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Posted: June 04 2012 at 23:48
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
stonebeard wrote:
In the end music is music and not all music is the same. Do you think the music you love so much has no studio alternation? Get real. I put it to anyone to tell me why it actually matters in this day and age if music has been hand-crafted into perfection by the artist and then just laid to tape*, or if it has been crafted and polished from the ground-up in the studio. The truth is, all great albums have professionals working on them, and most of them have extensive studio alteration. And sorry to break it to you, but all your favorite bands sound like sh*t, when they don't have good mixers, recording engineers, and producers telling them why they need to put a chorus right there. Oh and guess what? Your favorite drummers f**ks up the timing A LOT and it's edited in Pro Tools before it gets pressed. Deal with it. You probably don't even want to know how many records have sh*t drums when they get to the mixer, then amazing drums after it's mixed. Know why? They were enhanced with samples from Drumagog.
It's time for prog fans to get of the high horse and look at reality.
*By the way, for great albums, this never, ever, ever, ever happens.
I'd love to know where you got all this information. There are very many good albums that have been created by artists with little professional help. There are great albums that have been recorded live without much alteration; that's how they had to record before today's technology was available, and that's how many of the jazz greats recorded. Any good drummer can lay down a good drum track and only have to fix a few stray mistakes and apply some tasteful effects in the mix. If what you are saying was true and every band sounded terrible before their music was altered in-studio, then there would be no good live bands.
If you take away EQ, compression, reverb, delay, the acoustics of the venue, and the mixing engineer, there might be very very few good live bands. And it's especially evident when considering the amount of acts that are out there, not just A-list pros who've been together for 20 years. It's studio trickery done on the fly, and it's more impressive, but you're not just hearing 3 guys jamming when you're listening to a Rush live album.
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
I have no problem with studio alteration, as long as it's being used to perfect the music, not to try and make it something it's not. I don't care if they auto-tuned James Labrie's vocals because they were just a tad bit pitchy, or if Alex Lifeson patched his solo together from various takes, or if someone hit a bum note and they erased and fixed the mistake. I don't care whether something was recorded live or laid down track by track. We live in a day and age where the industry is obsessed with perfection, and our recording methods reflect that. In the end, there's two things that matter; the end result of the studio record, and the band's ability to perform it live. Though I say that it's the end result that matters, the way in which the band and producers go about recording is going to affect the end result. If something sounds bad in-studio, you can fix it all you want and make all the notes sound perfect, but it's never going to be a great album. All great albums have meat to them; they have talent, hard work, and musical value behind them, and the studio techniques are used to perfect and refine that. The band's ability to perform live is the big test: after recording the album, the band has to show that there was talent and good performing and writing by reproducing live what they created and perfected in-studio.
It's not just prog musicians, either, who can record like this. There are plenty of musicians in other genres of music who have created excellent music, recorded it in the studio, perfected and enhanced the recording with effects and mastering, and then managed to reproduce it live at a high quality.
The overall point is that you can make something artificially and have is sound almost exactly as it would if you had pros recording. It just depends how much time and money you want to put into it. I think the technology has advanced far enough that, if you dedicate your time to learning how to mix and use the software, hardware, and recording tools, then you can make professional sounding records in the bedroom. And it was all quantized, then humanized, and altered digitally until it sounds human again. Sure it takes time to learn everything but all the tools are there.
Live music is cool and all, but I rarely like to see live acts. I often like to hear music alone. It would just be ridiculous to think good music becomes less good knowing it was one dude in the bedroom recording everything and fixing it later on. And I say that as a dude who records everything and fixes it with MIDI. it's good to have strengths, and I'll take being able to play some amount of guitar, keyboards, drums, and bass as well as having to recording knowledge to make it sound good after the fact rather than just being pretty awesome at one thing. Other people might think differently.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 00:32
In a live setting, you can apply effects to enhance the sound but all you can do is enhance; you can make a good band sound better, but you can't make a bad band sound good. In the studio, you can fix mistakes, add samples, and make a terrible vocal sound good, but you can't do that live. I also dispute that there would be very few good live bands if live effects were taken away; I've heard local bands play with minimal engineering and still sound amazing.
I understand what you're saying about home recording and trying to work around your weaknesses using technology. I would contend that it takes some of the soul out of the music when much of it is artificial, but I think that in my previous post I forgot to take into account the most important thing (how intelligent of me): the quality of the composition. You're right, in that it's true that you can create some really good music even if much of the performance has been "fixed" as long as the composition is of good quality.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 02:28
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
In a live setting, you can apply effects to enhance the sound but all you can do is enhance; you can make a good band sound better, but you can't make a bad band sound good. In the studio, you can fix mistakes, add samples, and make a terrible vocal sound good, but you can't do that live. I also dispute that there would be very few good live bands if live effects were taken away; I've heard local bands play with minimal engineering and still sound amazing.
It's not that there wouldn't be any good bands, it's that any unedited/enhanced recordings of live bands would fail to live up to their potential in the studio. Which is not to say live recordings aren't better (re: every Police live album), but only the most solid of bands can come through with a product that stands together with the studio polished stuff. Which would have been fin in the old days when there was the filter of record companies keeping crap bands from releasing things widespread, but now any person with dedication and some spare income can make good sounding records. The fact that it can't be reproduced live shouldn't be a big issue.
It really boils down to how good the artist playing is, obviously. And I've heard a lot of stuff live that, if recorded and listened to not at 120 db and half-drunk, I would probably recoil in horror. This is typically not jazz played by 60 year old guys.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 04:28
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
Dean wrote:
You are never going to "get" this, but still I try. The market for the music you like is limited, this is not through the music industry choking the market with music you don't like, it is simply that the total number of people in the world who can ever like what you like is very small - marketing and promotion and education will never change that, the music you like simply does not have mass appeal, it never has and it never will. You just have to accept that the people who like Justin Beiber will never like Dream Theatre and the people who like Black Eyed Peas will never like Symphony X - marketing has absolutely nothing to do with that, education has absolutely nothing to do with that and the music industry has nothing to do with that. All the music industry does is create product for specific markets and by far the biggest market is the mainstream pop market.
Insofar as music is entertainment, this is a completely sensible view of the music industry. The point of entertainment is to put out material that people will like, and like immediately. If the music industry finds the cheapest and most loophole-filled ways to do this as possible, who cares? There's no real integrity to entertainment (unless you're talking about moral integrity with regard to lyrical content and such), because there's no such thing as objective value to entertainment. The only thing objective about entertainment is the amount of people who like it, and the music industry is trying to make that objective number as large as possible with the lowest possible cost.
Insofar as music is art, however, the modern industry is the worst thing that could ever have happened. There is an integrity to art; art takes skill and discipline and effort and pain and hard work, not merely from businessmen but from the artists themselves. Above all, art must move the soul and influence the mind; it's not just for entertainment, it's for catharsis, not just to momentarily distract you from your troubles but to lift you out of them, to lift you out of yourself to experience the world through someone else's eyes, to identify with his emotions and to share in them. Whether it's music, painting, drama, or sculpture, art has the power to change people, and the power to make them feel things they could never feel otherwise.
Don't misunderstand me; there's nothing intrinsically wrong or evil about the music out there that exists soley for entertainment, but there is something wrong when, as a society, that's all we see in music. You're not hurting yourself by listening to Justin Beiber, but you could be doing so much better for yourself if you listened to Bach and Mozart as well. That isn't to say that music meant for entertainment cannot be good art as well; Rush see themselves as entertainers as do many other prog bands, and much of the music we consider "classical" "art" music today was originally intended for mere entertainment. There are some very good pop bands; I think that Coldplay is one of the best groups in music today, and I find real value in One Republic as well, not to mention many of the "classic" pop groups. But I think that Geoff is correct in saying that the modern method of producing pop music is not conducive to artistic value. If you took his original post and specified that we were talking about most(not all) of modern top 40 pop music, and specified that we were talking about artistic value, then I'd basically agree with what he said.
All music is produced for entertainment of some kind, whether that is to entertain the feet or the mind, it is still entertainment - musicians are entertainers and performances are shows. Entertain is derived from inter - 'in ones self' and tenir - 'to hold' - when you have been entertained it means 'to hold in your mind' - you take something of that performance into yourself - it means you have been diverted or engaged, or by your own words: "it's for catharsis, not just to momentarily distract you from your troubles but to lift you out of them, to lift you out of yourself to experience the world through someone else's eyes, to identify with his emotions and to share in them" ... that is essentially the definition of 'entertainment'.
Classical music more than any other has been about the performance, the entertainment, whether that was Bach or Mozart, Paganini or Straus, Stravinsky or Cage - the academic high-brow analysis of that is a seperate diversion but it is still a form of entertainment through distraction and engagement, they dress it up but it's still entertainment. For many Classical music is a crashing bore, yet they are happy for it to entertain them as a soundtrack to something else, whether a film or a firework pagent - the music itself has not changed, the difference is context and context defines perception.
So up to a point Jacob I do understand you and I do agree with what some of you have said, however I do not agree on "artistc value" or that "you could be doing so much better for yourself if you listened to Bach" - that to me does not compute because you are making distinctions based upon intent.
56 years ago Hollywood made a film of the music business, intended as a satire on the emergent Rock'n'Roll it concerns a mobster getting his talentless and tone-deaf girlfriend promoted as a singing star. Today this film is lauded as a celebration of 50s rock'n'roll and back in 1956 it was inspirational to many wannabe pop stars at the time, including The Beatles and countless other bands that emerged in the late 50s/early 60s.
[For Geoff's entertainment, the actress playing the talentless girlfriend in question lipsyncs her singing parts in this film as she really could not sing.]
...the point being - manufactured Pop is nothing new - it has always been a part of the music industry, long before 1956 when that film was made. When King Crimson was recording "In The Court" and The Beatles were recording "Sgt Pepper" a manufactured pop group was recording "The Birds, The Bees and The Monkees" - as the late Davy Jones said in an NME interview at the time: "I can only speak for myself. I am an actor and I have never pretended to be anything else. The public have made me into a rock n' roll singer. No one is trying to fool anyone!"
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 05:28
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
stonebeard wrote:
In the end music is music and not all music is the same. Do you think the music you love so much has no studio alternation? Get real. I put it to anyone to tell me why it actually matters in this day and age if music has been hand-crafted into perfection by the artist and then just laid to tape*, or if it has been crafted and polished from the ground-up in the studio. The truth is, all great albums have professionals working on them, and most of them have extensive studio alteration. And sorry to break it to you, but all your favorite bands sound like sh*t, when they don't have good mixers, recording engineers, and producers telling them why they need to put a chorus right there. Oh and guess what? Your favorite drummers f**ks up the timing A LOT and it's edited in Pro Tools before it gets pressed. Deal with it. You probably don't even want to know how many records have sh*t drums when they get to the mixer, then amazing drums after it's mixed. Know why? They were enhanced with samples from Drumagog.
It's time for prog fans to get of the high horse and look at reality.
*By the way, for great albums, this never, ever, ever, ever happens.
I'd love to know where you got all this information. There are very many good albums that have been created by artists with little professional help. There are great albums that have been recorded live without much alteration; that's how they had to record before today's technology was available, and that's how many of the jazz greats recorded. Any good drummer can lay down a good drum track and only have to fix a few stray mistakes and apply some tasteful effects in the mix. If what you are saying was true and every band sounded terrible before their music was altered in-studio, then there would be no good live bands.
As an audience we are generally far more forgiving of a few fluffs and mistakes on stage than we are on studio recordings and, for example, if a drummer can't quite manage the tripplet fills on stage we aren't really going to notice but when he does that on album he will know, and that's when a bit of ProTools tweekings comes to his rescue. I've sat in on studio sessions where a very good drummer has spent hours doing multiple takes to get a drum line to meet his own high standards (something he can replicate time after time in rehearsal but under presure in a studio with the money-clock ticking away it's much harder) - as the budget was limited we finally had to use his best take of the day and just tweek one kick beat a few milliseconds to make him happy (not very happy mind, just happy, he still wanted just one more go to get it right).
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
I have no problem with studio alteration, as long as it's being used to perfect the music, not to try and make it something it's not. I don't care if they auto-tuned James Labrie's vocals because they were just a tad bit pitchy, or if Alex Lifeson patched his solo together from various takes, or if someone hit a bum note and they erased and fixed the mistake. I don't care whether something was recorded live or laid down track by track. We live in a day and age where the industry is obsessed with perfection, and our recording methods reflect that. In the end, there's two things that matter; the end result of the studio record, and the band's ability to perform it live. Though I say that it's the end result that matters, the way in which the band and producers go about recording is going to affect the end result. If something sounds bad in-studio, you can fix it all you want and make all the notes sound perfect, but it's never going to be a great album. All great albums have meat to them; they have talent, hard work, and musical value behind them, and the studio techniques are used to perfect and refine that. The band's ability to perform live is the big test: after recording the album, the band has to show that there was talent and good performing and writing by reproducing live what they created and perfected in-studio.
Yet so few of them really do manage to reproduce that studio perfection on stage, and we love them for it. On this forum we have had people criticising Pink Floyd for being studio-perfect on stage (even though they are not). No one is ever happy in Progland.
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
It's not just prog musicians, either, who can record like this. There are plenty of musicians in other genres of music who have created excellent music, recorded it in the studio, perfected and enhanced the recording with effects and mastering, and then managed to reproduce it live at a high quality.
I don't think they do, and more importantly, I don't think they can without filling the stage with dozens of extra musicans. It is impossible to replicate multitracked keys, guitars and vocals in a live setting yet they are an integral part of practically every studio recording, especially in "our game" of Progressive Rock. Some bands play to a backing track on stage to fill-in those missing studio layers (even Rush - how else are they going to replicate any of their songs live without one?) - they still play "their bits" live but all the extras that make up the studio version of the song are midi-sync'd.
I think I may have heard one live version of Savatage doing their trademark counterpoint vocals (not something that is easily reproduced using a backing-track), but on most live recordings they do not (The Japan Live '94 version of 'Chance' for example ends before the multi-part vocal section).
/edit: another unnecessary anecdote: back in the 70s one band strived to recreate studio perfection on stage, that band was The Enid - the fruits of that can be heard on the 1979 release "Live at Hammersmith" yet in every performance I can remember from that time Robert John Godfrey would always appologise for the missing trumpet during their set.
I don't have much to say as Jacob made a lot of the points I was trying to make much more eloquently than I could. But I will say this: Jacob touched on the idea of artistic integrity. And that phrase resonates with me. As a father, I hope my kids pick heroes that are good examples. I hope the heroes they pick are ones I can point to when they are trying to get away with not giving a task their best and say: "you want to be like that? Well the only way that person got to where they are is through a lot of hard work." Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of times the most successful people are not the hardest working. In fact, it often seems like the hardest working people don't get rewarded for their work. Often the richest, most successful people didn't get to where they are through hard work - maybe they were born rich and just got richer, maybe they were born good looking and got rich off of that. Whatever the case, I hope my kids pick heroes that exemplify good principles.
I don't have much to say as Jacob made a lot of the points I was trying to make much more eloquently than I could. But I will say this: Jacob touched on the idea of artistic integrity. And that phrase resonates with me. As a father, I hope my kids pick heroes that are good examples. I hope the heroes they pick are ones I can point to when they are trying to get away with not giving a task their best and say: "you want to be like that? Well the only way that person got to where they are is through a lot of hard work." Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of times the most successful people are not the hardest working. In fact, it often seems like the hardest working people don't get rewarded for their work. Often the richest, most successful people didn't get to where they are through hard work - maybe they were born rich and just got richer, maybe they were born good looking and got rich off of that. Whatever the case, I hope my kids pick heroes that exemplify good principles.
Much of commercial success boils down to luck- being at the right place at the right time, knowing the right people at the right time, etc.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 08:15
dtguitarfan wrote:
I don't have much to say as Jacob made a lot of the points I was trying to make much more eloquently than I could. But I will say this: Jacob touched on the idea of artistic integrity. And that phrase resonates with me. As a father, I hope my kids pick heroes that are good examples. I hope the heroes they pick are ones I can point to when they are trying to get away with not giving a task their best and say: "you want to be like that? Well the only way that person got to where they are is through a lot of hard work." Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of times the most successful people are not the hardest working. In fact, it often seems like the hardest working people don't get rewarded for their work. Often the richest, most successful people didn't get to where they are through hard work - maybe they were born rich and just got richer, maybe they were born good looking and got rich off of that. Whatever the case, I hope my kids pick heroes that exemplify good principles.
My daughter saw Courtney Love on TV when she was 6 years old and became an instant fan, she later picked-up on the Spice Girls, then Nightwish and Within Temptation, then Emilie Autumn and more recently Flourence and the Machine and Lana Del Ray, she may have discarded The Spice Girls in the intervening sixteen years but she is still a firm fan of Courtney Love... Whether you (or I) judge any of them to be ideal role models or positive or negative influences is irrelevant - I don't think she wanted to be like them (though having heard her sing along to 'Doll Parts', 'Wishmaster' and 'Thank God I'm Pretty' for many years you can never be absolutely sure ) - what she sees is strong independant women doing things their way and her chosen career was certainly shaped by the fashions those performers sported (she is currently studying to be a fashion designer). Whatever choices and heroes our children pick-up you have to be very careful how you react to them, I certainly never lectured my daughter using her heroes as examples, that would have been a folly and counter-productive just as it would have been counter-productive for my father to lecture me using my heroes as examples. But maybe that's just me - I'm an old gothic hippy who sees encouragement and support as better motivators. Sure we can stress that there are no easy paths to fame and fortune, but that lesson is one they learn soon enough and my daughter knows well enough that she has to work hard to get anywhere now she is an adult, especially in her chosen profession, (and believe me I've never seen anyone work as hard as she has over the past three years) - but would I have shattered the dreams of a six year old posing in front of her bedroom mirror with a tennis racket for a guitar wanting to be a pop princess - hell no.
The Artistic Integrity card is over-played, there are thousands of artists out there who can be used as illustrations of any point you care to make - there are more failures on the zero artistic integrity side than there are successes just as there are talentless people who have become rich and famous through sheer hard work. Success in the music business is a lottery, sure some impresarios/producers can stack the deck in their favour a little, but even they can have abject failures.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 09:17
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
I don't care whether something was recorded live or laid down track by track. We live in a day and age where the industry is obsessed with perfection, and our recording methods reflect that. In the end, there's two things that matter; the end result of the studio record, and the band's ability to perform it live.
That Peter Gabriel struggles to hit his high notes live has rarely come in the way of appreciating Genesis concerts, especially because he does all those theatrics to compensate for it. Mercury was the same, not the most convincing live singer but flamboyant and charismatic in terms of presence. And yet, the masses liking Lady Gaga is somehow supposed to be such a big deal. Strange are the ways of progland. I am in complete agreement with Dean. Artistic integrity is overrated. Further, we are frequently not really in the best position to judge the extent of integrity. We judge pop artists too harshly and cut our prog idols too much slack when they were not above writing pop to cash in on their popularity. John Wetton has stated on record that commercial success was always his ultimate aim and that is why he joined first UK and then Asia. He loved being part of King Crimson but it didn't enrich him all that much at the end of the day.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 09:36
dtguitarfan wrote:
I don't have much to say as Jacob made a lot of the points I was trying to make much more eloquently than I could. But I will say this: Jacob touched on the idea of artistic integrity. And that phrase resonates with me. As a father, I hope my kids pick heroes that are good examples. I hope the heroes they pick are ones I can point to when they are trying to get away with not giving a task their best and say: "you want to be like that? Well the only way that person got to where they are is through a lot of hard work." Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of times the most successful people are not the hardest working. In fact, it often seems like the hardest working people don't get rewarded for their work. Often the richest, most successful people didn't get to where they are through hard work - maybe they were born rich and just got richer, maybe they were born good looking and got rich off of that. Whatever the case, I hope my kids pick heroes that exemplify good principles.
A simple, if crude, example. Why is the lion the king of the jungle when he doesn't even hunt once he owns a pride while the donkey is called the beast of burden? It stands to reason that the donkey works much harder than the lion just to survive. Successful pop music enterprises are smart and 'with it'. They understand what the audience wants and deliver it. Once or twice is pure luck, but a long career is about great gut feel. That's what Quincy Jones or Clive Davis were about, that's also what George Martin was about.
Just because Beatles did stuff that the musos like, we overlook the fact that we would hardly be talking as much about them after all these years if it were not for smart people who saw their potential where most of us might have failed to in their place and only seen - in the words of Beatles haters - a bunch of people who were sissy and couldn't really play all that much.
The mistake you are making here is to look at the whole thing through just the prism of your tastes. People who don't like prog don't have the most flattering things to say about it. Is that really down to just their inferior intellect and your insight or is it simply divergence in musical tastes? As an Indian, I could eat Western veg cuisine only in small doses and certainly not on a daily basis because I am used to far more savoury food. Is that down to poor culinary skills on one side of the planet or plain and simple cultural differences? That's how it works in music as well. Much as you might wish otherwise, we can't all listen to the same music. Even progheads don't like prog metal as much as they should, right?
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 09:42
rogerthat wrote:
dtguitarfan wrote:
I don't have much to say as Jacob made a lot of the points I was trying to make much more eloquently than I could. But I will say this: Jacob touched on the idea of artistic integrity. And that phrase resonates with me. As a father, I hope my kids pick heroes that are good examples. I hope the heroes they pick are ones I can point to when they are trying to get away with not giving a task their best and say: "you want to be like that? Well the only way that person got to where they are is through a lot of hard work." Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of times the most successful people are not the hardest working. In fact, it often seems like the hardest working people don't get rewarded for their work. Often the richest, most successful people didn't get to where they are through hard work - maybe they were born rich and just got richer, maybe they were born good looking and got rich off of that. Whatever the case, I hope my kids pick heroes that exemplify good principles.
A simple, if crude, example. Why is the lion the king of the jungle when he doesn't even hunt once he owns a pride while the donkey is called the beast of burden? It stands to reason that the donkey works much harder than the lion just to survive. Successful pop music enterprises are smart and 'with it'. They understand what the audience wants and deliver it. Once or twice is pure luck, but a long career is about great gut feel. That's what Quincy Jones or Clive Davis were about, that's also what George Martin was about.
Just because Beatles did stuff that the musos like, we overlook the fact that we would hardly be talking as much about them after all these years if it were not for smart people who saw their potential where most of us might have failed to in their place and only seen - in the words of Beatles haters - a bunch of people who were sissy and couldn't really play all that much.
The mistake you are making here is to look at the whole thing through just the prism of your tastes. People who don't like prog don't have the most flattering things to say about it. Is that really down to just their inferior intellect and your insight or is it simply divergence in musical tastes? As an Indian, I could eat Western veg cuisine only in small doses and certainly not on a daily basis because I am used to far more savoury food. Is that down to poor culinary skills on one side of the planet or plain and simple cultural differences? That's how it works in music as well. Much as you might wish otherwise, we can't all listen to the same music. Even progheads don't like prog metal as much as they should, right?
Whoa, whoa, whoa!!!! Back up there! You are Indian?
I don't have much to say as Jacob made a lot of the points I was trying to make much more eloquently than I could. But I will say this: Jacob touched on the idea of artistic integrity. And that phrase resonates with me. As a father, I hope my kids pick heroes that are good examples. I hope the heroes they pick are ones I can point to when they are trying to get away with not giving a task their best and say: "you want to be like that? Well the only way that person got to where they are is through a lot of hard work." Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of times the most successful people are not the hardest working. In fact, it often seems like the hardest working people don't get rewarded for their work. Often the richest, most successful people didn't get to where they are through hard work - maybe they were born rich and just got richer, maybe they were born good looking and got rich off of that. Whatever the case, I hope my kids pick heroes that exemplify good principles.
A simple, if crude, example. Why is the lion the king of the jungle when he doesn't even hunt once he owns a pride while the donkey is called the beast of burden? It stands to reason that the donkey works much harder than the lion just to survive. Successful pop music enterprises are smart and 'with it'. They understand what the audience wants and deliver it. Once or twice is pure luck, but a long career is about great gut feel. That's what Quincy Jones or Clive Davis were about, that's also what George Martin was about.
Just because Beatles did stuff that the musos like, we overlook the fact that we would hardly be talking as much about them after all these years if it were not for smart people who saw their potential where most of us might have failed to in their place and only seen - in the words of Beatles haters - a bunch of people who were sissy and couldn't really play all that much.
The mistake you are making here is to look at the whole thing through just the prism of your tastes. People who don't like prog don't have the most flattering things to say about it. Is that really down to just their inferior intellect and your insight or is it simply divergence in musical tastes? As an Indian, I could eat Western veg cuisine only in small doses and certainly not on a daily basis because I am used to far more savoury food. Is that down to poor culinary skills on one side of the planet or plain and simple cultural differences? That's how it works in music as well. Much as you might wish otherwise, we can't all listen to the same music. Even progheads don't like prog metal as much as they should, right?
I think part of why this debate keeps going on and on is that this is about more than just the music. I'd love to hear what you'd have to say after actually watching the movie I took the clip from that I opened up this thread with. The movie is called Before the Music Dies, and it's more about how the industry does things these days than it is about the actual music, I think.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 10:48
Dean wrote:
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
Dean wrote:
You are never going to "get" this, but still I try. The market for the music you like is limited, this is not through the music industry choking the market with music you don't like, it is simply that the total number of people in the world who can ever like what you like is very small - marketing and promotion and education will never change that, the music you like simply does not have mass appeal, it never has and it never will. You just have to accept that the people who like Justin Beiber will never like Dream Theatre and the people who like Black Eyed Peas will never like Symphony X - marketing has absolutely nothing to do with that, education has absolutely nothing to do with that and the music industry has nothing to do with that. All the music industry does is create product for specific markets and by far the biggest market is the mainstream pop market.
Insofar as music is entertainment, this is a completely sensible view of the music industry. The point of entertainment is to put out material that people will like, and like immediately. If the music industry finds the cheapest and most loophole-filled ways to do this as possible, who cares? There's no real integrity to entertainment (unless you're talking about moral integrity with regard to lyrical content and such), because there's no such thing as objective value to entertainment. The only thing objective about entertainment is the amount of people who like it, and the music industry is trying to make that objective number as large as possible with the lowest possible cost.
Insofar as music is art, however, the modern industry is the worst thing that could ever have happened. There is an integrity to art; art takes skill and discipline and effort and pain and hard work, not merely from businessmen but from the artists themselves. Above all, art must move the soul and influence the mind; it's not just for entertainment, it's for catharsis, not just to momentarily distract you from your troubles but to lift you out of them, to lift you out of yourself to experience the world through someone else's eyes, to identify with his emotions and to share in them. Whether it's music, painting, drama, or sculpture, art has the power to change people, and the power to make them feel things they could never feel otherwise.
Don't misunderstand me; there's nothing intrinsically wrong or evil about the music out there that exists soley for entertainment, but there is something wrong when, as a society, that's all we see in music. You're not hurting yourself by listening to Justin Beiber, but you could be doing so much better for yourself if you listened to Bach and Mozart as well. That isn't to say that music meant for entertainment cannot be good art as well; Rush see themselves as entertainers as do many other prog bands, and much of the music we consider "classical" "art" music today was originally intended for mere entertainment. There are some very good pop bands; I think that Coldplay is one of the best groups in music today, and I find real value in One Republic as well, not to mention many of the "classic" pop groups. But I think that Geoff is correct in saying that the modern method of producing pop music is not conducive to artistic value. If you took his original post and specified that we were talking about most(not all) of modern top 40 pop music, and specified that we were talking about artistic value, then I'd basically agree with what he said.
All music is produced for entertainment of some kind, whether that is to entertain the feet or the mind, it is still entertainment - musicians are entertainers and performances are shows. Entertain is derived from inter - 'in ones self' and tenir - 'to hold' - when you have been entertained it means 'to hold in your mind' - you take something of that performance into yourself - it means you have been diverted or engaged, or by your own words: "it's for catharsis, not just to momentarily distract you from your troubles but to lift you out of them, to lift you out of yourself to experience the world through someone else's eyes, to identify with his emotions and to share in them" ... that is essentially the definition of 'entertainment'.
Classical music more than any other has been about the performance, the entertainment, whether that was Bach or Mozart, Paganini or Straus, Stravinsky or Cage - the academic high-brow analysis of that is a seperate diversion but it is still a form of entertainment through distraction and engagement, they dress it up but it's still entertainment. For many Classical music is a crashing bore, yet they are happy for it to entertain them as a soundtrack to something else, whether a film or a firework pagent - the music itself has not changed, the difference is context and context defines perception.
So up to a point Jacob I do understand you and I do agree with what some of you have said, however I do not agree on "artistc value" or that "you could be doing so much better for yourself if you listened to Bach" - that to me does not compute because you are making distinctions based upon intent.
Dictionary wrote:
Entertainment: 1. The act of entertaining; agreeable occupation for the mind; diversion; amusement; solving the daily crossword puzzle is an entertainment for many. 2. Something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, especially a performance of some kind: the highlight of the ball was an elaborate entertainment.
You're defining entertainment by it's word roots, not by what it actually means in the English language. These definitions include words and synonyms like "agreeable," "pleasure," "amusement," and "diversion," but not anything about power and lasting effect and unspeakable beauty and the experience of love, joy, and agony through music. Mere entertainment might engage the mind for the moment; it might even stick with you throughout the day if you get songs stuck in your head easily, but it will never change you, and it will never give you a taste of the experience of true beauty that humans really long for.
Remember, I never said that music meant for entertainment couldn't have artistic value. In fact, I said just the opposite. I know full well that a great deal of classical music was meant for entertainment. I will defend the value of Rush's music till the day that I die, and they see themselves as entertainers. I'd imagine that most prog bands think the same way. I'm not "making distinctions based upon intent;" I'm making distinctions based upon musical value, regardless of intent. I never said anything about our modern analysis of classical music, either; our analysis is not the art, the music itself is.
In response to all the further comments about studio alteration: I never said that I was against overdubs, or changes to perfect a band's sound, or the fixing of minor mistakes in the studio. I even gave the example of auto-tuning James Labrie's vocals as an alteration I really couldn't care less about. So when I talk about accurately reproducing a studio work (I probably didn't make this clear enough), I don't mean reproducing it perfectly. Everyone knows that you need a backing track, loops, or additional musicians to reproduce overdubs on stage. You're not trying to fool anyone with overdubs; everyone knows, when they listen to 2112, that Alex Lifeson can't play two guitars at once and that they overdubbed the solo over the rhythm guitar part. When Peter Gabriel struggles to hit his high notes on stage or when Steve Howe misses a few notes in his solo, I don't consider that to be a failure in reproducing the studio record. It's musicians showing that they're human, whereas on a record everything has to be perfect, by today's standards, anyway. The audience knows this, and they know that nothing can be reproduced exactly the way it was recorded.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 10:54
Some years ago I saw a special at Discovery Channel about the "Boys Band Manufacture".
There was a guy in his late 50's with "Rich Texan" outfit (Hat and everything), this guy owned a studio (huge storage room to be honest) where he recruited 1 or 2 hundred boys simultaneously from 15 to 18 years, dressed them in the best clothes available for kids, matching them according to size and physical characteristics (voice didn't mattered).
So he created like 25 or 50 boys bands simultaneously, made them record a demo with music by a group of composers hired by him and sent the kids on gigs.
The interviewer asked the "Rich Texan" if he didn't lost money and he laughed while saying something like "Probably 98% will be failure, with one I get back my investment, with two I get a lot of money and if I'm lucky enough to have three with a hit single and a record, I can close the factory or start the process again"
This made me angry, because it seemed an insult to art, but there was something worst.
In Mexico they used to create mixed groups (young men and very sexy girls together) like Timbiriche or similar.
One of this groups (not sure which) came to Perú (they had a huge fanbase among stupid teenagers), but we have a guy who has a great musical program and knows about Rock (he hates this groups) so he went to interview them, on purpose went to the leader and asked him what were their musical influences and why they got together, the kid (early 20's) replied "No me preguntes eso, a nosotros nos llamaron para una prueba y los mas bonitos nos quedamos" (Don't ask me that, we went to an audience, and the cutest of us stayed), of course before this selection they have recruited a female and a male young artist that can more or less sing, leaving the rest almost a s a choir. This was really amazing, kids with no musical formation, knowledge, skills or even basic musical studies are joined only in base of their looks.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 11:20
Ivan_Melgar_M wrote:
Some years ago I saw a special at Discovery Channel about the "Boys Band Manufacture".
There was a guy in his late 50's with "Rich Texan" outfit (Hat and everything), this guy owned a studio (huge storage room to be honest) where he recruited 1 or 2 hundred boys simultaneously from 15 to 18 years, dressed them in the best clothes available for kids, matching them according to size and physical characteristics (voice didn't mattered).
So he created like 25 or 50 boys bands simultaneously, made them record a demo with music by a group of composers hired by him and sent the kids on gigs.
The interviewer asked the "Rich Texan" if he didn't lost money and he laughed while saying something like "Probably 98% will be failure, with one I get back my investment, with two I get a lot of money and if I'm lucky enough to have three with a hit single and a record, I can close the factory or start the process again"
This made me angry, because it seemed an insult to art, but there was something worst.
In Mexico they used to create mixed groups (young men and very sexy girls together) like Timbiriche or similar.
One of this groups (not sure which) came to Perú (they had a huge fanbase among stupid teenagers), but we have a guy who has a great musical program and knows about Rock (he hates this groups) so he went to interview them, on purpose went to the leader and asked him what were their musical influences and why they got together, the kid (early 20's) replied "No me preguntes eso, a nosotros nos llamaron para una prueba y los mas bonitos nos quedamos" (Don't ask me that, we went to an audience, and the cutest of us stayed), of course before this selection they have recruited a female and a male young artist that can more or less sing, leaving the rest almost a s a choir. This was really amazing, kids with no musical formation, knowledge, skills or even basic musical studies are joined only in base of their looks.
Iván
This. In defense of OP, there is commercialism in all music, but it is more blatant and unabashed in pop music. That's not saying there isn't marketing and industry forces present in other genres. But in the pop music arena, they have focused so much on marketing to the point that it is deleterious to the music. Call me a cliche progger, but I think this dysfunction came about in the early 80s, when record label execs figured out you could just hand a hot dude/chick a guitar and use studio magic to cover his lack of instrumental acumen and make big money.
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Posted: June 05 2012 at 11:22
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
Dictionary wrote:
Entertainment: 1. The act of entertaining; agreeable occupation for the mind; diversion; amusement; solving the daily crossword puzzle is an entertainment for many. 2. Something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, especially a performance of some kind: the highlight of the ball was an elaborate entertainment.
You're defining entertainment by it's word roots, not by what it actually means in the English language. These definitions include words and synonyms like "agreeable," "pleasure," "amusement," and "diversion," but not anything about power and lasting effect and unspeakable beauty and the experience of love, joy, and agony through music. Mere entertainment might engage the mind for the moment; it might even stick with you throughout the day if you get songs stuck in your head easily, but it will never change you, and it will never give you a taste of the experience of true beauty that humans really long for.
Those synonyms are not replacements for "entertain" - you don't go to see an agreeablement, you don't come away having been pleasuremented, the artists on stage are not diversioners - while amusement is partial, not every entertainment will amuse you. The etymology of words is a means of understadning why we can use some words in some contexts and not in others, for examle the dictionary definition of entertain is most certainly "to keep, hold, or maintain in the mind" and "to hold the attention of with something amusing or diverting" and that is the reason why we use "entertainment" for a for an activity that diverts the mind. I think you are understating the lasting power of any "entertainment", belittling them with your own indifference as it were while overstating the life-changing effect of "art".
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
Remember, I never said that music meant for entertainment couldn't have artistic value. In fact, I said just the opposite. I know full well that a great deal of classical music was meant for entertainment. I will defend the value of Rush's music till the day that I die, and they see themselves as entertainers. I'd imagine that most prog bands think the same way. I'm not "making distinctions based upon intent;" I'm making distinctions based upon musical value, regardless of intent. I never said anything about our modern analysis of classical music, either; our analysis is not the art, the music itself is.
I fear you are still making distinctions based on intent ... you are giving a low value to music produced (in your eyes) solely for entertainment ... ie it is the intention of the artist merely to entertain. I am saying that all art is entertainment. This is not something I've just invented for this discussion - I have made this point dozens of times throughout this forum - all music is art, all art is entertainment. You can be as judgemental as you like on the value or worth of some of that art if you wish, but it is your judgement, not a universal truth.
Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
In response to all the further comments about studio alteration: I never said that I was against overdubs, or changes to perfect a band's sound, or the fixing of minor mistakes in the studio. I even gave the example of auto-tuning James Labrie's vocals as an alteration I really couldn't care less about. So when I talk about accurately reproducing a studio work (I probably didn't make this clear enough), I don't mean reproducing it perfectly. Everyone knows that you need a backing track, loops, or additional musicians to reproduce overdubs on stage. You're not trying to fool anyone with overdubs; everyone knows, when they listen to 2112, that Alex Lifeson can't play two guitars at once and that they overdubbed the solo over the rhythm guitar part. When Peter Gabriel struggles to hit his high notes on stage or when Steve Howe misses a few notes in his solo, I don't consider that to be a failure in reproducing the studio record. It's musicians showing that they're human, whereas on a record everything has to be perfect, by today's standards, anyway. The audience knows this, and they know that nothing can be reproduced exactly the way it was recorded.
I read and understood your acceptance of minor studio fixes of errors. You said "the end result of the studio record, and the band's ability to perform it live" - I merely pointed out that because of multitracking and overdubs that is not possible. If you now qualify that as "I don't mean reproducing it perfectly" then that's fine, you agree with me.
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Posted: June 04 2012 at 23:48
) - what she sees is strong independant women doing things their way and her chosen career was certainly shaped by the fashions those performers sported (she is currently studying to be a fashion designer). Whatever choices and heroes our children pick-up you have to be very careful how you react to them, I certainly never lectured my daughter using her heroes as examples, that would have been a folly and counter-productive just as it would have been counter-productive for my father to lecture me using my heroes as examples. But maybe that's just me - I'm an old gothic hippy who sees encouragement and support as better motivators. Sure we can stress that there are no easy paths to fame and fortune, but that lesson is one they learn soon enough and my daughter knows well enough that she has to work hard to get anywhere now she is an adult, especially in her chosen profession, (and believe me I've never seen anyone work as hard as she has over the past three years) - but would I have shattered the dreams of a six year old posing in front of her bedroom mirror with a tennis racket for a guitar wanting to be a pop princess - hell no.
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Ambient Hurricanes wrote:
