Today's pop music is too loud

[Wiz]

yeah good point, I love clean too... 8) I am a get rid of noise fiend..... 8) too me, silence sounds expensive.... and allows your verbs niceness to come through.

On visuals, I rarely look at anything in the DAW, to do with levels, the peak meters get a glance at the gain setting stage of tracking, at the end of the pass, and two bus peak meters get watched for peaking (which NEVER actually happens with the levels I track and mix at anyways)

I do however watch my VU meters like a teenager at a nude beach. 8)

I loooooooooooove VU meters. Greatest thing since sliced bread.

[jkhuri44]

back when i was at uni....i wanted to throw poo at modern music lecturers...10 yrs later, when i read the tripe they write...i still want to throw poo at them, nothing has changed.

Music academia is...pretty much, verbal masturbation...That article posted tells us nothing about modern music at all. "Chords" what F@#$ing chords...the latest music has riffs consisting of 1 note in an ostinato, followed by 1 note change in the cadence, and its not even played by an instrument, its a ripped vocal mp3 or something RIPPED OFF YOUTUBE....thats' the latest music, friggin stupid academic putz.

"timbral experimentation stopped in the 60s??" - wtf kind of bullshit is that?? I guess this guy has never heard Amon Tobin, or Aphex Twin, or Gong or KC or insert any good music...again, the prob with music lecturers is they talk down to people, people who actually know f@#$ all about music 90% of the time in the first place, and are easily impressed by lofty bullshit, and an impressive vocabulary.

I think the problem with this is...."today's older people are more annoying"...

Pop music has always been abhorrent to the older generations of its time, if Elvis was considered the devils music, it shows...quite easily that at all times, the grass is greener on the retirement village's side... Yes i bet you all think, if you did sit down and judge the music of each passing era with scrutiny, you'd "think" music is getting worse....however, in my humble opinion, if you dont like rap, electronic, RnB, house, fidget, dance music (insert more autotune, ghastly 2012 devils music genres here)...your appreciation of the talent in some engineers and writing doesnt exist in the first place.

Yes i hear you say that lil' wayne and nicki minaj are aweful...and yes in most songs they are, but some of their songs are pretty cutting edge...yes, The Ventures and Hendrix played instruments, and sung in relative key...but it's 2012....and we'll be lucky if humans are still doing the singing in 2030

[Ben M]

I do however watch my VU meters like a teenager at a nude beach. 8)

I loooooooooooove VU meters. Greatest thing since sliced bread.

I met Geoff Emerick last year and he mentioned how much he loves VU's. I mean we all do, right?
One thing that really surprised me was when he said that he could mix a band by watching the stereo vu's alone...without any sound. Whoa? (I said)
Not suggesting for a second that this is any way to mix a band...but I did give it a go ...and was happy with the way it setup the gain staging for the rest of that mix (with monitors up). It was an interesting exercise. Weird... but interesting.

Sorry if that was off topic. Back to normal programming:)

[ChrisW]

Pop music has always been abhorrent to the older generations of its time, if Elvis was considered the devils music, it shows...quite easily that at all times, the grass is greener on the retirement village's side...

I agree.
Survey say's "music today is worse than the music I grew up with"

I always try to check myself before saying something along those lines.

[Sammas]

back when i was at uni....i wanted to throw poo at modern music lecturers...10 yrs later, when i read the tripe they write...i still want to throw poo at them, nothing has changed.

Music academia is...pretty much, verbal masturbation...That article posted tells us nothing about modern music at all. "Chords" what F@#$ing chords...the latest music has riffs consisting of 1 note in an ostinato, followed by 1 note change in the cadence, and its not even played by an instrument, its a ripped vocal mp3 or something RIPPED OFF YOUTUBE....thats' the latest music, friggin stupid academic putz.

"timbral experimentation stopped in the 60s??" - wtf kind of bullshit is that?? I guess this guy has never heard Amon Tobin, or Aphex Twin, or Gong or KC or insert any good music...again, the prob with music lecturers is they talk down to people, people who actually know f@#$ all about music 90% of the time in the first place, and are easily impressed by lofty bullshit, and an impressive vocabulary.

I think the problem with this is...."today's older people are more annoying"...

Pop music has always been abhorrent to the older generations of its time, if Elvis was considered the devils music, it shows...quite easily that at all times, the grass is greener on the retirement village's side... Yes i bet you all think, if you did sit down and judge the music of each passing era with scrutiny, you'd "think" music is getting worse....however, in my humble opinion, if you dont like rap, electronic, RnB, house, fidget, dance music (insert more autotune, ghastly 2012 devils music genres here)...your appreciation of the talent in some engineers and writing doesnt exist in the first place.

Yes i hear you say that lil' wayne and nicki minaj are aweful...and yes in most songs they are, but some of their songs are pretty cutting edge...yes, The Ventures and Hendrix played instruments, and sung in relative key...but it's 2012....and we'll be lucky if humans are still doing the singing in 2030

I feel like I need to stick up for parts of music academia! I have certainly been lectured by the occassional putz... the kind of lecturer who wants to raise his or her minions to make music like he or she wants it... but I have also had some really, really great, down to earth, intriguing lecturers. Off the top of my head, Julian Knowles is one of them. Stephen Ingham is another.

I don't think its a case of academia being a bunch of putz'. Its 60% of the entire music scene are putz'. There are over-opinionated, ignorant, shallow-minded souls in pretty music every rehearsal studio, recording studio, live venue, control room, side of stage, music store, etc in the world at one point or another. Some people aren't ever open to other points of view.

[ChrisW]

I went to music college for four years.
I've taught briefly, and done plenty of clinics and seminars.
Education is a powerful tool.
In my opinion it's best used to skill yourself, soak up knowledge from those more experienced, and make as many mistakes as you can before it becomes a critical career mistake.
I'm all for education.
I just think music is somewhat intangible. One persons greatest song of all time, is another person's 'filler' track.
Education is at it's worst when it assigns good and bad values to things, based on 'research'.
I was treated as a second class citizen by some academics (in the classical department) because although I was enrolled in symphonic percussion, I enjoyed playing drums in a rock band too.
You can't really say contemporary music is stuck in a rut, based on counting the number of times a chord is repeated.
Well, that's just what I believe anyway.

[Drumstruck]

Education is at it's worst when ....

To truly understand education at it's worst you need to visit the school I was imprisoned at for 13 years - and I'm not kidding!

Thank all deities for freedom from that .

[Wiz]

[quote=" There are over-opinionated, ignorant, shallow-minded souls in pretty music every rehearsal studio, recording studio, live venue, control room, side of stage, music store, etc in the world at one point or another. [/quote]

and those are the nice ones.

[Wiz]

Education is at it's worst when ....

To truly understand education at it's worst you need to visit the school I was imprisoned at for 13 years - and I'm not kidding!

Thank all deities for freedom from that .

our lady of perpetual mistreatment ?

[Thirteen]

My grandparents didn't like rock/pop for all of the usually mentioned reasons - Too brash, too revolutionary, anti-establishment, too loud, too fast, long hair, too noisy....

Now this generation's parents don't like current music for the a different reason. Having grown up with everything from Punk to Bowie to New Order to Grunge to Numan to Talking Heads to Metallica to whatever, todays parents listen to current musical styles and production and their complaint is: "Is that all you got"?

[mylesgm]

Amazing.
If the artist doesn't know what they meant, why would you think a US academic knows better?

Well actually this is quite common in all forms of art and specifically for music as one of the most abstract forms of art. And further it is not something to be shy about about but something to embrace. I create music via inspiration that I am both aware and unaware of and what is significant to me may spark something in someone else that is totally unrelated to my own inspiration. This is beautiful and every artist should be aware that their understanding of the meaning in their work is merely one facet of art that reflects society, history, politics etc. Sure, the artist can be deeply frustrated with the way society understands or fails to understand or appreciate their art and there are many cases of this but it is part of being artist.

And I want to clarify that academics don't necessarily hold the keys of interpretation or that the artist is irrelevant to the conversation.

[The Tasmanian]

Hey Myles - you now need to change your place of residence to : "Sunny Africa"
The best luck mate!

[ChrisW]

And I want to clarify that academics don't necessarily hold the keys of interpretation or that the artist is irrelevant to the conversation.

Yes, I agree with you.
The example I gave was when the artist knew what they were saying, and tried to correct a misinterpretation by an academic, but the academic was not interested in the artist's view. The only problem I see is when academia try to claim something is a fact, when it's something more subjective as you rightly point out.

[Drumstruck]

There is the other side of the coin where "the public" views/hears "the artist" as though they actually thought wonderful things up (rather than paraphrasing / modifying the historical as they/we do.....) and even worse, there is the misguided assumption of great intelligence from the artist.

imo art and academia are complimentary disciplines - great art can arise from research - great insight can be attained from art..... ooo how waxily philosophical at this time of the morning