[linux-audio-user] More Homemade Music --

[james at dis-dot-dat.net]

On Mon, 04 Jul, 2005 at 11:10AM +0100, tim hall spake thus:
> Last Monday 04 July 2005 09:02, james at dis-dot-dat.net was like:
> > On Sun, 03 Jul, 2005 at 10:49AM +0100, tim hall spake thus:
> > > Last Saturday 02 July 2005 16:41, Thorsten Wilms was like:
> > > > Personaly, I don't see the choice of patches/sounds as part of
> > > > the production ... or rather it's inbetween composition/generation
> > > > and production.
> > >
> > > I believe it's called 'arrangement'.
> >
> > I've never been able to work like that.  I know that's the way it
> > should be done, with steps and definable phases, but I just have to do
> > everything at once.
> 
> Defining phases of writing, arrangement, production, recording, mixing, 
> mastering doesn't tie us to a way of working as mostly solo artists working 
> on our own, it's easy to blur these distinctions. I think it is useful to 
> ground the meanings of these terms for the purposes of analysing our results 
> and suggesting improvements.
> 
> > I can't just drop something in and then work on it later - everything
> > about the drums, say, has to be done as I'm doing it.  So, that
> > includes selecting drums, getting them into the rhythm I want,
> > compressing them, getting any effects I want on them all or individual
> > drums and eq'ing it all.  Often I do this at the same time I do the
> > bass, with all of the twiddling needed there, too.
> >
> > It might just be because I have a bad memory - I'd forget what the
> > hell I wanted to do with things if I left it for later.  That, and I
> > can't separate making music and producing music.  To me, "over
> > produced" is like saying "over musical".  Which is nonsense.
> 
> I have to disagree with that last statement. To me over-produced is 
> over-processed. It doesn't sound like you suffer from this problem. I am all 
> too familiar with watching a song die in the studio due to it having been 
> rehearsed to death before we began, then the writer decides to change an 
> important part of the arrangement five minutes before the red light goes on. 
> Then the engineer decides to compress the life out of the bass, drums and 
> vocals. By the time the keyboard player has done the 43rd Hammond take, the 
> band has lost interest. All the vocals go down flat because the producer is 
> obsessive about matching vowel sounds and timing, using extreme editing and 
> pitch correction, where none was needed. This style of arranging/production 
> frequently fails to come up with a final mix as there is always something to 
> fix or add, basically because you didn't get it right the first time.

I suppose this is where professionals like yourself and amateurs like
me differ.  Sine I do everything myself, I do it all at once.  In
fact, it would drive me bonkers trying to work any other way.  I think
production has a different meaning when you have no producer ;)
 
> Oops, does my stuff look big in this?

Huge.  Try vertical stripes.

> 
> tim hall
> http://glastonburymusic.org.uk
> 
> 

-- 
"I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development
That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb.  Thank you."
(By Vance Petree, Virginia Power)