I've been surfing through some of these threads and noticed a lot of musicians and people with music knowledge seem to be very knowledgeable in music. My question is when did music become more about the TRACK instead of the SONG?

I ask this because it seems as if the untrained musicians are more concerned with a "loop" on a track vs. musicianship and arrangement. I was listening to a lot of Teddy Pendergrass at work today and got chills on tracks like, "You're My Latest and Greatest Inspiration", "Close The Door", and "In My Time". As I was listening, I noticed that there was a certain magic that is lacking in today's music. I think it is the overall musicianship that I'm missing.

I miss real horns and strings on trax. I know that there are people that still do it, but now, it's all about the "loop" or the track" that only contains computerized music.

What is you guys' take?

daPrettyman said:

mmmmm I am not a musician, so I guess I don't know. I just replied 'cause part of what you wrote was really funny!

Im a musician artist and producer and I will tell you that you can make some interesting songs with loops on a computer but I have not heard anything
that comes close to the musicianship and creativness of those original songs
you mention. I mean even the intros of old skool songs have more creative
ideas then the complete songs people put out today. It's called laziness and taking the path of least resistance. I could go on but you get my drift.

daPrettyman said:

(Interesting terminology...)

When drum machines and computers began replacing musicianship ('80s).

Technology has made any yahoo with a computer think that they can make music, but the uncomfortable fact is: they can't.

I'm still trying to figure out why people buy such crap, but that's my problem.

When did the "track" replace the "song"?

Yeah, you could say it started in the 80s, but really I'd rather say that it didn't happen until the late 90s when the second or even the third generation of computer-aided musicians started ruling the charts. Some say it all went to hell in regards with R&B -type of music when Puff Daddy had the big hit with The Police -rip off. Prior to that people were still concerned about songwriting values - it still got carried on for a while and was seen as something to measure the quality of your material with.

Even something like The Produgy's "Firestarter" became a hit, because it still had a classic punk-ish song -quality to it. If you look at what happened after that specific era in british electronic -flavoured stuff, it's rather obvious that there was a great number of totally forgettable "electronica" tracks ruling the airwaves. Also, the dirt-good ballads disappeared from the top of the charts around that time as well.

But as far as "tracks" go, you've always had good instrumental stuff and experimental music that hasn't relied on "classic songwriting" or "classic arrangements". I think it just became more profitable for the record companies to release more forgettable pop music, because in the end I'm not sure either whether I want to hear something like "Purple Rain" being played at a mall when I'm doing my grocery or clothes shopping - more non-descript material just works better for most purposes as far as commerical / mainstream music goes.
[Edited 8/29/09 8:49am]
[Edited 8/29/09 8:50am]

To me the key word is INFLECTION.

A real musician can play a note with any inflection or (accent). These inflections give each individual note their own energy (or lack thereof).

Computerized stuff is colder.
[Edited 8/30/09 5:00am]

Indeed! Computerized stuff is colder. With the mpc and other loop machine, many "artists" can't even play a note. For example, Swizz Beats admitted he can't even play a note on his piano, yet he is a multi-millionaire producer.
A real musician knows not only how to play the instrument in a concert setting but can lay it down in the studio to record. The "song" art seems to be going by the wayside, and people are looking to produce quantity, not quality anymore. Even our boy Prince has jumped on the Pro-tools bandwagon, resulting in the lackluster sound of his new album , IMO.
Give these computer-aided musicians a real instrument and watch them fumble around like fish out of water.

I'd agree with a lot of novabrkr's comments.

There's a synergy that occurs when human musicians interact with each other.
Even with very strict arrangements there are subtle variations that occur (even within repetitive parts) when a human being plays them.
With a programmer that isn't lazy, these variations can be emulated with computers but it's never quite the same.

Some time ago (during 80's when drum machines became popular), I began to wonder why "groove-based" tunes that used them still sounded rather robotic. I put a metronome on some tracks played by humans (JB & Tower of Power) and noticed that the tempo shifted over the course of the tunes. This shift was not apparent (when you're not micro-listening) because the whole band shifts together in a very natural way and still sounded tight.
In the drum machine pieces, by its very clock based nature, this shift didn't happen.

When a non-lazy programmer takes the time to "de-quantize" (figuratively speaking) the "Robot" element, computer based tracks can actually seem to breathe a bit.


To daPrettyman's exact question, very simply, it's much easier to use a loop (prefab, created, or snatched from an existing tune) and slap some non-sense on top of that track than it is to compose a melodically/harmonically interesting song.



tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

As a DJ, and I'm sure dj's here on the Org do as well, notice the tempo shift over the course of the tune in music from the 60's, 70's, and some 80's music, while trying to beat mix.



I agree it still sounded like it was on the one.

I've always relied on my ear for mixing cuts, using the BPM is cool, but it's not challenging. I naturally developed "micro-listening" , I made sure I knew where the breaks were, when the tempo changed in the breaks or throughout the cut, how long to hold a mix, when to fade in or out etc, etc, etc, through micro-listening.

But today it take little skills to mix because like you've stated, "In the drum machine pieces, by its very clock based nature, this shift didn't happen", ...so 106 BPM is pretty much 106 BPM throughout the cut, which makes the mixes ever so easy..
.. not to mention everything pretty much sound the same....what a challenge for a dj.
[Edited 8/29/09 16:30pm]

Digital vs. Analog.

daPrettyman said:

When less talent = more $ loot.

Two issues: (1). The quality of the music itself & (2). The quality of the recording. My two cents.

Outside the technical argument of this deal ,, I think it comes down to that 60s music is rhythm and vocal driven. this makes for great music. When music went to lead guitar, beat & drum machines..... the boiler room as well as the lyrics and vocal performance became back burner stuff.

If you wanna make music like they did way back in the day.. ditch your bazillion stomp boxes and processors, stop obsessing about your tone,, turn down and learn to really be tight in the pocket and sing on key with multiple part vocals. I think the old bands had better rhythm sections and vocals. It's the songs - the arrangements - the orchestrations...not the technology. If the music s*cks to begin with, and a lot of it does, technology won't save it.


Thom Bell was the music arranger for Teddy Pendergrass hit song "Close The Door".

audience said:

I agree: Today you don't even need to assemble the musicians. Each musician can play along to a track and send his recorded track back for mix down. Yes, sometimes recordings are made by assembling the musicians in a room but not always and it shows. As you know musicians play with and against each other. There is synergy to people playing music together. When the vocalist is in Cleveland, the bass player in LA and the pianist in Atlanta, that synergy isn't there.

LBC makes a good point - Digital vs. Analog.
No recording techniques will ever replace the accuracy of content and harmonics that analog and tubes provide, just listen to an old record on a good record player versus a cd of the same band. There is no contest, the record sounds fuller and richer hands down. That's another geeky indepth discussion all together.


_____
[Edited 8/29/09 18:52pm]

These infernal machines are nothing more than tools and as such it would seem to follow that the more skill, talent and hard work that is involved in the creation, the more warmth and amazement they can and will impart.

Even before computers the studio was a place for attempting everlasting quality, and the stage for endeavoring to imbue that desired quality with undeniable flesh and blood.

I don’t think anything will ever change in that regard.

This exact same debate is raging throughout the film world. But cheap, digital cameras that can blow away what Akira Kurosawa worked with in the 40s with a camera only a corporation could rightfully afford doesn’t make one a Kurosawa, Stanley Kubrick or Spike Lee. Nor does it make digital cameras the devil incarnate.

As impossible as this is to quantify, ultimately I think it’s about how effectively one’s unique humanity can be transposed to the listener, not its technical formulation or fidelity.

If art could be understood fully by the subjective (technical), it could easily be reproduced by a formula. And that would instantly neuter the power that we felt it had.

In other words, in a hopeless attempt to address the original question, as long as humans are around, greatness will follow.

That it’s not flowing as readily through mainstream culture as it once did is a sad indictment on the masses.

But it’s still there if one isn't expecting it to be delivered by the same faucet they drank from as a kid.

I'm with Brendan.

"Computers" gets ALOT of flack when it should've been the people for being lazy. Herbie Hancock said, its just a machine that you plug and the rest is ON YOU.

Don't get me wrong, I love my organic music,,,,but I need alot of variety on my plate as well. Expression takes alot of forms and styles, and if you mastered it,,,,no matter what you play on, you'll get your point across.

Brendan said:

TD3 said:

You're lumping up tone generation, recording medium and mastering practises stemming from each historical period here in a rather inaccurate manner. Vinyl records are still being made and suffice to say if they are prepared the same way most CDs are, they usually will just sound like the CDs with a reduced bandwith and some of the colouring of sound vinyl as material is bound to bring along. Should you proceed to transfer that to your computer with decent converters and a high enough bit rate, you will not be able to hear any difference between the vinyl recording itself and the digital .wav copy of it. The audio file would have the same vinyl characterisitics on it. They're more artefacts than anything to be honest.

Tubes have hardly anything to do with accuracy - most professional recording gear has been predominantly solid state for ages - and neither does the analog format itself as it is just by being analog. If anything, a certain fraction of producers would seeem to be using tube based solutions now more than ever. The manufactureres have been sticking tubes into pretty much anything for the last 10 years, with rather indifferent results for the most part. For comparison, most of the classic 80s LPs were already soaked in digital effects and sounds from digital synths, so whilst recording the entire thing to tape and pressing it on vinyl might have produced its own favourable twist on it, they were far from being recordings that utilized a completely analog approach (take for example "Thriller"). What of course imparted its own charm there was things like analog summing, not relying on automation and the reduced bandwith that also all the transfer processes generated as a result. It all adds up.

It really is not as simple as "analog vs. digital". Neither should anyone at this day and age resort to thinking that analog provides higher resolution, simply by not utilizing a binary conversion method.

novabrkr said:

All music of the 60's/70's was obviously all analog.. An analog wave..

When a computer records data it is always done in series of 0's and 1's -00101001100.

So in a digital recording all the very ends of the signal are clipped

Every missing spot from one bar to the next, and what is missing from the top peeks are musical data that is lost.

Our ears and brains are fooled into thinking that what we are hearing is complete musical information, when in fact there is a lot of content missing from the picture.

This added with the fact the all digital recordings are negative harmonics when analog and tubes promote "even" harmonics which is much more pleasing to the ear and promotes the "organic" nature of the sound, hence tube amps.

While pc sample rates are a lot better than they where just a few years ago so the peaks are closer, they still don't match the bandwidth of analog. Also, even though we have stuff like 98bit dvd quality audio, cd is still stuck at 44khz, and it is still negative harmonics.

These are the real reasons old recordings sound so good. These are also the reasons that many better cd players now have built in d/a(digital to analog) converters.

Its not just enough to have a d\a converter though, you have to have as many instruments and vocals as possible be ran through such devices in the first place. Then you could always record to tape to get that natural tape compression which adds to the sound, then finally run it through a pc for final eq'ing and mastering. Has the technology improve I'm sure but tell is does... I don't think it digital can compare. (IMO)

That's the point I was trying to make and didn't.. my last statement of my previous post should've been it's conclusion. I didn't have the time to give my thought in-depth.


_____
-----
[Edited 8/30/09 12:19pm]

Brendan said:

Co-sign. People can get creative with digital shit. We just have lazy people in the industry, lol.

Harlepolis said:

I'm always cognitive of the points you and Brendan have made.... going on some nostalgia trip. Haven said that.

Technology has gone up but talent has gone down. I'm not sure I totally agree with that.

In the 50's and 60's there was a level and wide open playing field with many unexplored possibilities. Over time the commonality of melodies and rythm's and arrangements saturated the sphere and it became harder and harder to hit an original concept. Not to say that it's all been done before because I don't think it has. I just think it is harder to hit on an original idea that doesn't sound cliche' Look at the controversy that came up over My Sweet Lord and He's So Fine, ya know? I hope that is a good example that helps make my point. Maybe not.

Every now and then I hear a new song that strikes me as new and original, but that seems unfortunately to happen less and less these days. Yesterday, I heard a song on the radio by Kid Rock (that I don't even know the name of) but it was an absolute rip-off (call it a remix) of Sweet Home Alabama and Werewolves of London. Kind of creeped me out and I did not like it very much. I could not stop listening, though because I was kind of appalled by the fact that it was getting major air play and somewhere, some kid was going, "WOW Man! This is the coolest song I ever heard!" Yuk!

Another point, is that MY generation wants certain things, like melody and harmony and arrangement. My kid and the others want something different. I ain't sure what to call it without sounding mean, rude and biased, but it seems to have little to do with talent and more to do with technology.
I don't know, maybe I'm just out of touch.....

TD3 said:

Yeah I got that though.

I just think you are confusing fidelity with what is actually for the most part a case of the frequency range being reduced. Something being "pleasing to the ear" has nvery little to do with quantization to bits in the end, or "even and odd harmonics". The point about tube amps might be correct, but there's only a brief period in the history of recorded popular music when guitarists weren't using tube amps as a standard anyway (that being about 15-20 years ago). I doubt there would be too many rock records made even today that wouldn't use tube amps almost exclusively, so it's not just about nostalgia either. I wouldn't bring tubes into the argument at any case though: There's a whole lot of awful sounding tube gear out there and being constantly manufactured still to this day. If you hear a hit song on the radio that has a guitar part on it, it's most likely recorded with a tube amp. The same for the vocals, it's very common to use tube microphones at all professional studios.

As far as my point about the reduced bandwitch and distortion on analog being actually the pleasing factor to the ear: it's the same thing as the case with old analog synths and their remakes. Why do the old units sound more pleasing to most ears than all the reamkes that have started to pop up recently? Compare the old SCI Prophets to the new DSI ones, and there's a big difference of sound, same could be said of old Moogs and new Moogs. It's neither about discrete technology / op-amps being used either, as the old ones usually had a good number of chips inside them as well. It's just that the components weren't precision manufactured back in the day and that adds to natural variation of tone and distortion. These are all analog units though, yet people are still bitching about things being better back in the day.

Once you start piling up tracks in the digital domain - regardless of whether you're recording an analog or a digital source - there will be a lot of overlap in the areas that contain much of the same information. In the analog format that tends to get quite naturally evened out and compressed, whereas on digital you'll just have to really put a whole lot of work to get the same type of results. Granted I've never recorded to anything else than basic Studer type of units, but it has given me some idea.

And I repeat, you're not going to be able to tell the difference when listening to an original vinyl recording and when A / B:ing that with the same thing having been recorded to a oomputer with decent converters (this means having recorded the vinyl LP to the computer, not listening to the CD release). You can do that comparison even with your own mixer.by muting out the individual tracks. In the end, you just simply can't say that there would be a "big difference" prevailing there, because there isn't. The "00101001100" -argument is just something that people keep repeating almost religiously, and it's not that relevant at all.

Now analog versus digital summing or analog versus digital distortion, that's something worth discussing.

novabrkr said:

Just as much as you have those who dismiss digital "100101001100" argument as nothing more than an urban legend. I respectfully disagree.

So true and I'm all ears.