What makes music great - Plugins and Techniques

[pluginnow]

Hello,

I would like to introduce this topic.
Looking for the major plugins and techniques for a great song.

Of course, the most important thing is the artist himself. However, there are other considerations for a successful song or a song that sounds great.

So, I can point out some issues, not in order of importance:

- The soundstage
- Spectral Balance (lows, mids, highs)
- Tonal accuracy
- The quality of transients
- Compression
- Loudness
- Saturation

Between this, and others you can point to, what are the most important things to a successful song?

Regards

[BBFG#]

An audience that responds to it in a positive way.

[jules99]

None of these matter to the song. A successful song is one that makes enough people feel something. After that comes production where these things matter to some degree.

[sin night]

It needs to have something “strong”: a great musical idea, some lyrics resonating with people, maybe some sounds that makes you go “wow” (although I think it’s really hard to get the listener’s attention just with the sound).

Of course what works depends on the audience… but “production” comes later, you need ”something to say” first and it needs to be engaging.

[sin night]

I forgot: once you have a great song, then you need to be ablee to reach the crowd (aka promote it)…

[Cuauhtli]

Judging by most popular hits over the years, lyrics seem to matter very little. It's more the melody and the quality of the singer/auto-tune imo. Most lyrics are, I'll just say weak. Not everyone can be a Roger Waters, Harry Chapin, or Bob Dylan,.

[fisherKing]

Judging by most popular hits over the years, lyrics seem to matter very little. It's more the melody and the quality of the singer/auto-tune imo. Most lyrics are, I'll just say weak. Not everyone can be a Roger Waters, Harry Chapin, or Bob Dylan,.

or the landscape has changed? lyrics matter if you're a fan singing along to a song you love, whether it's 2026 or 1966. & why would any modern artist want to be a 'Roger Waters, Harry Chapin, or Bob Dylan'? they've already been there, done that...


EDIT: just (on topic) wanted to add: a half-assed mix of a great song matters more (to me, anyway) than a pristine mix of a half-assed song.

[Najimad]

a good song, a cassette tape recorder and a DX7 is all you need.

[pluginnow]

a good song, a cassette tape recorder and a DX7 is all you need.

Yes, but you would need to be a talented genius.

[jamcat]

Hello,

I would like to introduce this topic.
Looking for the major plugins and techniques for a great song.

Of course, the most important thing is the artist himself. However, there are other considerations for a successful song or a song that sounds great.

So, I can point out some issues, not in order of importance:

- The soundstage
- Spectral Balance (lows, mids, highs)
- Tonal accuracy
- The quality of transients
- Compression
- Loudness
- Saturation

None of this is what makes music great. It's just presentation.

Performance is the only thing that matters. The human touch. If it doesn't have that, it's not music.

[sin night]

And speaking of “how a song is presented”, things like “quality of transients” are very vague concepts in my opinion.

Quality as in “pristine recording” with lots of dynamics?
Quality as in extremely controlled (compressed/limited/clipped) in an apparently transparent way?
Quality as in very punchy?
Quality as in mellow?
Quality as in “with a certain colour”?

A “classical recording” may call for “fidelity to the source” (although that may be a thing of the past, I don’t know how modern classical recordings sound…), a pop/edm record may call for a certain “hifi” expensive sound, a club record has a different balance, some music genres which have been around for decades may have “a certain sound” were recording equipment plays an important role in “sounding correctly” and if you use the best most transparent gear available then the recording will sound off, while some lesser gear may serve the recording better.
Some songs may have a quieter/mellower tone, so maybe you want to show the song with a warmer sound and smooth out the transients?

So, what’s the “quality of the transients”?

It depends on what the songs calls for…

Then, you may want “less accurate” (less true to the source) transients on some parts of recording, if those distract the listener from a more important part. Maybe you have a strummed guitar but those extremely fast transients make it hard to focus on the singer voice, so you may want to reduce their dynamics and make their attack softer…


The thing is: first and foremost you need a great song, then you decide how you want to dress it, the tone you want, what needs to be done and then you decide the gear and the techniques to record and produce the song the way you want it. Each song is different, so you need to make different choices.
To “produce” a great song, you need to be able to listen, identify what needs work, what are your expectations and then you’ll reach for your bag of techniques to get those results.


Just my two cents (when I should be sleeping, really….) on production…

And of course you need a great song and you need to write/arrange in a way that allow you to get the results you want (for example, it would be difficult to get a loud yet detailed club record with a lot of things going on especially on the low end, a certain “minimalism” serves the quest for loudness…

[Cuauhtli]

Judging by most popular hits over the years, lyrics seem to matter very little. It's more the melody and the quality of the singer/auto-tune imo. Most lyrics are, I'll just say weak. There are very few great lyricists.

Better?

[sin night]

Maybe lyrics are not very deep and meaningful, but they still touch the right spots in the intended audience.
If people feel a connection with the lyrics and maybe there’s a small fragment they feel like singing/quoting without any embarassement, then the lyrics are “good”… they serve the purpose in an effective way.


As a listener I probably agree with you on the overall level of nowadays lyrics… but those lyrics do the job regardless of my very personal taste… and a bit of effort is still required, you can’t sing the most random thing like the grocery store shopping list…

[Scoops]

Hello,

I would like to introduce this topic.
Looking for the major plugins and techniques for a great song.

Of course, the most important thing is the artist himself. However, there are other considerations for a successful song or a song that sounds great.

So, I can point out some issues, not in order of importance:

- The soundstage
- Spectral Balance (lows, mids, highs)
- Tonal accuracy
- The quality of transients
- Compression
- Loudness
- Saturation

None of this is what makes music great. It's just presentation.

Performance is the only thing that matters. The human touch. If it doesn't have that, it's not music.

Yep, and I call that human touch, groove.

[CrystalWizard]

Hello,

Of course, the most important thing is the artist himself. However, there are other considerations for a successful song or a song that sounds great.

Between this, and others you can point to, what are the most important things to a successful song?

Regards

The artist herself, and the human touch.