After watching both videos, I think he's as technically inaccurate (in places) as the other guy unfortunately. I walked away from both thinking they were in cahoots for clicks/views.
I thought the point made about those two guys being responsible for the majority of tunes you hear on the radio and what not these days was pretty interesting, if true.
Interesting, and Max Martin's influence has been huge, but it's not true.
He does have the most Billboard No.1 hits except for Lennon & McCartney, but if the same people writing pop songs is bad for music then Lennon & McCartney must have been terrible for it.
What I found most interesting about the response video was that, given the same criteria, the romantic composers such as Beethoven and Chopin would be regarded as causing the decline of musical quality from the baroque period.
I have to confess a certain amount of ignorance regarding what's going on today with Top 40 music since I don't use Spotify, iTunes, and the like, and I only occasionally listen to the radio in my truck.
But since you mentioned Lennon and McCartney, can you give me an example or two of a current top artist that has done something completely and radically different from their previous work like what Lennon and McCartney did on Sgt. Pepper?
The question is not meant to be a critique of Top 40 music, I don't make judgements on things I don't know a whole lot about. I'm just asking from the standpoint of whether or not the big label record companies are risking letting their top artists do things like that.
I have to confess a certain amount of ignorance regarding what's going on today with Top 40 music since I don't use Spotify, iTunes, and the like, and I only occasionally listen to the radio in my truck.
But since you mentioned Lennon and McCartney, can you give me an example or two of a current top artist that has done something completely and radically different from their previous work like what Lennon and McCartney did on Sgt. Pepper?
The question is not meant to be a critique of Top 40 music, I don't make judgements on things I don't know a whole lot about. I'm just asking from the standpoint of whether or not the big label record companies are risking letting their top artists do things like that.
Nope, not that I know of. Innovation like that hasn't happened in the pop music realm for 30 or 40 years... arguably longer. But it's a different world now, and music isn't disseminated into the public sphere in the same way.
I think Zappa summed up what happened in the 60's pretty well:
Love Zappa, wish more people felt free enough to speak their minds.
Kinda my take away from that first video.
I'm sure there are tons of very talented musicians out there, slaving away in obscurity, and coming up with some really different and innovative things. Stuff that people have not only never heard before, but things that people never even dreamed of doing.
I probably should go ahead and get up to speed on how music is being distributed these days so I can find some those men and women.
I did go back and review the first half, all of the below bugged me and stopped taking notes 1/2 way through. Parens = me:
-"Recording technology and compression has gotten better since the 60s so music is a bit louder now." (so what but = more harmonics not less or neither and irrelevant)
-"Punk likes loudness a lot." (makes no contextual or technical sense for this argument)
-"With the digital tools available to us today, we can produce sounds that contain very little timbral diversity aka sine wave.." (that's not what they are typically used for, often the opposite cuz mangled = more harmonics and diversity)
-"There's a whole world of samples that intentionally throw away this richness in pursuit of a digital sound which a degenerate artist might do." (I don't equate degenerate artists and new sounds as closer to a sine wave).
-"Destroying timbre like using harmonics on guitar, sole pontechello on viola, prepared piano, falsetto." (really bad examples to prove a point that is not a good point to begin with).
Pretty much none of that is credible technical explanation to music being less "timbral" (SIC). However, I still agree the video he busts is bs, but all of the above is just well, bad.
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Last edited by karbomusic; 05-28-2019 at 03:22 PM.
I did go back and review the first half, all of the below bugged me. Parens = me:
-"Recording technology and compression has gotten better since the 60s so music is a bit louder now." (so what but = more harmonics not less)
-"Punk likes loudness a lot." (makes no contextual or technical sense for this argument)
-"With the digital tools available to us today, we can produce sounds that contain very little timbral diversity aka sine wave.." (that's not what they are typically used for, often the opposite cuz mangled = more harmonics)
-"There's a whole world of samples that intentionally throw this away this richness in pursuit of a digital sound which I degenerate artist might do." (I don't equate degenerate artists and new sounds as closer to a sine wave).
-"Destroying timbre like using harmonics on guitar, sole pontechello on viola, prepared piano, falsetto." (really bad choices to prove a point that is not a good point to begin with).
Pretty much none of that is credible technical explanation to music being less "timbral" (SIC). However, I still agree the video he busts is bs, but all of the above is just bad so I didn't finish checking the last 1/2.
Yeah, no disagreement from me there. The main interest for me was him outlining the research that sparked all the clickbait articles and videos. A link to that would have been more elucidating, but then he'd miss out on his ad revenue.
A bassist friend and I once recorded a guitarist playing solos in the other room, in the correct key, but with no monitoring at all.
We did it for effect, turning his record volume up where short solos needed to go between the vocals. He had played with the track and knew what would fit, but we cut him loose with no monitoring to create an intentional drift every time vocals stopped and solo began.
dope! i had a percussionist i went out to record and forgot to take the song with me. so we tuned to a pitch fork and luckily only had to move him a half tone to get it in key. then, i cut him up and played his clips in. the offbeat feel ended up being the meat of the song. doing things wrong once you know how to do things right...you know how in relationships it takes a couple years before you can call each other a bitch and laugh about it?
dope! i had a percussionist i went out to record and forgot to take the song with me. so we tuned to a pitch fork and luckily only had to move him a half tone to get it in key. then, i cut him up and played his clips in. the offbeat feel ended up being the meat of the song. doing things wrong once you know how to do things right...you know how in relationships it takes a couple years before you can call each other a bitch and laugh about it?
I had to go dig that song out and even thought about posting it, but it was such poor quality done on a 4-track cassette that I blew it off. The guitar solos on it are the high point and one in-between vocal bit is so out of meter with everything else it drives home what the vocal were saying.
I think the Zappa video eloquently identifies the problem with record executives. A friend of mine worked with Don Kirshner as the lyricist on hit songs like Neil Sedaka's laughter in the rain. He thought Kirshner was great to work with (unlike Mike Nesmith). Kirshner was the type of cigar smoking record exec Zappa was referring to.
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I'm going to say there's more, it's not dropping in one's lap but there's a boatload of interesting music out there assuming one's palette is as wide I'd imagine.
Karbo you are an amazing guitarist / singer!!!! Can you talk about your recording this song. What gear you used and how you made the recording. Thanks!!
yeah right, til Peter Garett sold out and became a politician, and was in the Cabinet that INCREASED the US base in Alice Springs, FAKE FAKE FAKE
big fake that Peter Garett, you were taken for a ride if you believed his politics. It was a gimmick to sell records lol
Very true.
While they had a big following (and not all necessarily to do with the political messages) they were never my cup of tea - not when there were so many other much better bands doing the rounds in Oz at the time
yeah right, til Peter Garett sold out and became a politician, and was in the Cabinet that INCREASED the US base in Alice Springs, FAKE FAKE FAKE
big fake that Peter Garett, you were taken for a ride if you believed his politics. It was a gimmick to sell records lol
Yeah, I know about that, although I do not know all of the details and will give him the benefit of the doubt. The music is it's own entity, and the band wasn't just Garett.
Australia seems to want to be at the front of any new "modern authoritarian" move, I'm not sure what the impetus of that is. Almost seems like Australia is the "test market" for America for certain things - privacy invasion, bureaucratic restriction of rights.