Are Todays Daw's Making People Lazy Producers ?

[EnochLight]

Well no, that's you looking at current pop music through your old man filter.

I know this must really burn a lot of the old timers here - BUT ROCK MUSIC IS DEAD. Like, seriously. Kids these days don't want to go out and buy guitars. They want a new DAW, Rock is dead, man. Dead as a f**k'n door-nail.

You know it's true. Guitars have been relegated to that background "additional" thing in most pop/contemporary music these days. When was the last time a 4 or 5 piece rock band (all guitars + drummer) made it to Number One on the Top 40 charts or dominated the Top 10 even?

I'll wait...

[THE INTRANCER]

....

Well, Top of the Pops started way back in 1960's... MTV didn't really make an appearance until 1987, in the UK anyway... 86 in the US possibly..going by memory. Other than that... what was the US equivalent, that's my point with the 'Price is Right' reference. The drive people had to produce great music was much stronger because of programs such as these, and if you're comparing popularity of 80's music to that of today's, this isn't just my opinion, it's pretty much accepted by much of the youth of today, wishing that they grew up in the 70's and 80's era... this one video... posted in 2010 has A-Ha 36 million views... a band from the 1980's... and Queen over 672 million...

---Side note: I thought it was funny when my nephew (he's 10) came up last year to visit, my sister was driving, he picked up a CD put it in the car CD player... and it wasn't some recent chart stuff, but a CD of Queen... and he prefers listening to that rather than current music we have now... rock on... . Personally I didn't continue to play the guitar my dad tried to teach me when I was young...it hurt my fingers for start and I didn't feel an emotional connection with it. Jean Michel Jarre was my idol as I watched him perform on stage to produce these wild sounds and rhythms he created. The music teachers in my high school in the beginning of the 1990's, were awful as was what we were given to do in class and at home for homework... such as writing notation by hand and threatened with detention if we didn't do it properly. I don't envy what kids have available to them now, I use the tools... that many here know I do already. I've been reviewing music for years, besides producing it so I can be objective without looking through some rose tinted spectacle's, that you're suggesting.

a-ha - The Sun Always Shines On TV


Bohemian Rhapsody



For others... who have posted earlier... in the amount of work relating to the hardware/ setup ect in the early 1980's, Vangelis didn't use a computer but here's what he did use and the techniques...

"The recording studio’s equipment

Vangelis’ studio consisted of a control room and a live room. The control room was equipped with a multitrack tape facility that allowed the recording of musical instruments into audio tracks on analogue magnetic tape, and these audio tracks could then be mixed down onto a master tape.

The control room not only contained the tape recorder machines and the mixing desk, but, it also served as the area where Vangelis composed music on his synthesisers. The control room was like an extension of his instruments, the sound processors, the outboard equipment, the tape machines and the mixing desk, all of which played a part in Vangelis’ performance.

An adjacent live room was filled with traditional instruments and other unusual musical items Vangelis had collected over the years. It also featured a wide collection of percussion, which included drums, gamelan, timpani, tubular bells, gongs and orchestral percussion. The live room was often used as the area where live work was recorded, which also included guest singers and other musicians.

Vangelis’ studio featured commercially available models of synthesisers as well as some old vintage electric keyboards, and it also had a 9-foot Steinway Grand Piano. All of these instruments were situated in the studio’s control room next to the tape recorders.

The control room was equipped with two types of tape machines, each dedicated to a certain function in the recording process. The first was a multitrack tape machine capable of recording 24 parallel audio tracks into a 2-inch-wide magnetic tape. The multitrack tape allowed the individual instruments from a performance to be recorded into discrete audio tracks. This gave flexibility during mixing, as each audio element could be treated separately for panning, gain or other fine-tuning. Vangelis’ multitrack tape machine was the Lyrec TR-532, the same tape machine he used to record his solo albums and his film score to Chariots of Fire.

The second type of tape machine in Vangelis’ control room was a ‘tape master’ machine that allowed the final mixed work to be produced onto a 2-track quarter-inch master tape. Blade Runner was going to be presented in cinemas with Dolby Stereo sound and using a 4-channel mix of the soundtrack. A 4-track master tape machine was rented so that any music mixes needing 4-channel mixes could be delivered on a 4-track tape.

Vangelis’ studio central command was a mixing desk – a 36 channel from Quad/Eight Electronics ‘Pacifica’ multitrack non-automated mixing desk configured as a 36-modular input console with eight selectable mixing busses and stereo mix down. Two separate stereo (cue) busses and four auxiliary send circuits (i.e. four echo send/return module) per channel input."

http://www.nemostudios.co.uk/bladerunner/

[EnochLight]

....

Look, when you're done reminiscing about "back in my day"... Maybe you can join the rest of us.

I have to say - the first time I heard A-Ha's "The Sun Always Shines on TV", I was a teen and thought it was magical. Brilliant piece of song writing and production, there.

My daughter (who is currently slightly younger now than I was then) feels the same way about the latest Panic at the Disco track.

Is she wrong? Are the other tens of thousands - perhaps millions - of teenage girls today wrong?



BTW, I have the original multitracks for Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" in 24-bit. I'm sure you do, too.

[digitalboytn]

Well no, that's you looking at current pop music through your old man filter.

I know this must really burn a lot of the old timers here - BUT ROCK MUSIC IS DEAD. Like, seriously. Kids these days don't want to go out and buy guitars. They want a new DAW, Rock is dead, man. Dead as a f**k'n door-nail.

You know it's true. Guitars have been relegated to that background "additional" thing in most pop/contemporary music these days. When was the last time a 4 or 5 piece rock band (all guitars + drummer) made it to Number One on the Top 40 charts or dominated the Top 10 even?

I'll wait... :party

I wasn't disagreeing with you....

I was laughing because "them were fighting words" and you had come out of your corner punching hard...

We all know that the way that we create music has changed dramatically in the digital age (along with so many other things) and the tools that we use to create that music have changed too...

I can't entirely agree that guitars have been relegated to the background,because they are still relevant for so many reasons...

But no matter what tools and instruments we use to put together the music that we make,there are still a few timeless fundamentals that need to be recognised...

It doesn't matter how cool and how complex the blips and bleeps and farts are,the music still needs to connect on an emotional level..

Most humans are still analog,organic creatures and I have to add here that "old school instruments" in the right hands can really touch the heart

Also,the music - be it a song or any other type of composition,needs structure and form...If it lacks the right creative spark and the necessary architecture to keep it moving through time,then it is not going to get up and go anywhere...

Like flogging a dead horse,musical composition without the right structure and form is just never going to happen...

So,in my own case,the focus is on the intellectual property and the composition,rather than the tools that are used to create the final picture...

Those tools will change as the world around us changes,but the overriding constant will always be the creative spark and the compositional aspect of the music

[jancivil]

Wow, I literally could not care less what is popular, or what trends or any of that. I'm not in music to be an insecure, conforming follower, just like I wasn't worried about what the popular girls thought about me in jr high school.

"Is she wrong? Are the other tens of thousands - perhaps millions - of teenage girls today wrong?"
Well... argument to popularity is a fallacy...
"We have to appeal more to the general public..."
"The general public likes Coldplay and voted for Hitler."

[EnochLight]

I wasn't disagreeing with you....

I was laughing because "them were fighting words" and you had come out of your corner punching hard...

We all know that the way that we create music has changed dramatically in the digital age (along with so many other things) and the tools that we use to create that music have changed too...

I can't entirely agree that guitars have been relegated to the background,because they are still relevant for so many reasons...

But no matter what tools and instruments we use to put together the music that we make,there are still a few timeless fundamentals that need to be recognised...

It doesn't matter how cool and how complex the blips and bleeps and farts are,the music still needs to connect on an emotional level..

Most humans are still analog,organic creatures and I have to add here that "old school instruments" in the right hands can really touch the heart

Also,the music - be it a song or any other type of composition,needs structure and form...If it lacks the right creative spark and the necessary architecture to keep it moving through time,then it is not going to get up and go anywhere...

Like flogging a dead horse,musical composition without the right structure and form is just never going to happen...

So,in my own case,the focus is on the intellectual property and the composition,rather than the tools that are used to create the final picture...

Those tools will change as the world around us changes,but the overriding constant will always be the creative spark and the compositional aspect of the music

I hear you. Great points.

Wow, I literally could not care less what is popular, or what trends or any of that. I'm not in music to be an insecure, conforming follower, just like I wasn't worried about what the popular girls thought about me in jr high school.

"Is she wrong? Are the other tens of thousands - perhaps millions - of teenage girls today wrong?"

Well... argument to popularity is a fallacy...
"We have to appeal more to the general public..."
"The general public likes Coldplay and voted for Hitler."

We're discussing pop (commercial) music, if the OP's first post is anything to go by, so no - not a fallacy at all. Congrats on hitting Godwin's Law, though!

[jancivil]

Actually that was a comedy bit which referred to Godwin in the title. Godwin redux, or something.
(FTR, Godwin has recently come out to say that if something really smacks of Hitler, it's not a problem.)
The point in the joke, though was that Hitler was very popular, an illustration of the fallacy that popular means good. I would have thought the reference to Coldplay revealed its comedic leanings, particularly here.

EDIT: I forget to point out how ludicrous it was to call 'Godwin's Law' not even knowing wtf it is.
"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1" What I did there was point out how the appeal to popularity as though it argues the quality of anything is a fallacy; with a rather good example [Hitler]. I didn't compare anyone to Hitler.


You asked if a large group of people who all like the same thing is _*wrong*_. About the quality of the music? What were you asking if not that? It seems implicit in the question.


I read the OP. The issue presented is the quality of commercial music going down because of the modern software DAW making people lazy. Try and follow, yeah? You look rather foolish there.

[woggle]

Assorted musings: on a side note, and I know this must really burn a lot of the old timers here - BUT ROCK MUSIC IS DEAD.

should have stopped there on the happy note

(I'm 62, the last time I liked a rock band I was 15, when it was still age appropriate)

[EnochLight]

Actually that was a comedy bit which referred to Godwin in the title. Godwin redux, or something.
(FTR, Godwin has recently come out to say that if something really smacks of Hitler, it's not a problem.)
The point in the joke, though was that Hitler was very popular, an illustration of the fallacy that popular means good. I would have thought the reference to Coldplay revealed its comedic leanings, particularly here.


You asked if a large group of people who all like the same thing is _*wrong*_. About the quality of the music? What were you asking if not that? It seems implicit in the question.


I read the OP. The issue presented is the quality of commercial music going down because of the modern software DAW making people lazy. Try and follow, yeah? You look rather foolish there.

You're confused. Pop culture (hence, pop/commercial) music is not simply "a large group of people". It has a far more lasting effect on human culture in general - influencing generations. I used my kid as example, because what kids listen to is part of said pop culture.

You conflating pop culture to Hitler (and yeah, I get that it was a joke) is not only poorly understanding the comparison, but grossly unrelated. A military dictator that steered a nation has nothing to do with what most kids in western civilization prefer to listen to while doing homework or clubbing. But please continue! I look forward to where you're trying to take this.

[EnochLight]

Assorted musings: on a side note, and I know this must really burn a lot of the old timers here - BUT ROCK MUSIC IS DEAD.

should have stopped there on the happy note

(I'm 62, the last time I liked a rock band I was 15, when it was still age appropriate)

Jesus. That would be... 1971? You missed a lot. There was a shit ton of great rock music in the mid/late 70's as well as the 80's.

[woggle]

Assorted musings: on a side note, and I know this must really burn a lot of the old timers here - BUT ROCK MUSIC IS DEAD.

should have stopped there on the happy note

(I'm 62, the last time I liked a rock band I was 15, when it was still age appropriate)

Jesus. That would be... 1971? You missed a lot. There was a shit ton of great rock music in the mid/late 70's as well as the 80's.

I'm exaggerating but not by much. I suppose it depends on what you mean by rock band - and also distinguishing between liking a band and liking a song. I think of rock bands as bands like Deep Purple or Led Zeppelin. I don't think of Radiohead as a rock band

re the OP - I don't think DAWs are making people lazy producers, they're just giving more people the chance to produce.
Although extending out from video - my friends who have worked as video editors for along time say they have only a fraction of the time to edit work that they used to have, less people are involved and at the Producer level more people in charge have less care or knowledge of how film/video works. That's the result of cheap production facilities that can undercut traditional skilled labour and the huge demand for video. So as with music it is not so much about people being lazy as people without great skills being able to undercut skilled labour to produce a product that can be delivered cheap to a market that is willing to watch or listen to media primarily as a time filler.

[andypryce]

To OP: There is garbage and good music as always since the beginning of music which is in the ears of beholder. Jazz could be garbage to a hard core classic music listener and Beatles to a Jazz listener. But it is easier to ''produce'' and distribute music than ever so that is maybe why you stumble on to too much music that is not to your taste. And simple is not always lazy. It is the hardest thing to do simple and success. And the whole new era is about simple and fast consume.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

I don't think of Radiohead as a rock band

Not so much now, but they definitely were up until the fourth album

[AnX]

i try not to think of them at all....

[woggle]

I don't think of Radiohead as a rock band

Not so much now, but they definitely were up until the fourth album

Don't think I've heard any of that early stuff - or much or them at all really - OK Computer I liked at the time but wouldn't listen to it now, liked amnesiac more. I've not been a band follower since I was a teenager really I have songs Iike but I haven't bought non-classical music for a long time as I find I like one or two songs from an album and that's about it and I OD on them pretty quickly

but I do like some Rammstein and RATM and McLusky when the mood strikes me. But wouldn't buy any of their albums and wouldn't want to listen to more than a couple of tracks in a row every year or so