Producers: presets or four days perfecting a snare?

[hint]

Come to that - has anyone actually talked to Funky producers about production? Are they really knocking out three tunes a day or are they actually spending as long getting a ruff and bouncy conga sound as 2562 does on a reverbed dub stab?

I'm kind of cautious about jumping to conclusions about the production process based on my perceptions of the sound...

I think at the very least it's clear that several Funky producers are happy to grab big chunks of other tracks, sample other producers' snares etc.

There's one track that just loops the drums from "It's So" by Omar, for example.

 

[baboon2004]

Although I'm not sure how much that's a real phenomenon and how much it's mainly just an idea that exists as a satisfying contrast with the rough and ready Funky approach...

Of course there's always nuance, but (from an ingenue's point of view) I have heard a lot of dubstep so dull that I can only assume the producers involved have suffered from getting caught up with trees and not seeing the wood. It seems the only possible explanation for making music that is quite that dull, as if they have dedicated only five minutes to all that fiddly hook/arrangement/'song' stuff.

It's a cliche, but one with its roots in truth, as with so many etc etc

 

[baboon2004]

By 'ingenue' I meant something entirely different of course . But I can't find my words today.

 

[Slothrop]

Of course there's always nuance, but (from an ingenue's point of view) I have heard a lot of dubstep so dull that I can only assume the producers involved have suffered from getting caught up with trees and not seeing the wood. It seems the only possible explanation for making music that is quite that dull, as if they have dedicated only five minutes to all that fiddly hook/arrangement/'song' stuff.

But isn't that characterizing the whole scene based on the rubbish bits?

Also I think a lot of bad dubstep producers really do just not have much imagination - or at least a very restricted sense of what constitutes an exciting step forward in terms of hooks and arrangements...

But while DnB does seem to have got into a general culture of spending a week processing and resampling a reese in order to get it to sound like everybody else's reeses, dubstep still seems to have a fairly healthy sense of 'stop fussing and get on with the tune'. There's an interest in getting things sounding nice, but (at least in the dubstep that I listen to) it's nowhere near taking over from interesting noises, funky beats, nice tunes and good arrangements as the primary source of interest.

 

[Shonx]

Then it would read "If you're any good you should be able to get sounds and write a track..."
But surely even if you're shit you should be able to get SOME sounds and make A track.
That would be virtually meaningless. What did you mean?

That there are plenty of good producers/musicians that are not going to necessarily churn out good tunes in two days - I've heard of very few producers that are talented and prolific simultaneously. I suppose if the genre is formulaic and song structures generally similar, then it would be possible to knock out something in that style - whether it would be any good is another matter. I mean seriously out of all the ideas that get started and not finished, hundreds are discarded for not being up to scratch surely.

I mean shit, some producers can't even fill an album with all good songs. Or are we talking by "good" we actually mean "good enough", nothing really that hasn't been done before? When I waste time in record shops listening to a load of tunes that have nothing remarkable about them whatsoever, I do think that if record labels can't figure out what's gold, and they're putting money behind it, then producers' self-critiques can't be worth much either.

I meant technical ability with regards to use of technology, I generally think of composition and arrangement as the arty end, although there is the craft too I suppose.

 

[petergunn]

re: dubstep

there are alot of dubstep producers you can tell put alot of work in, but no one should confuse "putting reverb and/or delay on every instrument" with "putting work in"...

 

[Edward]

Wrote a big reply and then it vanished.

I was agreeing with Sherburne that it's valid to write a track starting with no ideas other than making sounds on machines, but I also think my most memorable tracks came from having a strong idea before I started. If you have a 3 day sound-design session, that's time well spent, but really aren't you kind of killing time waiting for a great idea to come?

Also wanted to say that I think anyone can learn engineering whereas not anyone can learn to write a great track. But then I started to think that it's the same kind of good taste that enables you to know the snare is right that also enables you to know the chord progression is right. It's good taste in the end that will result in a good track and some people will take longer than others to get there. Even so I think it's worth learning to do it fast so as not to distract from the "musical" side. Imagine trying to do a painting and it takes you all day to make green. What was I gonna paint again? A tree? Or was it a frog?

I suppose I am a great admirer of craftsmanship, application to learning, I think that if you are gonna call yourself an engineer then you should be able to make a bloody good snare in 20 minutes and the best snare ever in 5 hours. Maybe that's elitist but it's my view.

About Phil Spector, he was a producer in the old sense and Larry Levine would have done the engineering for him. I bet he got a right ear-bashing if it took him too long to get a snare sound. I bet he could mic that shit up and hook up the echo chambers in no time flat

I don't think there's anything wrong with spending ages thinking about the way to orchestrate / arrange / edit / record / mix a track but spending days on a SNARE SOUND means you either don't know what you're doing or you're waiting for inspiration to knock. Spending four days making 250 snare sounds is totally valid use of time

 

[michael]

I was agreeing with Sherburne that it's valid to write a track starting with no ideas other than making sounds on machines, but I also think my most memorable tracks came from having a strong idea before I started. If you have a 3 day sound-design session, that's time well spent, but really aren't you kind of killing time waiting for a great idea to come?

This is what I was trying to address back on page 2...

I think the experimental angle is totally underplayed when it comes to making stuff - people love to romanticise inspiration, but sometimes the best ideas come through trying stuff, having happy accidents, seeing what to do with the thing you just stumbled upon. (I mean "experimental" in the most prosaic sense, btw - not as some shit genre tag)

But, really, I do agree with you - that most memorable or interesting things do start from having some big idea. I generally find the results aren't what I'd initially imagined, but there's still more focus than just playing about... I like going tramping (um, hiking - dunno why NZers call it tramping) or skiing or whatever and coming up with all kinds of ideas when I'm miles from my means of realising them. Make notes, have a crack later...

 

[Shonx]

Also wanted to say that I think anyone can learn engineering whereas not anyone can learn to write a great track. But then I started to think that it's the same kind of good taste that enables you to know the snare is right that also enables you to know the chord progression is right. It's good taste in the end that will result in a good track and some people will take longer than others to get there.

Isn't "good taste" purely whatever that producer thinks works though? Doesn't implying that "good taste" is universal mean that there are acceptable ways to arrange sounds? Or are we talking about a snare that's pitched in tune with the rest of the track (even then, are there not musical opportunities that arise from its potentiall dissonance).

This is strange to me as I've generally thought that most of the more innovative music I've heard doesn't restrict itself - most hardcore and early jungle wasn't considered tasteful, neither was the blackboard-scraping guitar of Steve Albini in Big Black, and I'm pretty certain that even Hendrix's wilder stylings caught some grief from the traditional blues fraternity. If what was considered "wrong" at the time wasn't embraced we would have lost a huge amount of the music we enjoy now.

I think by good taste you're really meaning "having a good enough ear to notice the connections between sounds, and then utilising them according to your particular aesthetic sensibilities to express yourself effectively" which will (or at least should) differ from the next person's.

Sorry if this sounds really pedantic, it's just that I think that "tastefulness" in itself is a term more suited to decor and lighting than it is to forms of expression - I've mostly seen "tasteful" as a euphemism for bland, conservative and ultimately dull music and so (in my mind at least) it's used in a derogatory fashion.

 

[Edward]

Isn't "good taste" purely whatever that producer thinks works though

yes but some of them are wrong. I am just being extremely subjective!

By good taste, I don't mean "tasteful" like hotel lobby music or cream carpets.

I think by good taste you're really meaning "having a good enough ear to notice the connections between sounds, and then utilising them according to your particular aesthetic sensibilities to express yourself effectively" which will (or at least should) differ from the next person's.

That's kind what I meant. The first two paragraphs of your post were a bit obvious and made me feel you hadn't grasped what I was saying at all. Of course by good taste I don't mean everyone should sound exactly like Simply Red, everyone should make interesting and informed choices in their own way.


I just meant having an idea/vibe/aesthetic that you are aiming for can be enough to make a good record despite lack of technical ability. I was kind of cautioning myself that despite my earlier posts, although I believe it's worth learning technical stuff so that you don't have to spend ages worrying about the snare, it is still possible to make an awesome track without technical training or experience, as long as you are listening.
It just takes ages.
For example my friend Nick doesn't know the names of chords or notes on a keyboard but he can make up good chord progressions. It takes him ages but he knows when he finds a good one. It is a process of discovery. He knows when it sounds good because of his great taste. Same with synth sounds or lines in a poem: I could say "you are the sunshine of my life" or I could say "shall I compare thee to a summer's day". Anyone could express that but it takes a certain good taste to choose the right line for the context.

I see creativity as a series of choices and the people who make interesting choices make the interesting artistic stuff, and they are the ones I would describe as having good taste.

In my subjective world there is also BAD taste which consists of things like using trance sounds, rhyming "moon" with "june", making the hihats really trebly and the vocals really dull. The first and second are boring lazy cliches, the third are just unsatisfying to hear - there's definitely a way to do it that almost any listener would perceive as sounding better even if they didn't know why.
But of course there's a slippery slope in this direction towards narrow-mindedness and proscription (once I played someone a song and they said "the second chord is wrong, should be this chord if you're in that key" and I was dumbfounded, "no i wrote it like that. how can you say music is WRONG?)

Nick can write good chords without knowing theory and teachers who tell you there is a right and wrong in aesthetics are best avoided, but if you want to be a poet, when inspiration strikes, you want to be able to get a pencil sharpened in under an hour so.

 

[Martin Dust]

I can see both sides and work both but on some tracks I love to "code" things up and just make all the frequencies sing - it's important.

 

[baboon2004]

In my subjective world there is also BAD taste which consists of things like using trance sounds, rhyming "moon" with "june", making the hihats really trebly and the vocals really dull. The first and second are boring lazy cliches, the third are just unsatisfying to hear - there's definitely a way to do it that almost any listener would perceive as sounding better even if they didn't know why.
But of course there's a slippery slope in this direction towards narrow-mindedness and proscription (once I played someone a song and they said "the second chord is wrong, should be this chord if you're in that key" and I was dumbfounded, "no i wrote it like that. how can you say music is WRONG?)

What do you mean by making the hi-hats too trebly - what kind of frequencies are we talking?

With regards to the anecdote, that person clearly knew nothing about key changes/adaptations in popular music!

 

[Edward]

What do you mean by making the hi-hats too trebly - what kind of frequencies are we talking?

I dunno what frequency. It would depend on the individual vocal and the individual hihat.
On most pop vocal tracks you want the vocal to be more in your face than the hihat, that's all.