Actually, no, you know, I retract that. Blocked. If I come back to this thread, somebody shoot me.

John T


Your unwillingness to engage with any specifics is absurd. Where do you stand on Strawberry Fields? Where do you stand on Chuck Berry? These aren't rhetorical questions, I'd genuinely like to know.

Where do I 'stand' on them? I like The Beatles. I'm asking people to take musicianship seriously, to stop making themselves out to to be more perfect than they are. The Beatles were excellent musicians, they used vastly more primitive equipment than available today and created amazing music. That music had plenty of actual human flaws in it, and that, IMO, makes it superior to hyper perfected music. That doesn't mean nothing today is good. There's music being made today that has those human flaws. It just doesn't seem to be very acceptable in pop music these days.
 

droddey


It's just not the same. There's a difference between the very less than optimal circumstances of a live situation causing performances to be less technically correct than they can be in the much more controlled studio situation. Long before there were all these modern corrective tools studio albums sounded better for that incredibly obvious reason. That's not what is being discussed here, clearly. We are talking about a album that the artist cannot actually have done. Not that someone did ten takes and kept the best one, which is a fairly common way to get optimal performances in the studio. But that the performance is edited, gridded, tuned, and highly automated, turning a 'decent' singer performance into a perfect pitch performance. It just isn't the same thing.

OK...now the issue gets a little clearer. Which artist was it that 'created'-is that the word I'm looking for here-this particular gem?

Are we talking about postumously written things here?

Or, are we talking records like the Archies? Josie and the Pussy Cats? 

Or some created out of thin air singer/songwriter who was the product of a producers nightmare....something like..oh ...say...Rebecca Black?

Who are we talking about here...name names.

If you are going to claim someone did this then finger them...

John T


Actually, no, you know, I retract that. Blocked. If I come back to this thread, somebody shoot me.

Excellent, you accuse me of things I never said, then you block me when I point out that you did so. You can easily go back through this thread and find that said exactly that. That I'd have no problem with it if people were honest about it. I said it multiple times. But you were too busy trying to come up with pithy reparte I guess to bother reading what I'm actually saying.
 

trimph1

OK...now the issue gets a little clearer. Which artist was it that 'created'-is that the word I'm looking for here-this particular gem?

Are we talking about postumously written things here?

Or, are we talking records like the Archies? Josie and the Pussy Cats? 

Or some created out of thin air singer/songwriter who was the product of a producers nightmare....something like..oh ...say...Rebecca Black?

Who are we talking about here...name names.

If you are going to claim someone did this then finger them...

You know perfectly well that the pop albums being put out now could not possibly have been created without extensive manipulation. If you don't then, well I'm sorry you can't hear well enough to tell it. I'm not talking about imaginary bands, but bands selling lots of albums right now with their faces on the covers. You have to realize don't you that no one plays in perfect timing, no one sings in perfect pitch, background vocals never line up perfectly with the singer, that snare drums don't have two velocities, right? But all those things happen on pop music regularly these days.
 
But of course rather than think through the obvious answer, you are just going to continue to go nah, nah, nay, Dean can't prove who does it. It's been pointed out already WHY you cannot find anyone who will admit doing it. But, unless you believe that the things above actually happen when people really record, then why exactly do you need someone to do so publically?
 

droddey

trimph1

OK...now the issue gets a little clearer. Which artist was it that 'created'-is that the word I'm looking for here-this particular gem?

Are we talking about postumously written things here?

Or, are we talking records like the Archies? Josie and the Pussy Cats? 

Or some created out of thin air singer/songwriter who was the product of a producers nightmare....something like..oh ...say...Rebecca Black?

Who are we talking about here...name names.

If you are going to claim someone did this then finger them...

You know perfectly well that the pop albums being put out now could not possibly have been created without extensive manipulation. If you don't then, well I'm sorry you can't hear well enough to tell it. I'm not talking about imaginary bands, but bands selling lots of albums right now with their faces on the covers. You have to realize don't you that no one plays in perfect timing, no one sings in perfect pitch, background vocals never line up perfectly with the singer, that snare drums don't have two velocities, right? But all those things happen on pop music regularly these days.
 
But of course rather than think through the obvious answer, you are just going to continue to go nah, nah, nay, Dean can't prove who does it. It's been pointed out already WHY you cannot find anyone who will admit doing it. But, unless you believe that the things above actually happen when people really record, then why exactly do you need someone to do so publically?
 

Oh..so NO ONE has perfect pitch, NO ONE has perfect timing, NO ONE has vocals lining up with vocals et cetera. And you accuse others of being nitpicky...sheeesh.

Now, since you pretty well established that the whole recording industry has gone to H in a handbasket, maybe you..in your wisdom have the perfect system that would educate everyone as to the kind of sham that it has become?

I can see this now, Parental Guidance stickers that proclaim that not only do the lyrics use cuss words and such but that they cheated by using all these new tools of EVIL as well....

trimph1

Oh..so NO ONE has perfect pitch, NO ONE has perfect timing, NO ONE has vocals lining up with vocals et cetera. And you accuse others of being nitpicky...sheeesh.

Now, since you pretty well established that the whole recording industry has gone to H in a handbasket, maybe you..in your wisdom have the perfect system that would educate everyone as to the kind of sham that it has become?

I can see this now, Parental Guidance stickers that proclaim that not only do the lyrics use cuss words and such but that they cheated by using all these new tools of EVIL as well....

Wow, I feel like your responses are just not in any way in sync what what I'm saying. What does nitpicky have to do with what i said. My nitpicky comment was because peole keep trying say say "well, what if so and so did this", trying to make it into some sort of detailed arguement about whether this or that is 'ok'. I'm not trying to tell people what is OK.
 
My point is that clearly all those things I said were being done are regularly being done. Everyone ridiculed my claim, when clearly it's true. If everyone hadn't be so snarky I wouldn't have pushed it so hard. But ultimately the point of that claim is not to say that everything is doomed. I've said so many times now I'm trying to set rules, but you guys cannot seem to get it through your heads that I'm not trying to impose my will on the world.
 
I'm ASKING for people to be more honest about the process. I've said time and again that honesty about the process is my main concern, that if people would be open about the fact that they can't sing like that, that they can't play like that, then I'd not be bothering to worry about it. The problem is that they don't do that, and therefore it's now become an arms race, just like the loudness war was an arms race. If you don't have someone edit your song into inhuman perfection then it's not competitive, at least in the pop landscape. I don't see how that's good for music. It doesn't allow for as much differentiation in the pop world as would be possible if this perfection race hadn't gotten to where it is.
 
I don't worry about EDM musicans putting out hyper perfected music because it's not presented as anything but computer created music.

You know, I gave a speech at a local high school, of all things, on the topic of record producing...somebody heard that I was doing summat here at my home... ..so I gave them this talk. And, you know? The kids there were very well acquainted with those tools...it was not as if they were hicks from the sticks here.  And I did get into the implications of using these tools...but there was one thing that I left out. Reason? We are seeing people using it now..how is going and telling people that it is dishonest going to make it less of a problem?


The idea of an explanation as to how the thing is used in the context of a particular record might be an idea...but my question then becomes...and how many people read their CD cover? And, if it is via download...how are we going to slip that information in then? are we going to ask eMusic and iTunes to do that?

Again, I'm not asking for a compaign to force anyone to do anything. But clearly if artists would be more candid about it in public, the public would become more aware of what is going on. Few lay people knew about or understood the loudness war per se until it finally began getting talked about outside of industry fora and such. People understand what Autotune is due to it's effecty use, I don't think most people understand it's more subtle uses so much, and how ubiquitous that is.

In terms of giving a talke to kids, I would think that explaining that what you hear on the radio is not something that you are ever going to accomplish as an actual musician would be a start. So that they know that the fact that they can't sing like that or play a single groove to atomic perfection for four minutes without flaw and whatnot isn't because they suck. It's because the performances are not real. I would think that they would be a help to them.

It doesn't have to be done in a judgemental way. That's not a judgement to say that, it's a fact. And to explain the continuum of processing available from naturalistic jazz up to highly produced pop, making them aware of what various points on that continuum sound like, so that they can learn what raw vs. highly processed really sounds like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQVXXy_jJIk&feature=related

Of course. I did not even have to specifically mention the issue of singing like that either...they already knew that. That was why they asked about autotune .....

By the way ... Micheal Rother(Neu) and friends....I've gotten to the point of being able to somewhat get into this groove drumming....