Some In the Eye of the Beholder Shit

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 9:37 pm

Have you ever had the thought that there are too many beats, tracks, sounds/patches, but not enough Songs?

background: i primarily make hiphop but love all kinds of music, grew up in punk and rock bands and make some tech too, imo there is this phenomena happening where the desire to make a song seems to be kind of lost. I'm not talking about techniques like pop structures or anything of that nature I'm not the type of person that cares if there is a chorus in a song or not and no matter how extreme or not of the composition style/method thats all valid to me but what I mean is lack of 'purpose'.

you know like you sit down and write a song because you have a reason to do so, does that sound weird?
so i have alot of peers who make music too just like most everyone here and lately it's just been nagging my friends are talking to me about beats, new beats better beats beats and more beats, or tracks...dude i just finished 60 tracks and..... or some of my friends are making sounds lots of sounds like so many sounds a deaf person could probably hear them, but I hardly ever hear anyone talking about writing songs, I even hear more of people talking about tracks and needing to get a vocalist to put on the track
but it's usualy to sing some shit that they don't even really care about, it's more like an afterthought or something, i'm not even really sure what i'm trying to say but it's like there have been millions of great songs written with just a piano, no complaining about patches that have been heard or not designed good enough and it seems like the difference is that the classic music people love had some sort of purpose or reason to exist as opposed to being another beat.
can anyone else relate to what i'm getting at, it even seems like some people make music just to release it publicly, now my songs are not the greatest cause i'm not the greatest at any of the things i do musicly but each one does have a purpose or imho what's the point.

sparklepuff · Post by **sparklepuff** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:03 pm

Whoa. I hear what you're saying. But now perhaps it is time for a nap?

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:08 pm

Being primarily a vocalist myself I unfortunately have to acknowledge your observations. I remember asking my former guitar-player once what he would tell the press what our songs are about: Riffs? Beat? Sound?

These are all important parts of music, but you wont need any of them for songs (Beat maybe). Sum the melody line of a song and people will recognize it. Try to sing a Riff once in a while, not that easy. Song still derived from Singing.

It's more about melody than lyrics though. You can hum your baby to sleep with a simple lullaby, lyrics don't matter there. Onomatopoeia (yes had to look that up in a dic myself: Echoism) is a great thing that I know Mike Patton (former Faith No More) and Chris Cornell (former Soundgarden/Audioslave) said to be often doing. We singers often do it when rehearsing new material which we don't have any lyrics for yet. You sing rather random wired words and phrases which just seem to fit to the melody and beat, sometimes you make songs out of it (see Black Hole Sun or a couple of Radiohead songs).

roby · Post by **roby** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:15 pm

Echoism? Wow, I didn't know that had a name. I always though I was just being lazy... hehehe

beats me · Post by **beats me** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:16 pm

135% of peope in music do everything except complete an actual song. Most people in electronic music are worried way more about production than a song with meaning. Most dance music writers couldn't care less if a song has meaning or emotion behind it. If gets people to dance then who gives a shit what the meaning, if any, is behind it.

At the same time everybody is an electronic music expert and the critic, even if they don't make music themselves. The listener is also obsessed with production over substance behind the music.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Mon Dec 03, 2007 10:24 pm

roby wrote:Echoism? Wow, I didn't know that had a name. I always though I was just being lazy... hehehe

Actually these two words were spit out by Leo's dic when I tried to find a translation for the german word "Lautmalerei". This can mean making just noise with your voice, or trying to copy natural sounds with only the voice. But it also means to sing something that more consist of vowels (important for melody) and consonants (important for rythm) than actual words/phrases.

And it's far from laziness, because once you try to make that into meaningful and maybe even intellectual lyrics while maintaining the feel and sound of what you've improvised with echoism before it becomes really hard work (even more so if you want/have to use English when it's not your native language).

EgAD · Post by **EgAD** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 2:54 am

i don't think it's write to criticize how one makes music, i mean some people think a song is not a song if it doesn't have vocals or some people even think whole genres of music are not music, thats not where i'm coming from at all, I think everything is music it just seems like right now that alot of music is made
for nothing. like i wonder how many people are asking themselves these days why they are writing the paticular song that they are writing.

anyway, it is nap time

Nod · Post by **Nod** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 3:24 am

Timur wrote:Actually these two words were spit out by Leo's dic when I tried to find a translation for the german word "Lautmalerei". This can mean making just noise with your voice, or trying to copy natural sounds with only the voice. But it also means to sing something that more consist of vowels (important for melody) and consonants (important for rythm) than actualy words/phrases.

Very like Lisa Gerrard's vocal style - on the eight Dead Can Dance albums she, much of the time, sang in her own, make-believe language pulled from dozens of different cultural influences. Essentially any words would distract from what she was attempting to convey...

Moody · Post by **Moody** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 4:56 am

I just like to make noise.

gjm · Post by **gjm** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:48 am

millions of great songs written with just a piano

I have observed in many other area's of industry and endeavour that the hardest thing to do is the simplist. In fact, I have often seen absolute brilliance in the simplist of solutions. When you have at your disposal an abudence of options, you can easily be lead into things far too complicated. Faced with only a bare instrument, a melody and some words, you are forced to cut the fat away. Its harder to convey your message with the correct intent, simply and honestly when you stick to the bare essentials.

Technology has provided some wonderful solutions (and disgraceful conduct) at times for our planet. As musical artists we have benefited from this with some of the tools we have at our disposal. However, I have seen people get distracted by all of the bells and wistles, and neglect to work on their core craft, writing the basic song. Too many people start the writing process at the technology end of things, rather than at the basic end of things. IMO technology should be used to touch up the finish product, not be the point of it.

Just because you own a piece of software that allows you to design a house dosen't mean you can design good ones. It will help with your work flow, automate certain activities and print beautiful drawings, all without picking up a pen! You might even be able to design 10 houses in the time it used to take one! Still dosen't mean you can design good architecture. Same with music software, it's cheaply accessible to mediocre talent who can produce lots of stuff that is not really good. Technology has made it easier to create junk. That's why there is lots of it around. This is not to take away from the skill of using the equipment, it's just to say that there are less really good musicians (I mean people who play actual instruments and who understand the basic's of music) these days making music. The same can be said in other disciplines.

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 9:55 am

Have a look at the Abbey Roads tv-show where current bands/musicians try to record songs from the Sergeant Pepper album on its 40th birthday. It's all recorded with the old 4-track desk so these bands have to record their track just like they did 40 years ago today.

First band to try is the "Kaiser Chiefs" and they admit that usually they record their music by doing several takes and edit it with Pro Tools afterwards. They have some real problems doing it the old way, because it demands so much better playing from them and they first have to get a feeling for what is a good take and what is bad one. Great show btw.

Phil Collins said about Ringo Star's drumming on that album that it's some really complicate stuff and that most really good drummers of our time wouldn't be able to play it. Point is, by having all the comfortable tools at our disposal we forget to work out playing skills to perfections. But can we be blamed? Not too much, I think, because the industry and also the audience want short-living products that renew themself in short cycles. No time for perfection there...

Timur · Post by **Timur** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:04 am

This is what professional musicians do before recording.

pepezabala · Post by **pepezabala** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 10:38 am

When I am sick of making "tracks" as opposed to songs, I still can grab my guitar and sing some

And then I met this guy who writes wonderful songs. I will play the bass for him. We won't use computers.

listen to his stuff: http://www.myspace.com/fisheart

(although I am really tempted to make some remixes of his stuff)

elemental · Post by **elemental** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:21 am

interesting points here...

I think there are different arts involved in producing a whole "song" - these days one producer does the beats, sound design, melodies, arrangment, mixing... whereas the "one man show" used to be a lot rarer - e.g. DJs would go to a studio and have an engineer do the technical stuff, also people producing together seemed to be more common then.

It depends what you want to do - some people just wanna make noise, some just wanna make beats, others just wanna get the perfect mix - writing a whole "song" often gets lost ... to bring all of these together requires time and patience, something we have less and less of. As there is less and less money in music, people need to do it in their spare time, so of course they (myself included) just do what they can with the time they have. But this is spilling over into another topic now...

pat the dog · Post by **pat the dog** » Tue Dec 04, 2007 11:45 am

elemental wrote:writing a whole "song" often gets lost ...

so true. especially when you have live's clunky arrange window to deal with.

getting some beats and ideas together is only 10% of the work in creating a song. the real work goes into arranging a song structure and fitting everything together which of course doesn't give you the instant gratification of making a great-sounding 8 bar loop. but nothing compares with the feeling of finishing a track you're happy with.

looking at some other threads, i get the impression that a lot of users a moving on from that beat-making phase which live has always been great at and is even better at with the new features in v7. i hope ableton recognise this and put some more focus on developing the arrangement tools a bit further in the next update.