Is it the song, or the sound you want to convey?

[Steven West]

Kinda in line with Alco's thread - and maybe I should've done a POLL for this? But just curious what the majority of members here are trying to 'get out' of their system - emotionally and technically? For me, it's 'the song', with a good idea of 'the sound'. Until the likes of Warner Bros. renews my contract - I won't dare call myself 'proffesional'. But I see so many here advising on sound perfection - which I think is cool too. But like Alco points out, sometimes it can get a bit much. And someone else asked here about a 'songwriters thread' - which always goes down like a stone... That's like asking bar patrons to pop into AA after just to explain why they drink.

So how many here still believe in MESSAGE, VERSE, WORD PLAY and EMOTIONAL RESPONSE and how many believe in ORCHESTRATION, PRODUCTION, TEXTURE and CONCEPT? Can a 'good song' survive here without the 'production' - or does a 'well produced' song get better attention even though the lyrics, message, and concept really are lame?

Just curious.

[vtx]

I find the sound thing holds us back all the friggin time,,,tweak this tweak that,,everybodies shooting for something else rather than what it is,,and ya in the end it sounds creamie[most of the time]but alot of the songs are a bit stale.
Now,, we get out of the studio,maybe havin a few pops in someones living room,,a couple acoustic guitars,a cardboard box and a voice or two,,and the priority changes,,we get word play,,harmonies and real emotion in the stuff.[and were usually happier]
I wish I could set up mics in those circumstances without anybody knowing....

[ouroboros]

hmmm, a bit like the old beats vs. lyrics debates, as well.

me, I'm a lyric/song guy. I absolutely love word play: makes a great song amazing. Over the last couple of months, reading BONES' posts, brash though they are, have helped me to rethink the simple/ get the song out and then worry about the sound.

I suppose that diff. genres have slightly diff values:

lyric-less music probably must pay more attention to texture. The problem is when texture replaces structure for me. (unless, of course, that is the aim)

am I always this obvious?

[Lady J]

Well said Steven...
For me it's about the song. I can't be bothered to spend hours engineering everything to what i believe is perfection only to be told 'good tune but the mix sux'. so instead i get it to sound as good as i know how (i'm not an engineer) and do the tune.

it's all about the tune. if it wasn't then someone kindly explain why poorly engineered tunes like the Bitch mashup i did got downloaded 10,000+ times in 24 hours :O or why my poorly engineered "I Lost My Robot" garnered nearly 30 pages of conversation here and an equally credible 5,500 downloads since it was posted....

it's about the tunes, it's about the hook. want an engineer? i hear they are available for hire...

[Warmonger]

I generally split my time more or less 50/50 between getting "that sound" and actually writing the song. For me, though, the sound tweaking has more to do with messing around with coarse LFO settings (for example) than with getting the perfect compressor attack or the exact reverb I hear in my head.

In order to save time, when I'm not writing a song, I try lots of different VSTs. The select few that get me to a sound I like quickly will stay on my drive, and be used often in actual songs. After I've decided on a particular reverb setting for a song, I rarely go back and change it (unless there's something very wrong when listening on different speakers). But I do expend a lot of energy on getting that sound in the first place.So I'm not sure whether I fall into the technician or musician category.

[Sascha Franck]

Many people often seem to have no ideas for songs (or structure, or arrangement or whatever), so they care about the technical side of things more. This unfortunately very often includes myself.

My musical "values" raised in a standard "yeah dudes, let's do a band" environment, so I'd take a good song over some technically brilliant but perhaps lifeless stuff any day.

But as said, lack of song ideas and inspiration IS a problem for me these days, so I may just sit around enjoying some nice new sounds I just got out of my equipment and add more of those.
But as I am a "song over all" kinda dude, I'll never post the results of that.

[vtx]

Put on a great song that might not be technically perfect and people listen.They want to hear the lyrics,they want that feeling you get when it changes .
A rather dull or directionless thing,,even if the sound is beautiful gets little responce,,they won't complain cause its candy,,but their not really listening..a good measure is how many people actually stop chit chatting..

this could be just me though

[androidlove]

The song comes first, but I spend a lot of time getting the right sound for it. Sounds also inspire me, which outputs...songs.

[nutekk]

the old saying "you cant polish a turd" comes to mind.

at the same time dont leave your song a "diamond in the ruff" cause it wont reach as many people as it could have.

its a balance.

[intel]

both are bollocks. I use fractal generators to create mathematically perfect arrangments which are then fed through sound randomizers which interpret the data and randomly select a sound to correspond to that particaluar bit of input. the resulting collage is output into a recombinant sound unit that automatically chops the sound up and recombines it into chunks of recognizable music. voila, its a new song.


all this talk of "feelings" and "structure" is for sissies with soft flesh. the real hardcore musicians know what I'm talking about.

[kilroy]

I am sooo tired it's stupid for me even to be posting this, but...it might make this glass of wine last a bit longer, sooooo....

There's nothing quite like having good songwriting. If you don't have it...it's pretty much down hill from there.








OK, what's that...uh...40 words or so? Took me probably 10 minutes to write.

*yawn* Couple more swallows then a few blessed hours sleep...

[ouroboros]

a nice sip of vino,
a post count nudge
a reasonable statement,
a nice night of sleep.


kilroy was here.

[M'Snah]

...

[Sascha Franck]

Btw, even if I still like it the most, I don't refer to "classical" song writing skills.
A good "strcture written" song could just amaze me as much.
Just some synth sounds, randomly thrown together don't make it for me, no matter how brilliant they'll sound.

[austere]

I don’t think you can discern music from it’s production, at least not fully. I don’t really care about the production of a song as long all what’s going on is more or less audible. Things that sound nice but have nothing more to it turn me off completely & usually fill me with disgust. But at the same time I still may have respect for the production engineer for making it sound the way it sound.

I consider composition and production two different art forms. When lappenpop and I are working on music a huge amount of time can be put in the composition. The composition is very, very important for us. And hours can spent trying to figure out where that one note should go.

When finally the composition is done and we start to record we spent an insane amount of time tweaking things. Now partially this is because we figure out new things for the composition and those have to be implemented. Then there is the fact things just take time with us. The more experience we gained the faster & better it went but still achieving perfection is difficult, to say the very least. Because of that we make tons of different mixes & masters which in the end all get burned down by us even though they are 97% good. It’s rather frustrating for us to focus so much on sound quality. For us production is one of the instruments and is a mean’s to an end, not an end in it self.