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

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.

that is true scott but i expect they practised a lot before going in

Wrecking Crew supposedly did not -- they were sightreading all that stuff.

they were really good at doing stuff fast. people couldn't do that now. unless they just hit record and a band started playing with minimal fuss. but even that would probably take a long time now.

yeah, wrecking crew people often had no idea what they would be playing from one job to the next.

Funk Brothers, too -- and what wasn't sight-read was arranged on the spot by the musicians.

i am not an advocate of one way or another. but hanging out at rudy van gelder's house for the day often yielded amazing music that people still listen to today and i am glad that that happened. even if i also wish that a lot of jazz artists actually had the time back then to make something in a way that they really wanted to make it. they usually didn't have a choice.

just the fact that there were VERY complicated pieces of music with many moving parts created in such a short amount of time is staggering. symphonies!

Yeah I assume the expected sales numbers for most jazz records also just didn't justify spending more than a day recording.

which is also why a lot of orchestras don't even bother recording today. it would take too long and cost too much.

the labels put out so much product. even the tiny labels. every week new records or singles. there was no time to take your time. that goes for pop, rock, r&b, etc.

x-post

scroll down to the list of recording dates on this page. these are entire albums:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Gelder_Studio

i think a somewhat reasonable contemporary analogy to the workload of those bands would be the roots on the tonight show (and, more immediately, batiste and stay human with colbert)

Well yes, there certainly are a number of examples of songs or albums being cut in a matter of hours or days, and there are certainly a number of examples of where a singer has gone into the studio, sung the song live in one take and managed to nail a really great vocal. However, the impression is got from the article that the author feels that things like comping vocals is a trend that has only begun to happen in modern pop music, which is bollocks. I don't think anyone would argue that Simon & Garfunkel were great singers, but even they comped their vocals, even down to the syllable - they were striving for perfection on the likes of the Bookends album... I'll bet though, that the author would hear those Simon & Garfunkel records as being more "authentic" than a Rhianna record.

Basically, what it boils down to is the age-old "authenticity" argument, that some recording approaches and musical forms are more "authentic" than others. However, I'd argue that whether a track or an album is recorded in one take or meticulously pieced together by editing together multiple takes of drum tracks or vocal tracks or whatever, that all recorded music is an illusion.

i think everything max martin does is 100% authentic for now!

i don't know who the first person was to splice different takes together to create a track but it happened long before any of us were born.

les paul and mary ford, no?

that is true scott but i expect they practised a lot before going in

― Cosmic Slop, Thursday, September 17, 2015 10:50 AM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Wrecking Crew supposedly did not -- they were sightreading all that stuff.

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Thursday, September 17, 2015 10:51 AM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the key to making great pop records is getting slumming frustrated jazz musicians who think rock n' roll is baby music to play it