Abundance of one-man "bands" in modern prog

Hear hear!   

 

It's not all about sound, it's the method of working, and some musicians may not be aware of how their working method influences the music, in a positive or negative way. If having a habit of using quantization and strict metronome-tightness, the resulting music may have a mechanic quality.

 

I think Tony Banks latest orchestral album "Six Pieces" suffers a little from being too rigid in the way that the music is closely related to the beat and the bar lines, so the beats are highlighted by the music, which makes it a little stiff. It may be a result from working with sequencers, but not necessarily. It may be the fact that he is mostly accustomed to doing rock related music. Otherwise in classical , and jazz, the music plays around the beats, not accentuating them, but rather pretending that they are not there. If doing a piece in 4/4, you can write music with a 3/4 feeling that goes across the bar lines. The bar lines can be completely ignored, if you will. 

 

In a lot of classical music I may be lost in what the time signature is, or can't even spot the tempo. In classical it's easy to assume that the first note in a melody is right on the first beat of a bar. But the melody in "Fur Elise" begins with 2 notes as a run-up (or what you call it). There are a lot of other examples like that. In Saint-Saens 3rd symphony there is a central theme with fast 16th note violins playing in a 3/4 time. I think everyone listening to it would assume that the notes are aligned to the bar beats. But when looking at the musical score, those violin notes are shifted a 16th note behind the beat. That was surprising to me.

 

So musicians working with computers and sequencers may develop habits in their working method which infuence the music in a way that they may be unaware of. And computer technology with all of its tools can easily stimulate such methods so that the end result may be compromised in some way or aspect.

 

I'm still struggling and haven't come far in my own music making, but I'm interested in the old way of writing notes directly on paper. It can be extremely time consuming though. But that way of working may produce different music. But whatever method you choose will have its obstacles and limitations.

 

I remember a video with Paul Mccartney composing for his "Standing Stone" piece. He worked with computer first, then transferred it to orchestra and real note sheets, the same method as Tony Banks used.I don't remember how the music sounded. But  I found the video:

 

When recording an acoustic guitar I use a minimum of three microphones as well as any built-in (piezo) pickups the guitar may have - one near the sound-hole, one placed half a metre or so away to capture the overall ambiance and one close to the fret board (often near the 12th fret) to capture the fingering of fret and string noise - these then get mixed to create as natural a sound as it is possible to make in an analogous media - because remember this - an analogue recording, whether recorded on analogue tape or digital memory is an analogy to the real sound, the microphones do not capture the real sound, that is physically impossible, they record an analogy, a likeness, that is why the signals are called Analogue. That is what the word means. The same approach applies when recording a flute or a violin or the human voice or a drum kit (and I have done all those as well).

 

So when it comes to using samples to replicate the "natural" sound of a guitar or a drum or a flute I apply the same reasoning and the same philosophy, and use more than one virgin sample to recreate that sound, just as modern manufacturers of electric pianos use more than one sample per note to mimic the sound of an acoustic piano (some replicate the sound of each tine of the piano note, some use different samples for different velocities of key-press - these people do understand the sounds they are reproducing, they have ears just like you or I). When re-creating an acoustic guitar I used a bank six monophonic samplers, one for each string, and I could have added fret and string noise if I wanted, but I purposely chose not to, not because I forgot to, or because I could not, but because that particular section of music didn't not need it and I did not want those extraneous sounds recording at that time, for that piece. Not all the acoustic guitar I used was sampled, not all was live - I chose the sounds I wanted for when I wanted them, my choice, my music, my privilege, my indulgence - of course some.of that was determined by my limited ability with a real guitar, or the availability of a real guitarist to play the parts that were beyond my very basic skill on that instrument and some of it was decided by the piece itself, some of them are impossible for a guitarist to play, even a talented one and that was a deliberate choice. The impossible is not agaisnt the rules - I've recorded a vocal track where the vocalist sang every other word, then recorded the same track again where they sang all the missing words, the final vocal track being an interleaving of the two - impossible to sing in reality and not sounding like a duo singing in unison - impossible in real life but achieveable within a recording studio.

 

Now, I don't think I'm unique or special, I think all musicians have ears and can hear what they create, I think that all musicians who create music in a studio or in their bedrooms know what they are doing.

OMG! Page is dead????  

 

*facepalm*

 

For pity's sake Normon, if you're going to make s*it up you really should take two minutes to see if the s*it you make up either is true or at least cannot be verified at the click of a frickin' mouse button. Is every word that pours from your keyboard is like this - s*it you made up and couldn't be bothered to check? You didn't even have to sully your hands with searching iTunes iStore to find this out - just visit the Led Zeppelin offical website and click "Order Here" on the 16-track digital edition and it takes you directly to the iTunes page where you can buy the damn thing.

 

 

 

Happy New Year 1813