BenMMusTech


Actually rus I think being different for the sake of being different as long as you are aware of the things I've already mentioned is the key in breaking blandness and predictability.

It is those of us who go no when everyone goes yes, it's those of us who stubborn and obstaninate, it's those of us who dare to dream and live outside the box when the world is trying to shove a round peg into a square whole that make the difference.

The problem is the world has never been so scared of difference in such a long time. Somehow a religious paradigm and ferver is gripping society not unlike the dark to middle ages.

And I'm not talking about religion as such, I'm talking about conformity as religion and this is perpetuated by media.

If you look at the messages being beamed into the young, a paranoid apathy is brainwashing the youth with the dogma of you must fit in, or else.

Or else you won't have a job, your music won't be heard, you won't have a loving union.  Any of the things we need to survive in modern society, any thing that you can think of that we call society.  

It is those of us that ask why? Who have always help grow the society we live in, where are these people now?

We complain about the blandness of music, art whatever but we have cooked the golden gooses by being fearful of difference.

Sorry Philip I might have ranted a bit.

Ben

I agree with this; however, there's a right way and a wrong way to do it. I shouldn't say right or wrong, but as Danny pointed out, there is such a thing as forcing the issue. I'm all for being assertive and chasing after what you want, but sometimes you have to slow up and down - take a step back and think.


Creativity is not something that can nor should it be forced and one can often times tell when something is.


And yes, I understand the philosophy; however, you need those similarities to make you different. Not everybody can be Beethoven to Mozart, Van Halen to Ozzy or Madonna to Lady Gaga; yet, note how each took notes and separated themselves. They aren't all that different. 


If anybody is stereotypical, it's the audience moreso than the performers.


I don't think anyone is fearful of being different. It's a fear of being the same. 


The next Pop act comes out and says: "I don't wanna be like Katy Perry!" However, she ends up sounding like her because she either hasn't a) studied KP's music enough or b) what everybody seems to do these days: "This song used the same melody/riff/progression as a million other ones!", then forces the issue only to see that "whatever you do, someone else has already done it." (Note how everybody wants to sue everybody else these days! (!))

However, she could use KP's influence to write something different and actually be different and it be done in a way where it is not forced!

I think if people would just do what's in their hearts and not worry about what someone else has done. (For legal reasons, yes, but that isn't the point.) If there were one song in the world, there's probably a significant amount of ways it could be played or sung; however, the same song is different!

Focus on the 1% that is different than the 99% that isn't. (You have to be really honed in with that kind of disparity) However, note that are differences in the 99% group, too. If it comes off as "nit-picking," well ... I said you have to be really tuned in!

I heard about 7 songs while eating at an establishment - analyzing every one of them. Did I come across similarities? You bet, but I came across lots of differences, too (and I mean the less obvious)

That's a tip for Philip and anybody else. Sometimes it's better to be subtle than blatant. (If this isn't true regarding production, I need to quit what I am doing - no really I might! lol)

That "different" when you ask about it, is usually something that ruined the song 8 out of 10 times, ya know? Coming into your own as an artist takes time. Achieving an identity takes time. Writing a lot can help while trying different things. However, the decisions that get made on some of these "different" things isn't always the correct choice in my opinion. If we look back at all the innovators...as I said before, none of them set out to be different nor did they know they would inspire millions. They just did what they did and people either loved it or hated it. "Different for the sake of" is just not a decision I feel is a good one being an artist. You BECOME different on your own...."different" chooses you, we don't choose it. Just my take though...but I totally agree with all that you said. :)

 
I totally agree with this statement, Danny. 
 
30 years ago I had a college design teacher tell me that it takes time to find your own style.  Whether it be drawing, painting, photography, or music, you keep at your art until you find a little something that works for you.  Then you keep doing it.  Milk it.  Refine this thing that is working for you.  All the while, you keep looking for another little something that works for you.  As time goes by, you suddenly have your own identity.  Sometimes it takes some one else to say, "Hey, I really like what you did here.";  and then you kind of recognize that that is something unique to yourself.
 
I agree though, a lot of it is not really trying  to find a way to be different, its more like doing the things you really like, while kind of finding out what make you different and unique.

Yes, it has gotten weird. Who was on the Today Show recently and on TV at night in a whatever concert? Justin Bieber (however his name is spelled). One song he has out which seems to be popular (I donot follow him so I really do not know) is Around the World whatever it is. When I heard it partly on TV I noticed that most of it was done with auto-tune (for effect, for what?). Well, it sucks, so much for conformity if they think anyone else wants to hear it except people who don't really know what it is. It sucks!

Oh please. The Bieber kid can sing. When every other popular act uses the T-Pain effect, if you wanna sell records, you go with the flow.

I am somewhat mystified by the energies expended by musicians to denigrate whatever is considered trendy pop music. This disturbing trend has been noticeable since the 70s. I  indulged it a bit when I was in college, but only really to make me feel cooler than I was.

I love pop music, always have. One of my all time favorite tunes? Silly Love Songs. Go ahead and laugh, but if that isn't a near perfect pop song, I don't know what is.

And what's wrong with that? ;)

jamesyoyo


Oh please. The Bieber kid can sing. When every other popular act uses the T-Pain effect, if you wanna sell records, you go with the flow. 

See man, that's the thing. I think he can sing also....I just don't see the need to do the T-Pain effect "for the sake of". The dude will sell albums if he burps for the entire thing...if you CAN sing, there's no need for that robotic, fake effect...but that's just me. I mean, is there some big unknown suit in the music business that frames out what people have to do or use to be successful? Some dude in a suit behind a desk that says "everyone in pop must use the auto-tune effect or they'll never be a star"?
 
I doubt that's the case. Something like that should never make or break an artist is my point. I'd rather continue as a nobody than to hear my voice with that effect all over the place. That's probably a bad business decision, but then again, I've been a pretty successful businessman for many years and have always survived. The keys to me are survival, happiness and doing what YOU believe in.
 
As for Silly Love Songs...totally agree. The only laughin' there is the happy vibe the tune brings on. :)
 
-Danny

Danny Danzi

jamesyoyo


Oh please. The Bieber kid can sing. When every other popular act uses the T-Pain effect, if you wanna sell records, you go with the flow. 

See man, that's the thing. I think he can sing also....I just don't see the need to do the T-Pain effect "for the sake of". The dude will sell albums if he burps for the entire thing...if you CAN sing, there's no need for that robotic, fake effect...but that's just me. I mean, is there some big unknown suit in the music business that frames out what people have to do or use to be successful? Some dude in a suit behind a desk that says "everyone in pop must use the auto-tune effect or they'll never be a star"?
 
I doubt that's the case. Something like that should never make or break an artist is my point. I'd rather continue as a nobody than to hear my voice with that effect all over the place. That's probably a bad business decision, but then again, I've been a pretty successful businessman for many years and have always survived. The keys to me are survival, happiness and doing what YOU believe in.
 
As for Silly Love Songs...totally agree. The only laughin' there is the happy vibe the tune brings on. :)
 
-Danny

I'm guessing most folks on these boards don't have tween children. As I do, I am constantly exposed to the latest stuff driving in the car or blasting out of my kitchen PC. So I feel pretty comfortable to say that I am really up on the Pop Music scene. That being said, I hear that T-Pain effect everywhere. A lot of it is super subtle now, little drops and runs and not so obvious. And I agree in ten years any current song that uses it will totally be "off a time".

Ben check this out if you get a minute. Totally raw and without any real coloration. Not a fabulous performance, but I think he can sing quite well. A bit too much of what I call "vocal acrobatics" (you know, the thing our black brothers and sisters do so well that sometimes shouldn't be attempted by anyone else) but he's definitely a decent singer in this which is recent. I hear a little bit of delay and some verb, but nothing that is hiding or masking him. See what you think if you get time. :)

http://www.mtv.com/news/a...ehind-the-scenes.jhtml]http://www.mtv.com/news/a...ehind-the-scenes.jhtml

-Danny

That video is pure 90s cheese.

I'm (re)reading a book on Richard Feynman (the physicist) and there's a good section in there on the whole subject of genius and originality. One of the points made is that, ultimately, the 'geniuses' are the ones who change the state of the art (whichever art that happens to be, including science.)

Of course in music it's a lot different. Science is very strict about making appropriate attribution of discovery to the people who discovered it. In music, it's not necessarily who discovers it, but who brings it into the wider mainstream who is given the credit. It's not because he's original, since he wasn't the first. It's just because he was the first artist to break out using that new style, mode, etc... But, that initial wide visibility is what changes the state of the art, and spawns the sometimes decades of emulations and permutations.

EVH wasn't remotely the first person to do double handed guitar, but he got it out there to the public in a big way, and to most people he is probably the inventor of it. And of couse that means that he is the one who actually changed the state of the art, because he is the one who made lots of guitarists want to do it and made it a widely viable technique.

Melle Mel wasn't the frist rapper, but he effectively created it in the eyes of the public, as I remember it from the time. So he wasn't being 'original', but he kind of gets the nod as the person who changed the state of the art and kicked off a whole new stream of music.

So, I guess in most cases, you have the option to be the very original guy who gets a one sentence mention in Wikipedia before they go on to spend of the rest of the page talking about the first person who took what you did and made something commercial out of it, and got rich while you died a crack addict in an alley.

Oh, and one other thing in the book I mentioned above, he quotes an inscription on an Egyptian temple that's probably five thousand years old now or so, maybe more, and the inscription is a guy moaning that he'd give anything to have an original thought that's not been thought a thousand times before and whatnot. So we definitely aren't the first folks to worry about this.

Dappa1


Hard to break out of the production line type of production if that is how you have been taught.

My question is.

How do you learn in a new way for you to stand out? Is it better to learn by ear and be creative from day dot or, be taught to be like everyone else then create your own style? Which is quicker, better and which is the smarter move?

I have my own thoughts on this but an interesting topic, how different can we really be when all our learning is taken from somewhere?

Hey Shaun, this is where my idea of historical perspective comes in.  Firstly though there is a massive problem in the production and audio engineering side of things.  Although I was never a fan of the "studio" apprenticeship which was the way producers and audio engineers came up through the system from the begining to the advent of the digital age (for me it always smacked of a form of cheap labour, I have never liked apprenticeships because of this disparity when it comes to income) it did however work when music producers and audio engineers were being pushed by artists to come up with new sounds.  Basicly everyone was learning.
 
Then something happend in the 90's artists stop pushing the envelope, or perhaps the studio system that worked for so long started to fall into a Rome type scenario: This is, the music industry was awash with money, greed and over self-belief.  The first CD issues of classic recordings had been and gone, now the money men thought ah ha, and the technology allowed for the remaster game to kick in and so the market was then flooded again with "classic" remastered recordings, a second wave of money came flooding in.  
 
The money men thought this river of gold would last forever, it didn't.  The money men forgot to re-invest in research and devolpment as Pete Towshend put it, or if you like they stoped taking risks on edgy music makers.  They played it safe.  They were then blindsided by the digital revolution, Napstar and the advent of consumer electronics that allowed people to make quality recordings from their bedrooms.
 
This then flooded the market with more and more stodgy product and the rivers of gold from the re-masters market dried up.  How many times can you buy Dark Side of The Moon??
 
It has got so bad that EMI is virtually bankrupt, they have tried unsuccessfully to sell Abbey Road.  Basicly when you have to sell the silverware you know you are in trouble.
 
Then as Pete Townsend likes to put it, the digital vampire came along: Apple and figured a way to make money  from music again but Apple refused to be a record company and just took the profits, they forgot to invest in artists, like a record company would have done in the past.
 
Now even Apple have been broadsided by Spotify (the most evil of all the bandits) and we are moving to this nasty subscription model, this is where nobody owns anything and nobody but the corporate vampires make money.  Basicly the artist gets .004 cents for each stream, not even a cent.
 
Now I am sayng all of this because this is historical perspective and a good part of the reason why production sounds so homginised.
 
What also happened whilst this was all going on another bunch of companies moved in and used the Apple model that further homginised the music industry.  You start to see the Rome scenario play out.
 
Rome=Music Industry, once all powerful starts to fall apart a number of smaller empire's start to feed, think Pro Tools and those odious audio engineering schools.
 
And (sorry I took the long way around to answer your question) here is why music is so homginised, no longer is production and audio engineering taught in the studio with top bands pushing the envelope but in these vampire schools, turning out even more green students with very little understanding of production and audio engineering skills.  They think they have all the skills but in reality, there is one maybe two who have got it.  Then the next problem is all the jobs are gone.  Nobody but a few record in studios anymore, the dumb idiots think they can record without, and here is the punch line: historical perspective.
 
So to answer your question, Shaun.  First get yourself imersed in the process would be my advice, learn an instrument, then start to explore the now large back catalouge of popular western music.  Learn how the greats put these recordings together.
 
Then trawl the internet, the formula for audio engineering is there now.  Don't get caught in the trap of equipment envey, I have been complemented on recordings and have had music I have recorded on TV using nothing more than a 150 dollar microphone and a 90 dollar Behringer preamp. 
 
Once you have got to this stage, I would suggest going to audio school, just to round out the edges, as long as you go to one of these schools with a headful of knowledge, as I did, all you do is speed up the process of perfecting techniques such as EQ, Time Based Effects, Compression and Mastering.
 
But if you go without this knowledge, you end up in the homginsed trap because experimentation is frowned upon and it has to be perfect (this is why Danny and I fight) I don't care if it's perfect I care about feel.  Do we have a great song???
 
Now I'm in another learning curve and this is the final phase of how to learn and to be an indivdual when it comes to audio production, this is how to transfer the classic analouge techniques we love so much from our classic recordings into digital techniques.  This includes, varispeed, harmonic distortion and the list goes on.  Then we can go further how do we invent new digital techniques, not just meloydyne.
 
Sorry I took the long way around to answer you question Shaun but this is how I learnt to be an individual in terms of production and audio engineering.
 
But this is the sorry part of the tale, nobody cares anymore about being an idvidual, music is consumed like McDonalds (Can I have some fries with that) and I do not see this changing in the forseeable future.  Perhaps ever because music no longer is at the centre of the cultreal heart.  I don't even know if culture really exsists anymore apart for the elite few.
 
Peace Ben