I would tend to agree with that statement if you qualify it with, the artist not knowing about the editing.Nick H. wrote:...but on a purely philosophical level, ghosting seems no less honest to me than intricate editing.
Nick H. wrote: I would imagine most have a personal attachment to their recorded performances and feel that their's is a uniquely honest approach to a recording, but on a purely philosophical level, ghosting seems no less honest to me than intricate editing.
Again, I'm not saying that any of these arguments stand up in the real world with real, volatile musicians, but I am interested in how others look at these issues.
Malcolm Boyce wrote:Who here, for a given project, has spent as much time editing tracks as they have recording them? I'm not talking about comping or things like that, I'm talking about moving and tuning parts until they are in with your vision.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:That brings me to my next point: How much editing by young engineers is being done with their eyes more than their ears?
Too much.Mathieu Benoit wrote:That brings me to my next point: How much editing these days is being done by engineers with their eyes more than their ears?
Nick H. wrote:Mathieu Benoit wrote:That brings me to my next point: How much editing by young engineers is being done with their eyes more than their ears?
If my own early forays into editing are any indication: quite a bit. I think that editing tastefully takes time in the same way playing tastefully does. For me, it was a matter of taking time to consider exactly why I wanted to edit something, and to what end. As with anything, being arbitrary with edits is potentially quite destructive to the finished product.
Malcolm Boyce wrote:A side effect of the omnipresent editing in recording now is the attitude of younger performers expecting it, without even thinking about stepping up their performance or listening ability. As a player, 99.9% of the time I will give you a track that I don't hear the need for editing. Many younger players that I hear think "good enough" is when you have enough notes you can push around to make something out of it. Totally foreign to me, but I know it's just a different threshold of what's acceptable.
I can only speak based on my experience. I know most players would not have the same ethic 15-20 years ago. It's not as simple as saying "lazy". They aren't being lazy, they're just growing up in a world where they think it's SOP.Mathieu Benoit wrote:Malcolm Boyce wrote:A side effect of the omnipresent editing in recording now is the attitude of younger performers expecting it, without even thinking about stepping up their performance or listening ability. As a player, 99.9% of the time I will give you a track that I don't hear the need for editing. Many younger players that I hear think "good enough" is when you have enough notes you can push around to make something out of it. Totally foreign to me, but I know it's just a different threshold of what's acceptable.
I wasn't around "back in the day" but I'm not convinced that this is some kind of new phenomenon. There have always been terrible players, and they are that way because they are lazy. They weren't less lazy back then because they couldn't be edited. We are just allowing them a platform to express themselves in spite of that laziness.
Malcolm Boyce wrote:I know most players would not have the same ethic 15-20 years ago. It's not as simple as saying "lazy". They aren't being lazy, they're just growing up in a world where they think it's SOP.
I absolutely agree. I just submit that in our society, you're not "lazy" because you drive a car to work, because that's what we do. The perception these days is that's how we record.Mathieu Benoit wrote: Certainly things have changed over the past 20 years, but I don't think human nature is one of them.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:Don't discount the fact that many people use "art" as a perfect defense against laziness.
Nick H. wrote:Unfortunately, it's only subjective to a point. These people can be, and often are, wrong. Ultimately, each individual performance should exist to heighten the emotional impact of the song. I've found that in my, albeit limited, experience, good performances tend to be those that get out of the way of the song and I think a great deal of people justifying their poor musicianship via art are doing so at the expense of the song.
Nick H. wrote:For instance: if a guitar player is insistent about playing a C over the band's C# (which is, of course, a profound inner expression of art), I am going to, as the listener, pay attention to the needless and arbitrary dissonance rather than what the song intends to communicate.
Nick H. wrote:I've always hated it when people disregard the technical side of playing their instrument in an effort to out-indie each other.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:Nick H. wrote:I've always hated it when people disregard the technical side of playing their instrument in an effort to out-indie each other.
I believe the terms is "indier-than-thou" and it may or may not already be copyright of William Wittman.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:Nick H. wrote:For instance: if a guitar player is insistent about playing a C over the band's C# (which is, of course, a profound inner expression of art), I am going to, as the listener, pay attention to the needless and arbitrary dissonance rather than what the song intends to communicate.
But if that is what they truly wanted to express, then that is their given right to express it. It's only wrong if the masses say so, I guess...
Nick H. wrote:But doesn't that just put us right back to saying that it is infinitely subjective?
Nick H. wrote:For arguments sake, let's say that they arrived at playing semi-tones apart after long hours of sober contemplation. In that case, they are very likely looking for some kind of harshness because of the propensity for obvious dissonance, but is it possible that there is an objectively better way to express this?
Nick H. wrote:And, more than anything, I am simply skeptical that these situations arise out of contemplation of any sort.
Nick H. wrote:Maybe if I thought that the artist was deliberately expressing something through a 'mistake', I would be more open and thoughtful towards it. In cases like above, I do not get that impression. This also has something to do with the listener, I think. There are musicians that I trust artistically to not be arbitrary. When Bright Eyes released "Road to Joy" with its cacophony of brass dissonance, I immediately accepted and praised that decision as a valid and fitting expression. Perhaps I should be so generous with other artists, or maybe the onus is on them to convince me, the listener, that their decisions have artistic repercussions.
Nick H. wrote:For me, the bottom line is that the landmark case of lead guitarist v. the rest of the melodic instrumentation in the band does not strike me as carefully considered, so I am disinclined to spend time considering how it might be the perfect way to express their existential angst and more inclined to complain about it on the internet.
Nick H. wrote:Am I being too generally harsh?
sean.boyer wrote:For me personally, for rock music recording, anything more than slipping a drum beat hear or there, doing vocal composite, or splicing sections of instrument takes me out of the mindset of "editing" and into the mindset of "fabricating".
sean.boyer wrote:Call me a purist, but I barf in my mouth at the idea of using triggered sampling for drums. Why the hell bother with a guy sitting there on traps, using all your great mics you spent so much time on setting up JUST so, if you're going to come in and replace the drums with sample, then quantize the whole mess? Sounds like you should have had Uncle Midi doing that for you from the get go.
Mathieu Benoit wrote:sean.boyer wrote:Call me a purist, but I barf in my mouth at the idea of using triggered sampling for drums. Why the hell bother with a guy sitting there on traps, using all your great mics you spent so much time on setting up JUST so, if you're going to come in and replace the drums with sample, then quantize the whole mess? Sounds like you should have had Uncle Midi doing that for you from the get go.
I totally agree with that. I do however use sample enhancements from time to time, especially for snare drums. More as a blending tool than anything and I've had great results with that as well. I will say this though, I have never used any snare samples from a library. I will record a particular snare drum in a particular way myself to achieve exactly what I intended and I'll usually make that decision before tracking the original drum track, alothough sometimes I'll make that decision come mix time if the vision for the song has changed.
Malcolm Boyce wrote: A lot of the time it's a multi sample made from the actual drum tracks on the session, so it's not like we didn't record what we wanted, it just needs a little help.
Malcolm Boyce wrote:The other side of the coin is, not learning how to get decent drum sounds because "everybody" uses samples, is so common these days, and so lame.
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