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Small Waves

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BonsaiK said:
Small Waves said:
Why can't we hire someone to break Dave Fridmann's hands so he can never operate a mixing board again?
Are you kidding? Sleater-Kinney's "The Woods" is the best they ever sounded.
I'm afraid not. Dave's mixing mindset is all about making everything loud and then half-assing dynamics (quiet as possible to clipping everywhere). Have you ever listened to The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin? It sounds like shit.
 

BonsaiK

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Small Waves said:
BonsaiK said:
Small Waves said:
Why can't we hire someone to break Dave Fridmann's hands so he can never operate a mixing board again?
Are you kidding? Sleater-Kinney's "The Woods" is the best they ever sounded.
I'm afraid not. Dave's mixing mindset is all about making everything loud and then half-assing dynamics (quiet as possible to clipping everywhere). Have you ever listened to The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin? It sounds like shit.
Knowing what I do about The Flaming Lips, if you don't like the production on that particular album, I'd say that's less of a Dave issue and more of a Flaming Lips issue. They were the primary producers on that record, Dave was only making them sound how they wanted to sound, which as an audio engineer and secondary co-producer, is your job. Although I don't really know, if I were to guess I'd wager that the Lips actually told Fridmann to clip the desk on purpose.

Most rock music has "fake" dynamics anyway (band seems to go quiet but it's actually still digital zero or close to it). That's just how you produce an album these days in the commercial pop/rock field, and it's done that way deliberately so it's punchier when making the transition to radio. The Flaming Lips clearly wanted a breakthrough commercial record that would work on radio so they hired a producer who they knew could get the job done that they wanted. Seems like it paid off for them.
 

BonsaiK

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Ham_authority95 said:
How much of a market is there for noise music? Nobody I know has heard of people like Merzbow, so where are it's fans?
Yeah, that market is pretty small. Last time I went to a Merzbow gig maybe 40 people were there, and that's in a city of over a million. The people who do like it are pretty hardcore about it though, and a lot of Merzbow releases cater to that mentality by really going to town on artwork, packaging and lots of content (like the Merzbox 50 CD set, the recently release 12-CD Merzbient box, etc). The audience is small but it's there. Having said that, I don't know of a single musician working purely in the field of noise music who actually earns a living solely from sales of that music, Merzbow included, there's just not enough people into it to make decent money.
 

Ham_authority95

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BonsaiK said:
Ham_authority95 said:
How much of a market is there for noise music? Nobody I know has heard of people like Merzbow, so where are it's fans?
Yeah, that market is pretty small. Last time I went to a Merzbow gig maybe 40 people were there, and that's in a city of over a million. The people who do like it are pretty hardcore about it though, and a lot of Merzbow releases cater to that mentality by really going to town on artwork, packaging and lots of content (like the Merzbox 50 CD set, the recently release 12-CD Merzbient box, etc). The audience is small but it's there. Having said that, I don't know of a single musician working purely in the field of noise music who actually earns a living solely from sales of that music, Merzbow included, there's just not enough people into it to make decent money.
I can believe that. With noise music comes a whole artistic package, not just sound.
 

BonsaiK

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Ham_authority95 said:
BonsaiK said:
Ham_authority95 said:
How much of a market is there for noise music? Nobody I know has heard of people like Merzbow, so where are it's fans?
Yeah, that market is pretty small. Last time I went to a Merzbow gig maybe 40 people were there, and that's in a city of over a million. The people who do like it are pretty hardcore about it though, and a lot of Merzbow releases cater to that mentality by really going to town on artwork, packaging and lots of content (like the Merzbox 50 CD set, the recently release 12-CD Merzbient box, etc). The audience is small but it's there. Having said that, I don't know of a single musician working purely in the field of noise music who actually earns a living solely from sales of that music, Merzbow included, there's just not enough people into it to make decent money.
I can believe that. With noise music comes a whole artistic package, not just sound.
That's why sales of physical product for noise music and related genres like industrial and neo-folk, although not huge to begin with, haven't really dipped much compared to other genres. A lot of those artists take great care with the physical presentation because it's considered to be a very important part of the artistic statement, more or less inseperable from the music. Fans of those genres continue to buy physical stuff often because they get "special treatment".
 

Ham_authority95

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BonsaiK said:
Ham_authority95 said:
BonsaiK said:
Ham_authority95 said:
How much of a market is there for noise music? Nobody I know has heard of people like Merzbow, so where are it's fans?
Yeah, that market is pretty small. Last time I went to a Merzbow gig maybe 40 people were there, and that's in a city of over a million. The people who do like it are pretty hardcore about it though, and a lot of Merzbow releases cater to that mentality by really going to town on artwork, packaging and lots of content (like the Merzbox 50 CD set, the recently release 12-CD Merzbient box, etc). The audience is small but it's there. Having said that, I don't know of a single musician working purely in the field of noise music who actually earns a living solely from sales of that music, Merzbow included, there's just not enough people into it to make decent money.
I can believe that. With noise music comes a whole artistic package, not just sound.
That's why sales of physical product for noise music and related genres like industrial and neo-folk, although not huge to begin with, haven't really dipped much compared to other genres. A lot of those artists take great care with the physical presentation because it's considered to be a very important part of the artistic statement, more or less inseperable from the music. Fans of those genres continue to buy physical stuff often because they get "special treatment".
They definitely get their dollars worth, that's for sure.
 

Inchronica

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As an artist who happens to be Christian, How often does religion clash with the industry when it comes to lyrical/visual content? And how are compromises made?
 

BonsaiK

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Inchronica said:
As an artist who happens to be Christian, How often does religion clash with the industry when it comes to lyrical/visual content? And how are compromises made?
Here's a cut and paste from a response I gave to someone about 15-20 pages back regarding their Christian band, this may answer some of your question:

me said:
"Christian" bands are always stuck in an interesting predicament, one which is not that different to what a lot of "white power"-style artists find themselves in. It works like this: people who are interested in the ideology want to listen to the music primarily because it matches their ideology, whereas people who disagree with the ideology refuse to even give the music a chance, once again, because they don't happen to agree with what's being said. In both cases, the actual music takes a back seat.

This is why, in the history of Christian music (in all genres), once an act starts gaining a very solid fanbase, they start toning down their Christian message - the people behind the music generally still hold those beliefs but they no longer want to be perceived as "that Christian artist", because it stops new people outside of that Christian music scene from checking out the music (and on top of financial concerns there's no point preaching to the choir after all). They're trying to break out of the "ghettoisation" effect that nominating yourself as a Christian artist tends to generate. Amy Grant, Stryper and P.O.D. are all artists who have attempted this shift, with varying degrees of success, but almost every big Christian band tries to "cross over" at some point. It's just good marketing sense.

For smaller Christian bands, ghettoisation can be a good thing - sure, it cuts off the non-Christian audience more or less completely, but it makes the Christian audience super-interested in everything you do, and at the start of your career you're probably mainly going to be playing just to your Christian pals anyway. Let's look at "white power" bands again - now that's a genre that's has zero chance in hell of crossing over into the mainstream because so many people find those kind of ideas completely abhorrent. Bands who choose that path knowingly choose the path of music industry ghettoisation. They know they'll never be accepted by the mainstream - only their specific audience will ever care. The flipside, is that that specific audience cares a whole lot. Look at Skrewdriver - even by punk standards, they can barely play their instruments and ignoring the lyrical content the songs themselves are simply not that good, certainly nothing to write home about compared to their contemporaries, yet they had that tiny core audience who latched onto them and loves them because of their extreme stance, hence they're still known today and have fans all over the world (not many though, but enough for a cult following).
Further to that, as far as the industry is concerned, it really doesn't care too much what you believe, what they care about is if it's selling, because it's a business and they're into it to make money. To put it another way, not every book publisher who publishes bibles has a 100% Christian staff who actually believe the doctrine - it's likely in some cases that they might, but it's certainly not always the case - often they're just filling demand for the book. That's why P.O.D. were able to get on things like the Ozzfest tour - the band were/are popular, they fit the format of the tour (i.e they're heavy), plenty of people like them and go to see them, and that's what business-savvy promoters and tour organisers care about. On the other hand, the idea that P.O.D. might be ideologically at odds with Ozzy himself and many other bands on the bill isn't really on the radar of those people. (That's not to say some promoters don't have stupid prejudices - some certainly do, but the good ones don't.) As long as you're filling venues, pretty much any message will be tolerated by an intelligent promoter or label unless it's really really extremely offensive in some way that might actually damage the label/tour/whatever on a business level. And Christianity is unlikely to do many bands too much harm, it's a pretty popular religion after all, and you'd be surprised even despite the ghettoisation effect stated earlier, how many fans of Christian bands aren't actually believers but are willing to say "I don't agree with the message but I still like the music". I have a Christian friend who loves Deicide, because he thinks the music is great, and the Satanism stuff, he's just like "they can believe whatever they want, I don't believe in that or really care, I just like it for the music - sure, it'd be nice if they were Christian too, but - oh well". That kind of crossover audience isn't huge but it really does exist.

In summary, most decisions about "how 'out' should we make our Christian message" come from the band themselves, not anywhere else. Maybe they're influenced by what their fans think, but the label couldn't give a shit to be honest as long as the end result is something people will want to buy. The exception is Christian-only labels that only deal in Christian bands and might use that as a marketing point, in which case it's kind of expected that you fly the flag a bit. To bring the book thing into it again, you wouldn't try to get a pro-Atheist book published by a Christian book publisher (you could try, but you'd obviously get nowhere fast).
 

gyroscopeboy

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I have a question. Triple J http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/ (for those not in Australia its the primary National youth news and music network, and it's MASSIVE) do you think Triple J Unearthed is a good thing or not? In some ways its good having an "easy" option to get your music out there, but n the other hand, the music scene is now saturated wth bands because its so easy to record and upload your music for all to hear. What are your thoughts?
 

BonsaiK

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Nov 14, 2007
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Shivarage said:
The Eurovision song contest...

Tell me it's not a serious competition o_O

PLEASE!!!
It's no less or more of a competition than any other band competition. In other words, it's a real competition but like all of them it's always fending accusation that it's notoriously riddled with bias and more about image than music. How valid those criticisms are, I couldn't tell you. The only real difference between Eurovision and other well-known band competitions from my perspective is that Eurovision doesn't have a shonky pyramid-scheme element and can actually sometimes help an artist's career. It's the only song competition in the world that actually looks good on a resume and gives you decent exposure, the others certainly don't.
 

BonsaiK

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Nov 14, 2007
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gyroscopeboy said:
I have a question. Triple J http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/ (for those not in Australia its the primary National youth news and music network, and it's MASSIVE) do you think Triple J Unearthed is a good thing or not? In some ways its good having an "easy" option to get your music out there, but n the other hand, the music scene is now saturated wth bands because its so easy to record and upload your music for all to hear. What are your thoughts?
I don't like Triple J because their playlist is the most repetitive in Australian radio, they're far worse than even the commercial stations when it comes to getting a song that you love and flogging it to death and basically forcing you to hate it. Every big city in Australia has at least one community radio station which is far superior to Triple J in every aspect and that in my opinion people should be listening to instead. We have radio all around the country here that's seriously as good as the John Peel days of the BBC, it's a pity more people don't listen to it and choose JJJ instead. Having said that I think Unearthed is one of the better initiatives that has come out of JJJ. I don't see any harm in it, after all the music scene is "saturated with bands" anyway whether JJJ plays them or not, and at the end of the day those bands will sink or swim based on their music, so I think JJJ's effect on all that is a lot more minimal than people think. It's just giving a few people a leg up and that's alright.
 

KiKiweaky

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Booookmarked theres a load of info in here haha. Good thread I must say, I've read a good amount of posts but seeing as I need to live aswell theres no way I'm going to spend a year and a half reading the thread before I post, so apologies if my questions have been asked already.

What is the path music takes from artist/band to the fans? I see loads of names like record labels, producers etc but I dont know how the process works.

Another thing I want to know, what has to be in place to allow a radio station to play a song? Do you pay the artist all the money or does some go person x and y and finally to the artist? Do you pay a licensce fee of say a 100 for a month or does it work on a per play basis? Do some artists earn more for each play of a song or does it depend on how popular succesful a song is?

Thanks :)
 

BonsaiK

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Nov 14, 2007
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Ham_authority95 said:
How is your band usually paid? Just a single sum, or depending on how many tickets/drinks are consumed?
Sometimes it's a flat fee. Sometimes it's a "door deal" where we get a percentage of what punters pay at the door - this is a popular arrangement because it's lower risk for the venue if the band is an unknown quantity that may or may not pull punters. If there are multiple bands on the bill a door deal is split between bands. Sometimes it's a combination of both - a guaranteed minimum payment, and then more if the venue has a good night (through either lots of people paying to get in, or lots of people buying drinks at the bar, or both). And sometimes we will do a show for free - benefit and charity shows are often like this, we naturally want maximum funds to go to whatever cause, so the bands will usually not take payment. We never pay to play, though - don't ever do this.
 

BonsaiK

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KiKiweaky said:
What is the path music takes from artist/band to the fans? I see loads of names like record labels, producers etc but I dont know how the process works.
Record label = a company that releases music. Can be a huge multinational corporation, a small backyard job, or anything in between. If the label likes the artist they will strike a deal together called a "recording contract", this is an agreement where the band agrees to produce x number of recordings over a given time frame for the label to release. The band then records this music in a music studio (see below), and gives it to the label, the label packages it, manufactures the physical product (or distributes it on the net) and sells it. Ideally, both parties profit from this. Of course, it doesn't always work out that way, but that's another topic. The label also sometimes takes control of many other things, i.e making sure stores have the music, getting it to radio and TV so they can play it, getting advertisements made and displayed, organising live appearances, etc. Bigger labels with more money are able to control more of these factors.

Audio Engineer = a person who does the actual physical recording of the music, in a music studio, this person works the equipment in the studio. (Audio engineers also work at concerts operating the equipment there.) These studio recordings used to be on large magnetic tape and DAT (digital audio tape) but these days hard disk format is more common.

Producer = the person who actually makes the decisions about how the music itself is going to sound, or should sound. As the recording is being made, they'll make decisions about what sonic elements need to be emphasised, changed, or dumped. The producer in many cases may be the engineer. Alternatively, the producer may be a member of the band, or even the band as a whole may "produce". The producer may also instead be a separate person brought in just for this job - this is common on high-budget recordings, but bands with minimal budget often opt to produce themselves, or let the engineer do it. Sometimes, the engineer and/or band and/or an outside person all work together and "co-produce" the music.

Hope that's clear-ish, feel free to ask more if you like if you still don't have a clear picture of how it all fits together.

(I'll answer your other question later when I have time - at work at the moment)
 

BonsaiK

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Nov 14, 2007
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KiKiweaky said:
Another thing I want to know, what has to be in place to allow a radio station to play a song? Do you pay the artist all the money or does some go person x and y and finally to the artist? Do you pay a licensce fee of say a 100 for a month or does it work on a per play basis? Do some artists earn more for each play of a song or does it depend on how popular succesful a song is?

Thanks :)
Generally speaking (can only speak in generalities because radio law is different in different countries) radio stations have a license to play music that they get from a broadcasting administrative body. There's no fee to play specific music as such, after all, record labels and artists both want their music heard on the radio and charging the radio station to play it is a great way to make sure they play something else instead, so nobody bills the label. If anything it's the other way around with "payola" but that's another topic. However royalty rates must be paid regardless of what is paid and that's the same for a radio station, a TV station, a supermarket piped music system, you name it. Royalties are very complex, fortunately whoever wrote the article I'm about to link has helpfully explained the basics in a fairly down to earth way (or as down to earth as it gets):

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royalties7.htm

That'll give you a basic understanding of the concept and how money flows around.
 

KiKiweaky

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BonsaiK said:
Alright thank for that Id get lost on the internet looking for something like that.

Does that mean the only reason pirate radio stations are shut down is because they arent paying royalties?
 

BonsaiK

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KiKiweaky said:
BonsaiK said:
Alright thank for that Id get lost on the internet looking for something like that.

Does that mean the only reason pirate radio stations are shut down is because they arent paying royalties?
That's part of it, yes. There's also that they're operating without a broadcasting license which is also a big concern for the radio regulatory bodies. The problem with that is that AM and FM frequencies in major cities are so clogged that it's very difficult to find somewhere to broadcast where you're not stepping on the toes of someone else's signal, so pirate radio transmissions can interfere with regular broadcasting, or they can prevent new legitimate stations from broadcasting by hogging their space. Pirate radio in the traditional sense is pretty much obsolete these days though, at least in the west - putting a streaming podcast up is far easier both technically and legally, and someone looking to play music without paying royalties would be far more likely to do it this way instead now. Also, it's so much easier to get busted doing a pirate radio broadcast because radio transmitters aren't small things and the signal is easily traceable (which of course, is the point). The most likely use of pirate radio these days would be political - set up a radio transmitter right near the border of a country you don't like very much and start broadcasting propaganda detrimental to that country, for example.
 

Troels Pleimert

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Jul 23, 2010
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Is this thread still alive? I actually do have a question that I feel needs an insider perspective.

I was talking about drums way earlier in the thread and about how hard it is to record them adequately on a shoestring (or a no-shoes) budget.

But I'm starting to wonder whether most professional bands in studios don't just cut corners and program the drums, even if they have a live-and-well drummer.

I'm not talking about when Meshuggah did Catch-22 (using Drums From Hell) or when Devin Townsend dit Ziltoid the Omniscient (also using Drums From Hell). Both of these were up front about using programmed drums.

I'm talking about those bands that PRETEND to use human drums, but by the sound of it probably aren't.

For instance, I'm listening to Paradise Lost's Symbol Of Life, and those drums don't sound real. Neither do the drums on Deadsy's Phantasmagore. And there's an on-going fight among my musically inclined friends (who also do music production on the side) on whether Fear Factory actually recorded Raymond Herrera live for the Demanufacture/Obsolete/Digimortal albums, or if it's actually Rhys Fulber working a drum machine. (One of my friends INSIST that "you cannot play that precise!", and Demanufacture is from 1994, so there wasn't any Beat Detective around back then.)

Peter Steele admitted that all the drums for October Rust, World Coming Down and Life is Killing Me were programmed.

As you can tell, I'm focusing a bit on metal drums, and that's because (in my view, at least) it's not as much of a "faux pas" to use a drum machine and lie about it in other genres, i.e. pop or country. (Jazz, probably, but hey.) Metal drummers are notoriously competitive. Admitting to using a trigger on the bass drums was even a sin once (I remember Nicholas Barker getting flak for it, and he's an awesome drummer notwithstanding!).

I have a feeling A LOT more bands are actually using programmed drums - out of laziness, or because the drummer really isn't that good (most people probably wouldn't notice when playing live that he didn't hit all the notes?), or because it just sounds better?

Does anyone know of any - ANY - albums where you know for a fact that it's a machine playing, even though we all thought it was a human?