the vocal on a song can be delivered a million ways, and it takes skill! You will have new respect for voice-over talent.

I was so excited at the end of the day that I couldn't believe it. It's kind of like a poet performing their work. Sent shivers up my spine. At the end of the sessions, I was so excited I wanted to do more, just for the sheer fun of it.

I no longer dismiss musical styles. Doing any style of music well often seems a lot easier than it is. One of life's lessons for me, tucked away.

You might say, "Well it may be poetry, but it's not music."

To which I answer, hmmm...there's a backing track with rhythm, melody and a bass line, and there's rythmical vocal inflected a certain way over the backing track...and while it's not singing per se, who's to say it's not music? If it isn't, then please define for me exactly what music is...

Of course, there's the matter of "do we like it?" I confess that rap listening isn't a thing for me, but neither is heavy metal. All kidding that I do about metal aside, however, to do it really well takes skills.

Ah, the question of what art is....

It's simple enough to say its subjective, but I suppose theres more to it. Im not an art critic or connoisseur, but there is certainly art that appeals to me, that which doesnt, and that which I find to be ridiculous, but thats my personal opinion. Im not sure the question can ever be answered. There is the question of certain forms of art being unworthy of high praise it receives while something more skillfully crafted remains in the dark, but that's a discourse for another time.

I actually have respect for many hip-hop artists. I grew up on Grandmaster Flash and Run DMC. Loved those cats. Something like Lil Pump is....err, while rap/hip-hop in genre, well....theres a certain amount of artistry on a Run DMC record. Repeating the term "Gucci gang" ad infinitum is just....not. My take on it, perhaps im alone in that sentiment, but....there you go.

 

[sergiodeblanc]

Sampling isn’t even really a thing anymore (sadly) because it’s just too damn expensive.

 

[sergiodeblanc]

I also recognize my participation in derailing this thread with my (ever so enjoyable for me) trolling of the “things were better before” crowd, and maybe it’s a natural trajectory for some of y’all to go there but..

Les’ intent is f this thread was to make people feel empowered and secure enough to share their creativity, not to knock anyone down.

Songwriting is hard. Being vulnerable enough to share your songs is sometimes even harder.

Unless you write songs, have posted links (now or in the past), or have ever made a real honest effort to put yourself and your art out there… WTF do you know?