Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself?

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SWANG
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/24 22:52:05 (permalink)
@rbowser, point taken. for what it's worth, i've written orchestral arrangements which were later recorded by a live orchestra in france. engineer used 8 tracks to record 22 pieces. sounded pretty on to me...
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rbowser
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/24 22:54:35 (permalink)
SWANG


@rbowser, point taken. for what it's worth, i've written orchestral arrangements which were later recorded by a live orchestra in france. engineer used 8 tracks to record 22 pieces. sounded pretty on to me...

Hi, Swang - I was talking about MIDI orchestration where you need a track for each instrument, and my example was for a full sized orchestra.  A good engineer could certainly record a medium sized orchestra of 22 pieces with 8 mikes.   For me to do that in MIDI-land would take a minimum of 22 tracks, probably more. 


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#32
SWANG
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/24 22:55:32 (permalink)
i can dig it... :-) i suppose i might have to revise my method if i were to ever include a midi orchestra in my own work. it would - at least, initially - require a good number of midi tracks (depending, of course on the number of parts/pieces). when it came time to mix, i'd likely bounce the orchestra down to between two and four audio tracks. i'm just old fashioned, i guess...
post edited by SWANG - 2011/10/24 23:06:10
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hellogoodbye
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/25 05:48:49 (permalink)
LOL I just made a template for use with Albion and it has 49 tracks... just so I can call up any of the basic instruments anytime I want to. 

And btw the standard certainly wasn't "less is more" back then... What gave you that idea? In those days 4 was more than 2 and 8 was more than 4 and no one wanted less if they had the choice. More was always more. Just look at what The Beatles cramped onto 4 tracks with Sgt. Pepper.  if they could have 64 tracks, they would have loved it. They certainly didn't add all those sounds with the idea that less was more... I never heard them refuse an 8-track because Pepper was made with 4... And I don't think McCartney has limited himself ever since to 4 tracks in order to stay creative. 


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Guitarhacker
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/25 07:32:18 (permalink)
my 2 cents on this topic.

When I am recording, I want to know enough about the software and hardware,  so that I can easily record the song, capture the moment without distraction, and get the job (music) done without having the software or hardware get in the way of the creative flow. 

When I obtain a new DAW platform or a new VST or FX... I set about learning how it works so I can work efficiently with it. Nothing more, nothing less. 

I learn about the features that I need, in order to do what I wish to accomplish.  I dare say there are probably dozens of features that are in X1 that I really have no clue about...and have no desire to know or learn because I don't need 5 ways to do something. I simply need one way that works. 



Even in the mix/mastering stages, I don't need or want all the tools. Give me an EQ, compressor and reverb that I know and I can make it sound good. 

That is, after all, what we all are chasing. 


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#35
SWANG
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/25 08:45:51 (permalink)
@hellogoodbye, point taken. however, much as i love the beatles and as influential as their work has become on us (myself included), they aren't the only musicians who were making music back then. my sentiment was "much of the music that inspired ME in my youth was made using 16 tracks or less", beatles included. we have the track sheets and in some cases the multi-tracks themselves as documentation of that. of course, they bounced down when they felt necessary, but the point i was making was that it wasn't ALWAYS necessary. at times, they may have needed more than 16 tracks to achieve what they wanted; at others, they needed less than the 4. stevie wonder didn't use a 24-track machine until halfway through the recording of "songs in the key of life". prior to that, 16 tracks were his limit (with drums being limited to no more than 4 tracks, usually just 3). herbie hancock's "headhunters" and "thrust" (2 more important records for me) were recorded to 8-track. if it was good enough for them... ...but of course, we all have our own individual methods. this one works for me. 64 tracks would probably ruin one of my tunes rather than complete it. LOL...
post edited by SWANG - 2011/10/25 09:09:18
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Guitarhacker
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/25 15:52:37 (permalink)
SWANG


@hellogoodbye, point taken. however, much as i love the beatles and as influential as their work has become on us (myself included), they aren't the only musicians who were making music back then. my sentiment was "much of the music that inspired ME in my youth was made using 16 tracks or less", beatles included. we have the track sheets and in some cases the multi-tracks themselves as documentation of that. of course, they bounced down when they felt necessary, but the point i was making was that it wasn't ALWAYS necessary. at times, they may have needed more than 16 tracks to achieve what they wanted; at others, they needed less than the 4. stevie wonder didn't use a 24-track machine until halfway through the recording of "songs in the key of life". prior to that, 16 tracks were his limit (with drums being limited to no more than 4 tracks, usually just 3). herbie hancock's "headhunters" and "thrust" (2 more important records for me) were recorded to 8-track. if it was good enough for them... ...but of course, we all have our own individual methods. this one works for me. 64 tracks would probably ruin one of my tunes rather than complete it. LOL...

I have heard that the Beatles recorded Sgt Pepper on 4 tracks. 

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#37
daryl1968
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/25 15:59:36 (permalink)
Please read 'Here There and Everywhere' by Geoff Emerick - Necessity really IS the mother of invention. It's a great read if you're a Beatles fan or not.
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/25 17:21:18 (permalink)
Just saw where AudioMidi has announced a "no brainer" sale on Ugh Productions X1 compatible "Tapir Thigh Bone and Hollow Log" VST plug-in.  Yes, it is native 64-bit.

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#39
SWANG
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/25 18:18:17 (permalink)
@guitarhacker, yes the beatles recorded "sgt. pepper" on a 4 track machine. @daryl1968, i own a copy of "here, there and everywhere"...signed by geoff emerick. :-)
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 08:17:11 (permalink)
Guitarhacker

 I have heard that the Beatles recorded Sgt Pepper on 4 tracks. 

You must have read my post above: " Just look at what The Beatles cramped onto 4 tracks with Sgt. Pepper." 

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#41
brammer
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 08:24:11 (permalink)
To misquote:

We ask "can we do it?"
We never ask SHOULD we do it

I think it's great to have all these tools WHEN we need them, but I think we over use them because they are there

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#42
mudgel
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 09:11:47 (permalink)
I can write and record a song with my acoustic guitar and a Zoom H4 recorder and it's inbuilt mic in a matter of a an hour or so from concept to final arrangement.

With all the wizz bang gadgetry I have it then can take scores of hours ove a period of weeks or months before that song becomes a final production with all the strings, basses orchestras, drums or percussion. You name it I can add it using technology or recording others playing the extra parts.

If I didn't have all the gear I wouldn't need/want to put in all that extra work. A simple truth that I've learnt is that less, really is more, much of the time.

Nice conversation going on here.

Mike V. (MUDGEL)

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#43
Jonbouy
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 11:25:48 (permalink)
brammer


To misquote:

We ask "can we do it?"
We never ask SHOULD we do it

I think it's great to have all these tools WHEN we need them, but I think we over use them because they are there


This is my favourite post so far.

An intensive focus on the tools is a good thing when it allows an individual to know them well enough forget the tools themselves. 

Just like any form of practice on any instrument most musicians become unaware of the instrument itself and are focused on what they are trying to achieve with it.  That kind of interaction between musician and instrument only happens after a good period of time of making mistakes and learning from them.

I think much popular music has changed through the changes in technology that have appeared but those things tend to be fads, like highly sequenced synth bands of the 80's and T-Pain effected vocals to name but two examples.  That's not necessarily a bad thing when you have bands like Erasure (Vince Clark) that write very good tunes that would sound great whatever they were played on but sound best the way the were originally rendered.

So yes it can change the music itself, it's not always a bad thing if it does and most importantly being able to choose to let the technology itself run the show or being able to direct it purposefully to where you want to go is just another creative option we all have nowadays.

I must admit though it did seem much simpler back when things were less easy, and also more seemed to get done with fewer options available.  There seems to be even less diversity in popular music these days as well although I'm prepared to own up to the fact that maybe it's just an illusion caused by my current dinosaur status.

And if any of the music 'purists' here want to debate this, listening to Bach played on a Piano is mostly just plain wrong.  So let's talk about the Piano.  There was a change in technology that affected the music itself...  Let's ditch that stodgy old fart of a beastly instrument and let's all get microtonal again!  The amount of impositions that infernal machine alone has placed on music over the last few centuries means we've forgotten what the good stuff is supposed to sound like and too scared to move beyond its limitations for fear of sounding completely off the wall.
 
Purists, pfft... get some World music in yer life and stop being so bloody hard wired European 'proper' about it..  Academics don't create musical breakthroughs, musicians do, the academics just waffle on about what's 'proper' and all that after the event. ...  Berklee certainly didn't create the Beatles but it is likely the Beatles contributed to the evolution of Berklee.
post edited by Jonbouy - 2011/10/26 12:05:12

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#44
brammer
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 11:51:18 (permalink)
I think it was Todd Rundgren (SP?) that said we've been making music since we used sticks & rocks
His point was - synths make sounds unlike "real" instruments yet can make a great tune

Whatever makes the sounds isn't as important as the sounds themselves
And I seem to prefer a tune that's drums, quitars, keys
But then, I'm old

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#45
Rain
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 12:23:01 (permalink)
I think our objectives changed along w/ the availabilities of all those new tools, and overall quality standards.

15 years ago, I considered myself a musician and songwriter. I recorded to analog tape and there was very little I could do besides piling up the tracks. So my goal was to come up w/ demos and sketches for songs that would have to be re-recorded.

Nowadays, I can bring the material as far as I dare venture, because I have access to the necessary tools. My objectives have changed, and I've had to learn different sets of skills. While it didn't change what I think a decent song should be, it certainly impacted my approach, as my perspective isn't the same. Ideas can now take the extravagant turn which used to be the thing of big studios and producers. And to accomplish that well, you have to be more than just a musician/songwriter, and sometimes, the engineer in you tends to take over for a while. So I guess it's a matter of embodying what used to be a collaboration, making sure that everyone gets to contribute for the greater good.

To that effect, I feel the need to maintain some of that old school methodology in my own work. I'm still doing a lot of demos - strictly intended to be demos and nothing more. I can complete over 20 versions of the same basic song, ranging from very simple to fairly complex. I feel it gives an opportunity for the material to grow and go through some sort of selection process. 

Certain bands - including favorites of mine - just seem to be putting out everything they record, releasing 90 minutes long album every year and a couple of EPs that are as long as albums used to be in between. What used to be unreleased oddities that the record company would put on a compilation 20 years after the band's demise is now systematically released.


And that's the key point to me - to treat the whole thing as a crucial matter, and to carefully decide what you want to say, how you want to say it, just like when you had a limited amount of time in the studio, and a limited amount of tracks, limited amount of "storage", and you didn't just record everything. To make music something special and precious, meaningful, like a very limited opportunity. 


TCB - Tea, Cats, Books...
#46
daryl1968
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 12:33:07 (permalink)
well said Rain
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Middleman
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 12:50:40 (permalink)
More accurate to say the Beatles used a couple of 4 tracks to bounce back and forth and create Sgt. Pepper. It was not done entirely on 4 tracks but many more accessible tracks by bouncing back and forth between two machines. 

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Rain
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 13:06:41 (permalink)
Middleman


More accurate to say the Beatles used a couple of 4 tracks to bounce back and forth and create Sgt. Pepper. It was not done entirely on 4 tracks but many more accessible tracks by bouncing back and forth between two machines. 

I've re-listened to that particular one for the first time in a couple of years yesterday, on the studio set up, and after a few months of training my "engineer's ear". Great moment to get to re-discover such albums.


No matter how much they thought they were piling up on those tracks, there's still a lot of room for the listener in there. You can get into the music instead of having it jumping at you. Almost like taking a walk in Central Park vs being dropped in the middle of Time Square.

TCB - Tea, Cats, Books...
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Guitarhacker
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 13:32:21 (permalink)
One of the big dangers we face today, with the abundance of tools and gizmo's we have at our beck & call, is the danger of recording the life and spirit out of the music with all the production tools. 

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#50
SWANG
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 17:11:44 (permalink)
@Middleman, indeed reduction mixes (tape-to-tape transfers) were necessary in order to create more "real estate" on the 4 track tape so more parts could be overdubbed. of course, this ultimately led to less flexibility during the mixing stage as emerick and martin found themselves having to make mono and stereo mixes from a 4 track tape consisting of (for example) an entire rhythm section on track 1, orchestra on tracks 2 and 3, all vocals on track 4. the simultaneous synchronization of 2 machines (using a tone generator from one machine to drive the motor of the other) was attempted only once (to record the orchestra on 'a day in the life'), and it proved to be so unreliable that they never tried it again.
#51
Kreative
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/26 22:59:10 (permalink)

For some people the intense focus is just on trying to get their software to work as promised, and as hoped for. The so-called beta testers of other DAWs are undoubtedly working feverishly to root out every possible bug that rears its ugly head, as with our new and highly acclaimed Studio One V2.


In our first episode of DAW wars, "First Kontact," the script brings us to a busy user forum in a stable DAW galaxy far, far away:


Captain's log, stardate 10-26-11. We are having a Problem: the new S1 V2' simply causes the DAW bundled software [kontakt] to reach a full CPU power load and needs a reset, sounds become unstable' also causing  the computer to freeze sometimes when mixing in non-real time .


Studio One Product Manager, PreSonus : "Disable multicore processing in Kontakt."

First S1 Customer: "In fact I'd disable it in all of the VSTis. They just don't seem to support it very well yet." 

"Oh, and something strange, funny? Check it periodically, too. I had a version once that kept putting it back on. Of course that could just be me and electronic devices again -- I was known as a "tube nuker" in that my first two years with tube amps I went through 8 quads of power tubes -- they were biased correctly".

Second S1 Customer: "yeah disable the multcore tab in kontakt that should do, it was having that trouble back in version one"


Third S1 Customer: "i tried disabling the multicore processing in Kontakt, it doesn't work, these are the same bugs that existed in the pre 1.65 releases of S1 V1 , the same problems !" 

** Based on a real story, user names are withheld to protect their identities.  






post edited by Kreative - 2011/10/26 23:16:53

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#52
Compguy
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Re:Does our intense focus on the tools change the music itself? 2011/10/29 15:49:04 (permalink)
OP here.

I just took delivery on a Zoom R8 Multitrack recorder. I want to see how things go when I record into the hardware and then upload it to Sonar for mixing.

I love the feel of hardware more than mousing around with software, although of course software is much more powerful overall. And there's something to be said for "Hit R to record" and watching the waveform generate on the fly (Do they call that "confidence recording?) as it does in Sonar.

So for a while I'll be simply plugging into the R8 and playing, concerning myself less with the computer. FWIW, the Zoom unit seems to provide absolutely pristine recordings, and the built-in mikes sound even sound exceptional, although a bit hot on the higher frequencies for my taste. Channel 1 provides phantom. Supposedly it works as an audio input for Sonar, too, so I'll play with that at some point.

I'll let you know if I notice anything worth posting about within the parameters of how our tools affect our creativity. Thanks for all the encouraging PMs, guys.

Brian
#53
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