OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

I wish songs had more boring, meandery, unmemorable sections

boring meandering music kinda rules tbh

that quote previously appeared in Seabrook's New Yorker article, it isn't new.

as does the "seven seconds" thing -- the new yorker piece is paywalled now but the relevant part is here: http://wsdg.com/the-new-yorker-the-song-machine/

as for the source of that, as far as I can tell it seems to be an advertising rule-of-thumb.

beethoven didn't just write hook after hook after hook, he wrote one hook, maybe two, and then beat it with a thresher into as many different shapes as he could. that's why he's cool.

yeah but how many takes of Eroica did Teo Macero splice together

All that modulation shit was done on a fairlight

can we stop having a pendantic nerd slapfight in here and get back to sonning lames

^

but i want to talk about glenn gould. :(

Where is the artistry when a producer digitally stitches together a vocal track, syllable by syllable, from dozens of takes?

I don't really see what the difference is between a producer digitally stitching together a vocal track from dozens of takes and a producer manually cutting together a vocal track on tape from dozens of takes. Vocal comping has been happening for decades and has been a bog-standard studio technique for decades... are there really people out there who think that every vocal on every "classic" song/production ever was sung live in one take? Idiots.

― Turrican, Wednesday, September 16, 2015 2:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is one of those hilarious dumb ideas in the article that shows how naive the guy calling everyone else naive is. i've laid down instrumental tracks in one full take with no edits or corrections needed, it's at least an attainable thing to try to do, but vocal comping is how pretty much everybody makes records, at least everybody who cares about the quality of the vocal.

among the many dumb ideas is the sense that it's got "harder" to make pop music but somehow it's also "worse" as a result.

A short-attention-span culture demands short-attention-span songs

wtf does this even mean? like "hooks", which apparently can be defined now, are bad by nature. it's the same ancient argument copied from like critiques of fast food or whatever. as if hooks are salt or something compared to the veggies of previous eras.

are there really people out there who think that every vocal on every "classic" song/production ever was sung live in one take? Idiots.

This is what happens when people listen to that Stooges Fun House Sessions box too many times - they start to think everyone used to do it like that, or should have done.

one thing that has been made evident by ilm squabblings is that people often identify different things as hooks. there is no hook consensus. the term isn't meaningless, it's just something quotable, and people differ both in what they pick out as quotable and their overall propensity to quote. speaking of which, some pertinent grumbling from adorno:

there exists today a tendency to listen to Beethoven's Fifth as if it were a set of quotations from Beethoven's Fifth

today being 1945, which makes me think we shouldn't worry too much.

"they start to think everyone used to do it like that, or should have done."

well, there WERE a ton of records that were made in a period of hours. especially in jazz. labels would set up entire orchestras and cut a record in 3 hours so they didn't have to pay union overtime. and, to be fair, a lot of those records sound competely friggin' amazing. an album in a day was very doable in the 50's and 60's. and on the street in weeks.

There are always practical/economic reasons why it's good to get a song recorded in one take or as few takes as possible -- that's why producers call certain singers/musicians "professionals" with a glint in their eye. But it's not the only way to get a good final product, for sure.

that is true scott but i expect they practised a lot before going in

Wrecking Crew supposedly did not -- they were sightreading all that stuff.

they were really good at doing stuff fast. people couldn't do that now. unless they just hit record and a band started playing with minimal fuss. but even that would probably take a long time now.

yeah, wrecking crew people often had no idea what they would be playing from one job to the next.

Funk Brothers, too -- and what wasn't sight-read was arranged on the spot by the musicians.

i am not an advocate of one way or another. but hanging out at rudy van gelder's house for the day often yielded amazing music that people still listen to today and i am glad that that happened. even if i also wish that a lot of jazz artists actually had the time back then to make something in a way that they really wanted to make it. they usually didn't have a choice.

just the fact that there were VERY complicated pieces of music with many moving parts created in such a short amount of time is staggering. symphonies!

Yeah I assume the expected sales numbers for most jazz records also just didn't justify spending more than a day recording.

which is also why a lot of orchestras don't even bother recording today. it would take too long and cost too much.

the labels put out so much product. even the tiny labels. every week new records or singles. there was no time to take your time. that goes for pop, rock, r&b, etc.

x-post

scroll down to the list of recording dates on this page. these are entire albums:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Gelder_Studio

i think a somewhat reasonable contemporary analogy to the workload of those bands would be the roots on the tonight show (and, more immediately, batiste and stay human with colbert)

Well yes, there certainly are a number of examples of songs or albums being cut in a matter of hours or days, and there are certainly a number of examples of where a singer has gone into the studio, sung the song live in one take and managed to nail a really great vocal. However, the impression is got from the article that the author feels that things like comping vocals is a trend that has only begun to happen in modern pop music, which is bollocks. I don't think anyone would argue that Simon & Garfunkel were great singers, but even they comped their vocals, even down to the syllable - they were striving for perfection on the likes of the Bookends album... I'll bet though, that the author would hear those Simon & Garfunkel records as being more "authentic" than a Rhianna record.

Basically, what it boils down to is the age-old "authenticity" argument, that some recording approaches and musical forms are more "authentic" than others. However, I'd argue that whether a track or an album is recorded in one take or meticulously pieced together by editing together multiple takes of drum tracks or vocal tracks or whatever, that all recorded music is an illusion.

i think everything max martin does is 100% authentic for now!

i don't know who the first person was to splice different takes together to create a track but it happened long before any of us were born.

les paul and mary ford, no?

that is true scott but i expect they practised a lot before going in

― Cosmic Slop, Thursday, September 17, 2015 10:50 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wrecking Crew supposedly did not -- they were sightreading all that stuff.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Thursday, September 17, 2015 10:51 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the key to making great pop records is getting slumming frustrated jazz musicians who think rock n' roll is baby music to play it

Lennie Tristano apparently experimented with tape manipulation on tracks like Line-Up, although I've never been able to find a good, detailed explanation of what exactly was done, and I'd love to know.

on the flip, i enjoyed this interview:

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2015/09/15/440363012/a-rational-conversation-do-we-need-new-old-soul-music

Not to mention the artistry of the actual art world using found objects and mixed media, collages, appropriation.

xxxp matt, your comment on the doors thread about how there are a hundred underrated 60's/70's jazz musicians for every "prog genius" applies there as well

Yeah, splicing different takes together has been going on for decades and decades - I'm unsure who did it first, though.

as far as wrecking crew goes, i am really happy they did what they did. they were amazing. and i would actually love to see more indie people who can't play go into the studio with pros and veterans. often now i hear indie rock/pop that ALMOST sounds professional, so why not go all the way? if you have the money that is.

xp which thread forks?

xxp:

Even on the early Beatles stuff there are different takes knitted together or a middle 8 from a different take cut in.

xxp i second that NPR's piece description of the muscle shoals doc as "weird" would add "bordering on racist" and "confusingly hagiographic"

xp to man alive: marissa's "doors are a PROG BAND" extravaganza, nb i may be misquoting

what would the beatles have sounded like without all their hired help? uh, i have no idea, but not like what they ended up sounding like at all. they were really young. not really the greatest musicians in the world. they had their hands held from an early age.

x-post

all recorded music is an illusion.

― Turrican, Thursday, September 17, 2015 11:06 AM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

believing this has saved me a lot of anguish

as far as the immediacy thing goes, i love that people go into a studio with no song and just make something up (all those stories of people scribbling down lyics in the corner while the rest of the band waits around...) and people end up loving it and singing it for decades. that to me is the essence of magic. people do that now. people did it in the past.

i don't think black sabbath had any songs ready when they went in to make their second album. or very few. they had just put out their first album! just made stuff up. now we all sing paranoid together.

Even on the early Beatles stuff there are different takes knitted together or a middle 8 from a different take cut in.

― Turrican, Thursday, September 17, 2015 12:25 PM (19 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This isn't the case with their earliest EMI recordings. Each song on Please Please Me is from one take (though there were surely other takes, false starts and breakdowns).

is this thread where the most substantive discussion of the song machine book has been? has anyone read it?

One thing I think it's always important to keep in mind is how much insipid, throwaway pop music there has been in every decade -- this sort of helps me keep a mediocre Demi Lovato song in perspective.