Are Todays Daw's Making People Lazy Producers ?

[vurt]

is popular chart music shite? yes, mostly.

Said every old timer ever...

im middle aged for sure, but ive pretty much always felt this way.
the majority of chart music has always been throwaway shite. with occasional diamonds in the rough.

as im sure now, for all the shite that makes it in to the top 40, there will be a few great pieces of music.

as an example, vienna by ultravox was kept from the number one slot by joe dolce, shuddupya face. which one is remembered fondly as an 80s classic?



something else that is great about today, that also comes from the digital age.
we have access to all the music of the past also, without spending 200 quid on some out of press piece of vinyl that is scratched to hell.

[Aloysius]

shuddupya face

[vurt]

the follow up "kissa my arse" was less successful.

[Aloysius]

Ah shuddupya face

[vurt]

almost as repetitive as the actual song

[antic604]

I think the biggest problem with today's DAWs is the fact that they make people forget grammar... Like the title of this topic

[BertKoor]

How many keys were there on the original MS-20, SH-101, MiniMoog, Pro One?

[vurt]

How many keys were there on the original MS-20, SH-101, MiniMoog, Pro One?

why let facts get in the way of hyperbole?

[digitalboytn]

You know what is dead in the realm of commercial music is musicality, and craft in songwriting.

The problem is not the digital domain and the amazing tools that come along with that territory...

The problem is in the hearts and minds of the people who are behind the DAWs and the digital tools...

These days a kid can waltz down to The Apple Store with a fistful of dollars ( ) and buy the latest laptop and go home,fire it up and get Logic happening, then stick in some ear buds and say,"I'm a producer ! "

That is true...everything that they need to make music is right there inside that shiny new laptop

Creativity doesn't demand a license like driving a car or flying a plane...

But without any real skills,the music that is "produced" can sound mindless and those blips and beats may grab someone's ear for a minute or two,but without the proper structure and form,it is just going to degenerate into a pile of shxt !

Back in the day,the start of the whole recording process was A&R...

You got the right artist and you put them together with the right repertoire and things started to happen...

Those songs and the arrangements were written by people who in most cases,had solid skills in their respective fields...

Then they were recorded and produced by another team of people who also knew a thing or two about what they were doing ..

Those skill sets were not put together after watching a couple of You Tube videos and wearing the latest cool fashion and all the bling...

The musicians had to know how to play their instruments,the engineers had to know how to get those sounds into the desk and then onto tape and the producers had to know how to "put it all together"....

But in the digital world,with much of the work being done by one person,there are many different hats that have to be worn and this multitasking can lead to a great deal of compromise,unless the person behind it all has considerable skills...

But let's get back to that person who has the shiny new laptop with the slickest digital tools,along with the fashion and the bling and has declared to the world that "I'm a producer !"...

Great...but what exactly are you producing ? What level are we talking about here ?

Let's compare that person to a producer with a proven track record and a serious skill set...Someone who has put together that knowledge through years of study and dedication to the art,as well as having more than a spark of genius...

Let's compare that person to someone like Quincy Jones....

There's not much more to say really is there ?

Just think about that for a minute or two

[donkey tugger]

Let's compare that person to a producer with a proven track record and a serious skill set...Someone who has put together that knowledge through years of study and dedication to the art,as well as having more than a spark of genius...

Let's compare that person to someone like Quincy Jones....

There's not much more to say really....

Just think about that for a minute or two

I hate the term, 'DAW' - pretentious arse, it's a computer, and the program is a sequencer.

More than that though, I hate that everyone is now a 'producer'. Trevor Horn is a producer, Rick Rubin is a producer, Stephen Street...etc etc. To me it was always someone who produced a work of another artist/band, overseeing the creative process, not some shite you do yourself.

[Hink]

digitalboytn, I agree but how many people here do you think wear all the hats and believe 100% they should? (not that they can which is a different story, I believe many can but maybe shouldn't) I say it all the time, my mixing skills suck and when I said this to a family member who is well known as a mixing engineer he got mad at me. The bigger picture for me is, sure I can mix my tunes so john q public likes it, but I hear where I lack but that isn't my biggest point. My point is I want outside input, my ears are tainted and biased and when it comes to mixing (and mastering) I might wish to lead the mix to where I want it to go and not where it should go. If a mixing engineer said, "c'mon Hink that's just not working and you need to redo that part" I would not be offended, I would be inspired.

I guess that's why the premise of this thread puts me off, no I'm not lazy. I'm doing so much because I can do more than ever, not that I want to. In fact I would love to hand off the work and tbh I could to more than just said family member but that would be imposing and I dont go there. As it is now I cant afford to shop it out, maybe soon but these last two years losing an income from my late wife is starting to take a toll. I just keep practicing, if I did get someone to mix songs for me it wouldn't be lazy, it would be the humane thing to do

[jancivil]

And, as per the OP here, Producer stands in for the creator of the track. It's not a composer, it's not really a producer, it's not a songwriter, it's all under this vapid umbrella term Producer. As brought to us in digitalboytn's post, all of this is one person with no particular accomplishment in any of it, but they have Apple Loops or the equivalent in teh Fruityz or whatever.

Probably not charting in the "Top Ten" or the Hot 100, but it's there in the title of this thread and most of us here have seen this for the last decade or since they signed up for an account.

I've lived in 'the naborhood' for some years. "Hip Hop" was brought in as though to indicate the death of "Rock". Well, I'm familiar. I've had nabors playing track after track, they'd pretty much have been advised by Urban Radio and it's perfectly clear someone had acquired a ONE BAR drum loop, a ONE BAR melodic loop - very likely in Apple Loops - and that's that. It's enough to rap some drivel over, and maybe a second producer has a two-note bass ostinato (for you children, a repeated motif. If buffaloed still, google it.) on some shite synth with overwhelming bass you can't discern the pitch of it's so overamped. Track after track of this garbage, no musicians allowed. Now to be fair, there is an area of Urban Radio - or it might be called R&B radio, still - which grooves like a mother and tight. Huge gap in between. And if you're not from the naborhood it's not in yer Top Any Number.

Anyone who takes the state of music from their particular awareness of 'The Top Ten' is holding up a rather empty bag and waving it around in lieu of anything substantial.

I was just reflecting, since I basically consider the vast majority of this kind of thing to be targeting children, what was the situation like when I was in primary school, for me. There wasn't a lot I had any desire to hear a second time. I thought Land of 1000 Dances was a little bit interesting, it was exotic to me. I liked the Monkees. The Monkees used good musicians, top of the crop of LA studio cats. I won't have known that... but I grew up under my father's record collection... so anyway I also liked the music in the Batman TV series. We went to buy a record at the K-Mart and my father directed me to the original Neil Hefti record and showed me Neil Hefti with Stan Kenton and so forth. But I liked Mary, Mary because the beat. I liked it more than the Beatles, which at this time (ca.1966, before I started smoking weed and found out about Rubber Soul and Revolver) I cared nothing about. Actually a kid the next street down had I Saw Here Standing There on 45, which was cymbals-heavy so I would practice to that. But I went directly from the Mary, Mary to Fire by Hendrix in my drum lessons. I was 12.

Grow the f up and stay off my lawn.
Seriously, I have a fairly objective consideration behind 'this music sucks like it never did before'.

[woggle]

I was just reflecting, since I basically consider the vast majority of this kind of thing to be targeting children,

Yes, adults are listening to music for children, "tweens" and adolescents and acting as if that music is for adults. Same with TV and film.

[jancivil]

arrested development

[digitalboytn]

digitalboytn, I agree but how many people here do you think wear all the hats and believe 100% they should?

I'm not saying that wearing all of the hats is a good thing at all...

But in most cases these days,that's just the way it is...

It's incredible how much one person can do in the box now,but is that producing better music ?

Personally,I think not...

Maybe more technically polished material,but not better music...

In another post here in this same thread,I said that I felt that much of what was missing from a lot of the music we hear today is human interaction...

The composers and songwriters,the arrangers,orchestraters and the musicians,along with the engineers and the producers...

Each contributing their specialised skill set to a project...

If we could harness the power of the internet and have real online collaborations to bring back some of the collective vibe,that would be so cool !

But if nothing else,this thread has been rather dynamic with more that it's fair share of bannings and suspensions,along with a fair amount of donkey tugging going on