So you say new music sucks…

is an amazingly good observation by Adam’s mother in this video which also applies to how jazz has been taught in recent years and how new musicians/vocalists are learning to create music.

Don’t let the title fool you, it’s a means to this really cool observation of music in general. And I couldn’t agree more.

That “feel” that seems missing in so much new music….this could be the answer (not auto tune, Adam’s mom).

https://youtu.be/yxX2u8iggYI

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ehh i thought that this video showed that in most cases the changes made by autotune are pretty subtle. i’m kind of opposed to it on an integrity level but if you played the autotuned version to someone with no warning i’m pretty sure most people wouldn’t know the diff.

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I was more interested in what his mom has to say about new musicians hearing “perfectly mixed” music Vs more life music with errors and all. Etc. Found it fascinating.

On the auto tune front, this is something that drives me nuts but on another front. Remasters etc especially the likes of what Apple does. I hear those differences and it drives me nuts when it’s not the original.

That said, the whole world of digital music is missing giant portions of sound in the tracks Vs the original. Thank you Fraunhofer Institute for developing the mp3 format and eliminating all that apparently unnecessary “noise” from the world’s music.

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i find pretty much all his stuff fascinating. even when i don’t know what he’s talking about :grin:

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Auto tune has it’s place, like virtual hologram artists like Hatsune Miku.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNrdGx69pCo

Yep, “live” concert.

Technology used to better effect by Alan Parsons

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAE1XTvKLXA

More than autotune, I think we lost a lot by software, where you go in and aline all the beats to the click, and lose the natural syncopation and rhythms players had. But that’s another discussion.

I do think most music is meh. I think that is always true, we look at past eras fondly because we remember the good songs and forget the meh ones which cluttered the radio of the day.

That being said, I think Western music is in a rut. Looking at other regions of the world there is a vibrancy and experimentation we are lacking.

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I am so ridiculously glad melodyne exists because holy crap do I ever need that crutch.

But I use it subtly, yeah.

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It’s not only western music. It’s western culture. Just look at movies. Reboots, superhero flicks and movies with #10 in their title. Books, with piles of self-help books from religious charlatans like Jordan Peterson to old army veterans being best sellers, etc. etc. … “Play it safe” is the core mantra of all media studios out there in the Anglosphere atm. .

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Soul gets squeezed out
Edges get blunt
Demographic
Gives what you want

One of the wonders of the world is going down
It’s going down, I know
It’s one of the blunders of the world that no-one cares
No-one cares enough

The Sound of Muzak
Porcupine Tree

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This has become meme-like with my friends and I. We joke about it a lot.

That said I do think there’s more good music being made right now than at any point in history. It sure isn’t pop though.

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80% of the bands I love have crappy singers 🤷

you too, I suspect :grin:

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The availability of gear makes it easy for anyone to start and as such there’re a lot of talented people who make great music. However, for every talented person there’re 30 generic, cookie-cutter “musicians” who bring nothing personal or new.

So, it seems that it’s actually harder to find a good music out there. At least for me.

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Yeah but I need Melodyne to get up to that level of crappiness :slight_smile:

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I did this deep dive into post-rock and post-metal last year that just blew me away.

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I agree and disagree. popular music is very formulaic but it always has been. I find the trend of female singers needing to be model beautiful annoying. OTOH, as someone pointed out, diversity in music is much more common now. it’s cool to be into ancient throat belching from botswana or whatever.

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Yeah man totally, I much rather have Janis Joplin than Taylor Swift.

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I love Janis, but she was damaging her voice with bad foundation. Like Miley Cyrus did.

Taylor is an average singer, but what she does really well is take parts of her life and make catchy songs about it. She’s really an exceptional song writer, for all I don’t like her style. Respect to Taylor.

Britney Slays, now there’s a voice.

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My humble opinion as a non-professional musician is that pop music sucks. Then again, I have never really listened to it. And its great we have all these neat tools for creating music and practicing, but I cannot stand the “perfect” auto-tuned songs with quanticized drums and 50 post-recording effects. It sounds so fake and plastic. I like the imperfections in older music. I liked hearing different mixes. And I loved hearing music live.

Its really a sad state of affairs when people have been on almost two years without hearing any live music. “Listening” to “perfect” music gets boring and doesn’t move the soul.

Edit: As an example, I like to compare the freshman album of the Royal Blood duo, with its gritty and imperfect darkened tone with the plastic, overproduced disco-shit they did on their latest album. Yeah, the band has “matured” and “rounded out their sound”, but the new album simply doesn’t DO anything for me. Their first one really spoke to me because all the grittiness and darkness

There’s NO EXCUSE for this!

…humanizing them only takes one click in the DAW :rofl:

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Interesting article on the BBC about this I read this morning.

Broadway!!! It’s all remakes of movies for goodness sake, WTF…you are so correct @wellbi En masse we like our media like we like our food, Applebee’s-ified.
This is why I despise the en masses.