The great thing about home recording is you can toss genres out the window if you want to. Make music you like and forget about which bin it would go into at the record store - if there were still any record stores.

I often don't even know what genre a song will be when I start it. It takes on a life of its own. If it starts out as a folk song and turns out to be a heavy metal polka with Mantovani undertones, then so be it. That's what came out of my head, and I'm going with it.

Regarding pop music, I have to make this honest admission: I don't have the self-discipline to do it. Pop has to have a core direction and a focused, simple groove. I could start to do a pop tune but it would quickly fall apart as soon as I threw in a diminished chord or a bongo break. 

bitflipper

bongo break. 

Why not a whole pop tune solely based a bongo break?

bapu


LP,

20 people? That's some Shlitzy split on the songwriting royalties even if the song sold 20 million copies.

I imagine the same song could have been made with 10 or even as low as 6 people. Maybe not 5 since it's such stellar writing and production.

I read this article on gearslutz, that described the production behind a Rihanna Track, and it went laid out the scenerio of, "an all star team, of writers, mixers, and beat makers," collected into the studio to create the beat, harmony, lyrics and possibly vocal demo, and then after all that, another specialist vocal producer would come and do the parts with Rihanna herself.

Basically the article described the production of modern pop, being a team sport of about 20 different people.

Now.. For this particular Clarkson track, "we don't know."  wikipedia  says, "3 producers."

Gearslutz changed their forums, and removed the old music bizz forum, and replaced it with something else...  All this due to trolling, arguments, stuff like that...  I can't find a link to the article I read...   ( edit - link found, in my post below )

Yes, its a shlitzy split..

http://www.npr.org/blogs/...ost-to-make-a-hit-song

Amazing article..! I had no idea it cost soooo much per-song!!! From me, I'm the kind who like to work is small, thight-knit groups where everyone has their responsibility, and that's that. I couldn't work with the pressure of 19 other people making sure I don't screw up.

I'm also wondering now- how much do albums make? Like that Rhianna one specifically- how much has it made so far? Cuz for whatever reason, perhaps I'm small-minded, I just can't see how they would pull back enough to pay EVERYONE. Especially with the stories I hear about badly paid artists.


But theeen... They do sell millions of copies at $10 or more per album, and then there's royalties and touring... Such a big world is music!

davdud101


 

But theeen... They do sell millions of copies at $10 or more per album, and then there's royalties and touring... Such a big world is music!

http://www.amazon.com/Nee...Business/dp/0684870649

http://www.amazon.com/Con...-Edition/dp/0879309482


Interesting reading, if you haven't seen em yet..  two of the most important books on the industry, IMHO...

Cheers

That Kelly Clarkson song leaves me cold unfortunately. It's just a bleh melody with bleh chords and doesn't have any character. I was sitting in Starbucks the other day underneath this one mono speaker and they were playing bleh chart music like this and it just sounded like a continuous wall of compressed plastic. Then all of a sudden Sly & The Family Stone's It's A Family Affair came on and I was completely blow away by the contrast - the presence in Sly Stone's voice was incredible, he sounded like he was in the room singing directly above me. And the rest of the mix just sounded so well defined on that mono speaker, you could make out every note as clear as a bell, the Pianet, the bass, the wah-wah guitar, the drums, everything sounded so balanced and warm. And looking around I saw that everyone had stopped talking and had started nodding their heads. Compare it to that Kelly Clarkson mix, which just sounds like a bunch of shiny overexcited audio trinkets melted together and then covered in saran wrap. 

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I don't "do" pop I Am the pop.

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