I’ve read a few album reviews that commented on how much the drummer sucks. That’s not something I would notice at all, I don’t think. But it brought an idea to mind…
Someone like Britney Spears or N*Sync tends to be backed by studio musicans, who I assume are pretty damn good at their instruments. OTOH, a standard popular rock band is just a bunch of guys, a couple of whom might be talented and the rest of whom probably just lived nearby. The talent level is a crapshoot.
So it would seem that, for someone who can tell the difference between crappy playing and a virtuoso, that pop music would actually be less grating due to the higher talent level. Anyone ever notice this?
Yeah, I smell what you’re cookin’. The thing that is lacking, however, is (and I’m generalizing) feeling/sincerity/passion. Maybe you just haven’t found the right garage band. And there are pop bands that ARE good.
Depends on what you’re looking for in the sound. Sound quality? Yeah, I suppose pop is it.
I’d much rather listen to a garage band that writes good songs than a technically brilliant, well-produced, artistically bankrupt pop “masterpiece”.
Some of my favorite bands are obviously not good technical players - The Ramones, The White Stripes, Modest Mouse, the Pixies, and countless other bands aren’t going to win any guitar magazine “player of the year” awards. But I don’t care - they write great songs and I love them. The guitar solo on Neil Young’s “Cinnamon Girl” is only one note, and it’s great. Much better than some technical wizard masturbating with some pointy 80’s heavy-metal guitar.
I realize that the studio musicians are probably really good, but if they’re squandering their talent on things like Britney Spears and N’Sync, who cares? I’m never going to hear it, regardless of how “good” their musicianship is.
A side note - are there actual musicians playing instruments on those examples, or is it just some knob-twiddler? Not that I can’t appreciate that - I’m a big hip-hop and techo fan too - I’m just wondering if it’s relevant.
IMHO, many bands are so over-produced these days that musicianship tends to play a very small role. The use of Pro-Tools to “fix” mistakes totally makes up for drummers who can’t keep time. Bands get signed to major labels more for songwriting ability, stage presence/image and marketability than for their musicianship.
I wonder what sucked about the drummng the reviewers are referring to? Are they talking about a lack of creativity? Lack of groove?
As to the OP, I don’t think that whether music is grating or not has anything to do with musicianship. I think that music is either appealing or not to an individual based on personal aesthetic. Also, certain sounds tend to grate on the ear more than others (most people can listen to a piano longer than they can listen to a trumpet.) I don’t have a cite, but that’s what they told us in music school, anyway!
I agree Morgainelf. I have actually experienced the “pro tools” fix up first hand. I play drums. My band is working on some demo material. I totaly F’d up a drum fill and thought I was going to have to re take at least that portion of the song, but the producer just cleaned it up. I like to think of my self as a good drummer, but that just showed me that anybody can do it in the studio. Live is a different story though…
As far as pop or garage, it depends. Steeley Dan uses a lot of studio musicians to make pop music, but I like them a lot. For me it is more important how the tunes make me feel than how technical they are.
Well I use many editing programs, Pro Tools being one of them, and let me tell you no longer need talent to make music. Although the OP made a good observation, I find it difficult to compare all the different apples and oranges. First off music is completely subjective, and people are into some strange stuff these days, so it seems anything can be good.
Pop music should be better then garage music because the musicians involved tend to be technically better then their unprofessional brethren.
Not at all, most people wouldn’t be able to tell the difference, they just tend to like the song or not based on it’s melody. Aural art and visual art are the same in that there is no good or bad, its 100% subjective. Some people may prefer the simplicity of ‘Hot Cross Buns’ to something like Beethoven’s ninth, and thus consider it a better piece of work.
Most recording artists you hear these days started off in garage bands (or in a garage band type of situation, one old keyboard, a four track, etc etc).
Studio musicians are no better then other musicians, in fact, I’ve found the opposite. I worked in a studio for years, and remember all these bass player session musicians would come in, bust out some Les Claypool style slap bass, and think they were God. The problem was that’s all they could usually play; those few little memorized tired old flashy bass lines. I always reasoned it that they need to impress people, and during the years of playing other peoples music, they had no time to develop their own style. In a nutshell I usually likened studio/session musicians to a knowledgeable stuffy old Harvard professor with no soul.
Pop musicians will sound better then a garage band for 2 reasons.
They are professionals, this is their life, and this is all they do. I play in a band, and when we rehearse 2 or 3 times a week, we already sound better, we are more comfortable and tend to improvise more without screwing up. We’ve also gone a few weeks without practicing as well, and sounded like shit. Its no skin off our backs, because we don’t play out much, but for a professional band, this wouldn’t work well.
That lil engineer guy trained to use half a million dollars of equipment, which is used for the sole purpose of making you sound good. Now more then ever studio tricks and recording techniques are used in ways you couldn’t fathom. I would think of it this way. Just as Spielberg can remove the guns from people’s hands in ET and replace them with walkie-talkies, they can do equally impressive tricks aurally. Say when’s the new Tupac album coming out anyways?
Lastly with all mentioned above, music is not about music. It’s about catering to the lowest common denominator and moving as many units as possible, not making technically correct music featuring people with a modicum of talent. It’s a lot easier to take a beautiful woman and make her voice sound good, then to take an ugly ass talented person and make them look good. I forgot what the op was about so sorry if I went off on a tangent.
Studio musicians are the best in the world (I mean the kind of guys who play jingles in LA), and if they are hired to do a gig the last thing they want to do is showboat, they play what is written. A work for hire drummer in a pop band can hardly be blamed for what he does as long as he lays down the beat like he’s told to, which he will as long as he calls himself a drummer. If he makes one mistake the next guy will be called, problem solved.
They are not squandering their talent, though I must admit they could be doing better things elsewhere. Also they probably don’t care if you hear them or not, because by that time they would have gotten that fat check in the mail. Again I’m talking about the work for hire studio cat.
The music business is run by money, not taste, and even the best musicians in the world have a hard time getting by. I don’t know a musician (and I know quite a few) who would walk the high ground and pass up on getting paid big to do easy pop music.
It’s a sad state of affairs in the music business, and as world eater said it all comes down to moving that inventory off the rack. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if people would buy decent music you would be hearing a lot of better things come out of the industry. As it stands right now the industry is geared towards the pre-teen/teenage girl, they account for the majority of record sales, and they are at the root of bad taste. Some people dig N’Sync and the rest, but they just don’t sound good, as a matter of fact I’m surprised these bands are still selling albums. Music can only sound the same for so long…