Curious about the music industry? Find out stuff.

[BonsaiK]

I am aware that questions about auto-tune have been asked however I want to make sure that I'm getting my facts right. I don't want to be even more misinformed by misinterpreting something.

Noticeable use of auto-tune or 'hard' as you addressed it as, is only used because they like the sound of the effect that it makes? As in the same reason an electronic musician would use vocoder? And could you give me an example of auto-tune being used to actually 'perfect' the pitch of an artist? I heard from my friend that a news outlet had covered auto-tuning by 'de-auto-tuning' a song and revealing that it was used to perfect the pitch however I am not sure if it was 'hard' or 'soft.'

Thanks in advance, I always like reading through this thread do get some musical-enlightenment.

The reason why Auto-tune is used these days a lot is because it's a fashionable sound.

However, that doesn't mean that artists who use hard Auto-tune are singing in tune. Often they are not. In many cases, they are singing out of tune on purpose, so the Auto-tune has more work to do and therefore the "cool sound" gets triggered more. Here's an example that The Escapist collectively loves (or loves to hate, which is the same thing as far as the music industry is concerned):


Hear that high thing the singer does between 0:57 and 1:00? He's singing way out of tune, and he's doing it on purpose so the Auto-tune flips back and forth between the notes a lot to get that hard, snapping effect. Slightly out-of-tune notes accentuate the Auto-tune more than singing in tune.

When someone's who's hitting the notes properly gets Auto-tune put on their voice, the result is more like this (from 2:17):


You can hear here that the Auto-tune effect, while still obviously present on all of T-Pain's vocals, is more subtle and that's not because the effect is toned down (it's maxed out, just like it is in the Brokencyde song) but because he's making the extra effort to hit every note bang on. T-Pain's actually quite a good singer:


Here's a guy helpfully singing reasonably well, and then kind of badly-ish, note how the second version has more of that wavy shit in it:


Actually the first version is pretty much bang on but he tends to slide up into the note and that's where the Auto-tune kicks in and notches him down a semitone just at the start of each phrase. In the second version he's singing flat on purpose (or trying to - he's not actually that good at singing flat and still hits pitch most of the time!) and so occasionally the Auto-tune will notch down to the next semitone in the middle of his notes as well as the start.

If you want to hear what softer Auto-tune does, here you go:


This singer really doesn't need any help, she sounds fine as-is and in fact slightly better without the Auto-tune (well, Melodyne, but it's the same type of thing) because the program is adding some weird artifact to the start of her phrases. But in a full mix, even a practiced ear would have trouble telling the difference aside from one or two obvious phrases, that's because the softer Auto-tune still preserves most of the vibrato she's deliberately adding into her voice, thus the result sounds more "human". In fact you might listen to the following song and wonder if it's Auto-tuned or not:


Now you can play spot the difference:


Keep in mind though that Keri Hilson sang on a lot of that track too, here's the vocals that you need to "take out the equation" before judging the rest:


Where Auto-tune might be used as a corrector is when a singer fluffs one note, or phrase. It's one way of fixing the problem. However, it's a hell of a lot easier to get the singer to record it again and do what's called a "punch-in", where you insert a little bit of correct vocal into the mistake, it's like white-out for voice (or any other instrument, actually). Here's someone doing a punch-in with ProTools so you can see how it's done:


You'd only use Auto-tune instead of a punch-in, once again, if you wanted that sheeny Auto-tuned effect. Or if your singer really couldn't sing a damn note at all, and even then, they'd probably still sound shit even with the Auto-tune, because Auto-tune only moves your note to the nearest correct pitch in a musical scale, which won't help you a damn if your singer is tone-deaf and singing, say, a minor third too low... or something completely different altogether, then you have to get the notes from somewhere else...

Hope this helps.

 

[Nouw]

Snip

It has helped! Thank you very much once again.

 

[chuckey]

Sorry if this has been asked but this is a really long thread.

Anyway

1.) What do you think of all these bands that are drop tuning there guitars and screaming? Are they a type of genre that should continue and do they bring a lot of money in the industry?

2.) what should someone who wants to minor in music (guitar) take in college?

 

[BonsaiK]

Sorry if this has been asked but this is a really long thread.

Anyway

1.) What do you think of all these bands that are drop tuning there guitars and screaming? Are they a type of genre that should continue and do they bring a lot of money in the industry?

2.) what should someone who wants to minor in music (guitar) take in college?

1. It doesn't matter whether it should continue, it does continue. The industry is a business, and business doesn't care about what they feel the musical world should look like, the business cares about what the musical world is - and then making money from that. If bands want to tune their guitars down and scream a lot, and if people then want to buy that stuff and listen to it, and come to the shows, and buy t-shirts, then who am I to judge. Yes the stuff makes money but not as much as pop, rap or country, and most bands in that genre aside from the few at the very, very top of the game live a fairly hand-to-mouth existence (same as pop, rap and country).

2. I don't know. What are the options and what do they qualify you for down the track? Also, what's your goal?

 

[Zombie_Fish]

How much money is there to be made out of tribute bands? Initially I thought there wouldn't be much success for those bands, particularly if the band they're paying tribute to are still around. But one of my teachers recently told me about a Bon Jovi tribute band he knows of who get a minimum of £1500 for each gig they play between the five of them and these are people who play around 5-6 gigs a month. That's well more than I've known a lot of acts to get paid in a single concert.

So whilst I'm not currently interested in forming a tribute band, I am curious in seeing how much success one of those acts can achieve.

 

[BonsaiK]

How much money is there to be made out of tribute bands? Initially I thought there wouldn't be much success for those bands, particularly if the band they're paying tribute to are still around. But one of my teachers recently told me about a Bon Jovi tribute band he knows of who get a minimum of £1500 for each gig they play between the five of them and these are people who play around 5-6 gigs a month. That's well more than I've known a lot of acts to get paid in a single concert.

So whilst I'm not currently interested in forming a tribute band, I am curious in seeing how much success one of those acts can achieve.

As a cover band, it's frankly a lot easier to get gigs (many small venues will only book cover bands), easier to get people to your shows, bands like that tend to do a lot more local shows when they're not on tour, and the shows also pay more. You're expected to play for longer though, it's not normal to have a lot of tribute bands on a bill together, and you better make sure you know ALL the material your chosen artist does. So getting a start is certainly easier, and word spreads quicker if you're good at it. Making a living solely off a tribute band's income is possible, but it's still not brilliant money because that £1500 (which is realistic for a tribute band with a reputation) has to be divided between all the band members and then expenses have to be taken out, but it's better than working in fast food.

However, there's also a finite limit to the amount of success a band like that can achieve. Tribute bands attempt to copy the original as exactly as possible, so you can never make significant money off of a recording when it's easier (and often cheaper) for people to get the original. You have to play shows constantly to stay viable, and you can't even sell merch at those shows, because once again, who wants the merch of a tribute band when they can have the real deal for the same price, and merch is really where a lot of the money is at for a lot of touring artists these days (unless they were stupid enough to sign a "360 deal" with somebody). If you like playing shows a lot and you really love a particular artist, tribute bands can work, but it's never going to get you much farther than playing in pubs, or in absolute best-case scenario, medium size halls. Most tribute band artists moonlight in original bands on the side, and use one project to fund the other.

However, if you're a cover artist or predominantly cover artist who likes to cover songs in ways startlingly different to the original, now that has a lot more marketability off the stage. See Cat Power, Easy Dub All-Stars, Nouvelle Vague, Dread Zeppelin, etc. But that's a very different thing to a tribute band.

 

[Shivarage]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTNquPzvbWY

Rebecca Black supposedly without autotune

I have a strange feeling that that video is a publicity stunt for her, it's obviously not her but the video hasn't been taken down so... do you have an idea of what that's all about?

 

[BonsaiK]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTNquPzvbWY

Rebecca Black supposedly without autotune

I have a strange feeling that that video is a publicity stunt for her, it's obviously not her but the video hasn't been taken down so... do you have an idea of what that's all about?

Look at the source - look at what YouTube channel it's from. It's a parody, obviously. A lot of artists don't mind getting parodied. Rebecca Black, like most young celebs who get hated on, has got a pretty good sense of humour about herself, and I've seen her participate in parody videos, parodying her own song (which have since been removed from YouTube, probably due to the recent legal wrangling over Friday, so sadly I can't link them).

As for being a publicity stunt - type "Rebecca Black Parody" into YouTube now, see how many hits you get. No need for a publicity stunt when so many other people are doing your publicity for you.

If you want to hear Rebecca really sing without Auto-tune, here you go:


Nothing amazing but I bet she can sing better than most 13-year old people reading this.

 

[Shivarage]

Look at the source - look at what YouTube channel it's from.

Ohhh, I didn't actually look at the channel ^^;

cheers

 

[Kenami]

Brilliant thread man. I spent about three nights reading through all this (insomnia) and it's not only incredible to read posts from someone whose knowledgeable but also unbiased and most importantly: factual. It always find it odd how people can rail on Justin Beiber when such music was never intended for them (myself included) but alas that is a conversation for another time.

I have several questions.

1. I work as a music photographer in my area (New York). I network with many bands and several photographers and the dependence you described that musicians need to rely on at times plays into photography as well. Some of my peers have shot shows/bands specifically for record labels and I was curious how to go about this? I guess for insight you could tell me an experience you've had hiring a photographer in the past?

2. As you stated before, you primarily work with people you know, from that I'm sure you didn't mean just people on your email list. I have various contacts that I have emailed/talked to via phone regularly but only a few I have actually seen face to face, would you say emailing/telephone can be a barrier at times compared to an actual face to face exchange?

3. I am interested in learning bass guitar and do scales here and there. I'm not serious with it at the minute but the bass and people who play it are musicians I have a lot of respect for (Paul Simonon of The Clash is right up there for me). I was wondering if when learning music if you'd find it better to learn on your own first OR with somebody else? Not exactly lessons but I suppose I'd also like to know if you found instrument lessons to be a good source of education as well?

Thanks in advance and honestly, I really appreciated the insight you gave with this thread.

Edit: I actually have a 4th question I wanted to ask, hope that's alright. Have you ever found it difficult to distinguish someone as a friend and working acquaintance. For example there are some bands I have photographed more than once and had great experiences with, some I'd consider friends but others I wonder if its strictly a professional (you scratch my back, I scratch your back) basis, know this might seem very general and I apologize in advance for that, I had a bit of difficulty phrasing this question.

 

[BonsaiK]

Brilliant thread man. I spent about three nights reading through all this (insomnia) and it's not only incredible to read posts from someone whose knowledgeable but also unbiased and most importantly: factual. It always find it odd how people can rail on Justin Beiber when such music was never intended for them (myself included) but alas that is a conversation for another time.

I have several questions.

1. I work as a music photographer in my area (New York). I network with many bands and several photographers and the dependence you described that musicians need to rely on at times plays into photography as well. Some of my peers have shot shows/bands specifically for record labels and I was curious how to go about this? I guess for insight you could tell me an experience you've had hiring a photographer in the past?

2. As you stated before, you primarily work with people you know, from that I'm sure you didn't mean just people on your email list. I have various contacts that I have emailed/talked to via phone regularly but only a few I have actually seen face to face, would you say emailing/telephone can be a barrier at times compared to an actual face to face exchange?

3. I am interested in learning bass guitar and do scales here and there. I'm not serious with it at the minute but the bass and people who play it are musicians I have a lot of respect for (Paul Simonon of The Clash is right up there for me). I was wondering if when learning music if you'd find it better to learn on your own first OR with somebody else? Not exactly lessons but I suppose I'd also like to know if you found instrument lessons to be a good source of education as well?

Thanks in advance and honestly, I really appreciated the insight you gave with this thread.

Edit: I actually have a 4th question I wanted to ask, hope that's alright. Have you ever found it difficult to distinguish someone as a friend and working acquaintance. For example there are some bands I have photographed more than once and had great experiences with, some I'd consider friends but others I wonder if its strictly a professional (you scratch my back, I scratch your back) basis, know this might seem very general and I apologize in advance for that, I had a bit of difficulty phrasing this question.

Weird, the Bieber thing, isn't it. Why do people care? A friend of mine made some silly snarky post about how he wished Avril Lavigne died instead of Amy Winehouse and my knee-jerk reaction was "wait... you care about the fate of Avril Lavigne enough to even post that? You've been thinking about Avril recently?"

1. I work with photographers a lot, off and on. It's the same as hiring anybody I guess although with photographers there's one huge advantage - their work and their resume are essentially identical, and it's easy to access this stuff before you commit to anything, so you more or less know what you're getting straight off the bat. I'm at a bit of an advantage here because my girlfriend is a model, and she shoots with various photographers, at any given moment she's on good terms with at least half a dozen. When it came time to recently pick someone to do a studio shoot, I perused her modelling pictures and found the best photos, then I asked her opinion of the personality and intelligence of the photographers and who she liked to work with. That's really important, because a good photographer will have the smarts to get creative on a shoot, and adapt the photography style to the aesthetic of the band, rather than just churn out very generic band shots or whatever. Also, I don't want to endure an asshole. There's one guy I specifically didn't use recently, because even though his shots were high quality my girlfriend let me know that he was a bit of an egotistical jerk on set, so we went with someone else who was nicer to deal with and whose shots were almost as good. As you've alluded to, photography and music are related in the sense that personal relationships are important and will get you work.

2. I like to meet people when I can. Of course that's not always possible if you're dealing with someone interstate or overseas, but local people, I will always meet them if we're doing important business. Even if a meeting isn't really required I'll try to line up a "catch up for coffee" anyway or something similar. Having a picture of someone's personality is a useful thing, it's much easier to hide who you really are via text or phone - body language reveals all.

3. Instrument lessons are great if you can afford them. I learned piano at a very young age and then self-taught myself guitar for a while, eventually I got guitar lessons too just to accelerate my learning. Nothing wrong with being self-taught though. When I was learning there weren't very many resources around - if you wanted to learn stuff and couldn't pay for lesson you had to buy books and magazines. Now it's all changed with the Internet which is great, of course not all advice is good (and the ease of putting up stuff means many tabs are wrong) but it's easy to get a broad consensus on just about anything. However, with so much information, it's easy to get overwhelmed. What a (good) teacher really gives you is not learning (you do that yourself) but guidance, they can filter through all the stuff that's out there and say "maybe you should work on this first" or "if you want to get to goal x, you should focus on y and z". The teacher will enable you to access relevant knowledge and skills quicker. If you are self-taught you'll get there anyway eventually, just takes a little longer and you might potentially pick up a bad habit or two that no-one is there to pick up on and that you then have to unlearn. Not the end of the world though, all things can be both learned and unlearned.

4. Yes. I assume everyone is a working acquaintance, initially. Being "friendly" and being "friends" are two different things. Really difficult to make the distinction in Australia where "you scratch my back, I scratch your back" is an embedded cultural trait and people therefore tend to act like that anyway regardless of what they actually think of you, I find it easier to make a clear distinction with people from overseas. But yeah it can be hard, I err on the side of caution a lot and I'm really careful about who I give sensitive information to. If you're well-known this becomes even more of a minefield because there are so many people who want to talk to you for reasons that have nothing to do with friendship.

 

[Kenami]

Thank you very much for the in-depth answers, you really hit the nail on what I was curious on knowing. Thanks especially for the answers on Photography and friendships, I'm a big fan of the Northern Irish music scene and what stands out to me a lot aside from the music sounding good is that the keyword with the musicians is solidarity, something I wish many New York musicians could learn (to be fair I have seen some comradery across NYC musicians but it is an area drenched in competition throughout various scenes).

Another question if I may; Your Do's and Don'ts of sending a demo was very thorough, I was wondering to some degree if you could tell me the do's and don'ts for a photographer wanting to work with musicians. I can imagine creating a list quite a daunting task so feel free to write a few sentences or something, like what would be a deal maker and breaker for you while looking at a photographers work?

 

[SadakoMoose]

Let's say I want to be the next big producer of idol groups and female pop acts.
The American Stock Aitken Waterman, or the American Tsunku.
I wanna take up and coming young girl singers, and use whatever I can to make them more than just household names, but full on idols with insane followings.
A synthpop girl next door, maybe? An attempt at making a Japanese style idol group using American talent perhaps? I want to do it all.
Where should I begin?

 

[BonsaiK]

Thank you very much for the in-depth answers, you really hit the nail on what I was curious on knowing. Thanks especially for the answers on Photography and friendships, I'm a big fan of the Northern Irish music scene and what stands out to me a lot aside from the music sounding good is that the keyword with the musicians is solidarity, something I wish many New York musicians could learn (to be fair I have seen some comradery across NYC musicians but it is an area drenched in competition throughout various scenes).

Another question if I may; Your Do's and Don'ts of sending a demo was very thorough, I was wondering to some degree if you could tell me the do's and don'ts for a photographer wanting to work with musicians. I can imagine creating a list quite a daunting task so feel free to write a few sentences or something, like what would be a deal maker and breaker for you while looking at a photographers work?

DO:

* ...your research - listen to the artist's music before the shoot, think about what image would suit
* ...be on time
* ...realise that the band probably won't be on time (use the extra time to plan and set up stuff)
* ...be easy to get along with
* ...discuss money upfront
* ...be open about any plans you may have for the shoot and what the artist can expect
* ...bring an assistant, or ask any hangers-on to assist if needed
* ...adapt your ideas to suit the band and to any changing circumstances
* ...take risks and run with bizarre ideas (but get artist approval first)
* ...explain any technical issues or problems if things aren't working as planned
* ...get back to the artist with product reasonably quickly after the shoot
* ...have a business card and give it to everyone

DON'T:

* ...try and talk the artist/band into doing something they're clearly not comfortable with
* ...stress out in front of the band if things aren't going according to plan
* ...freak out when somebody in the band pulls out a clump of marijuana which is bigger than your head and starts rolling joints (or similar)
* ...complain, be positive
* ...take drugs/drink/etc (if you must, do it after the shoot is over and the files are safely on your hard drive)
* ...be rude or dismissive to anybody there - maybe the lead singer's girlfriend seems like a bit of a bimbo, but that idea she had just might work...

If I was looking at work, what I'm thinking about is - does this person have an eye for photography? If they didn't I guess that would be a dealbreaker because I knowing nothing about photography really could just get my mobile phone and do the shots myself and they'd probably be just as good. I don't care about the equipment, only about the result, and a good photographer can get decent results even in very strange or non-ideal settings. A bad one will whine that the light isn't right or whatever, the good one will make it work anyway. I did some shoots recently in a disused, cramped shower with no lights or windows, they came out really good because the guy doing it knew how to make the conditions work in our favour.

 

[BonsaiK]

Let's say I want to be the next big producer of idol groups and female pop acts.
The American Stock Aitken Waterman, or the American Tsunku.
I wanna take up and coming young girl singers, and use whatever I can to make them more than just household names, but full on idols with insane followings.
A synthpop girl next door, maybe? An attempt at making a Japanese style idol group using American talent perhaps? I want to do it all.
Where should I begin?

Begin by acquiring insane amounts of musical, mixing and production knowledge. Pop music is the hardest style of music of all to record and mix correctly, to be good at it your knowledge has to be impeccable. All current and past pop hits have one thing in common - the people behind the mixing boards knew their stuff absolutely 100%. Make sure you're keeping up with current trends and techniques in pop music, you want to be on top of that stuff and ideally slightly ahead of it, so you can look not just at where pop is at now, but where it might go soon. You should be able to hear a song, like, for instance:


...and be able to say to yourself "I can identify every instrument in this song, and I have a pretty good idea how they made that noise at 0:45, plus I know what kind of post-processing has been done on the audio". Listen to that song - listen to how texturally dense it is, in the chorus there's so much stuff going on behind the vocal. What the fuck IS half of that stuff? You need to know.

Then, or simultaneously, build or acquire a studio. Normally I'd hire a studio for work myself, but if you're wanting to make money out of the production side you can make a lot more money if you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars per day to hire someone else's stuff. Plus, if you're going to be the one who controls everything musical, well, you have to - you know, control everything musical. That means having your own stuff. Your studio does not need to have the latest and greatest everything, but you must be able to at the bare minimum have two sonically isolated rooms and be able to reproduce any sound that you might hear on something like the above linked pop song.

While you're doing this, you should be talent scouting, plus you should be working a day job to pay for all this stuff. A good quality studio costs serious money to set up. Hopefully by the time you've got all that stuff set up, you've met a few talented artists who don't suck, and preferably also who look right because like it or not, that's important. You also need to be able to write songs, and songs that not just you like but other people like them too and believe me that's hard because if there's one thing songwriters almost universally lack it's a knack for what the general population wants to hear in a song, that's why so few of them ever get anywhere. And we are talking about the general population here, if you want someone to be stratospherically huge you have to pitch to the biggest market and like it or not that's "normal people", not "people who like the obscure shit that I like".

If you can do all that you're 90% of the way there. Then you just need the image side of things sorted (that's when you can hire the photographer mentioned above, and maybe some stylists or whatever) and a marketing plan or some label involvement and you're away but I won't go there. It is actually possible, all the big production teams started from some pretty humble beginnings, just don't fool yourself that it's easy, making pop music is seriously hard work behind the scenes and there's a real art to it which is vastly underrated and misunderstood. If it was easy we'd all be pop starts, but we're not, and with good reason.

 

[Kenami]

Thanks for the insight! Once again very helpful stuff!

 

[SadakoMoose]

Let's say I want to be the next big producer of idol groups and female pop acts.
The American Stock Aitken Waterman, or the American Tsunku.
I wanna take up and coming young girl singers, and use whatever I can to make them more than just household names, but full on idols with insane followings.
A synthpop girl next door, maybe? An attempt at making a Japanese style idol group using American talent perhaps? I want to do it all.
Where should I begin?

Begin by acquiring insane amounts of musical, mixing and production knowledge. Pop music is the hardest style of music of all to record and mix correctly, to be good at it your knowledge has to be impeccable. All current and past pop hits have one thing in common - the people behind the mixing boards knew their stuff absolutely 100%. Make sure you're keeping up with current trends and techniques in pop music, you want to be on top of that stuff and ideally slightly ahead of it, so you can look not just at where pop is at now, but where it might go soon. You should be able to hear a song, like, for instance:


...and be able to say to yourself "I can identify every instrument in this song, and I have a pretty good idea how they made that noise at 0:45, plus I know what kind of post-processing has been done on the audio". Listen to that song - listen to how texturally dense it is, in the chorus there's so much stuff going on behind the vocal. What the fuck IS half of that stuff? You need to know.

Then, or simultaneously, build or acquire a studio. Normally I'd hire a studio for work myself, but if you're wanting to make money out of the production side you can make a lot more money if you don't have to spend hundreds of dollars per day to hire someone else's stuff. Plus, if you're going to be the one who controls everything musical, well, you have to - you know, control everything musical. That means having your own stuff. Your studio does not need to have the latest and greatest everything, but you must be able to at the bare minimum have two sonically isolated rooms and be able to reproduce any sound that you might hear on something like the above linked pop song.

While you're doing this, you should be talent scouting, plus you should be working a day job to pay for all this stuff. A good quality studio costs serious money to set up. Hopefully by the time you've got all that stuff set up, you've met a few talented artists who don't suck, and preferably also who look right because like it or not, that's important. You also need to be able to write songs, and songs that not just you like but other people like them too and believe me that's hard because if there's one thing songwriters almost universally lack it's a knack for what the general population wants to hear in a song, that's why so few of them ever get anywhere. And we are talking about the general population here, if you want someone to be stratospherically huge you have to pitch to the biggest market and like it or not that's "normal people", not "people who like the obscure shit that I like".

If you can do all that you're 90% of the way there. Then you just need the image side of things sorted (that's when you can hire the photographer mentioned above, and maybe some stylists or whatever) and a marketing plan or some label involvement and you're away but I won't go there. It is actually possible, all the big production teams started from some pretty humble beginnings, just don't fool yourself that it's easy, making pop music is seriously hard work behind the scenes and there's a real art to it which is vastly underrated and misunderstood. If it was easy we'd all be pop starts, but we're not, and with good reason.

Hmm, alright then.
I'll get started on that immediately!
BTW, just personally, but what do think about the old "Hit Machine" S.A.W produced music?

 

[BonsaiK]

BTW, just personally, but what do think about the old "Hit Machine" S.A.W produced music?

What I think of it personally, as far as music goes - I remember distinctly not liking it when I was growing up and it was popular. In retrospect that was probably more due to overexposure at the time than any qualities the music itself had, because SAW artists were phenomenally successful in Australia and because of this they were really hard to get away from! These days I can admire the production techniques more in retrospect, but I'd generally choose to listen to modern pop influenced by SAW (such as the video I linked above which I think is fantastic and which lifts some of SAW's signature rhythms and textures) rather than anything SAW created themselves. The main dealbreaker for me is that I'm not keen on their overly processed vocal sound, I actually prefer the sound of Autotune and other modern vocal processing to what we had back then, because at least these days we're double-tracking less, and using less obviously artificial reverb. Here's something fun you can try, if you own a Kylie Minogue 45RPM vinyl or a Rick Astley 33RPM vinyl, if you play either of them at the wrong speed, Kylie sounds almost exactly like Rick and vice versa. Testament to the amount of vocal processing on those tracks.

What I think of it as an industry entity - I think it was alright, it fulfilled a demand and people liked it, what more do you want from pop music. That type of interchangeable production-line music-making was decried at the time by critics but it wasn't new even back then, Motown had similar "hit-factory" aspirations in the 1960s. Both were pop phenomena which were obviously never going to last long given ever-changing music fashion, but just because something doesn't last, doesn't mean it wasn't a worthwhile thing for a lot of people while it was happening.

 

[Herbivore]

In continuation of the post where you mentioned the so-called "punch-in" I would like to ask some questions.

I listen to classical music, and when I listen to a solo performance on an instrument, I've been wondering if the piece actually is patched together of the best parts of multiple recordings.
Is it very common to use punch ins to patch out mistakes, or is it expected that a talented musician can play without making any? I've read in this thread that there is an enormous pressure on classical musicians aswell, because people are very perfectionistic. Or does this only aplly to live performances.

Also, what do you do when you want to record an orchestral piece? Do you record all the instruments at once, or are they divided into groups and recorded one by one? Does it make it more difficult to correct, say, one violinist playing slightly out of tune because everybody is playing at once?

 

[BonsaiK]

In continuation of the post where you mentioned the so-called "punch-in" I would like to ask some questions.

I listen to classical music, and when I listen to a solo performance on an instrument, I've been wondering if the piece actually is patched together of the best parts of multiple recordings.
Is it very common to use punch ins to patch out mistakes, or is it expected that a talented musician can play without making any? I've read in this thread that there is an enormous pressure on classical musicians aswell, because people are very perfectionistic. Or does this only aplly to live performances.

Also, what do you do when you want to record an orchestral piece? Do you record all the instruments at once, or are they divided into groups and recorded one by one? Does it make it more difficult to correct, say, one violinist playing slightly out of tune because everybody is playing at once?

Officially, there are no punch-ins on classical recordings, ever, because the musicians are so talented and they never make a mistake. In reality, yes, it happens all the time, just like it does in rock music, the classical world is just a bit less honest about it.

The typical way to record an orchestra is to hang two very sensitive condensor microphones above the conductor's head. From his position, the seating arrangement of the players is designed so that he hears a balanced sound that doesn't require mixing. That's what normally happens. However, there are situations where that doesn't work. Frank Zappa made the first digital multitrack recording of a symphony orchestra and he did it because the usual two-microphones technique didn't work in the crappy room he was using, so he went for close-micing instead. Outdoor classical concerts often get close miced too, especially if there's high wind or high environmental noise (traffic nearby, planes going overhead). And yes multitrack recording does give you more control later, which is helpful if you're recording with a really shitty, non-rehearsed or drunk orchestra (happens more often than you think).