Current trend of shouting (loudness) to try and sound important, when generally they have f*all to say.

Umm her songs must be (Are) of good quality for sure and i don't for a second doubt peoples ability to create hits and multi selling record if i did i wouldn't write songs anymore myself.

Maybe its because I've grown up in showbiz enviroment around older performers i have the view, they've rubbed off on my haha.

Although I write and produce modern pop songs doesn't mean i should only listen to modern songwriting. like i said earlier its my view only and other may not agree.

Quote Squiresy91:

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they've rubbed off on my haha.

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am i the only one immature enough to think that sounds funny?

Quote snipsnip:

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Quote Squiresy91:

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they've rubbed off on my haha.

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am i the only one immature enough to think that sounds funny?

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No, +1.

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http://soundcloud.com/anthony-wall/sets/audio-reel
http://songsforvoiceandpiano.com/

Quote Steve Hill:

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Radio 1 has been rubbish since 1967 when they kicked off with Flowers In The Rain by the Move, introduced by DJ Tony Blackburn. (Tragically, I remember where I was when I listened to this).

With rare honourable exceptions like John Peel they've always been middle-of-the-road, chart oriented pap. Exactly what you'd expect the Beeb to come up with as a tax-funded public service broadcaster tasked with doing something for "youth", and convening many committees of grey-haired old farts to consider what the brief actually meant.

If you scour the R1 playlists of the late 1960s you'll find little or no trace of Hendrix, Zeppelin, Floyd... no hope for anyone not issuing singles, and/or a bit "underground" (for which read inaccessible), or controversial. Setting fire to guitars = incitement to riot! Actually a plausible enough fear given the student riots of 68, Mao's Little Red Book, the cold war etc. I'm sure the Beeb felt it was their patriotic duty to keep the nation's youth on the straight and narrow.

Good job we had the pirates.

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It is just like today then! Nothing changed much!

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www.coorecords.com
www.last.fm/music/cloudcub

Erm rubbed off on 'ME' gulp! How embarrassing!

Quote Bradley:

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Got to admit I laughed about the Mozart comment in that interview. Putting together a 4 min pop song on a sequencer is not quite in the same league as writing a symphony with nothing but an old keyboard instrument and some manuscript!

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Perhaps he was getting confused between "Mozart" and "Falco"

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Quote feline1:

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Quote Bradley:

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Got to admit I laughed about the Mozart comment in that interview. Putting together a 4 min pop song on a sequencer is not quite in the same league as writing a symphony with nothing but an old keyboard instrument and some manuscript!

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Perhaps he was getting confused between "Mozart" and "Falco"

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LOL

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Composer, Producer, Sound Designer
www.universal-sound-design.com

Quote Bradley:

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Got to admit I laughed about the Mozart comment in that interview. Putting together a 4 min pop song on a sequencer is not quite in the same league as writing a symphony with nothing but an old keyboard instrument and some manuscript!

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'Yesterday' vs 'A.N.Other symphony'

I'd say both were as difficult to write as each other.

Quote Parker Fly:

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Quote Bradley:

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Got to admit I laughed about the Mozart comment in that interview. Putting together a 4 min pop song on a sequencer is not quite in the same league as writing a symphony with nothing but an old keyboard instrument and some manuscript!

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'Yesterday' vs 'A.N.Other symphony'

I'd say both were as difficult to write as each other.

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Well, for instance, Tchaikovsky wrote more songs than he did symphonies! They were big hits in their day, but its his 4th, 5th and 6th symphonies that the crowds go wild for these days. Maybe in another 100 years, we'll all grove to his songs again.

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Quote Parker Fly:

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Quote Bradley:

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Got to admit I laughed about the Mozart comment in that interview. Putting together a 4 min pop song on a sequencer is not quite in the same league as writing a symphony with nothing but an old keyboard instrument and some manuscript!

---

'Yesterday' vs 'A.N.Other symphony'

I'd say both were as difficult to write as each other.

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well, I'm not sure if anyone woke up from a dream with a complete symphony running through their head... correct me if I'm wrong!

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

you think not?
Symphonies only generally have 4 movements anyways
( = half a dozen actual tunes, the rest is all "orchestration" and texture, and would be scored out by the composer as bookwork)
i.e. what I'm saying is that if you wake up with half a dozen melodies and the ideas for texture in your head, you're about 80% of the way there
(sits back whilst dozens of proper classical musos spit their coffee over their screens)

Getting back to the loudness wars:
one f*cking annoying problem is that the EU have now put a cap on iPod output volumes, which means loudness-warred pop mixes are still easily audible,
but if I put a classical track on my iPod, even at full volume, I generally CANNOT HEAR the quiet bits if I'm outside with ordinary earbuds - I can't turn the iPod up loud enough.

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~~~ A weasel hath not such a deal of spleen as you are tossed with! www.feline1.co.uk ~~~

Modern LOUD music is like fast food, high in sugar and calories, designed to give an instant fix but leave you feeling empty and craving for more an hour later. Makes perfect business sense: when you're already sitting on a goldmine of music from the 50's onwards, who is going to spend £££'s developing the next Beatles, Presley, Bowie, Madonna, Prince, Pink Floyd etc when there isn't one to be found? Focus instead on making what you have - an increasingly bland selection of musical landfill (to borrow that genius phrase) - as attractive as possible. Everything to the max, bikini clad nubiles grinding into the camera, chop it up into ringtones, sell some Pepsi, part the punters with their cash and move onto the next thing. WOOF!

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Funk this, arm half due wink a trump

Ok, I just listened to the Justice album.

That is one UTTERLY RIDICULOUS level of compression.

It's like having your ears pulled from inside out of your own head.

Shame. Sorry if it's already been mentioned on this thread - don't have time to read it -but that album's a write-off IMO.

Quote jrbcm:

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Ok, I just listened to the Justice album.

That is one UTTERLY RIDICULOUS level of compression.

It's like having your ears pulled from inside out of your own head.

Shame. Sorry if it's already been mentioned on this thread - don't have time to read it -but that album's a write-off IMO.

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The compression on that album is part of it, heavily compressed synths being part of their unique sound. I love the album and the sound and don't find the compression annoying because it is used creatively. Almost like the increased use of distortion over the last 30(?) years as a means of creating something new. The production is blatent and brilliant IMO. Also, the album isn't stupidly hard limited and actually has a fair amount of dynamic range for a modern dance record. I haven't tired of it within the last year and a half.

That 'write-off' album is the most creative and successful dance releases of the last decade.

but there again how old are you, Sincratik?

I am never sure why, but I seem to end up with very loud mixes compared to a lot of commercial stuff without relying on compression. Usually end up having to tame then down quite a bit, so it isnt simply a question of squeezing the last drop of volume out of the format, I think it is laziness on the part of engineers & producers/mastering engineers when told by the label "make it sound really loud on radio etc"

Part of it I think is down to choice of textures - I tend to use a lot of disparate, fairly cleanly-recorded sounds, so I would not be able to do the same with, say, a metal album.
Would imagine that this technique would translate well onto HipHop though, god help me!
No - forget I said that!
Off to ahve a lie down....

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Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

I'm in the younger bracket of the community, why do you ask?

I don't find 'Cross' to be particularly loud, the compressors have been used for a different reason (for the most part).

Quote jrbcm:

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It's like having your ears pulled from inside out of your own head.

.

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Interesting. I find listening to over compressed music is more like having my ears pushed inside my head to the point where they cross over and come out of the other side ...

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http://anotherfineday.bandcamp.com/ http://anotherfineday.co.uk http://apollomusic.co.uk

Quote SyncratiK:

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The compression on that album is part of it, heavily compressed synths being part of their unique sound. I love the album and the sound and don't find the compression annoying because it is used creatively. Almost like the increased use of distortion over the last 30(?) years as a means of creating something new. The production is blatent and brilliant IMO. Also, the album isn't stupidly hard limited and actually has a fair amount of dynamic range for a modern dance record. I haven't tired of it within the last year and a half.

That 'write-off' album is the most creative and successful dance releases of the last decade.

---

I hear what you're saying, and 'write-off' is probably a bit strong- I love alot of the music there too, but I still think there's enough else that's interesting about the production without squashing it so heavily - all it does is obscure what's there.

And as far as dynamic range goes, yep I've heard worse, but on my Central Station the meters never dip below about -2db. It's a square wave.

Adopting my usual MOR stance, I don't think there's a real answer. When I was younger, I know of people who preferred the sound of a record after they'd "taped" it to cassette on their invariably lo-fi cheap cassette decks, packaged into cheap Japanese or Taiwanese "music centres" of highly dubious quality. Why? Because the voracious ALC (little more than a primitive, single-band compressor) turned up the quiet stuff and sat on the loud stuff to make the record sound more like they first heard it on (predominantly AM) radio. Of course I know that's analogue compression whereas what we're condemning here is wanton 'digital destruction', but the point I'm making (albeit long-windedly) is that "there's no accounting for taste".

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I'm a bedroom beatsmith in an 8x7 cell, writing trance dance and techno, and sometimes words as well...

edit cos i lost track of what the initial thread was about

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www.myspace.com/michaeldow www.myspace.com/portasoundband


Edited by Michael Dow (08/01/09 03:34 PM)

Quote feline1:

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you think not?
Symphonies only generally have 4 movements anyways
( = half a dozen actual tunes, the rest is all "orchestration" and texture, and would be scored out by the composer as bookwork)
i.e. what I'm saying is that if you wake up with half a dozen melodies and the ideas for texture in your head, you're about 80% of the way there
(sits back whilst dozens of proper classical musos spit their coffee over their screens)

Getting back to the loudness wars:
one f*cking annoying problem is that the EU have now put a cap on iPod output volumes, which means loudness-warred pop mixes are still easily audible,
but if I put a classical track on my iPod, even at full volume, I generally CANNOT HEAR the quiet bits if I'm outside with ordinary earbuds - I can't turn the iPod up loud enough.

---

Feline, this issue also affected Creative Nomad Jukeboxes (which I still, stubbornly, use): European ones were crippled with a horrible loudness limiter that also seemed to mangle the sound-quality.

The solution was to install the US firmware, which I did immediately. My Jukebox is now loud and clear. It also plays back CD quality WAVs. And has 2 line outs as well as the headphone out. The sound quality is great too.

The disadvantage is, since it's the size of a CD-walkman, using a Nomad 3 is the equivalent of having a 'brick' style mobile-phone. Maybe for classical stuff you could pick one up, though: or just find some US firmware for your iPod.

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Battle flags are flown at the feet of a garden gnome.

Quote SyncratiK:

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I'm in the younger bracket of the community, why do you ask?

I don't find 'Cross' to be particularly loud, the compressors have been used for a different reason (for the most part).

---

Because I have noticed that the younger members of our little group here seem to ahve more tolerance to mangled sound than us oldies who were brought up on stuff wot sounded close to real.

I have a real hard time listening to anything that has just had the sh1t squeezed out of everything indiscriminately to get it LOUD.
Some creative compression is fine, but there are limits and I think the majority of mixes I hear these days are well over that limit.

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Me? But I`m such a loveable old bugger!

I agree, many dance mixes are certainly over done nowadays, there's an artist I really like who spoils their tracks with hard limiting, which bugs me. I suppose your right about being younger, I think I'm pretty tolerant, partly because I like mangled sounds and partly because my ears probably don't notice it as much.

Its just the same old story - youngsters see the medium and think of a way to max out the sound. Faced with perfect digital recording what else would you do?

The Justice album is a 21st century classic as far as I am concerned - made by people who just dont give a whatever about "analogue vs digital" or how things "used to be done".

Any more than than Ray Davies did when he played guitar through a broken speaker cone, or players started deliberately "distorting" these hand crafted tube amps.

Its easy to forget that craving for energy once you reach fourty - although you will continue to defend the young and hungry guys who offended your parents when you were young.

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That sounded personal - It includes me - when I catch myself moaning about modern music!

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Quote Chaconne:

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Its just the same old story - youngsters see the medium and think of a way to max out the sound. Faced with perfect digital recording what else would you do?

The Justice album is a 21st century classic as far as I am concerned - made by people who just dont give a whatever about "analogue vs digital" or how things "used to be done".

Any more than than Ray Davies did when he played guitar through a broken speaker cone, or players started deliberately "distorting" these hand crafted tube amps.

Its easy to forget that craving for energy once you reach fourty - although you will continue to defend the young and hungry guys who offended your parents when you were young.

---

Yeah, but you're forgetting that the vast majority of historical trends and experiments go in the bin. Or at least get refined. Personally speaking, the Justice compression is just too unsubtle- the whole track is just squashed to bu55ery, wheras other dance artists use compression really creatively, and it's not easy to do.

In fairness though, I think there's something quite specific going on here. The Justice type stuff would doubtless sound great in a club, and even sounds a zillion times better when you stand away from the speakers. It's really in a studio close monitoring environment that you get the full 'having your brains sucked out of your ears' feeling.

99% of the contemporary pap, nobody is going to listen to, 5, 10 or 20 years from now. It won't stand the test of time. Want to make a bet?

There simply are no Jimmy Hendrixes, Bob Marleys and Miles Davises around anymore - leaders who moved music forward and beyond the prevalent stereotypes. That's the real problem with popular music. Over-compression and a generally crappy sound are only some of the symptoms, but not the causes for the disease.

I know that's a broad generalisation, but these days, younger audiences don't much appreciate class and originality. The record labels couldn't care less for "art" anymore either. Rather, they want to make a quick buck, and cater to the juvenile, instant-gratification crowd. Apparently, 14-year old girls are the demographic with the greatest buying power. Go figure.

Things will only change, if and when the global mindset changes. As long as we glorify consumerism and superficiality in all areas of life (of which music is a reflection), western popular music will remain on the downward trajectory that began in the mid 80s.

No one's going to take that bet Tui, because it's never been the case that much more than 1 or 2 per cent of any pop music would stand the test of time. even in The Sixties

I think I've raised this point before, but have you listened to Dale Winton's run downs (runs down?) of histories top twenties on Radio Two? There seems to have been at least as much samey guff swamping the charts as everyone competed to cash in on the sound of the latest beatles record or whatever.

I think the way that rubbish bands are able to market themselves now may be masking the difference between the good and the duff a wee bit. For example, if all you did was read reviews and check out listings and billing statuses, you would be excused for thinking that a bunch of lyrically artless joy division copycats that I don't even need to name are as good as a genuinely kicking and alive rock band like the Kings of Leon. You would also be excused for thinking that great and countryish songwriting from Midlake was some kind of weird art-music experiment.

For some reason, all I can see in my head is a room with lots of Crash magazine journalists on one side and lots of Mojo journalists on the other side, shouting at each other forever.

Which is not a vision I need haunting me on a sunday afternoon...

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

Quote IvanSC:

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us oldies who were brought up on stuff wot sounded close to real.

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that might be more concise than you realise. I think there are actually plenty of people on this forum who think that 'sounding close to real' is still a goal for producers like yer Justice.

But it wasn't really a goal for Spector, and it wasn't a goal for Jack Nitszche a lot of the time, and it was even less of a goal for Moroder... I suppose it became fashionably relevant for a while in the nineties... but really, why sound real when you have an infinitude of other sounds to choose from?

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

Quote molecular:

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it's never been the case that much more than 1 or 2 per cent of any pop music would stand the test of time. even in The Sixties

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Not at all. A great number of CDs that still find buyers are derived from the enormous back-catalogue of the 50-70s. There are entire record labels, such as Rhino Records, that market nothing but reissued music.

Many young people wouldn't know about those record sales because they never buy music from that period.

It is indeed true that a great number of records from the past still sell today. My point was that this doesn't mean that a great *percentage* of the records from the past still sell today. Alongside all of those great records were a lot of s**t, frankly. It just gets forgotten about because nobody buys it anymore. Exactly the same will be true of today in years to come.

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

I did get your point. However, my point is that the percentage of recent, contemporary music that will stand the test of time will be minuscule.

10 or 20 years from now, we will count the number of compilation albums featuring "That Great 90s Sound" or "That Great 00s Sound" by one finger of our hands.

In that case, I accept your bet!

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Anto mo Ninja, Watashi mo Ninja

Bets, bets..what happened to good old bartering?



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Samplecraze
Stretch That Note

Haha, any opportunity to use the new gif

Sorry to set off on a very slight jaunty tangent, but..

Quote JamesSimpson:

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Tim public school westwood. If i wanted to know a 50 year olds opinion on the latest hip hop record id ask my dad.

I just refuse to believe that Tim Westwood can be at all genuine.

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A lot of people forget (or perhaps just don't know) that Tim Westwood is one of the fathers of hip-hop in this country. During the mid eighties he was importing all the records he could, championing the fledgling British hip-hop scene and putting on legendary events such as his Sunday all-dayers up at Notting Hill. You may think he's 'public school' and irrelevant (you think Radiohead are irrelevant? Or insert any other of the many many excellent bands that have paid for their education) but he has certainly paid his dues. For someone to stay at the top of their field for over 20 years is someone you don't want to write off. I don't really like listening to his shows but I respect him for being, for want of a better word, a pioneer.


The crushing of dynamics in modern records is sad but it's in response to the downloading of music and the medium through which this music is played. Sadly 90% of people aren't aware of the difference in quality or sound of compromised downloads OR could not point out the differences between a Timbaland mix and an Everly Brothers mix. Radio plays a big part, no-one wants their song to be quieter than the next. Hip-hop and dance music are, on the whole, loud music meant to be played as loud as possible. Some producers have taken this to the next level and have lost some of the subtleties of a mix by squeezing the life out of everything.

Also don't forget that people seem so intent on making the vocal the loudest part of a track by a country mile. I know that 90% of people only listen to the vocals, but we're in danger of losing the intricacies and interplay of a great backing band / track.

There is no subtlety in smashing the bejesus out of everything, but it's what's in vogue at the moment - and hopefully in some far-off day it will end up sounding as out-of-place and 'naff' as some of the less desirable eighties production techniques do now.

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www.mikeandersonmusic.co.uk

Quote feline1:

---

you think not?
Symphonies only generally have 4 movements anyways
( = half a dozen actual tunes, the rest is all "orchestration" and texture, and would be scored out by the composer as bookwork)
i.e. what I'm saying is that if you wake up with half a dozen melodies and the ideas for texture in your head, you're about 80% of the way there
(sits back whilst dozens of proper classical musos spit their coffee over their screens)

Getting back to the loudness wars:
one f*cking annoying problem is that the EU have now put a cap on iPod output volumes, which means loudness-warred pop mixes are still easily audible,
but if I put a classical track on my iPod, even at full volume, I generally CANNOT HEAR the quiet bits if I'm outside with ordinary earbuds - I can't turn the iPod up loud enough.

---

But then again making a decent symphony is something quite different. Any decent symphony from classical and romantic era's have long melodies barely ever repeating with lots of texturing

Really? There always was a limit but how much quieter are they now??

I have just purchased a new ipod from the UK and I have LOTS of classical and commercial stuff to go on.

Was listening to a 10 yo album in the car today

Turned on Radio 1 and WOOOO had to turn way down, for several reason,

1). Too loud
2). Annoying Music
3). AUTO CHOON!
4). Did I say it was annoying music?