PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Does all this music stuff I own actually produce better music?

Bingo we have a winner!

Many years ago a friend and I were practicing in his dad's bar. Me with my new Country Gentleman and Fender Super Reverb amp and my friend with his new Gretsch (forgot which model) and Marshal amp. A black gentlemen ask to join in. He had an old Silvertone amp that was all beat up and an equally old and beaten up Kay guitar. He promptly taught us that we didn't know jack about playing guitar. Thus lesson learned, it ain't about your gear.

You produce ... not the fx. But from echo chambers to plate reverbs to the current plug-ins producers have always used effects of some nature to shape what they feel the song should sound like. Regarding how many you "need?" Well, how long is a string?

Bud

what i find v interesting is...they didnt have the tech we have today in the 60's but a huge no of hits were churned out. even with limited trak counts.
eg studer/scully.
and one sees collections of 60's hit songs advertised daily on tv....cos of demand.
a little bit of studio history from my growing up in london uk. some studios grew out of music stores.
or little family businesses etc. if i remember the hit telstar was done in a flat.(google for more info.)

theres lots of fascinating aspects to recording studios in the uk in the 60's and beyond.

best
om

Right. You got it Bud.

What I have found in my "spring cleaning" of the studio is that there is usually one simple sound or a few simple "sounds" that most true artists like to go for. And, again, it is simple. Mark Knopfler is a good example. He did not use a lot of effects but his sound is unmistakable. It also suits the personality of his songs.

Hendrix and Clapton did not use a lot of effects either, and weren't experimenting with a hundred guitars, 300 cabinets and 1000 racks. They did experiment a lot, but in the end, they were picky. They didn't throw in everything but the kitchen sink. It was not about the technology as much as the tone.

I have found that there is one very particular "warm" sound I like from a Strat and I am striving to perfect that tone. I am able to fiddle with it because I have A LOT of VSTS, pedals, amps, whatever. But at the end of day, I will be settling on the best possible TONE I can get that fits my style and then produce music with that. That is, I won't just talk about it endlessly, I will actually record a song.

So, for me, in these spring months, I am really all about getting back to tone and getting hyper-focused on practicing and creating tones that work for me.

BUT, and this is a big one--I am not ashamed that I have 900 VSTS. I love them all.

42.

No Eddie, you are wrong. You obviously have no comprehension of string theory, and you, as usual, are wrong. Let me pontificate.


The given identification identifies 00 with 2\pi R2πR. All points xx between 00 and 2\pi R2πR are identified with points with magnitude larger than 2\pi R2πR. The identification has made the real line periodic with period 2\pi R2πR. One can think of this as identifying the interval [0,2\pi R)[0,2πR) with the circumference of the circle of radius 11.

In this case, the compact space S^1S 1 is found by taking the quotient of the non-compact space \mathbb{R}R by the discrete symmetry group \mathbb{Z}Z, the group of integers. This corresponds to the fact that points shifted by integer multiples of 2\pi R2πR are identified.

Hey! I have a theoretical degree in physics!!

And that's exactly what I said.

42!!

I don't know these things...they are "rules" anyway, rules established by convention, culture, time, exposure and imposition.
As I don't KNOW the theory/rules I don't follow them yet I make "music".

Yours is a very limited view of music I suspect. The pentatonic/blues scale was very naughty for a long time, the blue note was frowned upon, certain harmonies were forbidden, (almost). Luckily there were folk ignorant or brave enough to buck those trends.

Yeah, back in 1976 when they handed me my BA in Music I noticed that it had a notation on it that said "People who know theory well enough to earn a degree will have a very limited view of music."

How ^#@$@%#^ dare you!

A musician with 66 years of experience (Yes, 66. I started before age 5.) suggesting to absolute neophytes that a little bit of theory would help them is "a limited view"??

Repeat the sentence before this one a few times. And don't ever speak to me again. I got your limited view right here.

How dare I?
easily Eddie, easily.
I responded to your words.

Oh, it was a laugh to read "I never saw a post that was a bigger flex in all my years here." given the circumstances and author.

I don't owe you instant respect: you have to earn it a person at a time.

I suggested that the requirements you put forward present a limited view and strongly implied that if that's all you see as music then that is a limited view. Why? Simply because it is so. Your rules apply to one notion of music..a pretty big one and an important one BUT one. Had the world abided by your rules we'd be the poorer.

I know plenty of folk with academic qualifications in a field that have a limited view in that field...it ALMOST goes with the territory & letters. Myopic academic is a long and strong trope.

Read your words mate, comprehend the limiting nature of the things you wrote.

I don't care about you diploma & trencher. I don't care about your precocious start in music. They are both nice things and more easily had by some demographics than others.

More people graduate with a degree from university in China in a year than the population of Australia in 2000.

More people with degrees work outside their field of study than in.

Your statements about lesser mortals tells far more than your excreted expletive..."...absolute neophytes..."? Really?

Had you contained yourself to "YOU make the music, not your gear." I'd have supported you 100%
You didn't though.

You support your strong convictions by patronizing, demeaning asides and a substitute for swearing?

You seem to wear your frustrations & insecurities in public quite a lot...ranting and throwing disparaging comments at "lessers".
I'm not even a cod psychologist but I can see an unopened can of beans on a lighted stove from a few meters off.

Onya mate.

As to hardware & software...if they inspire, overcome a disability, improve the work process then great.

'tra then.

This thread reminds me of 2 guys in a bar. The one at the left end is boasting about how he is building a house. The one at the far right is saying it too in a far less belittling tone.

When you listen more closely, the loud one at the far left is saying "Yeah my cement guy was in and poured the foundation. Then the framers got the walls up. The electrician finished yesterday. The plumbing guy comes tomorrow." The one on the right is describing how he poured the foundation, framed it all out, ran the electrical wiring and is doing the plumbing next.

"Hiring a contractor to build a house" and "Building a house" are not the same thing. They both end up with a house being there, but they are not the same thing. Just like going to the style picker, clicking "Load Demo" and letting the program write music that you have NO idea about is NOT the same as songwriting. I call that "microwave music". Pop the baggie into the nuker for 3 minutes and you get a bag of beef stroganoff. Did you COOK it? Did you make the pasta? The sour cream gravy? No, you just heated a bag.

I knew a girl some years back that went to Williams-Sonoma and walked out with cookware that cost a little over $4000. She can't cook AT ALL.

The cookware doesn't make you a good cook. YOU make you a good cook. You practice, you test, you make a lot of bad food until finally you get it right.

The gear doesn't make you a good player. YOU make you a good player.

The ignore list is now 14 names long!

Not sure I agree with all of this Eddie. Let me explain why. It is a "philosophical issue." I am afraid technology has made everything relative. And if you don't like it, your only recourse is to unplug.

I remember when I got my first BIAB Pak in 2014. I think it had 32 Real Tracks and I was amazed. Hooked immediately. (And I have been in some great bands all my life, starting at age 15.)

"A real bass player and a real drummer on demand!" I cried. "How neat!!"

It never occurred to me that I would stop playing my own guitars, keyboards and such. Just that I had a really cool tool to add another layer to what I was already doing.

To me, music is what you make it, and for the sheer pleasure and joy of it, I am interested in a list of things, including these:

1. What can I do in the chord progression to make this more interesting?

2. Can I think of a wicked cool riff to go with this song that has not been done before?

3. What are the exact notes I will use in the riff and why?? What will make people tingle all over and why??

4. What notes do I use in the melody??? What will be insanely memorable and why?

5. What rhythmical shape should I use and what instruments/style would make a great bed???


As you can see, BIAB can come in basically on point 5, and in very useful ways. But not in the rest. You might say it works in #1--but not really. If you do not create the progression yourself for very solid reasons at every step, then the rest of it will not work. A canned chord progression is a canned chord progression.

To me the real joy in music is learning to play and figuring out why certain notes in certain melodic lines and progressions create a sense of joy and wonder inside of your own soul.

To not do that is not robbing other people, it is robbing yourself.

BUT, there is no law that says you have to.

The thing is, the same logic that says it is perfectly fine to use Real Track drums and bass if you play everything else yourself also says you can just hit render and not do ANYTHING original and call it your "art". Technically speaking, you can't copyright a chord progression, as they say. This would be the farthest end of the spectrum, but still, who gets to arbitrate? Half of the songs in the world right now sound exactly the same, minus the rap.

So where do you draw the line?

Who gets to make the rules?

Who gets to say what is legit and what is not?

In art, I am afraid, the answer is clear: NO ONE.

So, that leaves us all stuck.

The only question at the end of the day is: are YOU proud of what you just put out?

If the answer is Yes, then good for you.

If the answer is no, then--well, do it again. Or--shame on you.

You know, Mr. Snyder, at the core we agree on all of that. My gripe for years has been people who look for the fast lane and don't take time to learn with any depth of substance. Many years ago here I posted something I will try to recreate here to see if you understand what I mean.

Me: So how do I use this software? I want to make songs so I can put out a CD. What do I do?

Him: Well, open up the chord tab and on that page enter your chords.

Me: What's a chord?

Him: You know, the notes from scale of the key you are in.

Me: Notes? Scale? Key? What are those?

Him: Okay let's forget all that. You see where it says style? Click there, pick one of those, and then click Load Demo and it will write a song for you.

So I do that, I end up with a basic song that Peter Gannon wrote for me. Then I go hire cliff the guitar player who plays guitar for me to do some solos. After that Todd form the English department comes in and writes some poetry that fits the music. Then I hire Lori to sing for me. Then Steve the keyboard player can come in and play in some background stuff. And then I have my song. I have done nothing put pay for software, but somehow it's MY song.

That is, of course, an exercise in "reductio ad absurdum" (reduction to absurdity) but this is likely how a good number of people create things that they call their music.

Nobody is saying that it takes a PhD in music to do any of this. My point is that basic basics, like knowing the steps of a major and minor scale, the circle of 5ths, and note names are building blocks for those who want to develop into serious musicians who want to know how to do more than create demos or hit play on a preprogrammed instrument.

Every time that subject comes up we hear people telling us that the Beatles couldn't read music. And it's always people who feel the need to defend that THEY can't read and know no theory at all. All because I said "It would help if..." Nobody here who has those basic basics in their bag doesn't appreciate knowing them. They are not absolute necessities. They are tools to make your job (music) easier. I mean, you can carry the lumber from the store to the truck board by board or you can use a forklift and move them all at once.

So we don't really disagree all that much. And a lot of this stems from schools cutting music and art programs. My friend who teaches music in middle school in the inner city told me that she spends a lot of her own money to buy strings for the guitars, reeds for the woodwinds... Her room had congas that were so old that both heads wore out and were poked through. The budget people told her to just change the kids to a different instrument. SHE paid to have new heads put on them. She has been teaching music since before kids were made to rent instruments and just bought mouthpieces and shared brass and woodwinds. That is how little schools care anymore. If not for us in the old guard helping out the youngbloods music might just disappear.

Remember the old adage when schools cut frills. "A frill is stuff the NEIGHBOR'S kids do, not mine. Mine need that underwater basket weaving class!"

For me, the grouchy old man, I just hate seeing the house being built before the foundation. That's sneaking under the tent to see the circus.

< "Me: So how do I use this software? I want to make songs so I can put out a CD. What do I do?

Him: Well, open up the chord tab and on that page enter your chords.

Me: What's a chord?

Him: You know, the notes from scale of the key you are in.

Me: Notes? Scale? Key? What are those?

Him: Okay let's forget all that. You see where it says style? Click there, pick one of those, and then click Load Demo and it will write a song for you.

So I do that, I end up with a basic song that Peter Gannon wrote for me. Then I go hire cliff the guitar player who plays guitar for me to do some solos. After that Todd form the English department comes in and writes some poetry that fits the music. Then I hire Lori to sing for me. Then Steve the keyboard player can come in and play in some background stuff. And then I have my song. I have done nothing put pay for software, but somehow it's MY song.">


That's how songs are recorded multiple times a day, commercially... So far, it hasn't been done to my knowledge with just BIAB, but your scenario is more of a "when" than a "can't" happening.

Replace the names of your session players and singers, don't do anything else but pay for their services and yes, it's a recording of YOUR song. What's the issue?

The Beach Boys wrote their 'songs' but used producers to work with Brian Wilson on many of their songs and the Wrecking played all the instrumentation on their recordings.

I'm not getting your point.

If the Beach Boys made better music hiring musicians with session players adding instrumentation that no Beach Boy could play or the session player could do it better, isn't that the same as us using BIAB to get a performance we can't do?, Or, we can do but with BIAB providing access to someone who can do it better from the BIAB galley of session musicians? Finally, use BIAB for instrumentation you can play but it's inconvenient to do so? For instance you play the pedal steel guitar but it's 3am and it takes 46 minutes to set up, tune up and you can't crank your amp up in your apartment anyway because of the early morning time? Use BIAB with headphones and do the task in 5-10 minutes....

Yeah Charlie,

I have to agree here on several points. And maybe I will add a few.

FIRST, if you have ever used ANY Real Track or BIAB/RB process/tool or track on ANY song you have ever done, then the entire argument breaks down. Who gets to be the judge on how much Band-in-a-Box is too much?? God???

SECOND, I have read some CRAZY stuff on these forums about what is legit.

For example, many times I have heard this argument or something like it on these very forums: "Well he is a REAL producer. He is using REAL loops from Bandlab and making his own loop tracks! In Ableton! Not Band-in-a-Box loops!"

Insane very much??????

THIRD, 90% or more music today is written by people who have no knowledge of music theory whatsoever, I would guess, and don't play anything. So, the bar is pretty low. If you type in a chord progression that is like having a Ph.D in today's world.

And NEXT TO LAST, I think I play guitar at a pretty advanced level and do know how to sight read. And I think BIAB is a miracle.

I am able to jam out at 3 o'clock in the morning through an amp (speaker unplugged) with the signal running through an amplitube chain and Shannon Forrest playing drums. I can call up a list of stars to play bass and I am off. What's not to love.

And FINALLY, the STYLES, especially the X-tra Styles (to me) are a super miracle and you are SUPPOSED to use them, to try out new sounds and genres.

Say you grew up playing like R.E.M. or Alabama (or anyone else, just pick a name). Chances are that left to your own devices. everything you played would still sound like R.E.M. or Alabama, or John Mayer, or whatever.

The styles allow you to get more creative by showing you OTHER ways you might sound, and for most people that is miraculous and they have to use these styles to experiment with it all, and then learn from it all to get better.

But, the final question I always have for anyone in these discussions is this:

May I PLEASE hear you latest tune??????????

This site is not about talking at the end of the day. You can talk anywhere.

Where is your latest SONG????????????????????????????????????? Can I please hear it.

That is what I am always thinking. Always.

Charlie, when the Beach Boys wrote their songs, they wrote them with a catalog of knowledge they amassed since childhood. They fact that they CHOSE to use The Wrecking Crew to play the music for the albums is moot. If that carried the weight you are giving it, the Wrecking Crew would have had to tour with them too because they had to play the stuff in concert. The burr under my saddle blanket is about the people with no knowledge and no skill who CAN'T play on tour. I have to think that almost everybody here is hobby level, and I'll even create a category called "advanced hobby level".

It's important to remember the long-standing position I have talked about here for many years now that the idea of entering this great world of music is to end up playing the Enormodome (as I have always called it) for 20,000 or more people. I've been dealing with the bitter disappointment of failing for a really long time. The best I did was being in well respected Great Lakes regional bands who played more copy than original music. When I hit maybe 42 (which would have been 1992) and accepted that it was over I went into such a deep depression that I didn't touch an instrument for like 15 years outside of playing one reunion show per year. I didn't set up a home studio and play again until 2009. MANY times I thought about how the music world didn't even know who I am and wouldn't miss me if I was gone. I looked at bridge abutments more than once, thinking that if I went fast enough when I drove into it, I wouldn't suffer for long. What was painful was that my failure was not for lack of effort. So when you DO try hard enough and fail anyway the only thing remaining is to admit you just don't have the talent.

This took a turn but the point is that the left hand column is names who HAVE talent and knowledge and choose to have studio players play for them, and the right hand column is those who have zero talent and knowledge but want to play in the same sandbox as the left hand column, and that column has an entry fee. MOST people don't agree that the left column is an exclusive members only club, and that's okay to not agree with that. But PLEASE don't use Brian Wilson as your example to which you compare the "load demo song" bunch.

Everybody seems to agree that YOU make music, not the toys you own, yet when I take that another step further it turns into this discussion again, which defends the side of the room that uses the tools exclusively with no human input at all.

Where is your latest SONG????????????????????????????????????? Can I please hear it.



OH, sorry this was 9 years ago before I knew anything much about anything other than a DAW. My latest would most likely be to "War Graphic" for this place as singing about current events is too near the truth for most people.

https://soundcloud.com/planobillydfw/dfw-stefe?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing.

The idea that me using BIAB or a studio musician or the guy next door precludes the song from being "mine" is BS. We have a very good legal system that will define who owns what.

Let's see who is up for playing only one instrument with your own two hands and singing original lyrics you wrote yourself and recording that and posting it here?

All talk? Or can you actually make music?

Billy

Billy,

I have done it at least 200 times here man. I am gonna you slap you son.

I'm waitin' on you. So is everybody else.

"Shut up and play yer guitar."

--Frank Zappa

Ray:

Now, let's focus on the complete societal break down the four track cassette machine visited upon the world.

The democratization of music making broke the elite stranglehold, the internet has further advanced that access,use and opportunity which flooded the world with good and bad music.

The goal of individuals varies, the realistic, objective view of the chances to achieve a goal varies.

Respect and validation, in this arena, come from interactions, assistance and, (crucially when it comes to advice, comments, suggestions and perspective), one's recent recordings.