Over-engineering Musical Solutions

[beats me]

I’ve definitely learned a lot more over the years but certainly not enough to replace a team of specifically skilled people which I think is expected today.

As far as hypothetical situation tutorial videos go, ADSR recently released a great series on Future House (which is Deep House, giving a genre a new name doesn’t mean it’s a new genre). What makes it great is it walks you through the process of creating a specific song. By the end you should have close to what the presenter made. It goes from creating the sounds from scratch through to the final mix of the song. You get a direct comparison while learning. I wish there were more tutorials like that. It’s not “EDM music generally uses this” which you may or may not want to apply.

Just as importantly the track created is actually decent. I hate tutorials where the presenter’s track is utter shit.

Your post exemplifies very well the point Tarekith just made.
It talks all about the how and never about the why. You end up with a perfectly produced House track you could be proud of..............if only you'd have had anything to do with it.

Sure the track isn’t mine but I learned a ton about working with Logic, Massive, and Maschine to get a finished result. A lot of it I will use in my own productions. And there are “why”s sprinkled in there. It’s just not the focus.

Compare that to generic videos going over different compressors or kick stacking and my eyes (and ears) just glaze over.

[TomViolenz]

can't say, since I never watch videos. It's just not a method that suits my learning style. OTOH, I found pretty much everything I ever needed to know about music production in one form or another here on the forums and by following my ears

[beats me]

Different methods work better for different people.

I seem to recall one of the first things Timothy Allan did when he started producing music was scour the considerably smaller Internet for production techniques and that served him well. Now it’s all a lot of noise, redundancy, and “throw this new plugin at it.”

[fishmonkey]

I think it's partly that, production techniques are procedural : do this then that with this tool.
But we need to incorporate the responsive : when this does this, that should do that.

Making responsive work as an individual is tough, because you have to do both this and that. I am drums and bass, one after the other, procedurally, not both at the same time responding to each other reactively.

It's much easier to work as a single person procedurally, to make the drums, then make the bass, then make the lead sound.

I've started copying Alessandro Cortini's performance technique to try and get around this. Making everything at once. I've not got it nailed yet though.

for related reasons i like this kind of stuff by Nils Frahm, everything flowing in real-time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLNeZogTsK8

[Citizen]

Hmmmm... this looks like a very interesting thread, with some very widely applicable knowledge. I'm at work now, so will have to return to it.

Also, thanks again to Tarekith and Tom Violenz for being two of the most consistently informative and helpful posters on this forum.

[Citizen]

Your post exemplifies very well the point Tarekith just made.
It talks all about the how and never about the why. You end up with a perfectly produced House track you could be proud of..............if only you'd have had anything to do with it.

Exactly! Nail on head.

Although, there are the rare tutorials that provide the insight - the 'why' behind the how – and those are invaluable. Timothy Allen is one of those guys.

I actually sometimes find it useful to watch a tutorial that is of a genre than I have no intention of actually writing – as then you focus more on the underlying concepts, and not simply replicating the surface aesthetic.

[Tarekith]

I think one of the things that helps me the most is reading interviews with producers who work in genres or with techniques I'll never use. Country music, classical recording techniques, recording Motown guitars, etc. Not so much for what gear they used, but more the thought process behind it.

The downside of learning about only one style of music is that often by the time you get good at it, everyone else has moved on to th latest new style or genre.