OK, is this the worst piece of music writing ever?

It's more abo

I decided not to post what I was going to post so let "it's more abo" be the whole of my opinion

it is not a bad piece but i also don't *think* it is very good.

typo sorry

but maybe he is... ARTISTICALLY BALD

xp

lol

re: carl's piece, which is fine, but

And both Tesfaye and Jepsen also collaborated with another Swede, Peter Svensson, formerly of the band the Cardigans, who were already somewhat of an ’80s throwback in the ’90s.

this links to a video that's been deleted, so i really have no idea what he's talking about

you guys need a good laugh.

"Before Dead Boys and Pere Ubu was Rocket from the Tombs, the Cleveland protopunk favorites Rocket from the Tombs raged through tracks that would eventually become “Sonic Reducer,” “Final Solution,” and others, changing the course for music as we know it."

http://noisey.vice.com/blog/rocket-from-the-tombs-coopy-video

oh noiseybot 3000, you never fail us....

In the music industry, the performers are called artists, while the people who write the songs remain largely anonymous outside the pages of trade publications.

this is like exactly how it was in the 50s and 60s during the heyday of tin pan alley and the Wrecking Crew and all that

yea i thought about that too

the world is as it is

Travis Blanchard • 2 hours ago
And this is why almost every pop song for the last 15 years has been complete crap. Today's music is in a sad state. Pop stars are not musicians, they are barely performers. They are figureheads used by record execs to make money. Unfortunately, the way the music industry is today has contributed to the overall decline of the quality of music. Very little good music across any genre has been made in the past decade.

Fabian to critics: Drop Dead!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/1959_Fabian_Forte.jpg

Pop stars are not musicians, they are barely performers. They are figureheads used by record execs to make money. Also, that's not even Michael Nesmith's real hat.
http://t4.kn3.net/taringa/0/6/2/9/1/4/Uter_Zorker/39C.jpg

#whoa #wow

Where is the artistry when a producer digitally stitches together a vocal track, syllable by syllable, from dozens of takes?

I don't really see what the difference is between a producer digitally stitching together a vocal track from dozens of takes and a producer manually cutting together a vocal track on tape from dozens of takes. Vocal comping has been happening for decades and has been a bog-standard studio technique for decades... are there really people out there who think that every vocal on every "classic" song/production ever was sung live in one take? Idiots.

you take that back about michael nesmith's hat

this is like exactly how it was in the 50s and 60s during the heyday of tin pan alley and the Wrecking Crew and all that

― Ma$e-en-scène (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, September 16, 2015 12:27 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This came to my mind too. In fact didn't Phil Spector basically believe that he was the *real* artist and the girl groups he used were just kind of disposable instruments in his hands?

Although to clarify, the heyday of tin pan alley was most certainly not in the 50's and 60's. Maybe you mean Brill Building?

OTOH I wouldn't take that comparison too far, because I think that there were well-known songwriters in the era before most artists *wrote their own songs.* I mean I think Tin Pan Alley composers, for example, were pretty well-known. People bought a lot more sheet music back in those days, and the sheet music credited the songwriters.

yah brill building i meant

still i bet there were a shitload of teenagers who didn't give a fuck who doc pomus or hal blaine were

yeah the backing musicians seem like another story, I think it really wasn't well known who those people were. They weren't even credited most of the time. According to the doc it sounds like a lot of said teenagers probably really believed that it was the Beach Boys or the Association or whoever playing on their own records.

also, in a lot of cases, the "artistes" who wrote their own stuff back then were just as produced and arranged and micromanaged by a hundred people as anyone else.

When one of my bands had a brief affair with Big Deal Music Industry Manager, he asked us pretty early on how we'd feel about having someone else "work on our songs" with us, or something to that effect. I almost wish we had gotten to that point because I was curious to find out whether said *someone* was just going to lightly edit them or completely reshape them into country-pop hits or something.

His Atlantic magazine editor didn't seem to question the lack of clarity on music history.
This paragraph, where he acknowledges the existence of earlier hired tunesmiths, seems a little questionable too, both on its own and in the manner that it does not quite fit in with his later arguments:

The music has evolved in step with these changes. A short-attention-span culture demands short-attention-span songs. The writers of Tin Pan Alley and Motown had to write only one killer hook to get a hit. Now you need a new high every seven seconds—the average length of time a listener will give a radio station before changing the channel. “It’s not enough to have one hook anymore,” Jay Brown, a co-founder of Jay Z’s Roc Nation label, tells Seabrook. “You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge, too.”

That doesn't even sound internally consistent, unless intros, pres, choruses, and bridges each last no more than seven seconds.

That doesn't even sound internally consistent, unless intros, pres, choruses, and bridges each last no more than seven seconds.

If super-hooky grindcore became the new thing, I would totally start listening to the radio.

Motown songs only needed one hook?!? Has he heard any Motown songs? A lot of the time the intro's a hook before the singer's even turned up.

I like Nathaniel Rich btw but he wouldn't be the first smart, talented writer to say dumb things about pop music.

WTF does he think the Be My Baby drum intro is?

The first movement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony is pretty much one hook after another, for that matter, just relentless hooks.

"You’ve got to have a hook in the intro, a hook in the pre, a hook in the chorus, and a hook in the bridge, too.”

Sounds great. More memorable melodies. Thanks, short attention spans.

If super-hooky grindcore became the new thing, I would totally start listening to the radio.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, September 16, 2015 4:49 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can't say we didn't try...

https://open.spotify.com/album/3yByFtADzRS96I3j4l5v9s

I wish songs had more boring, meandery, unmemorable sections

boring meandering music kinda rules tbh

that quote previously appeared in Seabrook's New Yorker article, it isn't new.

as does the "seven seconds" thing -- the new yorker piece is paywalled now but the relevant part is here: http://wsdg.com/the-new-yorker-the-song-machine/

as for the source of that, as far as I can tell it seems to be an advertising rule-of-thumb.

beethoven didn't just write hook after hook after hook, he wrote one hook, maybe two, and then beat it with a thresher into as many different shapes as he could. that's why he's cool.

yeah but how many takes of Eroica did Teo Macero splice together

All that modulation shit was done on a fairlight

can we stop having a pendantic nerd slapfight in here and get back to sonning lames

^

but i want to talk about glenn gould. :(

Where is the artistry when a producer digitally stitches together a vocal track, syllable by syllable, from dozens of takes?

I don't really see what the difference is between a producer digitally stitching together a vocal track from dozens of takes and a producer manually cutting together a vocal track on tape from dozens of takes. Vocal comping has been happening for decades and has been a bog-standard studio technique for decades... are there really people out there who think that every vocal on every "classic" song/production ever was sung live in one take? Idiots.

― Turrican, Wednesday, September 16, 2015 2:27 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah this is one of those hilarious dumb ideas in the article that shows how naive the guy calling everyone else naive is. i've laid down instrumental tracks in one full take with no edits or corrections needed, it's at least an attainable thing to try to do, but vocal comping is how pretty much everybody makes records, at least everybody who cares about the quality of the vocal.

among the many dumb ideas is the sense that it's got "harder" to make pop music but somehow it's also "worse" as a result.

A short-attention-span culture demands short-attention-span songs

wtf does this even mean? like "hooks", which apparently can be defined now, are bad by nature. it's the same ancient argument copied from like critiques of fast food or whatever. as if hooks are salt or something compared to the veggies of previous eras.

are there really people out there who think that every vocal on every "classic" song/production ever was sung live in one take? Idiots.

This is what happens when people listen to that Stooges Fun House Sessions box too many times - they start to think everyone used to do it like that, or should have done.

one thing that has been made evident by ilm squabblings is that people often identify different things as hooks. there is no hook consensus. the term isn't meaningless, it's just something quotable, and people differ both in what they pick out as quotable and their overall propensity to quote. speaking of which, some pertinent grumbling from adorno:

there exists today a tendency to listen to Beethoven's Fifth as if it were a set of quotations from Beethoven's Fifth

today being 1945, which makes me think we shouldn't worry too much.

"they start to think everyone used to do it like that, or should have done."

well, there WERE a ton of records that were made in a period of hours. especially in jazz. labels would set up entire orchestras and cut a record in 3 hours so they didn't have to pay union overtime. and, to be fair, a lot of those records sound competely friggin' amazing. an album in a day was very doable in the 50's and 60's. and on the street in weeks.

There are always practical/economic reasons why it's good to get a song recorded in one take or as few takes as possible -- that's why producers call certain singers/musicians "professionals" with a glint in their eye. But it's not the only way to get a good final product, for sure.