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nat whilk II

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  1. Great article, Craig. I tried the Channel Tools in Sonar for the first time after reading your comments about it, and narrowing the stereo image did the trick as far as making some synth horns sit in the mix in a song I'm working on. In an effort to make synth presets and patches sound impressive on first listen, lots of programmers intentionally spread the stereo field and introduce stereo motion to liven up the sound. Which is great until it messes up a mix with other instruments.
  2. I hope people you hang with give you due credit for your ability to think clearly right to the heart of issues. nat
  3. I suspect that a lot of people get obsessed with details and perfection because, frankly, they are trying to create material that is simply above their true skill level. Skill levels among popular artists, amateurs, hobbyists, and the self-taught in general, are all over the map. I tell people that if you graphed my skillset with a vertical bar graph, it would look like a broken comb. Big spike here, half-spike there, no spike here and there, all across the board. Didn't sing that song so well? Instead of a half-hour tracking redo, you turn to the software and spend four hours tweaking. Don't know how drummers think? You turn to the loop library and spend two hours auditioning "perfect" loops pre-recorded. Just can't strum that thing on the beat? Cut, paste, nudge, crossfade, nudge, double, time-shift, tweak, listen, tweak, listen all the bloody day long. I have this notion that one reason (among others) the Beatles liked ADT and double-tracking so much was that these techniques can do a lot to hide small rhythmic and pitch flaws. George in particular, if you listen closely to the first four albums, had issues playing in time. At least in those early years - he certainly fixed all that over time. So it's natural to turn to studio techniques - call them tricks or gimmicks if you want - to airbrush or blur imperfections. If you can walk into the studio and just nail the part right off, you won't need to trouble with all the clever tools and techniques to tweak it all out. Personally, the most valuable thing Melodyne has done for me is to give me visual feedback to help me learn how to sing more in tune, and to identify problems with phrasing. For example, I can see how I would hit the note right off ok, but closing out the phrase, I would quite often lose the pitch. It's an amateur giveaway, that flaw. But I never really identified the issue till I saw it "in the blobs", which you'll understand if you've ever worked with Melodyne. So I recommend turning the process around and use the software more often as a learning tool, and less often as a fake-it-up tool. nat
  4. So how about the case where the crowd says they like some recording, but the studio engineer has a negative opinion about the same recording. It's way too simple to say, "forget the engineer, the people have spoken." The crowd might like it more if the engineer's advice is heeded. There's no single standard here that can be referred to as the final word. It's no use pitting the production pros against the listening public, saying "who is right?". They can both be right, both be wrong, or one right, one wrong. It depends. Engineers can certainly be over-fussy. The crowd can like perfectly wretched material. Happens all the time. If there's a final word on the issue, it's the musical vision of the original artist, right? Some musical visions include a high degree of technical perfection - some don't. I don't listen to Dylan to hear technically amazing acoustic guitar work - but a crack bluegrass band better have precision chops or they will totally fail. So, if you're the artist, and you're feeling harassed by some picky engineer, forget using the crowd to justify your beef with the engineer. Use your own artistic instincts. If it's good enough and you know it, then just say so. nat
  5. Just my taste prolly but I don't care for that super-compressed snare sound. I do see how that sound works for metal, but in power-ballad stuff, it lacks "reality" to my ears. Also - you hit the big crash in unison with the snare a lot, which is a standard thing, but the sampled crash is so repetitive, it gets a little obnoxious. I'd say vary up that crash with other samples or treatments that make it sound less like you just hit the "crash" button over and over. The guitars sound nice. The vox needs to sit down a bit more into the mix as noticed by gubu. But good work - if it were my mix, I'd go listen to some good Tom Petty tracks and take a few hints from his most excellent mixes. nat whilk ii
  6. I always took it for a typical 60s lament about the soulless and sheep-like state of the average person. Like the composer had just read Brave New World and was resonating with all that..... thinking about it a bit more - the metaphor of the sun and moon - I suppose the sun being "life" at its source, and the moon being a dead reflection of the sun-life. Commercial/mass society versus authentic individual life 'n all that jazz.... nat whilk ii
  7. http://www.dailytech.com/Alaskan%2BGlaciers%2BGrow%2Bfor%2BFirst%2BTime%2Bin%2B250%2Byears/article13215.htm The Alaskan glaciers have grown this year, Arctic sea ice has increased this year, some areas just had the coldest summer in several decades -- and yet the press isn't giving it any coverage. Odd. Gotta be careful with one-off bits of evidence. I mean say we have one year, or even one decade, of reversal in the observed trends in global warning, that's not enough evidence to overthrow all the other data that point the other way. Your quoted info is certainly interesting, bears looking into for those witht the time, etc. But it's not time to yell trumps over all the other evidence. I don't think anyone expects global warming to occur in a straight upward ramp to disaster. It could easily be that warming occurs in an ascending sine wave pattern. It's up and down, but the question is - are the ups averaging more avg temperature gain over time than the downs are taking it away? Again, all evidence has to be in context with all the rest of the evidence, or it misleads. nat whilk ii
  8. Originally posted by Jotown The big deal is that they have been black listed by country music radio and that there is an organized right wing attack on their career. This makes me curious - just how many country stations have blacklisted them? A significant number? All of them? A tiny few? Half? As for the "organized right wing attack" I think just about every public figure is on some right or left wingers enemies list. Doesn't make it right, of course, but enemies are part of the deal when you become a spokesperson for just about anything. But I'd still like to know just how widespread the radio blacklisting has spread. nat whilk ii
  9. Originally posted by Angelo Clematide We have a scientific correct proverb for that in Switzerland ---> !!! attention direct word by word translation: "Actually i have I no clue, of that however each quantity" is that understandable in american? . Now, see - you have purposefully set me something else to analyze in my amatuer fashion, so it's all your fault. My guess is that your proverb might be translated as: "In spite of my total ignorance, I will give you a very precise answer" or, "being clueless never stopped me from having an opinion" What other kind of person did you expect to meet over the internet? nat whilk ii
  10. Originally posted by Angelo Clematide mama mia nat whilk ii, you are a musicologist as well a political analyst. You betcha - I'm an amatuer at almost anything. Actually, I'm fascinated with the demographics and statistics of political elections - they have the same attraction as sports to me. You can analyze the "teams" all day long, become a stats expert to whatever level of sophistication, and still the actual games hold surprises and yield plenty of material for post-game analysis, etc. to start the process all over again. nat whilk ii
  11. Myself, here in my armchair at the center of the universe, suspects that the media obsession with the Chicks has less to do with the inherent interest of the story than it has to do with demographics. By which I mean: the last presidential election saw a bunch of new demographic definitions, and chief among the newly christened population groups was a "new rural" group often referred to as the Nascar Dads. You know how the media people work - sure they report the news, but they also have slots to fill to appeal to the major demographic groups. It's targeted advertising in a sense - find something to report that appeals to a particular group, just to keep them interested (hopefully) in your show or newpaper or magazine. So here come the Chicks - nice to look at and young (the Nascar Dads all nod), country (the Nascar Dads nod, mostly), and most importantly, CONTROVERSIAL (the Nascar Dads look at each other, shrug, and say, "whatever"). But hey, the Chicks can also be targeted to the wives and daughters of the Nascar Dads because they are women (country-type women) who are speaking out. And the Chicks cut across the grain of the common perception of rural Americans as conservative and leaning toward Republican. (In reality, rural Americans are highly alienated from the government, but that's another story...) Put all these factors together and the media manipulators think maybe they can make a real "item" out of the Chicks. I'm sure the Chicks don't mind! I must think, too, that the press relations arm of the Chicks organization must be doing a bang-up job and getting bonuses. But of course, the Chicks are on a short lease, here. In a couple of years Bush won't be an issue (actually less time than that). And some other entertainer will surely do something more sexy and interesting and controversial than the Chicks. Maybe by then the Chicks will have to rely only on their music to gather attention! By that time, all the press relations personnel will have moved on to some other job with some other celebrity. nat whilk ii
  12. Originally posted by ViLo brake a leg!......... brake a leg? who am I? a WWF wrestler? this phrase has I think a little known source (BTW it's break a leg, not brake) It's an anti-bad luck thing. Performer is about to go on stage, someone says, "You'll do great!!". The performer, a superstitious type says, "Don't say that - you'll jinx me", so the well-wisher says, "OK, break a leg!". And it caught on, but after a while the original meaning got left behind even 'tho the phrase is still used. nat whilk ii
  13. It's not the phrases so much as their lazy overuse I guess that makes so many of the phrases abominable over time. On the other hand, some phrases are so loaded with pretension or are so totally useless that they deserve the contempt they inspire: "Deal with it" is a favorite of the self-righteous advice flinger "Go with the flow" was for a very short while a pretty cool, new-agey sort of self-help seminar phrase. Overuse did this one in. "That dog won't hunt" is a special one, spoken mainly by old-timers in Texas or the deep South USA and their imitators. Makes the speaker sound all "back-home" and full of folk wisdom. Means basically "it won't work" with a touch of contempt, as for a useless, lazy dog. "A new paradigm" is one that was taken up by businesspeople after all the sweet was chewed out of it by the new-agey seminar people. Use this one and you are instantly dated - beware! "What goes around comes around" should be said while nodding slowly and sucking your teeth, viewing the dead body on the ground or other scene of someone's disaster. There are a lot of slang phrases that mean basically "he got what was coming to him". Again a bit of self-rigtheousness, very popular. "Upside potential" - ahhh, the business entrepenuer's pride and joy, this one. Should be said while nodding slowly and sucking your teeth, looking at a whiteboard diagram of some ridiculous new business idea. Makes the speaker sound wise and penetrating. "What a hoot" I haven't been able to trace to the source but I think it's a recent movie or TV show. Untold numbers of phrases come from TV or movies - they're fun for a while but go quickly stale, but people just won't give up on them. My mother-in-law (nearing 80) still says with mock round eyes, "Oh my goodness!" as if everyone remembers it's from a 1950s Shirley Temple movie. Move on, Granny! "We're looking into that" is a favorite phrase used to divert an unpleasant inquiry. Makes the questioner feel like, "Oh, okay, they seem to be sensitive to the issue so I don't need to pursue the question just right now". CEOs and politicians love this one. that's it for now, "Catch you on the upside"!! nat whilk ii
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