[meticadpa]

Music is becoming too clinical. If you hear newer bands' guitar work, or drum work or whatever, they often sound like they're played by a machine, because they're so flawless.

I like my music to have the little clicks that a plectrum makes against a guitar string. Why? It's human. It's an accurate reproduction of what a guitar does sound like, rather than what notes when played together sound like.

Does anyone else agree?

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Overproduction kills the soul of the music.

Click tracks for the drummer do the same. Perfect drumming with a beat that never wanders even a smidgen to go with the flow of the music results in music that is less human. It's like listening to Commander Data from Star Trek trying to play music. Yes, all of the notes are perfect. No, it is not musical.

 

[meticadpa]

For sure.

Music loses its soul when it becomes over-analysed and perfected. The tiny imperfections in things are what makes them human.

I like a guitar to sound like a guitar, not for a guitar to sound like a group of notes played together simulating unrealistically what a guitar should sound like.

 

[fjrabon]

It depends on the music. Oddly enough, soul music absolutely has to have perfectly on beat drumming. A friend of mine played guitar for James Brown (happy birthday JB, by the way) and he told a story about during a practice the drummer was using a click track through his headphones and JB stopped and said he was off time and the drummer was like "I'm right on the click track." JB replied "lemme hear that thang!" and the listened and said it was mesed up. Everybody kind of looked at him like he was crazy. But he made the drummer take it into a tech and it was in fact slightly miscalibrated.

But back to my point, soul and funk absolutely require near perfectly on time rhythm or it loses its impact. Metal also sounds bad if it's "sloppy".

I think another aspect is that its not so much that we like to hear the mistakes, its that we like to know that the musician is pushing himself as far as he can go. If he was messing up simple things we'd just think he wasn't very good. Whereas we like it when it sounds like he just pulled something off that was barely within his capabilities and had a couple of small mistakes to prove it. I think that's what we like more than anything, to really feel like the musicians are trying their hardest to get the music out. We don't like music to be totally effortless.

 

[meticadpa]

Hmm, that's a valid point.

Though I'm not necessarily saying that I like mess-ups, it's more that I like hearing the little clicks that are actually present whilst recording/playing a guitar. I obviously don't want a misplayed note or whatever (that could sound horrible in a harmony or whatever) but I like it when bends aren't 100% accurate, vibrato is maybe a little out, etc.

It applies to guitars a lot more than any other instrument for me. Perhaps it's because I'm a guitar player.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjrabon /img/forum/go_quote.gif Metal also sounds bad if it's "sloppy".

Sloppy is bad. But the rhythm for rock music can vary without being sloppy. A very slight slowdown or speedup during transitional parts of the music can be what is needed. Metallica doesn't use a click track (at least "enter the sandman" doesn't).

Here's a little tool I found that can analyze music for evidence of a click track: In search of the click track
It's on my list of something to play with as a fun python project. Analyze some of my favorite music and see what's click tracked and what is not.

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by meticadpa /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hmm, that's a valid point. Though I'm not necessarily saying that I like mess-ups, it's more that I like hearing the little clicks that are actually present whilst recording/playing a guitar. I obviously don't want a misplayed note or whatever (that could sound horrible in a harmony or whatever) but I like it when bends aren't 100% accurate, vibrato is maybe a little out, etc. It applies to guitars a lot more than any other instrument for me. Perhaps it's because I'm a guitar player.

By mistakes I didn't mean wrong notes so much as like slight flubs, slightly off the beat, etc. Like on most Jimi Hendrix songs his left hand technique is pretty sloppy (though his right handed technique is always right on point). He flubs tons of notes compared to a guy like Satriani. And though I appreciate Satriani and like some of his music, there is no doubt who I'd rather listen to. The other Jimmy (Page) was also notorious for being "perfectly sloppy". In fact a lot of people say he actually practiced being sloppy so that he was sloppy in just the right way, which kind of kills the effect a little, maybe.

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ham Sandwich /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sloppy is bad. But the rhythm for rock music can vary without being sloppy. A very slight slowdown or speedup during transitional parts of the music can be what is needed. Metallica doesn't use a click track (at least "enter the sandman" doesn't). Here's a little tool I found that can analyze music for evidence of a click track: In search of the click track It's on my list of something to play with as a fun python project. Analyze some of my favorite music and see what's click tracked and what is not.

For metal I was more talking about you usually need the guitar to be near perfect or it just falls into a jumble (though certain genres of metal do this on purpose). The time of the drumming was more about soul and funk.

 

[mgrewe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjrabon /img/forum/go_quote.gif It depends on the music. Oddly enough, soul music absolutely has to have perfectly on beat drumming. A friend of mine played guitar for James Brown (happy birthday JB, by the way) and he told a story about during a practice the drummer was using a click track through his headphones and JB stopped and said he was off time and the drummer was like "I'm right on the click track." JB replied "lemme hear that thang!" and the listened and said it was mesed up. Everybody kind of looked at him like he was crazy. But he made the drummer take it into a tech and it was in fact slightly miscalibrated. But back to my point, soul and funk absolutely require near perfectly on time rhythm or it loses its impact. Metal also sounds bad if it's "sloppy".

I agree to some extent with you that soul music needs to be in perfect time. But what I see it as is not "perfect time", but rather that it has a solid groove to it. To me there is a huge difference between playing perfect time and playing a solid groove, which happens to be in perfect time. It's a perception thing and I haven't heard many groovin' drummers, or drum machines, in modern music.

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mgrewe /img/forum/go_quote.gif I agree to some extent with you that soul music needs to be in perfect time. But what I see it as is not "perfect time", but rather that it has a solid groove to it. To me there is a huge difference between playing perfect time and playing a solid groove, which happens to be in perfect time. It's a perception thing and I haven't heard many groovin' drummers, or drum machines, in modern music.

I think Raphael Saadiq's last album grooves pretty hard. Disconnect the dots by Of Montreal grooves pretty good and it's a drum machine.

 

[GlendaleViper]

I have to say, for me this is only an issue with overproduced records... sadly, most modern albums (any given genre) are overproduced. There is a painfully distinct lack of musicality, particularly with drum tracks and "cleaned up" guitar/bass work (and don't get me started on vocals) in most modern studio albums where the norm is to cut-and-paste, pitch shift, compress, limit and otherwise completely sterilize the performance. This is exacerbated if you get out to see live music on a regular basis.

I know this is audiophile blasphemy, but I'll take a poorly recorded live-studio performance over a pristine-but-overproduced hack job any day of the week.

 

[fjrabon]

Quote:

Originally Posted by GlendaleViper /img/forum/go_quote.gif I have to say, for me this is only an issue with overproduced records... sadly, most modern albums (any given genre) are overproduced. There is a painfully distinct lack of musicality, particularly with drum tracks and "cleaned up" guitar/bass work (and don't get me started on vocals) in most modern studio albums where the norm is to cut-and-paste, pitch shift, compress, limit and otherwise completely sterilize the performance. This is exacerbated if you get out to see live music on a regular basis. I know this is audiophile blasphemy, but I'll take a poorly recorded live-studio performance over a pristine-but-overproduced hack job any day of the week.

it's one of the hardest thing to do working in a studio, know where to draw the line between making a great product and producing it to death. Of course it always helps to have better artists.

Part of the problem is that the artists/producers themselves don't really hear the emotion of a raw performance, they just hear the mistakes. Mick Jagger hates Exile On Main Street partly because all he hears are all the mistakes, while its probably their most "real, raw" record. I've been in a studio before where I came in and heard two different takes, one which obviously had more emotional punch, and the other that was cleaner. The people involved all preferred the cleaner version since they were so brutally aware of all the mistakes of the more emotional cut, they would literally wince at every mistake. But I had no doubt that the more emotional cut was the better one. Luckily it ended up going on the record and became a semi-minor hit, where I am sure the other version would have gotten them totally written off.

 

[CuteHanna]

Yes i share this feeling with you. Of course - i like good, clear sound in music. But triggered drums? This kind of things are killing music today. But when i get depresed by this fact i like to listen records like this YouTube - Czarci Åšwit - ...Lecz Demony Whishlandh Nadal CzuwajÄ… .

 

[Spyro]

Absolutely! Basically too much programmed music, loops, etc and not enough "live" playing.

 

[deadhead12]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjrabon /img/forum/go_quote.gif The other Jimmy (Page) was also notorious for being "perfectly sloppy". In fact a lot of people say he actually practiced being sloppy so that he was sloppy in just the right way, which kind of kills the effect a little, maybe.

Having watched "It Might Get Loud" I would think that this is absolutely true, based on what Page said his motivation for Zeppelin was.

As to the general theme of the OP's topic, and I'm not sure how this fits in but its relevant. I have had many conversations with my roommate who is a classically trained musician, as opposed to me who is just a fan, about whether or not music is art or science. My take was music is art, he said music is science and I think those differences show up in our musical preferences. (me leaning toward more live performances and "jam band" and folksy type stuff and him listening to more polished, produced hip hop and what not) I would have to say the answer is somewhere in the middle, but I tend to prefer the artistic elements in music more so than the scientific or theoretical elements. This could have something to with how records are being made and as the musicians themselves might be more aware of the technical or theoretical side to music where as the ordinary run of the mill fan (not that head-fiers are run of the mill) would rather just enjoy the music as art. As an aside I remember reading in some magazine somewhere that Paul McCartney intentionally avoided learning about music theory because he thought it would sap the artistic elements right out of his songwriting/performing.