Now that things are easy to do, why don't we do them?

[Anderton]

I was thinking about this because of the new song I posted, which uses backward guitar. Whenever I do that, people always ask "How did you get that effect?!?" Well, the short answer is "click on the DSP function that says 'reverse.'" The longer answer is create a reversed premix to play along with, and sometimes, I'll play a forward solo prior to reversing the audio so I can follow along with it while playing what will become the "backward" solo. In any event, it's a whole lot easier than the way we used to do it, which was flipping tape reels.

 

Same with preverb - it's easy to do now, but no one seems to do it. Or take CD players. With vinyl, people used to skip around and play various cuts. Now that CD players have made that process super-simple, it seems folks are more likely just to let the CD play through (while sometimes complaining that they're too long and have too much filler).

 

So what's the deal? Does doing something off-the-wall lose its appeal if it becomes too easy to do? Or maybe particular sounds have just fallen out of fashion so no one wants to do them any more, regardless of how easy they are to do?

[blue2blue]

I had to make a rule about not seeming to include reverse guitar in all my projects starting back in '96 when I first got my DAW going. Very first track I did was lousy with backwards guitar -- which I'd used occasionally in analog tape days but had no convenient way of doing on ADAT (save for bouncing out to two track editor on the computer, reversing there, and then flying it back in). I still probably use too much.

 

And I'm all about shuffling and rearranging the queue in my subscription player -- not to mention avoiding the junk filler 'bonus' outtakes, studio chatter, and old radio adverts that the labels seem to think are inducements to buy yet another repackaging of a classic album -- geez, I hate that crap.

 

 

BUT.... all that said, the one thing that's now 'easy' that I seem to have increasing difficulty making myself do: turn on the machine.

 

I'll sit and play guitar for hours (and I think I might actually be getting somewhere, either that or the alzheimer's makes me forget I already knew it)... but I just can't seem to trick myself into hitting the big red button...

[MrKnobs]

Some things were only done BECAUSE they were hard - not because they were good. Another way of looking at it is when only a few people have the tools and expertise to do something, it's de facto a novelty. Once everyone can (and does) do it (e.g. autotune as an effect) then it gets old quick.

 

One mouse watching you eat lunch at the zoo is cute. 10 mice watching is an infestation, 100 mice is a horror movie.

 

Terry D.

[Anderton]

Some things were only done BECAUSE they were hard - not because they were good. Another way of looking at it is when only a few people have the tools and expertise to do something, it's de facto a novelty. Once everyone can (and does) do it (e.g. autotune as an effect) then it gets old quick.

 

Terry D.

 

That makes sense with some things, except that people simply aren't doing effects like preverb and backwards tape, so those aren't a question of "everybody does it." The last time we had a surfeit of background sounds was in the early 70s, so I think people have had time to recover. And I'm not sure they've worn out their welcome. On the (admittedly rare) times I've use them, people are curious about the effects and think they're cool.

 

On the other hand, gated reverb on drums...

[blue2blue]

Oh, golly, I've felt more than a few times in the last ten years that backwards guitar was sneaking into cliche status in some of the music I listen to. Maybe I'm just self-conscious because I use it so much myself. I just got done sending a link to someone who wants to cover one of my songs and was thinking about the

and rhythm guitar on it in relation to this thread, in fact.

[Goober(s)]

effects don't substitute for good music

[MikeRivers]

Seems to me that many things that I do have been made harder by technology, and the end result isn't necessarily better. I don't do backwards guitar, but more often than I used to, I'll look for a processor or diddle with settings trying to improve something over what I did initially. Usually I don't end up with a compelling reason to use the "after fooling around for too long" result other than to justify the time it took.

 

Most technological developments don't make things any easier, they sometimes make things we don't really need more accessible, and they always make us change from the way we used to do things that used to work just fine.

 

You can tell me that I don't HAVE to get a new computer or a new phone, but those are things that you no longer can use for 20 years because of changes in the technology that surrounds them.

[Geoff Grace]

My experience is that major artists want to do new things with technology and not revisit old things that have already been done. In other words, how easy it is to do is beside the point. Innovative or unusual effects are more likely to create a buzz that could help market an artist or establish a style—the way BT did with stutter edits.

 

Best,

 

Geoff

[MrKnobs]

Seems to me that how difficult (or easy) something is to do has very little to do with how much it's done - unless it's flat out impossible or really expensive in terms of $$$ or time. If something is really useful it's done a LOT more when it becomes easier / cheaper to do.

 

Examples: (off the top of my head, feel free to add more)

 

Backwards guitar: Was harder, now easy, still a gimmick and not widely done.

 

Backwards vocal: See backwards guitar above.

 

String samples live: VERY useful, used to take a $$Mellotron, now every kid has a Casio with good string patches.

 

Drum sound replacement / augmentation: Was impossible, on nearly everything now, recorded AND live.

 

Vocal pitch correction: Was impossible, then expensive, now trivial, used on nearly everything.

 

Creating drum track from loops: very useful! Was hard and slow with tape, Tom Sholtz did it, now digital, hear it everywhere, recorded and live.

 

Echo: So useful it was done by everyone even when you had to have a tape unit.

 

Reverb: So useful it was done by everyone even when you had to have a ROOM with mics in it.

 

Gated 'verb: Dear GOD, that was done to death just after Phil Collins, rarely seen now.

 

PreVerb? Meh. Where's a stunning example of that significantly changing a song? Doubt the average listener would notice.

 

Talk box: Wasn't ever too hard, but Frampton kinda nailed the coffin shut. Points to Bon Jovi for finding a subtle use later.

 

Pitch correct as an effect? Done to DEATH and then some, but still hanging in there. We can only hope.

 

Terry D.

[onelife]

When the recording of music was hardware based we asked what else we could do with the hardware - how can we set it up differently to achieve different or unusual results.

 

Now that production has become software based, we treat it like any other computer program - which of the many available drop down menu options am I going to need for this project.

 

If the idea of backwards guitar comes up today it may get quickly dismissed simply because there are so many other instantly available options.

 

[UstadKhanAli]

I like to do reverse guitar and preverb and use it in songs, but I'm not going to do it any more often merely because it's convenient.

[Lee Knight]

effects don't substitute for good music

 

Nor does orchestration, but it can be a welcome and vital part of a great piece of music.

 

No offence to you, but you're really stating the obvious. Yes, make the song a great one. In any way you can. From soup to nuts. That soup portion of the creation should be meticulous. In other words; write a great piece of music first.

 

Sage advice, yet I would hope elementary for most.

[Lee Knight]

The mere effect is nothing more than a mere effect, but...

 

...musical use of an effect... that's quite a different story. All those clangy metallic sample clashes in the 80's. Jaw dropping at first but eventually just sounded like a mishap in the kitchen. But then look at Trevor Horn's Art of Noise or Owner of the Lonely Heart work. Love it or hate it, it was musical. Contradict that and I believe you're nitpicking to nitpick and intentionally missing the point.

 

So, backward guitar? Reverse cymbal swells? Preverb? They are no more effective than unison flute and oboe. Who cares unless it moves a piece along and serves a purpose musically.

[blue2blue]

Seems to me that many things that I do have been made harder by technology, and the end result isn't necessarily better. I don't do backwards guitar, but more often than I used to, I'll look for a processor or diddle with settings trying to improve something over what I did initially. Usually I don't end up with a compelling reason to use the "after fooling around for too long" result other than to justify the time it took.

 

Most technological developments don't make things any easier, they sometimes make things we don't really need more accessible, and they always make us change from the way we used to do things that used to work just fine.

 

You can tell me that I don't HAVE to get a new computer or a new phone, but those are things that you no longer can use for 20 years because of changes in the technology that surrounds them.

I dunno... I guess there's so much similar and so much so very dissimilar in me and Mike's backgrounds that it seems like we often bookend any given technology topic.

 

We both like to hang on to stuff that works -- I only moved from XP to Win7 when Dell was blowing out the last of their i5's preloaded with W7 -- great deal! And I still have the 8 year old ~$400 P4 with XP on it as an auxiliary machine (and to run a couple of old programs that didn't make the transition to W7 gracefully).

 

But, all the same, I seem to find a lot of things to really like moving forward, even as I remain skeptical of a lot of 'change for change sake' type stuff. I like new toys, I like exploring them. Some become tiresome quickly. But some provide hidden depths and open up new avenues.

 

 

[UstadKhanAli]

 

Nor does orchestration, but it can be a welcome and vital part of a great piece of music.

 

No offence to you, but you're really stating the obvious. Yes, make the song a great one. In any way you can. From soup to nuts. That soup portion of the creation should be meticulous. In other words; write a great piece of music first.

 

Sage advice, yet I would hope elementary for most.

 

It is obvious, but yet......

 

It's not unlike lots of things. So for instance, you could use effects on keyboards or guitars to enhance a sound, with that becoming a welcome and vital part of a great piece of music.

 

We all know it always starts with great songs, great musicians, great sounding instruments, that kind of thing. That's obvious. Effects can really enhance a mood and put something over the top if done right, and that's what we as musicians and engineers are always trying to achieve.

 

Again, obvious, but who knows, maybe not for some.

[gubu]

You'd do all of those wacky tape fx in the old days to prove that it could be done. Now that the machine can do it for you, it's not nearly as much fun, and not anywhere near as great a proof of your own ingenuity.

 

Ditto flicking through tracks on a vinyl LP - having to lift the needle, find the correct silent groove, be super careful not to mangle the drop, for the sake of your ears, and the physical record - all that stuff was and is a delightful experience. Flicking 'next' on a CD remote, not so much..

[WRGKMC]

I do like a challenge when I add things to a mix. I suppose it goes back to when I recorded analog and I'd micro tweak "everything" to squeeze out every ounce of quality a piece of gear could produce. I find myself doing that with digital tools and often have to stop and slap myself in the head when I realize I'm just spinning my wheels because there aren't any sweet spots to be found with that particular tool.

 

Other tools may need a whole lot of tweaking to do simple things but its often not the same kind of tweaking I'd use with analog gear.

 

In all cases what I choose to use is driven by the music. If the music is creative and lends the opportunity to use audio tools creatively I'll use them. If its simpler music designed to be heard in a simple manor then there not much sense wasting time trying to use a bunch of stuff they doesn't fit the music and just stick with the stuff that can be used well to enhance it. For some reason allot of the music I've been writing tends to be in that category so mixing hasn't been very challenging lately. I know the wheel will eventually turn again and I'll be wishing I had a bunch of simple songs to mix again.

[blue2blue]

You'd do all of those wacky tape fx in the old days to prove that it could be done. Now that the machine can do it for you, it's not nearly as much fun, and not anywhere near as great a proof of your own ingenuity.

 

Ditto flicking through tracks on a vinyl LP - having to lift the needle, find the correct silent groove, be super careful not to mangle the drop, for the sake of your ears, and the physical record - all that stuff was and is a delightful experience. Flicking 'next' on a CD remote, not so much..

Wow... I don't think I ever once thought that dropping the needle was a delightful experience. Every needle drop puts in one more tick, every needle pass, a little more wear. I made a rule for myself as a kid: one play per day. Period. I wanted to keep my records pristine. I worked the better part of a year selling organic cleaner door to door, washing cars, (not many lawns in my heavily landscaped neighborhood) to afford what the reviewers breathlessly suggested would be a great automated turntable. The automation was a poorly designed joke. The once-decent line of the British manufacturer was at the end of its rope. For a little while I had a full manual 'table. An undamped drop onto the surface, just like my first turntables. Hated it. Finally ended up with a couple of auto-drop, auto-lift Duals, the last one, a very nice deck for a consumer unit. The equivalent of over 2 grand today when it was new. (I got it used from a pal.)

 

Anyhow, I love my LPs and singles and 78s. I still have them all, for the most part. Haven't sold any since c. 1973.

 

But I really don't miss handling them. Those who like playing an LP to some kind of tea-ceremony charm me. But I don't feel it myself.

 

Give me a good, high fidelity stream with a good player and let me shuffle and rearrange the queue as I like and I'm pretty content, though.

[MrKnobs]

You can tell me that I don't HAVE to get a new computer or a new phone, but those are things that you no longer can use for 20 years because of changes in the technology that surrounds them.

 

20 years might be a stretch for a computer, but it will still do what it did the first year forever. I had one on my workbench at work that was bought with DOS running it and shortly thereafter loaded with Windows 3.0 (I think). Anyway to this day it controls a super expensive scale and it still does that perfectly.

 

I also hae an ancient Gateway that runs Windows NT Server. It still serves as a server (imagine that), runs training sofware over the web, and serves an old HP color laser printer.

 

As for phones, well I think even a rotary phone still works. Certainly a landline still does.

 

With electronics, you change things when you want better. If you never need better, you never need a new computer.

 

[MikeRivers]

 

20 years might be a stretch for a computer, but it will still do what it did the first year forever.

 

That's not necessarily true. They break, and replacement parts become difficult or impossible to find. And even what might be repairable parts like a power supply usually have no documentation so unless a problem is obvious, it may be hard to troubleshoot, and then you may not be able to get a capacitor that fits the circuit board to replace the failed one.

 

Your DOS computer with Windows 3 might have an MDM hard drive in it. Where are you going to get one of those? And do your DOS floppys still work so you can reload the new disk drive that you managed to find?

 

It's not all that hard to repair a 40 year old guitar amplifier because there's a small industry devoted to supporting them. Same, sort of, with a 40 year old 24-track tape recorder. But the PC100 250 MB SIMM memory for my 15 year old Mackie HDR24/96 (which is as close to a 20 year old computer - it's a Celron motherboard - as I have here) is getting pretty scarce. There are sources, but it's getting pretty expensive. And unless you can find some old stock, you can't buy a new ATA (parallel - now we have to say that) hard drive now. And the BIOS and the operating system doesn't know what to do with a terabyte of disk capacity, so using a modern SATA drive and an adapter isn't the answer.

 

[rasputin1963]

You've hit upon something very significant, Craig.

 

I think the lay-public (ie., people not directly involved in musicmaking, who likely don't have much musical/performance study under their belts) have gotten the idea that, in the digital domain, everything is possible. And not only possible, but do-able, instantly, by utter novices. Anybody. (And truthfully, one can hardly blame them.)

 

Sometimes with my graphic art, I'll do something which I know is very clever indeed (if I do say so myself), something which required a good bit of talent, discernment and work on my part. But the people who see it on Facebook often do not perceive what is remarkable about it. They have gotten wind of the idea, as I say, that ANYthing is do-able, even by the most rank beginner. They assume that my coolest artistic effects were done with a press of one button within Photoshop, something a baby or a chimp could equally do. It's not true! I bust my ass achieving some of the effects I do! But when you start explaining or justifying yourself to your audience, you run the risk of looking vain or windy or imperious or amateurish or too cunning or braggadocious, or some combination thereof.

 

This is the dilemma, you see.

 

Can I rant on something?

 

<rant> What I hate, in the consumer DVD's of movies, is when they have some video "Extras" on the disk.... which show some studio dweeb EXPLAINING IN DETAIL HOW ALL THE SPECIAL FX WERE ACHIEVED. I hate that! I think that a good magician never reveals his secrets. Can you imagine if the 1939 screening of THE WIZARD OF OZ featured a reel which showed how the studio achieved all their amazing effects? Did P.T. Barnum sit his audience down and tell them how he sewed together his Fee-Jee Mermaid? Oh, HELL no. In entertainment, the illusion is--- must be--- everything. Grrr-rrr!

 

I suppose MTV's "UNPLUGGED" concerts were an attempt to show that, no, some people do indeed still have talent. (The audience being so naive, not realizing that even "naturalistic" effects can be easily faked just as well.)

 

So where does that leave us? Sex and Aggression: Those are the two things that modern audiences are still always impressed by, no matter how they are presented. </rant>

 

[Goober(s)]

 

Nor does orchestration, but it can be a welcome and vital part of a great piece of music.

 

No offence to you, but you're really stating the obvious. Yes, make the song a great one. In any way you can. From soup to nuts. That soup portion of the creation should be meticulous. In other words; write a great piece of music first.

 

Sage advice, yet I would hope elementary for most.

 

orchestration is what's needed when you include an orchestra.

 

effects are never "needed," they're just used to enhance whatever you've got.

 

some people use them to enhance the impact of their musical content, some people use them to compensate for lack of musical content.

 

but to answer the initial question "now that things are easy to do, why don't we do them?" it's because for the most part "things" don't substitute for fundamentally great musical ideas. and people who do obsess about the effects produce tail-wagging-the-dog music that has a half life of around 5 minutes.

 

[Goober(s)]

 

It is obvious, but yet......

 

It's not unlike lots of things. So for instance, you could use effects on keyboards or guitars to enhance a sound, with that becoming a welcome and vital part of a great piece of music.

 

We all know it always starts with great songs, great musicians, great sounding instruments, that kind of thing. That's obvious. Effects can really enhance a mood and put something over the top if done right, and that's what we as musicians and engineers are always trying to achieve.

 

Again, obvious, but who knows, maybe not for some.

 

it's easy to say "obvious"... but for most people it's not.

 

there's a guy I do stuff with every now and then whose music uses all kinds of effects in truly innovative ways.

 

when i started doing projects with him, I appreciated just how much of a musical monster he was... his understanding of how music works and how to manipulate it is unbelievable. he's always looking to do "cool things" with his music but it always comes from a fundamentally musical place.

 

if you strip away the effects, his music is still amazing. the effects simply enhance it.

 

sure, that sounds obvious to write on an internet forum, and everyone would say "great, I'll write fundamentally good music and then layer on effects to enhance it" but what that actually means is not so obvious because it doesn't happen all that often

[Lee Knight]

 

orchestration is what's needed when you include an orchestra.

 

 

 

Hmm.... not really what I meant. Orchestration as in... should a Rhodes or a Tele play the 2s and 4s? Do we use a pad on a B3 in the chorus? Should there be a response BG section? Orchestration. Arrangement.

 

And I don't disagree with any of your points. Only that... arrangement, effects, audio quality. Yes, we need great music first. Some believe that isn't a given and we need to state it? Cool. Good! For me it's a given.

 

Any talk of effects should concentrate on their musical usefulness. Think of a backward cymbal as a timpani roll into the next section. A crescendo. Think of backward guitar as assigning a melody to the clarinet (soft attack) instead of the marimba (hard attack).

 

Jacking off with effects is silly. Musical use of effects can be a beautiful thing however. And it can take a musical idea over the top.

[techristian]

In the past week, someone posted a link, to an entire library of reverse sounds. I laughed to myself, thinking that I can produce any reverse sound that I like. I have used reverse reverb before and I like a reverse crash cymbal occasionally. The reverse crash creates a tension like something from a suspense movie, but yes, anything can be overdone.

 

Dan