The Death Of Mistakes Means The Death Of Rock

swilow

swilow

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Pretty interesting article here. I tend to listen to a lot of pretty sloppy musicianship, from lo-fi black metal, chaotic death metal and 'organic' doomy stuff, and find most modern rock (and a lot of metal) to be so excessively quantized and totally in time/in-tune/etc. that it really doesn't sound like humans playing instruments. Whilst I fucking love such music, and make heaps of IDM and psytrance which needs to be 'perfect', and I really can admire ultra-clean production, I do think we are losing some of the soul and character in music. I actually find that I artificually introduce mistakes into my own compositions, I love trying to recreate tape drag and hiss, and the pitchy wavering of analog instruments.

Anyway, worth a read :) I'm struggling to access the actualy recording of "Rain" referenced in the article so you'll need to find it.

The Death Of Mistakes Means The Death Of Rock

Want to hear a really sloppy record? It's a good song, but the recording's a mess. The drums consistently drag the rhythm; the bass player isn't quite sure how his part is supposed to go. If you listen carefully to the end of the second verse (around the 48-second mark in this video), the whole band gets lost for a moment and ends up adding an extra beat by accident.

[video]https://youtube/bdrGS__yg6Q[/video]

It is, of course, The Beatles' "Rain," as great a rock recording as anyone's ever made. And it's full of mistakes, accidents and inconsistencies that would be utterly unacceptable by the pop-music standards of 2009.

Now imagine what would happen if some band of 25-year-olds with radio aspirations wrote and recorded "Rain" today. That take would probably be thrown out, or at least digitally edited to fix the screw-up; even if they played it right, the drum track would get imported into ProTools and snapped back into strict rhythm any time it drifts behind the beat. The lead singer's wobbly notes, and the not-quite-in-tune bass guitar, would get fixed with AutoTune. The all-over-the-place guitar dynamics would be tightened up with a compressor-limiter. It'd still be a fine song, but the recording would be impossibly boring ? as frictionless and dull as the recordings even the best mainstream rock bands often end up making now.

Voices, guitars and drums are really expressive instruments for the same reason that they're really inexact instruments: Tou can't coax the same note or beat out of them exactly the same way twice, even if you try. They're never perfectly in tune, and any number of factors can throw their sound a little bit off. Add that to the fact that, if you're working with analog tape (as almost all pop musicians did before the mid-'80s), you're basically stuck with the performance you've got, and you end up with recordings that mercilessly document endless errors, small and large.

The large ones sometimes used to make it out into the world; occasionally, they even turned up in hits. James Brown's "Sex Machine" has a wreck of a keyboard solo; the Mamas and the Papas' "I Saw Her Again" includes Denny Doherty flubbing the beginning of a chorus. That doesn't happen anymore, and hasn't since massively multitrack recording became standard operating procedure for pop: Losing an error doesn't mean abandoning a group's entire performance.

Another kind of inconsistency has been methodically crushed over the last two decades, literally and figuratively, in what audio engineers call the "loudness wars": the competition for new recordings to be as loud as possible. If a piece of music can be compressed to a very narrow dynamic range ? a minimal distance between its quietest parts and its loudest parts ? then that means the whole thing can be really, really loud. It sounds bold and forceful when you put on a CD or play an MP3 file; it's clearer and less likely to flicker out when it's played on the radio. If you listen to a super-compressed, very loud recording next to an uncompressed version of the same thing with a wider dynamic range, the louder one is going to seem much more immediate and consistent. It's also going to be harder to listen to at length, because the natural dynamics of rock groups ? not just the difference between quiet parts and loud parts of a song, but also the accidental fluctuation from one moment to the next ? suffocate when they're squashed. Here's a video that demonstrates the damage the loudness wars have inflicted:

And now, the smallest errors are vanishing, too. The gift that modern digital technology has given pop music is the ability to fix every nagging inconsistency in a recording, note by note and beat by beat. If you hear a contemporary mainstream rock record, you're almost certainly hearing something that has been digitally nipped and tucked and buffed until it shines.

The little inconsistencies in musicians' performances aren't just glitches, though: They're exactly what we respond to as listeners ? the part that feels like "style," or even like "rock." The exciting part of guitar-bass-drum-voice music is the alchemy of specific musicians playing with each other, and the way those musicians' idiosyncratic senses of timing and articulation and emphasis relate to each other. That's where the rhythmic force of rock 'n' roll comes from; that's also why a great band can replace one of its members with someone who's technically a more skillful musician, only to discover that their instrumental chemistry isn't there anymore.

Fix enough little mistakes and inconsistencies in a rock recording ? snap its rhythms and pitches to a grid ? and you've effectively replaced all of a band's members with technically more skillful musicians. That can be very useful for some kinds of pop, especially kinds in which a well-executed composition is more important than an idiosyncratic performance. On the other hand, it's dangerous or even fatal to recordings in traditions like rock ? the kinds of music that thrive on friction. The high-tech ideal of popular music means no botched rhythms, no sour notes, no shaky dynamics, but also no "Sex Machine," no "Louie Louie," no "Rain." It's not always worth the trade-off.
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-Source
 
Interesting.

I love mistakes in music. If you listen to "please please me" (to use another beatles example) both john and paul fuck up the last verse (you hear john's first "come on" prechorus after that verse and he's laughing (this is around 1 minute 30 into the track) and it gives it a big part of its charm, and its natural feel.

I have a bit of an unorthodox preference for recording as well.
I've made an album that used click track and drum machine, which gave metronomic timing - but i prefer the imperfection of human rhythm.
I also have a disliking of doing too many overdubs - because it sometimes comes out sounding too tacked-together when all of the instruments are recorded in perfect studio isolation, and sliced together.

Personally i prefer the ("primitive") recording techniques utilised in the pre-digital age, where studio recordings were typically done by having a group of musicians literally in a room together, and bouncing off one another's energy.

Most engineers i've worked with want all the amps to be totally isolated (in different rooms) and away from the drums etc, because it gives them a lot more ability to work with the sound, and to cut and drop in different takes and whatever without it being noticeable.

The first record i made, we had this fucking sloppy drummer, and some of his snare hits were way off the beat, and because our amps were all isolated in different rooms and stuff, the engineer was able to drag and drop the snare hit into the beat - or just copy and paste one of the previous bars.

But the recordings i've been most satisfied with was an EP i made a few years ago which consisted of a mic on each amp and a few on the drums - with us all together in one room, with no overdubs.
There was heaps of bleed - which i love - and recording engineers typically hate.
Basically that means the drum mics were picking up my guitar amp, and the mic on my guitar amp was picking up things like snare hits.
I love that sound because it has this reverb resonance kinda thing - not sharp and precise, but it sounds like us playing live.
Like a fucking rock'n'roll band.
It sounds warm and kinda BIG because the instrument sounds are all bleeding through into each other, which i enjoy.

There is some slick music i like, but i like guitar based rock'n'roll to be raw, and down and dirty.

"Mistakes" are a good thing in some music - but honestly i think the article is a little alarmist.

There are still cantankerous punks like me making records that are done cheaply and with the best recording equipment we can find that someone will let us use (or we'll pay them to use).
There are less and less big budget rock albums being made - but there has never been more low-budget independent rock n roll albums being made.

Viva lo fi :)
 
Purification, is a terrible addiction, imho.






*when you discover the revelation of peeling away Jordan Peterson's, unshiny PR ( I am the perfect father, you never had guru/aka I get paid more by selling to the 'largest' YT demographic), business model.

Selling ideology to a needy demographic you've studied and improves your odds of wealth - check.
Making sure your ideology gets approved without question - check
Cha-ching- check
Following-up with the responsibility that you eulogise about - not so much.
 
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Theres a band called Camp Cope and they released an album called something along the lines of "How to make friends and socialise".

Ive heard a lot of it on JJJ.

Its a very raw sound, some tracks are a lot better than others but one track the singer just recorded by herself and played guitar, didnt do anything else and the finished product was the first recording.

I cant remember the same, "I have you" something like that.

Her dad was the singer in an Aussie band Redgum and he died from cancer, very raw song and worth looking up.


She sounds an awful lot like a female him so it makes sense ..
 
^ never heard of them but just checked them out. Awful name.

... the dissonance in live performance - when art imitates humanity, not sich-heil but the universal fist, of 'fuck you' the only necessity to 'conform' to bullshit, is so that you keep that fist raised, above it, ( always ) and until - hehe... Yup. %)

 
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^ Ah here, heard some of their songs and they are sweet tbf...but terribly boring imo. THen again, I like PJ and a lot of people felt the same way so, I get having a sweet band that is sweet being antagonised, for no discernable reason - which I wouldn't do.


How and ever, I still stand that the name is god-fucking awful. Especially, as the band offer nothing to cope accept, singing for themselves ( which PJ did - and was mostly true, in their later years but they did havemany outwardly looking themes, in their zenith - which got you thinking and stopped the brain stagnation completely).

If you like it, you like it but it is, imo, artistically, vapid.

Just my 2c. and to each their own but by 'my own', is 'superior'. ;)

...not here to be liked, eh? ...and if we all supported the team, we'd be in a state of stagnation, also.
 
I've only seen em once, but they're friends of friends, etc.
One of many many many melbourne bands :)

RVG are a fucking great band. I'd definitely recommend them.
 
^ Cool man, thats how it is. As much as I sound like a giant asshat. Maybe I misunderstand if the name is 'ironic' or some shit but I immediately thought of Ned Flanders. lol ;)

I think young, talented musicians need more fucking fire in their gut. We live in one of the most repressive of times - where any form of individual, gut - intentionality is thwarted beyond human. It is like people are being fed a diet of blandness in order to dampen any change ( while their is an illusion of rebellion via social networks etc.). Sad times. :/
 
I think technology is probably the biggest hinderance to "good art" at the moment.

People used to create to alleviate boredom.
With the advent of youtube, facebook etc etc people can be amused by endless distractions nowadays.
It's virtually impossible to get bored in the way we did pre-internet.
I think that's part of the reason for the blandness of (absence of?) organic youth culture.
 
Technology is a tool; we choose how we use it- we are not collective dipshits; we are willful, thinking and feeling, beings.
 
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