I know this will rub some people the wrong way, but I genuinely can't stand how over produced and aligned to the grid most music is now, I used to be into metal as a kid and now I can't stand any modern recording, it's all very digital and synthetic it just sucks the fun out of it, I've seen some bands back in the days that sucked live, while on recording it sounded perfect, it's very disappointing and you feel somewhat scammed, anyone else feel this way too?
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unpopular opinion about modern recordings
- Thread starter dajazz
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Jeremy Bender
Platinum Member
I've felt this way about most popular music since the 1980's.
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Son of Vistalite Black
Well-known Member
Don't find this to be the case with my current favorites: M.J. Lenderman, Alcest, Waxahatchee, St. Paul and the Broken Bones, Gojira, Oceans of Slumber, Wednesday, Green Lung and Marcus King.
Perhaps, you're focusing on the wrong music?
Perhaps, you're focusing on the wrong music?
mikyok
Platinum Member
Not an unpopular opinion at all. When you alter everything to make it perfectly in time and in tune it takes away the human element and makes it sound stale and boring.
There are still people who do things the old fashioned way but that costs money so they're getting harder to find!
There are still people who do things the old fashioned way but that costs money so they're getting harder to find!
That's not over-production, it's lack of musicianship. Typically, a band has to actually play their parts in front of an audience. That's where they help build exposure and longevity. And make money. It's certainly not from dismal record sales, no matter how over-produced and perfect the music sounds.
Don't blame the production, blame the players.
brady
Platinum Member
Yes!! That is a wholly different issue than the recorded music being too rigid and sterile...
I think another popular opinion is that there are fewer bands are out there on the road paying dues, getting tighter, and generally growing as musicians. A lot of the hopefuls out there seem to expect to get famous right out the gate from posting videos or competing on the karaoke shows.
Damn I sound old, but the winner of these shows shouldn't get a multi-album deal right off the bat...they should get a van!! Learn how to criss-cross the country for a while, paying their dues. I know it's the corporate suits that are the source of the problem...just like any other business. So this model is unlikely to ever change.
Back on topic, yes, I've noticed that a lot with current music, that it's too...precise, and sterile sounding. Luckily, my girlfriend, who listens to more current stuff than I do, will always alert me of a new band she thinks I will like. Otherwise, I probably would have never heard of younger artists like Momma, or Slow Pulp, or Emily Wolfe.
Duck Tape
Platinum Member
I was talking to a sound guy at a gig I played once and I mentioned to him that I used to be into metal, and he said he was a metal head but couldn't listen to any new metal for about 15 years because every producer/artist? used the same kick and snare samples during that time, and of course programmed the entire album. Maybe someone can verify that. When I casually listen to older metal with real and natural drums I think I'm hearing a lot more excitement and genuine testosterone.
There are very lifeless drum machines that suck any musicality out, not only because there's no swing, but because of the sounds used - think of any early 2000's RnB, I just hear it and I can't imagine why anybody danced to that stuff, it just sucks, and it is a blight on the rnb artists that came before that time, some small posse of producers that generated all that garbage that filled night clubs need to rot in hell because they had some sort of racket going while so many of us cried in the corner of the club about what a terrible era we had to endure. Beyonce, Fat Man Scoop etc YUCK.
There are albums that I didn't even know had programmed drums, like Simply Red - Stars, I only just learned that all the drums were programmed, now that I listen I don't know how I missed it, I guess I just have this belief that there are studio drummers that accurate. It still grooves, probably because of the other musicians. Perhaps I will no longer enjoy it now that I know.
There are very lifeless drum machines that suck any musicality out, not only because there's no swing, but because of the sounds used - think of any early 2000's RnB, I just hear it and I can't imagine why anybody danced to that stuff, it just sucks, and it is a blight on the rnb artists that came before that time, some small posse of producers that generated all that garbage that filled night clubs need to rot in hell because they had some sort of racket going while so many of us cried in the corner of the club about what a terrible era we had to endure. Beyonce, Fat Man Scoop etc YUCK.
There are albums that I didn't even know had programmed drums, like Simply Red - Stars, I only just learned that all the drums were programmed, now that I listen I don't know how I missed it, I guess I just have this belief that there are studio drummers that accurate. It still grooves, probably because of the other musicians. Perhaps I will no longer enjoy it now that I know.
brady
Platinum Member
I hate to ruin this for you too, but the majority of Collective Soul's first record (Hints, Allegations...) was a drum machine, as Ed Roland put it all together mostly by himself initially.There are albums that I didn't even know had programmed drums, like Simply Red - Stars, I only just learned that all the drums were programmed, now that I listen I don't know how I missed it, I guess I just have this belief that there are studio drummers that accurate. It still grooves, probably because of the other musicians. Perhaps I will no longer enjoy it now that I know.
I don't mind songs like that, where it still grooves, despite being a drum machine. Dirty Laundry is like that for me too. So the next time you hear Shine, see if you can't unhear the drum machine.
Chris Whitten
Platinum Member
It's very, very hard, never been harder. Most of the smaller venues have closed. There is no money in the lower levels, income for beginner musicians has dropped through the floor while costs have sky rocketed - fuel for the van, bus, eating out, hotels and motels, renewables like drum heads and drum sticks. The industry and actually a large part of the public has abandoned entry level scene and just wants to hear finished product and an artist/band with thousands of Youtube/Facebook and Tik-Tok followers.
Chris Whitten
Platinum Member
There's plenty of drum machine music that grooves like a mutha, even going back to the 70's. There are drum machines that aren't even that accurate compared to the modern grid.
The problem with modern music is that the industry has demanded absolute perfection while drastically reducing the budgets for recording.
So artists and producers gravitate to a formula that 'works', using the same software tools, the same sampled sounds etc. Sadly, these are the records that are streaming the most, usually far outstripping the records made by real musicians. So until the public tire of the gridded, auto-tuned, cookie cutter release, expect it to continue.
Tamaefx
Silver Member
Most modern popular music are boring to death. Rhythm being the same from beginning to end, no melody or just one repeated 50 times, no real bass line... I have hard time grasping the musicality on them. Not even talking about RnB, where all the artists could be interchangeable. No soul, just robotic stuff.
I know I sound old fart but that's why most radio here (France) play 80's 90's music mostly.
I know I sound old fart but that's why most radio here (France) play 80's 90's music mostly.
piston broke
Junior Member
The music business has always worked in cycles - one artist gets big, then next thing you know there's 3,000 rip offs looking for a bit of the action. Then there's the journalistic shorthand, the new Beatles, the new Nirvana, the new Amy Winehouse... So it comes down to the common denominator of money, where you've less risk and hopefully some reward.
In the 80s there was no-one more overproduced than Def Leppard - drum machine and all - but I will hear no argument that Hysteria isn't a classic album. But there's a big difference between overproducing great music and polishing a turd!
But for me, modern music falls down with the vocals. It's either under-emoting, like Billy Eilish and followers, or over-emoting, and you can pick just about anybody new here. And you can hear this difference in the plethora of modern covers of classic songs, where the performers and producers skilfully manage to lose the melody of the original and squeeze the life out of the song. The hangover's too bad or I'd come up with examples, but here in the UK just about every advert has a terrible cover version as the soundtrack. Oftentimes I only recognise the song by the words.
And drum machines might not swing, but again, put them under a good tune and nobody cares about the lack of a drummer. Here's Marvin Gaye from 1982.
Everybody's said it, but nobody's used the word so far: greed.
Money and time and perfection and laziness and ambivalence - these are the catalysts, but greed is the cause.
From the executive producer right through to the listening audience, everybody wants more for less. What you get is what we got. It's the same everywhere.
They say money is the root of all evil, but greed is the cause.
Money and time and perfection and laziness and ambivalence - these are the catalysts, but greed is the cause.
From the executive producer right through to the listening audience, everybody wants more for less. What you get is what we got. It's the same everywhere.
They say money is the root of all evil, but greed is the cause.
Multijd
Active Member
Don’t know how popular/unpopular your opinion is but from my perspective there are a lot of real musicians playing great music out there. I see lots of great bands playing and recording on Instagram including Lake Street Dive (seen them live), The Band Lawrence, Louis Cole, Dirty Loops etc. I saw Norah Jones last summer. There are festivals and concert series all over our area (Western New York) with bands Ive never heard nor heard of. I’m going to agree with @Son of Vistalite Black (a first hah) and suggest you may be listening to the wrong bands or in the wrong places.
Also don’t ignore your local musicians. There are many great local bands in our era who need support in order to push to the next level. Many of them are touring within a short distance and they need your ears and your cash.
Go hear some music you’ve never heard before!!
Also don’t ignore your local musicians. There are many great local bands in our era who need support in order to push to the next level. Many of them are touring within a short distance and they need your ears and your cash.
Go hear some music you’ve never heard before!!
John B
Junior Member
I think "over-production" can certainly play into this. The design/workflow/cookie-cutter approach of DAWs can easily allow for derivative music and extreme "polish" in production. I tend to think that recordings have gotten WORSE over the past decade or so. It's almost as if every aspect of sound is massaged/tweaked into a chromium amorphous glob of digital audio perfection. Almost as if the goal is to eliminate any evidence of a human being involved in the process.
Tamaefx
Silver Member
You nailed it.
In one word : flat.
brady
Platinum Member
doggyd69b
Platinum Member
How do you feel about all the metal drummers posting "play through" videos? they are so perfect is hard for me to believe they can actually pull this off live, but then again, when I used to play original music (that I wrote) I was always playing the exact same notes.
We even found that out when we were doing a recording session and the guitar player kept saying that something I was doing was throwing him off, we recorded me twice and both times I did the exact same thing in the exact same spot (I was playing in autopilot because I didn't make that one note change on purpose but it happened both times at the exact same place), then when I explained to the guitar player my thought process, he understood and stopped getting lost. It was a dance type beat very simple and mind numbing so at that particular spot I would make a one note change and go back to the pattern, a "you blink and you miss it" kind of change.
I notice the same with another band I was in, I would play the exact same notes automatically every time, UNLESS I was still writing the part in which case I would change some things here and there and then leave it alone once I was ok with how it flowed.
Back to the OPs comment, I never wanted my playing to be put to a grid, because I have a very good sense of timing and when playing with a click, you can't deviate that much, but I can hear the difference between my original recording and that same recording aligned to the grid, it loses some life. Now about over producing, yes, some producers kill a lot of dynamics by forcing the volume to remain constant and removing anything that goes out of the set threshold. That leads to uninspiring recordings that start to sound very robotic. (No human can play at the same exact level for an entire song). The other thing is overdubs or things like.... a singer singing a line and starting the next line while the last line is still being heard. (something you can only do in a recording) of course that can't be replicated live so it will sound off to people who are used to the way it sounds recorded. That was one of my requirements when recording with any band I was part of. If we couldn't replicate it live, we were not going to fake it in a recording. (That of course doesn't apply to backing tracks), but of course the key word is BACKING, not main tracks, the tracks should be used to fill the space when... for example having an entire orchestra would be impractical or impossible. So yes if you can't replicate it live don't record it.