well yeah there is some semi-diagnostic apps but i dont use 'em - there was an old one, i cant remember the name of it, but it could apply the eq curve from one track to another which people used to talk about
i know there is stuff that does that but as i say... not really interested in it
um, usualy you can get any track off the web from someone unsigned, put it in wavelab, apply some eq tweaks, add some multiband compression, and widen it out a bit and you have an instant tweak, but really thats a sort of quick lo-fi solution or tweakener, in that it's not ideal it just subjectively makes the track louder, wider and the eq tweak is just mebbe to fatten the bottom or smooth out some harshness etc
I have to say this subject is quite current with people i talk to in that it makes me think recently not just because of the fact there is a zillion forums with people yakking on it, but the content of such discussions. I'm actualy starting to think the www is going to kill originality in music which was something no-one anticipated
does that sound mad? I explain. The www does provide one aspect of the dream for people which was to get music out to others bypassing labels or the requirement to use a label. In that respect i always thought it would be like an extended neighbourhood.
The downside seems to be imo that the www also provides all these forums and 'how to do this' stuff, and it's killing things in other ways
Now if you go on engineering forums for say rap & hiphop, all they bang on about is kikdrums etc
now for me I think wtf is that to do with hiphop? it's become all consuming so that the other aspects of hiphop seem almost not to matter. To me hiphop is just about the loop and a beat, not about making monster kikdrums and going up your own arsehole with production values
NO fat kikdrum is going to make me go "Oh yeah!" if the track is boring - in hihop what used to make people go "Oh Yeah!" was the fact the guy had got some wicked loop from god knows where, the cleverness of that, the originality was what it was about, how someone would fit a cool loop and how they'd work those loops, but now everyones obsessed with production values and talking about which compressor is best to fat my bass end etc or endlessly banging on about sidechaning... or, Oh neptunes use an SSL etc.. so fucking what... all they talk about now is 'that snare sound' or 'that kikdrum sound' etc like a snare and a kik is the be-all and end-all of it
whereas rock, well fuck man it's become a cliche almost and worst of all rock music and hiphop have now stood still for so many years pretty much with just subtle changes happening, almost like the market controls it rather than music makers. Alot of big 'rock bands' now are just pub bands, and harder rock has gone up it's own arse and is just a bunch of fucking barking alot of the time
I think people have become MORE lemming-like & more controllable, eg: The news says myspace... everyone rushes to myspace... Then the news says facebook, everyone rushes to facebook... The news says fat kickdrum everyone rushes to fat kickdrum
and i'm in the middle of all that saying: "can I hear something original please?" _ I mean call me an old tosser if you like but music used to have decade driven cycles
1956/7/8 - rock and roll - Chuck Berry buddy holly, little richard, elvis, jerry lee etc
1966/7/8 - hippie rock - who, janis, hendrix, doors, etc
1976/7/8 - punk rock/new wave/synthpop
1986/7/8 - acid, house, big/fast metal
1996/7/8 - dance/britpop/grunge
now look at us.. it's 2007, and whats happening? where's the totaly new music scene? - the truth is probably that marketting corps have taken over more and more and are selling us the same stuff cos it is tried and tested and is marketable commodity controlled by accountants, and anything new is held down and not allowed to become a new movement, instead all we have is a polishing of what came before, ok you've got 'donk' in UK dance which you could say is a new northern sound, but isnt it just an extention of hardhouse? hardhouse that's gone more mainstream? or rather that's got bigger thru production and new s/w tools?.. same with trance it's just got bigger production values, but it hasnt gone anywhere which it shouldnt perhaps anyway cos it's music thats about 15 years old at root and wouldn't you say that trance now is just a bigger produced version of clubtrance from the mid/late 90's?... likewise, the current crap of new british bands like the arctic spunkeys is just more twangy britpop
so for me, whereas when DT started, dance was still about grabbing a few bits and banging out some tunes, now it's people wanking off about needing vintage compressors and that stuff (not here but generaly around www forums), it's sad frankly, tools have replaced style imo alot of the time, but I am so sad there is not much new happening, there's no more global movement it seems almost, no big shift, nothing radicaly new from the street anymore cos you cant compete on the street now cos you dont have vintage compressors and cant achive massive production values of the acts that are big
i think what i mean is, now we have a situation where people would rather follow what they percieve as being sucessful or have been told is the thing to do rather than do their own thing
People talk about new synths and the quality of those sounds, but in truth dance music is purely about rhythm and ANY old cheap synth will do cos synths arent supposed to operate quite the same in dance as in trad' synth music. A synth in dance simply provides a different sounding 'drum' pattern most of the time, so any old thing will do if you tweak it to fit and make something new.. I suppose dance has become a bit constrained with genres now defined and the sounds for those genres defined.. so you can use a cheap old yammy FM synth to play a mallet style sound which is a small percussion part in a track, but the track is about the flow really in it's totality.. in ruffcut dance, small simple things should stand out by the fact that there isnt so much else to drown it out
So mebbe i feel the gear has taken over and people are up their own arses about 'the mix' all the time, and the old guys sitting on forums love it cos tey have the whiphand now & they are feeling important cos they control some arcane knowledge (noobs think) which is the key to making 'professional tracks'...
but what the fuck has underground music got to do with a 'professional track' I ask myself?
back in the day the kids would say "Fuck those old guys, who cares what they say THIS is what WE are doing, and if you dont like it then fuck off with your flashy mixing desks and your UA compressors and your 5 grand preamps etc cos we are too busy creating and putting on events and having fun"
or mebbe i'm cynical? but traditionaly music moved on and left the bloated overblown up-it's-own-arse stuff behind and ushered in a new breath of fresh air which came from nothing but ideas & energy
no-one it seems now takes a cheap synth sound and removes all the top end and says - thats a sound! it fits!.. no instead they are asking what vintage channel strip & compressor do I need to properly eq my sounds like a pro
PRO MIXING HAS GOT FUCK ALL TO DO WITH DANCE MUSIC (IMO) dance should be a raw tribal thing
what gets me is how many people aspire to something unachievable rather than going for something they can do, to draw a parallel again it'd be kinda like a young band trying to acheive demo recordings which sound like a huge top band.. it's not gonna happen, whereas befroe perhaps they'd say "we cant do that, but we dont wanna do that, lets do what we can do"
what has been lost in all this i think is the actual music, the ideas, the movement... no-one talks about making music on forums, all they talk about is "How much do I have to spend to sound like track X?", and it's fucking sad seeing noobs wanting to sound like big acts who have tons of top gear and a cohort of hideen technicians in the background making their huge sound for them.
people used to say "Fuck that overblown rubbish, lets make something new and vital where it is about the music and the vibe and energy and not about not having an uber-reverb".. back in the day squat dance music makers didnt have anything but cheapo reverbs either standalone or inside the synth perhaps if it was a cheap rompler.... new blood would take over and usher in something raw and radical, something different
dont get me wrong there's good dance tracks out there all the time in all genres, not overblown stuff at all, but i think people have forgotten what dance music is, the endless tech forums and old engineering guys who dont even make dance are brainwashing noobs.. whatever well known tech forums you go to, they are full of old guys with a snobby attitude and sadly now noobs actualy beleive this crap, that say they must have a german mic costing 500 quid or whatever... as if the difference between a 60 quid chinese mic and a 1000 quid german mic is really going to make the difference, it's fucking laughable.... Sure, if you have 2 equaly hopeless tracks with a vocal, and one has a 20 quid plastic tandy mic and another has a 900 quid german mic yes, you'll hear a difference, but they both will still be hopeless rubbish. But if the track is alive and has energy it doesnt matter, it really doesnt.
same with monitors, all this endless shite about which speakers to use, fucks sake, do you REALLY think the original hiphop boyz or all those old guys like orbital or chem brothers or whoever started with huge descisions about which monitors to use?... You used whatever you had! and if that was hifi boxes or some pa boxes well you used that!.. reverb wasnt even required and still isnt tbh for a banging dance track, dance is tribal stuff man, or should be at root
if we had this same situation back in 77, you'd have punk bands being told they must get xyz top end guitar rigs cos thats what Whitesnake uses or whatever, lol
Ok decent monitors can help, but they will not make your music better, end of story, all they can do is make it easier to mix, but in no way will they change the CONTENT, just subtle things only.
Anyways, there's dance music, and there's electronic music, they aren't the same at all, one is to dance to and one is to listen too in a chair or in your whip... thats something to think about
Nme, your stuff is fine mate, it is what it is.. sure, you could re-eq it a hundred times and just have 100 different eq's versions.. but the bottom line then is.. "so what"
look, here's a released techno tune play link:
Derek Marin, Remix By Platonik here's another funky tune
Sander Van Doorn Featuring MC Pryme and it's the same as it ever was, simple, with things dropping in and out, simple. there's only about 4 parts in either track, a cyclical loop and a groove, plus some sounds, then you just drop shit in and out and work the flow
now you could re-eq those and tweak them and change compression values etc, but would it really be any different? it's about the groove and the flow at the end of the day which is tied up in the whole creation as an organic thing. changing eq etc is too late cos it was created as part of the track
and you could make those tracks like that with a single sampler and a couple of old synths which is what it's about at root no matter how far that idea can be developed with more toys.
The golden rule in producing is dont give them everything at once
so there's always that classic technique which never goes way... you start a groove, it plays for 8 bars or 16 bars, it drops down for the last bar or 1/2 bar and something makes a sound effect or a vocal lick on that small drop/gap, the it comes again but with one new added thing... then it drops again, and again it starts with something else changed or a new motif appears, whatever.
So hold stuff back, bring things in bit by bit... it's like sex, you dont just jump in and bang away at the same final tempo, lol
actualy this probably sounds like a contradition. On the one hand i'm saying "where's the new?", and on the other i'm saying dance has roots which never change
lol, i mean that music is about doing it rather than tweaking it endlessly or thinking toys and production values rule as opposed to raw roots and creativity.. does that make sense?
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