How Computers Ruined Rock Music
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- Опубліковано 5 тра 2024
- In this episode I show you the reason I believe that computers killed Rock Music.
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Computers: WE SHALL KILL ROCK
Radiohead: OK Computer
This is way too clever
@@WickedKnightAlbel ;)
@Mark Down i dont think a got all them if there is three levels of humor.......
😂👍🏻
funny fact, they actually using tape machine and a lot of analog gear with few digital stuff for doing that album ^^.
I love how half way through, Rick forgot about the video and just started remixing songs lol.
...And that is part of the beauty of this video. "Just let the camera roll as I play around and have some creative musical fun."
The more of his videos I see, the more I like this guy.
It's like a drug. You could see Rick getting excited about some of the changes that he tried. The more he changed, the more excited he got.
To me that proved how easy it is to get caught up in the whole quantizing thing. You start with one or two changes where the drums or guitar was badly off, then you start 'fixing' some other parts that were a little ahead or behind, then you decide to quantize the whole track, then you start moving this beat and duplicating this riff and next thing you know you've taken the humanity right out.
NultyMusic I noticed that. Luckily I could scrub forward until he got back to the point.
NultyMusic he sure made ruining rock music look fun
@@mdc53 and then ten years go by and you're like.....hey, where'd my girlfriend go?
I’ll never understand why people decided that producing music with your eyes instead of your ears was a good idea.
Cheaper
Explains everything wrong with modern music 👏👏👏
@@adrianpilcher703 quicker also. Gotta keep churning that mass commodity out!
It started out as a good idea. Technology starts as a tool to help humans but eventually all humans will be replaced by technology. Who would have thought that musicians would be among the first to be replaced?
Same thing happened with digital consoles in live music. Engineers stopped listening and started futzing with the plug ins. You don’t need a fancy pultec EQ plug in on a snare bottom mic tweeked to the nth degree while ignoring everything else for 5 minutes.
"Music is what happens between the gridlines." -Rick Beato
syncopation or groove or swing..... yes...
Back in the day, Eddie Van Halen was asked when they were going to put out a live album. He said listen to our studio albums, they are essentially live. Ted Templeman said he loved producing for Van Halen because all he had to do was set up the mikes and then hit the record button!
Vital Vector but they did put out a live album with Sammy
@@michaelrochester48 You've completely missed the point of what Vital said. And what this video is about. Congrats.
@Odell Mateo 😂
Michael is an idiot and should have kept his mouth shut in the first place, BRO. No need to argue. Yet if another point NEEDS to be made Templeman never bothered to "produce" the wretched Van Hagar. The first guy to produce Van Hagar was Mick Jones of Foreigner (a band Eddie used to razz back in the '70s as Foreigner was not close to Van Halen live).
ambiguation you completely missed the point of Michael’s comment, and acted like a jerk. Congrats.
Computers didn’t kill rock music, over-engineering and terrible musicians killed it.
These terrible musicians and over-engineers paid for these products to be made
True
Very well said. Plus compressing the §hi† out of every channel.
Those (twice), not these (twice).
there is not such a thing as.over engineering.
i just see bad and.intrusive engineering, unable to correctly identify the problem.
ok, pergaps i sau that being an engineer myself.
Rock music is terrible musicians and over-engineers
What's worse is, today's young musicians are learning to play like this, following along to soulless computerized music, expecting nothing less than rigid, soulless perfection from themselves.
I've been listening to a lot of isolated tracks from classic metal and rock albums lately, and noticing just how perfectly imperfect they were in isolation, but came together as a whole to create magic. But you look at guitar and bass lessons on UA-cam, or people's covers, what have you, and they're striving and beating themselves up for a "perfection" that never existed.
Spiritually radically (arguably a redundant term) speaking, it is the fear-driven power trip of unprocessed trauma that closes the heart and seeks escapism from that in glorifying the mind imbalance.
We basically have uninjured bodies walking around with battery-powered crutches because it's easier.
John Lennon's bass work on Helter Skelter is a great example of that. I don't think he gets it right once...
@@experi-mentalproductions5358 Though not as bad as his bass on The Long and Winding Road. That's some appalling bass playing. Though not as bad a Chris Hillman's bass flub on Feel a Whole Lot Better.
It's the equivalent of "pixel peeping" in the digital photography world; obsessing over tiny irrelevant imperfections and not paying attention to the bigger picture, which is the only thing that matters.
Thing is, _all_ isolated instruments sound shoddy outside the context of the full band/song.
Love Spreads by the Stone Roses has a tight driving groove and the band is totally on it, but listen to the isolated tracks. Mani's bass, which is tight and punchy on the record, is flubby and loose on the isolated track. A modern producer would "fix" this and would kill the groove and feel.
“It sounds like a sequencer, because it’s a sequencer.” Priceless.
That little pause in between really emphasizes it, hahahaha :P
Gregory - I was gonna echo the SAME line! That is some dry biting commentary.... unless you like it that way... :-|
ya best line for sure
"Music actually happens in between the grid lines."
I'm going to use this quote abundantly in my studio now
Had a band director that would say something similar: "The art is between the notes"
Not if you increase the resolution of the grid lines
Who said that first? Claude Debussy? No, why should he? He had no reason.
@KC Yeah, the title is sensationalist, but if you watched the video then you know there was no hypocrisy. Basically he believes a certain producing technique made music feel robotic and artificial, it has nothing to do with recording method or engineering stuff.
@KC It's not a hypocrisy, you have to adapt to the widespread technologies related to your field of interest and know it to actually keep up your pace.
Yeah, it's easier to say "it's just worse now", but this video takes time to explain (even though not really directly) pros and cons of quantization.
Only thing i don't like is that the presentation is clickbaity, but gotta be honest, i would rather click on "HOW COMPUTERS RUINED IT OLLOL" than on "what is quantization and why it made instrumental music sound less authentic".
"Look what I can do with this track by Nickleback." *hits Ctrl A, Delete*
😂
Shift Delete please :)
🤣
Then bleach my ears
@@franciscodanconia45 hahahaha
“If you hear NICKELBACK backwards you will hear demonic music, even worse, if you play it forwards you will hear NICKELBACK”
Dave Grohl is a savage lel
The absolute madman
Ha..... good comment I feel the same 😝
This comment needs WAY more love
Is that true?
I know this has been uploaded for some time, but I'd just like to make a random comment. I am not a musician, I am an exercise science professional by trade. This video relates so much to what we consider a healthy cardiac system. We actually want to see Heart Rate Variability (HRV). Basically, we want to see the intervals between heart beats (in miliseconds between each heart beat), as well as the average Heart Rate (in bpm), vary through the day. On a non-scientific note, I assume that is why we love this "groove" and "humanity" in music, they behave just like our hearts and make them skip a beat or two every now and then. Thanks, Rick for such an awesome channel!
This makes sense
Smartest comment I read today
Similarly we value slight facial asymetries. If you mirror a half face to the opposite side the result looks kinda scary.
That's a great observation. I once was listening to a reggae band while lying on a beach and was startled to realize the music was in time to my heart....I wasn't a huge reggae fan but I decided to look further
Very relevant. Most of the most popular songs in popular music have a BPM that closely matches the average human heartbeat.
Rick sounding like a teacher who Is grading his students after knowing they cheated. Hes proving it to them
When my band was recording in a studio in the late 90s, there was a metronome click coming from the tape machine. When we started recording, our drummer had to start over several times, and then he said, "it's not me, the click is off."
We couldn't believe it, until the sound engineer noticed that there was a quivering lightbulb above the mixing console. He pulled it out, we started over, and then the drummer was able to play through the songs.
Nobody else had noticed that the metronome was off (and if I had noticed, I would not have dared to submit it).
Today I wonder, if that drummer was a beat detective himself, or a cyborg. xD
Impressive. I'd love to see something like that done as an experiment to see how many people have the rhythm to notice such a thing.
Just shows there is no replacement for sheer talent and experience!
"I've heard beats… heard beats you people wouldn't believe"
Or maybe an excellent drummer with a great sense of rhythm!
I entered a studio as a young but experienced live drummer for the first time in '89. We used the click as a simple baseline to find the desired tempo and once we found that...bye bye click, i don't need ya. Laid down the drum and bass track together. Hands off. Clicks were used for rhythm sections that couldn't keep time in an obviously awful way. - The sterilization of live recording has killed a lost art and you can hear it everyday in modern music. Sorry young pups, tis a fact.
It's really nice to see that someone in the rock world is sharp enough to see this stuff and how disastrous it is for the feel of the music. Many jazz and classical musicians are very conscious of this stuff. A classical musician might consider it rubato or an aspect of phrasing, but very subtle rhythmic variations are often considered the difference between a virtuoso performance and a mechanical performance. When I was at conservatory, my piano teacher once took my metronome away from me. Not that I was using it at the moment, but he could tell that I was following the beat too slavishly. He could tell, without asking, that I was lazily using the metronome as a kind of crutch in my practice. I'm also a drummer. Most of my training is in jazz. In jazz, one of the key things to understand about rhythm is the beat: in most jazz you want the 'and' of the beat to be dead on like in your software, but not so with the beat itself. Learning to land your beats stylishly off of the beat is, in many cases, the difference between a professional and an amateur. I studied with a very fine jazz drummer who made me practice with a metronome, but the click was used as the 'and' of the beat. Like a lot of jazz drummers, I've played with a lot of rock bands here and there. It has become very common for rock bands to use a click to drive live performances. In some cases when the musicianship is a bit borderline, I get it, but this can damage more than it helps in many cases.
Auto Tune is also a dangerous tool. As a pianist, I'm well aware of the advantages that stringed instruments, wind instruments, and voice have over a fixed pitch instruments like piano. Small variations in pitch can make a melodic line sound much more natural, e.g., a slightly sharp 7th leading back to the tonic in a major key. It shocking to think that such things might be removed by software.
Thanks. This was a truly informative video.
I feel like your comment deserves a paywall lol-so much valuable information...plus now I have an overwhelming urge to rewatch Whiplash.
@@moshyura nothing will change the fact that classical and jazz musicians can play most forms of rock with little effort, while the contrary is nowhere close to being true. There have been a handful of musical geniuses have become rock/country music, but this is uncommon.
the thing about metronome being used as the "and" is very interesting. umm
something ot think about
Those electronic beats sound horrendous. It’s like a sound effect from an old Atari game.
Rick opens the 16th note grid:
“Look at this graph...”
watch Rick casually, accidentally, improve songs during an object lesson
If John Bonham had been "quantized" Led Zeppelin would have never made it out the door.
I'm sure his talent would still have shown through. I am certain that quantization couldn't have made it any better though
But maybe in through the out door?
John Bonham is one of the best drummers ever in my opinion. Even listening to his drumming, I can tell the timing isn't perfect. But that's what makes it seem more alive and organic. And likewise, Jimmy Page is one of the best guitarists. He misses notes sometimes. But every one of his solos has an emotion and a story behind the notes.
Julian Burmeister noice 👍🏻
Neil Peart entered the chat
All this machinery
Making modern music
Can still be open-hearted
Not so coldly charted
It's really just a question
Of your honesty, yeah, your honesty
Rush - Spirit of the Radio
Can be. Keys words here. Not guaranteed to be open hearted.
"They make the machines doing the recording now and I think that takes a lot away from real music. They got buttons that can play bass, buttons that can play whatever you play, and I don’t think that’s really what music is supposed to be."
-Muddy Waters in 1981
I love Muddy but I think that's an outdated take. These "machines" have made music more accessible to create and I think that's ultimately a good thing. You no longer have to be a multi-instrumentalist, virtuoso or invest a lot in having other musicians play things for you. You still can and it's better to have that choice
@@thaconnection8201 you do realise that if you’re not good at music you can just take another path or instead put in the time and effort and learn the instrument and master it, music isn’t something you do because you like it and to gain fame, you do it because you’ve a genuine love for it and is the only thing you can think of. What you’re saying is like saying if you wanna be a footballer just get prosthetic legs so that you can be the next big thing in football
Laptops and the like are fine if you're an electronica musician, or a musician composing for videogames, certain movie genres, or if you want to add some creepy or spacey sound effects. Before laptops it was synthesizers after all. But it's never okay for most organic genres of music.
What you're actually saying is that Rock Musicians and studio people ruined their own music by using computers the wrong way. Agreed
Musicians like Pink Floyd and The Who dabbled with electronic contraptions, but obviously couldn't do much because of the limitations. Even they were using it the right way. Computers should aid music, not dictate it.
"It just sounds like a squencer... 'cause... it's a sequencer" - BEST LINE EVER
I happened to read this at the exact moment he said it. That was freaky!
Thing is it isn't tho. You can see the parts are different
I actually wondered why my love for finding new rock and metal bands died in about 2010, now I know.
Rick: Beat Detective has killed Rock Music
Also Rick: let me show you how to use Beat Detective
right? lol!!
Know Your Enemy. (...and yeah, RATM related...)
Beat Detective makes it sound better than it really is. Think I’ll call it Beat Cop.
That's part of explaining how it works. Sometimes, you have to show what you're talking about.
Also gets sucked into flying different samples around every song, far past making any point, just playing. Now we see why it's so insidious-- there's something in the brains of recording engineers and musicians that responds to it like catnip lol
Expecting the computer to make you a good musician is certainly a problem. But DAWs are just digital studios. The computer doesn't push vocals through auto-tune, a mix/engineer/producer does that. Nor does the computer quantize anything until it's told to do so.
Digital recording is the BEST thing to happen to music in a long time. It has taken the power OUT of the hands of the labels and studios and given it to the artists. Not to mention the fact that $4000 amp stacks are no longer needed, ultra rare studio equipment is no longer needed and super expensive producers are no longer needed. Digital recording gives an artist the ability to have an entire studio within their grasp for pennies on the dollar while losing very little (if anything) on the final product.
Very good point thanks
Amen to that
Then why does modern music sounds so horrible?
@@n.d.m.515
TLDR - IMO, modern music SOUNDS really good. Pop music seems to be dropping Xannys right now but productions generally sound better than ever. We're in a cool experimental phase that'll hopefully result in some epic level music.
The best part of music is how varied but still accessible it can be. However it's appreciation is always subjective based on preference. Some folks dig Bach. Some prefer Mozart. Some can't stand classical period. Some people like the sound of dirty analog equipment some people don't.
If by "modern music", you mean Top 40 - cookie cutter stuff... well, subjectivity plays pretty heavily. The validity of Top 40 pop music can be debated ad nauseam however, the point stands that people ARE spending money or time listening to those artists (as strange as it may be). So modern music must not sound THAT bad.
But if you mean that modern music 'production' sounds horrible, I'd have to disagree. Modern productions sound incredible for the most part. We are far beyond the days of cutting grooves in vinyl and listening through a horn. The ability to make music sound anyway we want is limitless and fully able to accommodate every particular taste in... well, every genre. And as it continues to proliferate, it'll get better. The cream always rises to the top.
The digital recording thing that's happening right now is a big bombshell in the monumental paradigm shift in the music industry. Pandora's Box has been opened now. Consider this the "holy crap, look what we can do!!!!" phase. But keep this in mind:
It's an artist's desire and willingness to push tech and sounds that give us people like Tom Scholz and Devin Townsend. Yeah, there's going to be a metric ass-ton of Cardi B clones because for some reason that crap sells. But if you actively look for good modern music (song and sound-wise), it's easier to find now more than ever. Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Spotify, etc. Pick your favorite genre and just Google it. You'll be surprised. The big shocker for me was metal. Metal ain't paying much right now, so the bands that ARE out there are doing it just to make the music. You can tell too cause some of that stuff crushes!
@@ch3nz3n wrong and anyone who knows music and has listened to a wide variety of it knows it. Music these days, no matter what genre, is horrible. It has no soul, it has no class, and it all sounds the same from beginning to end. The only people who don't see that were born after 2000.
Imagine being a drummer who has honed his skills for years and has spent thousands of dollars on his drumkit just to get his recordings treated by the beat detective. I would probablly just walk into the studio, hit every piece of the kit 2-3 times and leave right ahead calling it a day and grabbing a cold one.
Yup 😄
It's not just that, it's that many of those expensive drums you are using get replaced with samples, or added samples to your snare sound, etc, to make them bigger or more impactful in some ways. Depending on the genre, and the producer, sometimes only a section or a bar here and there can be quantized and you leave the rest alone. Differs depending on the song and the final intent. Sometimes just the bass and kick drum will be quantized in some parts, etc. It's not always all or nothing...
It's sad because Arejay Hale is actually an extremely energetic and theatrical drummer.
I'm a singer and I just realized that this is actually how I am expected to work 😂🙈
I'm a singer and I just realized that this is actually how I am expected to work 😂🙈
Quantisation of human played music is the instant coffee of music - almost like the real thing, but somehow it's not quite right.
Good analogy but it’s actually much more distasteful than instant coffee.
I always considered it more like fairy floss and McDonalds compared to restaurants (professionally produced real music) or home cooking (indi rock and garage bands)
@@r4mbl3r and now we have the idea that potatoes are ugly and less than perfect cos they don't look like fast-food fries, that natural singing voices are "imperfect" if their pitch-accuracy is not 100% spot-on and all right-angles,,, give me natural wood, real potatoes, and un digitally-tamed singing please!
@@OTLCellartapes exactly!
If the goal was to make everything in perfect time and movable with a drum machine why have a drummer at all. just use the drum machine?
Pants420 Drummers can be more expressive for certain songs than drum machines and fit better for certain types of parts/songs... and vice versa
I'd also imagine the it would hurt a band's public image not to have a drummer, and indirectly admitting how much they rely on technology. A drummer or a percussionist is (rightly) considered a fundamental element of a band. Someone must play during live performances too.
Someone's still gotta be the butt of all the other musicians' jokes. Hard to rag on a machine.
@@lewiswilliams1893 they'll have to replace bassists in addition to drummers, then. Same for banjoists, accordionists, and perhaps players of other niche instruments.
Of course I like all of those instruments, so grateful to be able to squeeze my butt plug in here. ;-)
Someone has to drive the van.
My buddies spent $$$ to record their album at a "big time" studio, and when they got there, dude made them record everything to a click, wanted to replace their drummer because of tempo drift, and then sliced and diced everything in the mix. When they got the songs back they sounded like radio music, unrecognizable to their fans. Totally killed the music. They thew the album away.
That's because the "big time" studio they went to wanted to just run up their bill by taking advantage of them by using the "big time" studio's reputation to dictate. Did they pay them to produce them or to record them?? They needed somebody with balls to say, WE are paying you to record in your studio but WE are producing it, not you so just STFU and be the good trained monkey knob turner to give us top notch sonic quality and we'll produce the songs the way we want, not you. If we like the results, that's all that matters. If you don't like it, we will take our business elsewhere. Been there, done that.
@@farque7179 I thought the original post was good because it outlined a common problem. You took that up a notch and gave the solution.
👏👏👏
@@farque7179 you're talking about non conformity, and when you take that path of resistance these fragile little muppets engage in 3rd grader slander bringing the rest of the weak minded muppets in line with them. Now you try and deal with a new Studio who has a bias towards you and treats you with some animosity and no matter how you present yourself they remain obstinate assholes, the moment you attempt to confront their assholery you only confirm their bias. This is the trash world we live in
God this problem persists in new heavy metal/thrash/groove. When I play my guitar I have a style, I have a rhythmic signature that nobody else has. Sure I'm influenced by great musicians but who isn't? I do not want my percussive sound taken out of my pick attack while down picking. When alternative pedaling a 8th note my up stroke is just a tad weak. This causes a bit of groove in my playing that I like. Music is not supposed to be perfect.
They should have recorded with a "big time" guy like Steve Albini who respects rock bands, does NOT use click-tracks or even computers for that matter. Analog all the way, baby!
Did the computer ruin rock music or did the producer/ Artist / record labels/ higher ups that control music, change rock music? Don't blame the computer, man.
True Don
Amen. The sole fault with computers in music, or any any field for that matter, is that they do exactly what they are told to do by humans.
Good point.
I’m also curious what role the general public played. Was there demand for this? If made to listen to a quantatized song and an unquantatized song, which would people prefer?
@@kawmic7 His point was that computers are taking the Groove and feel out of music, you cannot argue the truth in that.
I was a recording musician & studio owner. When we recorded via 8 track, the drums got 4 tracks, bass got 1, rhythm 1. vocals 1. Lead guitarist had to pre-plan his solo. He learned it & then went in to record an intro, story line, climax, outro, like a book outline. Anymore than 8 tracks needed, you had to do what was called fold down or bounce tracks. When we went to 24 track machines, drums got 8 tracks. Bass, rhythm # 1, rhythm # 2, keys, backing vocals, horns or strings, sync tone or video sync got a total of 7 more. This left about 10 tracks open. Now the lead player would come in the studio & wing 5 tracks of lead guitar. The lead part would then be mixed together by listening to the 5 parts, & moving the volume faders up & down on the mixing console, while recording to a 2 track machine, to send to the mastering studio. The lead guitarist then had to go home, & learn the solo for live work.
Everyone who was lucky to start listening to music before the 00s felt that something awkward happened in mainstream pop rock music after that point. It wasn't so much that songs were getting uninspired as that they conveyed a feeling of fakeness. It was a product of loud mastering, vocal fixing with auto tune, and now this, drum/rhythm "quantization", and I guess other tricks. A feeling that music production got streamlined. No wonder that in this same period, fringe genres like death metal increased their popularity. It was somewhere you could still find music played by humans.
It was all about greed. But this is only 50% of the story. Why younger listeners kinda dropped the baton, the other 50% of the story, is more complicated. I think it still wasn't their fault, I mean what could they have done when music became merely one product among many defining a teen's life (social media hype, fashion, games, hip hop/rnb) and all that in an environment of social fragmentation.
A bigger picture of that matter. Very interesting
As the late great George Martin stated in his autobiography "Perfection is boring" !
Ringo Starr as a drummer has said the he is naturally left handed, but always played a right handed kit. That sometimes delayed his fills and thus his distinctive (and the Beatles distinctive) sound was created.
Take that Microsoft!
@@charlie-obrien Aha, never knew : like uncase the secret of Ringo ---
I just listened to the white album again. George Martin was a genius! White album is just one example
@The Happy Merchant Having multiple takes doesn’t mean you achieved perfection, it means you achieved what you were searching for. There are probably alot of small imperfections in the White album.
This KIND of perfection is boring, yes. When it is computerized tinny sounding crap! Whatever happened to the perfection that happens when a musician has played so much it is like breathing to him?
May I humbly suggest the occasional 32nd note drift is not the reason Nickelback does not sound as good as Soundgarden or The Police?
Wells Oliver hahahahaha fair enough
There first few albums were actually very good and they were excellent live performers. Chad Kroeger made no bones about wanting to be very commercial, though, and the insipid result was later songs like "Rock Star."
Seriously, the premise of this video is ridiculous. Sure, there's something to be said for over-quantization.. but it's very far from having ruined rock music lol
You're gonna have to have us look at a graph while singing the song for us to understand...
@@celestialmonkey Think hes making the point that it is vastly overused since 2001, sort of "dehumanised" some of the songs. If they do cut and paste verses etc. than that is a crap way of producing.
One of my favorite recordings is classical, a piano concerto I sometimes see described as "an old warhorse". The pianist is...mid-twentieth century. And in one of the movements, he sounds like he is staggering across the keyboard, searching for the right note in the instant before his finger hits the key.
And it is perfect. Every note, in exactly the right place, at exactly the right time, delirious with joy and beauty. It is ALIVE because it is not perfect by the metronome, but perfect by the genius of the pianist. With every single note written down on the staff two hundred years ago, no control over pitch, and having to not let the orchestra get lost, he improvises the exact timing and the dynamics of each note.
Rock and roll is all about improvisation, a trick you cannot do with a fifty piece orchestra. But the two tools Rick describes here strips that element out completely, strips out the life, the joy, the beauty, and turns it all into a music box.
“Sounds just like a sequencer, cause, well,,
It is a sequencer.” Rick Beato.
Luv this guy!
I said this 3 months too late...beat me to it.
I've gotta go with Geddy Lee on this one: "all this machinery making modern music can still be open-hearted". The issue you're talking about is the fault of bad sound engineers, not the computers themselves.
well duh... computers can't think for themselves. Yet.
Neil Peart?
That's a good quote from Lee 👌
You mean bad producers. They are responsible for the outcome, not the engineer. George Martin produced the Beatles while guys like Geoff Emerick had the engineering duties on several of their albums.
Neil Peart wrote the lyrics for that song
As someone who is a hip hop fan, I wonder why rock producers leaned so much on quantizing and Beat Detective. Hip hop producers, led by J Dilla, were known for using the software as an instrument and avoiding quantization. In a weird way, the way hip hop leaned on sampling forced them to understand the beats as opposed to editing live performances to death. I wonder why rock production stopped listening to the actual live performances of the musicians.
This is insightful and thought provoking
You and me both; I think it had to do with corporatism and "assembly lining" the production process as Rick mentions here. Fortunately, hip-hop record producers didn't have this mentality and ACTUALLY SHARE the creative mentality of the artists. Now if only we could bring in Rock producers who think like the artists they sign!
Hip hop sounds pre-chewed - there is no spontaneity - they sound like human machines. Nothing is NUANCED. Look it up, kid.
Back in the day some rappers used loops of real drummers. But most hip-hop today is programmed and quantized. Trap is all programmed. Hardly any real musical instruments in rap or R&B. That's why is has no soul. Don't know why they still call it R&B. R&B used to be soul music. Computers don't have any soul.
@@Cryo837 True, but so is Rock music. It sucks. Always did.
Me: Click on a "how computers ruined rock music".
UA-cam: Plays a symphonic virual orchestation online course ad.
My 13 year old grandson recently started learning to play guitar. I shared this video with him with the hope that he might learn a few valuable lessons about making real music as opposed to what he hears online every day.
I blame Nashville.
Notice how all country music started sounding the exact same around the same time. Started in the late 1990s.
except the dixie chicks
Blame Shania Twain.
@@Blaqjaqshellaq I don't .. there are people who did worst.
Or is what happened to
Nashville a example of the “product” of the problem
No I never noticed but I like my ear drums and do not subject them to that genre.
I do recall a time when my teenage metal band recorded our "tape" yep tape, and there wasn't a screen to be seen, just reel-to-reel VU meters and faders. Then came ADATS, then PT's. The rest is, I almost said history but the rest is now until A.I. completely take over. :o
Dude your channel is awesome!
Edit: your teenage metal band video was one of my favorites!
4 tracks were awesome. I still have blank cassettes in the package from 1990s. I have vinyl and tapes and the tapes still sound better with a good clean tape player than digital music.
"It ruined rock music." Starts using it and "hey, that sounds pretty cool" with every edit he makes. lol
There’s actually some truth to your comment
He was being ironic
Sarcasm
That's the whole point - he can re-engineer the songs as if they were made by machines.
YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO DO THAT SO EASILY!
@@maldivirdragonwitch yup precise, imagine the nightmare the band going to play it back live with that arrangement...
Eye-opening. I love the subtle tempo changes the old bands had in their songs. Like Boston, Maiden etc.
I was tangentially involved in a live recording for a worship CD some time ago (running mons for the live band).
The producer afterward proudly told everyone how he had to “fix” EVERY drum beat by quantizing.
I was, and am still, horrified.
I had simillar experience... this people should be baned from music community! :-D
If you have heard five klove songs you can stop, because they are all based on five songs recorded a few years before and before......... then quantized to death.
What's a klove song?
@@RedVynil I guess its K-love, christian radiostation
Got me! I haven't a clue!
John Paul Jones explains it in a way that any idiot can understand: "I remember hearing a cover of Stairway to Heaven by an American group called Great White. They'd obviously used a click track, and by the end of it you'd lost the will to live. Because the real version SPED UP. Which is a musical dynamic. Acceleration is a musical dynamic! And it needed to speed up!" Quote from Geddy Lee's Big Beautiful Book of Bass - a compendium of the rare, iconic, and weird
and that speed up was an intentional musical decision by Jimmy when he was writing Stairway. He was previously a session musician prior to The Yardbirds and Zep and wanted to write something that "broke" the rules of being a session guitarist
i can agree with that the song needed to speed up but i don't see a reason to not like a click. they are a must for a lot of genres of music [any prog band really]. and you can use a click to speed up and slow down.
This was eye opening to the fact that when everything is perfect, nothing is. Let the imperfections shine! Don't feel the pressure to be so robotic with your production and the feel will carry the song. Most people aren't going to notice if the attack of the note is a couple of ticks or samples away from the grid as long as it's not distracting from the journey of the song, you can go much further by being authentic and not worrying about how locked in you are, than stressing for every part to be on the grid
It's not just the "perfection" aspect of it, but the fact that finding, keeping, and recording/gigging with a drum machine takes aways the biggest headache in every band - the drum kit and associated expense and hassles of having to constantly break down, set up and transport all of it. Throw in that drummers are very rarely songwriters and only occasionally lend backing vocals or play any other instrument. Our drummer actually had a drum machine - that way he could come up with and rehearse his parts while living in an apartment. Then it was back to the real kit for recording and gigging. RIP Rimshot, we all miss you!
A very interesting example of the opposite happening in electronic music is Burial's first album
Of course he used a computer, but he did not use any software with grids or quantization in it.
That is something very strange in that genre, but it really makes his music sound much more "human" and natural. 100% recommended.
J Dilla is another person that used technology but never quantized.
"Beat Detective Killed the Groove, where Autotune Killed the Humanity!"
and Video killed the radio star!
@@mikeoliver3998 We can't rewind we've gone too far...
This explains why all these bands sound so bad live. The records are an unattainable proxy for the band
Which bands specifically?
Thats an excellent point I don't think the industry realizes.
If you say really all bands with no exceptions I can prove you wrong.
I was thinking the same thing. if a band needs all that augmentation to sound good, how the hell would they be able to play live??
unless of course, they pulled a Milli-Vanilli...
I'm not saying you're wrong about mediocre musicians but logically, a band could as easily sound better live because they aren't being computer modified.
I started a few years ago to program a browser application for finding out the chords of a song.
So I had in first step to program a beat detection. I found out that it works quite well with newer songs, but not so well with older. I went totally cracy when testing it on "Money" by Pink Floyd.
Now I know the reason why. Thanks!
As I watched, it became clear that the power to mess with things in detail like this is addictive. Yet there are wonderful musicians. What will it take for them to be able to sit in the studio together and really let that group vibe build the music. Is it just too expensive? Do the record producers(programmers) just want to control it so much and fix it so much that they don't need the musicians for anything except that "first pass."
For me, computers gave me the oppertunity to finally play and record all my rock ideas. I didn't have the luxury of a band that stucked together back in the day. :)
Should have used the spell check on your computer for this comment you dunce
@@Swanlord05 Do you feel powerful pointing out typos on the internet, pal?
We all need the computer bro including the author himself,i guess all he meant to point out by using the term computer was automation and the present overkill in production level by engineers and the race for perfection.
@@Swanlord05 easy pal.
I agree that they are a great addition and really useful to music but at the same time it’s pretty lame to “fix” EVERYTHING you play with a computer though.
I’m confused by this video. I’m being told quantized audio is bad but then I’m being shown cool things you can do with quantized audio lol
Noize Tank maybe the key would be to record some scratch tracks, do a mix and then re-record it live, as in the early mix.
Makes sense to me. Illustrates both what's wrong, and why it's done. It's not just a bad decision, it's a _trap_ - and a well-baited trap at that.
Ah, but we all saw it in real time (reel time?) -- Rick got so caught up in the magic of the software, that he got into a huge sidetrack of editing. IT'S A DRUG, PEOPLE! And highly addictive. I guess I already suspected that, but now I saw if for myself.
@@MushVPeets Exactly, and it sounds like Noize Tank just took the bait. LOL!
The point was to show how easy it is to do, and also how it's kind of hard to resist. But doing so takes all the feel out of the band and makes it sound pretty bland.
I had a deja vu when you first mentioned pocketing. Thanks for your input on what killed rock music. What also killed a lot of emerging bands was Latency. Basically everyone wanted CD quality recording as opposed to the no-Undo option of Tape Multitracks. Cut Copy Paste Undo Redo was a major breakthrough when writing essays as opposed typewriter, so many of us rushed towards Digital Multitrack options, very many of us had no clue that our PCs were the ones messing with our live sound. I wasn't aware of using room mics to make a reference track at that time.
I remember recording a live jam for the first time with a buddy of mine via Fruity Loops and an inexpensive USB DAI. We celebrated our first 3:50 musical victory knowing that we were slightly off beat. However, the sessions that followed were ultimately frustrating for the next 2-3 years until another buddy of mine told us about what the problem was. Even on the internet, very little information about latency and how to compensate it was available until about 2015. So yeah, a lot of frustrated musicians recorded their stuff in the bedroom, thinking they did a great job playing were suddenly fooled into believing that the recording was done by a psychotic off-beat wierdo. No backstage groupies for those odd fellows.
Greetings from Germany!
thanks. I started playing guitar in 2003 i think, because i am from a small city in India 6 7 years later i found rock blues or any western genre and fell in love with that music i tried my best to learn and play it professionally and realised that not many people like now a days in the west too.. and there is pop going on everywhere. here in my area no one cares about rock music but still i play n teach as much as possible because it’s like in my blood😆 i i love making my instrumental songs mostly rock. good stuff btw
What you are demonstrating is the very reason I got out of producing. Every vocal had to be tuned, every drum had to locked to a click. People mixed with their eyes. Screw that. Plus the format! Every song had to have the same format. Love your vids. This one brought back my anxiety and hate.
Thank you! Lol.
well, music is a commodity now, maybe even the cost of doing business for bands. The money is in live performances and merchandise, etc. All my current favorite bands, I have my favorite live performances for songs instead of the album versions. The album version has usually been a casualty of the loudness wars anyway. Used to be vinyl was good because you can't master it that way on vinyl, from what I hear now vinyl is just a larger copy of the CD. Not sure what they do.
I honestly don’t know if it’s appropriate to give this a thumbs up. It’s sad that the way that digital workstations ended up being used got you to leave the production world.
Ignore all this autotune and Beat Detective crap and approach the DAW as a musical instrument with new and previously impossible possibilities, rather than a digital toolkit to make doing 1990s stuff easier. Computers make rock music BETTER if used correctly - to the point of allowing one to incorporate a complete symphony orchestra if one posesses Native Instruments Kontakt and the right libraries, as well as a PC with 32 or even 64 GB of RAM. Only if you approach recording digitally with the mindset of the 1990s this problem occurs. Why make the sound of the band a slave to the DAW rather than the opposite?
Try to think like Mike Shinoda or Liam Howlett or the engineer of Rammstein. Use the computer to your advantage. And perhaps learn a thing or 2 about synthesis and sound design that is less usual in rock than in electronic music. Try and incorporate production techniques from drum and bass, trance, or even Daft Punk in your stuff. Rock would be so much better if people used DAWs to expand rather than limit how a band sounded.
@@autohmae Music was a commodity well before the first rock and roll or even proto rock and roll emerged. It was already the case in the 19th century when sheet music rather than recordings were the main medium of monetising music. Hell, it was an issue already in the era of Mozart and Beethoven, right when the first modern-ish publishing deals were signed (there's even correspondence of several 19th century composers, including superstars like Chopin, complaining about being ripped off by publishing houses or complaining about bad arrangements made for amateurs of difficult compositions they wrote)
@@classicallpvault8251 Sure.of course, just saying selling music (CD,vinyl, etc.) for bands doesn't pay the bills anymore. The near zero marginal cost of digital media...
Quantizing, Auto-tune, Volume, and Compression. The Four Horsemen of the the Rock Apocalypse.
Kent Hawley I don’t understand how or why some people defend these things. Most of the time it’s not the talentless modern musicians defending it, its producers or audio engineers.
They’ll say “It’s not inherently bad”, “you just don’t understand what goes into making the sound”, or “it’s not all bad. It can be used tastefully and artistically if done right or not overused”. But what constitutes being “done right” or “not overused”? Nearly all popular music I hear doesn’t do it right and certainly doesn’t use them in moderation. Quite the contrary. Instead of a touch up, they repaint the entire picture, so to speak.
Anyway, even if it could be done right, I still have a problem with it. I seriously think it’s cheating. It’s deceiving the listener and removing all the human inconsistencies that make the music great. Perfection sounds boring. It’s so fake and superficial.
I would want to make a record without autotune, quantization, and dynamic range compression so that it sounds real, even if it means sounding not as good.
Now I know why music sucks for the most part from the mid 2000s to now.
I’m not even a middle aged old man or a dad. I’m in my early-mid thirties and I remember music in the 1990s and even the early 2000s didn’t have these “cheat codes”, but they have been used increasingly ever since to the point where pretty much all current music relies on them. It’s a damn shame.
What happened to just recording another take if the musician messes up? Producers these days are so lazy and impatient. They just want to make money as quickly and cheaply as possible.
@@SkaMasta097 I couldn't agree more. I am a middle-aged father, and more and more I find myself listening to stripped down songs that are sometimes just a guy and a guitar and a pedal bass drum like Colter Wall. It's just more real. But even groups like Rush who had huge sounds back in the '70s and '80s were just doing it on their own. Sometimes Geddy's voice cracks, sometimes Peart gets ahead on the beat, sometimes Alex misses a note, but it all still sounds fantastic.
I’m glad it happened. It was good so other genres could blossom
Volume and Compression? Compressors and limiters were used even on The Beatles records. Now, Quant and auto-tune can fuck off.
But why say rock apocalypse when you could instead say rockpocalypse?
I think of it like this. Music Companies were the killer, computers were just the knife.
Thanks - I try. And as guy who spent many years teaching college too (music of course), I appreciate good communication, I really like Rick's approach - he's got the knowledge and teaching chops.
"Music actually happens in between the grid lines." I'm going to make a poster...
That would sell. Or a tee shirt.
@@dclaghorn2 I would definitely buy that poster...AND the T-shirt!
Computers didn't kill rock music, formulaic cookie cutter corporate radio buttrock killed rock music.
Yes yes yes. Computers made it possible for everyone's music to be heard. You just have to look harder for music.
The formula makes it a more precise ritual. Worse music, better hypnosis. Billionaires 1, music 0.
The formulaic cookie cutter corporate stuff is happening in movies as well
The internet, the fans, radio, the record companies and the acts themselves killed rock music as a cultural voice. Everyone is guilty, no one is innocent.
@@danjones4002 Real effing hard! It's a small miracle that Geta Van Fleet actually made SNL this past week...
Great video Rick! I really enjoyed this one! Thanks for taking the time to make these educational videos! If you haven't done one already you should do a video on the differences in the music industry of today and the industry back in the time of say.....the Beatles or Led Zeppelin.
Brilliant! You've explained what I've heard. Thank you for that.
Query: are we doing the same thing now to Pop with DAWs & - especially - with loopers?
I've been thrilled to see the development of musicians as 1-man bands, building a brand & career with both tools. Death to recording labels! But I've grown increasingly concerned about the effect on the music as music during the pandemic. Looping makes it possible to accompany yourself on the same instrument or even others, if you're up to that (Elise Trouw & Andres Colin have made it performance art). But the music gets boring & repetitive; it's assembled, not played. I guess it does put an onus on the singer to emphasize the vocals & use them to generate interest, so it favours people with that skill (good, if you've got it) and emphasizes the songwriting & lyrics (ditto), but as you've pointed out, the overall effect is too quickly forgettable.
Will we see a resurgence of bands & performances after the pandemic because it'll bring the human element back to music?
“Music actually happens in between the grid lines”....
LOVE IT!!!
That's a T-Shirt!
I've usually put it: "the pocket's not on the grid."
Similar to what Debussy said, “Music is the space between the notes.”
@@christopheroliver148 Throw it on the computer and kill the back beat.
10:55 *uses Nickelback as an example*
I'm pretty sure the quantization isn't the only problem with Nickelback's music
Unpopular opinion:
Nickelback really isn't that bad.
made my day haha
@@tissuepaper9962 realistic opinion; they aren't really good enough to warrant their sales and celebrity. They are just ok. Bread Rock.
not really @Jorgekg
It is a part of why however
Thank you Rick. I was aware about that, but that is great to see those things made.
I can add that I better realise the reason why i like much more the live performances and improvisation even in jazz or classical. The reason is a bit different, but treatment of sound and perfect executions by reapeating sessions in the studios, make music somehow asseptised and not so interesting.
I see it a little differently. I have been using a Teac 3440 to produce my music since the early 80s ( I went digital PC in about '95) soon after I got a TR909 to give me the beats to jam to. I played around with these and worked out I could trigger my Roland Juno 6 with the TR909 and do some cool stuff with syncing. I always played my guitars and Bass and Keys manually and sang as best I could. I also left spaces to insert riffs an licks I didn't have at the start. Now, using this setup I did need to use my head to keep to the arrangements I was developing. I found it cool in that the setup kept me sharp and on time, and allowed me to develop new ideas. Of course playing with a real drummer (for some reason they are hard to find) the dynamic is different (and more fluid). Some of the best recordings have always been with real drummers who experiment as the song progresses. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I guess the thing I'm trying to say is that the digital environment offers some advantages in being able to take the good performances (from a long session) and trim them and use them in the production. Way back when 16 and 24 track recorders were still very expensive and the old Musicator program on win95 with midi helped a lot.
15:42 "it just sound like a sequencer, cause it's a sequencer"
Best line in the entire video.
YEAH!
had to play it twice. (couldnt believe that he really said that)
Saying it like it is! lol
It’s not as easy as “the computers did it”. I worked with more than a few producers in my youth who simply wouldn’t let bad time and bad intonation get the thumbs up on a take. And I’ve been the producer on enough albums that had the “A List” guys on them - and when I looked at their tracks after the session, I could literally see how good their time was.
This is actually an issue of time management, budget, patience, and musical expertise - or a combination of some of these factors. If the singer’s good enough or the budgets big enough, you can get the job done. If not, technology can save the day. Just because a human sings it or plays it does not make it fab. It’s the degree to which the human has the requisite ability to make it right - which of course is in the eye of the beholder, I know. Having said that, even before I knew what good time and good intonation was (as a child), I knew what sounded right to my ears. It was never bad timing or bad intonation.
And yes, the grid is great for some things and not for others. The bottom line is use your ears, get what you need on “tape” (yeah, I know), and if you don’t have unlimited time or resources, use what you can to make it happen. I think the biggest mistake is using anything indiscriminately. I seen people use the quantize randomize function and say, “yeah, that make it sound more real”. It doesn’t. Players lay back and rush with purpose, not haphazardly so.
2 Cents...
There is a big difference between slaving away to perfect your craft and get the best timing/intonation that's humanly possible vs. artificially 'enhancing' the life out of a performance. That's exactly the point of this video. Listen to the drums from the soundtrack song. They were perfect before the processing with beat detective. After the life was gone.
Thomas Niehof artificially enhancing a performance is exactly why Bohemian Rhapsody is the amazing track that it is. It is NOT four guys going into a studio, rolling the tape and getting the track done like a Capitol Frank Sinatra record date. The technology at hand and the use/abuse of it helps create new paradigms. Some of it crap, some of it brilliant and everything in between.
The days are gone when a band took 3 years to produce an album.
"Players lay back and rush with purpose" - and, thinking deeper, that 'purpose' is 'heartbeat' - where tempo follows the heartbeat - some things naturally speed it up, others slow it down...
@Blake West Disgusting. Why couldn't they use a REAL choir like the good days instead of these weird tape technologies? Back when people composed REAL music.
Not coincidentally, pop singers from the early 2000s became more and more pretty, as the focus shifted from music to their looks.
TheSanityInspector Yeah because in the 80’s it was all about the music and image didn’t matter. Yeah.
@@IAm-qf2xb Fair point! But at least in the Eighties there was still songwriting and musicianship with at least a partial share of the spotlight. Now you've got teams of producers and engineers bolting together all these modular computer music elements into a song with like twelve words.
@@svenlima wouldn't call it a routine, but Thelonious Monk did got up on the sudden and danced, the Happy Mondays had their drugdealer dancing in stage. But yeah, even dancing got quantized and performance focused, no inner need for it.
@@IAm-qf2xb Motown had dance routines, The Beatles were admired because of there looks, same thing with Elvis, Cher, Michael Jackson and many others during that era. I agree with you, back then, songwriting and musicality was still in the spotlight and now it's been infested with buggy robotic noise, but it hasn't been too big of a change.
Most pop singers are pretty
I read a bunch of comments below and most are about bands and various opinions and for some reason this video and all the comments brought my mind to a guy named Derek Paravicini. He's a Savant Pianist and there are UA-cam videos of him playing. If I recall correctly there are videos where music experts talk about how accurate his playing is, so much so that almost nobody in the world can match his timing. Now I wonder how accurate his timing really is in Pro Tools. I watched another video of Derek playing songs people asked him to play in a different genre than they were written in and not only can he do it, he does it seemingly without thinking about it. He listens to a song once and can play it back from memory even years later. Improvise you ask? No problem, he can improvise any song and even blend songs together. If you haven't heard of him, give him a listen and see how talented this musician really is. Happy listening.
For years the goal in the studio was precision, but once the tools made everything precise the goal became "dirtying it up". The problem is that too many engineers and producers never understood that exact thing... imprecision is music.
In other words, because analog tape and FX were inherently imprecise, in order to get a clean, marketable sound you needed as much accuracy as possible, but you were always working with people and equipment that would never actually allow you to reach complete accuracy. Now we know what happens when you achieve complete accuracy, and it's boring and soulless.
Geoff Allan absolutely. I’m always talking to other bedroom producers about why analog stuff is so great. The imperfection. That’s pretty much it, distilled as simply as possible. That’s why I like to use a mixture of digital and analog, best of both worlds.
Geoff Allan what does the inaccuracies of analog’s reproduction of sound have to do with the human performance, specifically where time and intonation are the subject?
TremblingGiant The workflow is totally different, forcing you to get it right, often taking multiple takes. People who can’t play their part on a song start to finish need not apply. If you have to rush art, you probably shouldn’t be making it.
The imperfection of analog creates interesting workarounds in particularly industrious people. I won’t go Into the numerous ways that is so, but suffice to say that tone, workflow, and performance are all affected. Some may say affected in a positive way, some may say it’s affected in a negative way. The point is, the inaccuracies (or imperfections) of both the performer and the medium add up to create sonically interesting characteristics that are lost when everything is plugins, quantized, and/or lazily written. And these days, so much IS plugins and quantization that the merits of (at least a little) analog injection into the process is so overwhelmingly obvious.
Nick Haldin I understand your point now. The workflow can indeed be different, for those who did not cut their teeth on tape. Not waiting for the tape to rewind, or for the second machine to catch up to the SMPTE code is not something that I particularly miss. I also do not miss finding the offsets to fly backgrounds from tape machine B to tape machine A - or better still, endlessly making China Marks on the 2 Track so that I can start the tape on beat 1 a bar before I need to fly in the mixed-down package of “whatever I’m trying to fly around” just to get the feel exactly right. I’ve been participating in this recoding world since 1974, so I’ve seen what a few technological advances can do for a budget and a schedule. And unfortunately, while I might agree with you on the statement “people who can’t play their part on a song start to finish need not apply”, that doesn’t fly in the real world - especially if you make the decision to remain viable in this field.
Thank you for the clarification nonetheless, I do agree with the sentiment.
TremblingGiant yeah I totally see what you mean, the difficulties that come with analog. That’s why I feel fortunate to live at a time where one can pick and choose how they work. It is a constant balancing act of authenticity and not wanting to do take #472😂 punching in and out of tape is a NIGHTMARE 😬 working in a hybrid way has so many benefits, best of both the analog and digital ways.
Man I started writing music on my akai mpc and while I was working on a track I had the tempo off by a couple of BPM on each section. Chorus was maybe 1-2 BPM faster than the verse, etc. When Id listen I thought "you know, those tempo changes are actually cool and give the track a MUCH more human feel." I then went and re-recorded my track with a consistent tempo and lo and behold -- felt robotic. This was all on feel and intuition and I thought surely the pros don't vary the tempo -- they keep it consistent. I even charted out the bpm changes *exactly* how you did. Boy was I wrong about keeping it all the same BPM and this totally validated my feelings! Thank you Rick!
Agreed on almost everything, but there's something bugging me, since it's somewhat of a subverted approach by some artists such as Trent Reznor, where he would deliberately use, let's say, two different drums and then pairing them so that they sound more (ironically) natural, by playing with both time measures and patterns off-the-beat and at one point of the song enhancing some odd-time drum pattern over the main beat, giving them a sense of "Divine Imperfection" let's say, and therefore, a more natural feel, but hey, it's Trent Reznor.
Other than that, it is really interesting to study the original Vinyl releases versus the constant remasterization of some of the re-releases on streaming services or more recent versions.
It was a very interesting experience
I would like to know what you think about it, and of course, I think it is somewhat of a paradigm shift that surely would be great to watch.
I would love to see a video about that, and I think it deserves to be made.
This gives new meaning to being "off the grid."
Lol!
Yey!
🤣
How in hell did you get the original studio unmixed recording trax for these songs? Now that video would be very interesting!!!
Agreed!
Mostly they are taken from the Guitar Hero stems
The man knows people,in high places,does that answer your question?
There's gotta be software that analyzes songs and breaks the tracks up.
@@joeskisjoeskis hahaha definitely not. That would be like trying to extract the eggs out of fully baked cake. Once it's mixed together you can't do much! He definitely either scoured the internet or more likely just knows the right people. Rick has actually recorded a ton of hit songs and has Grammys so it's easier for him than most!
I never use snap and quantize or anything that hampers the music now. when i did my audio engineering in Melbourne Australia i was taught by pros on 8 track Atari on tape in 1984. We actually got the musicians to play it again and again unit it flowed but usually found the second take was the best and most together if not the first.
Great demonstration. I think a similar thing happened in the movie industry. How many dialogs in movies where actors don't actually talk to each other ? Because of profitability issues, actors availability and schedule constraints, actors may play as much as possible of their part separately and film editing would then build the scenes out of the various shots. No doubt it has been done before. But I feel it has become systematic. The film may be very good to watch by the way. But the narration is so different. It's like watching moving comics. Long shots are so scarce. In old movies action was so slow.
To paraphrase Dave Mustaine - playing a riff then cut n pasting it a few times isn't metal.
@Ken Nuppenau i dont think that means anything in regards to what i wrote. Rock on.
All of your favorite bands likely record and arrange in a computer.
@@Abruzzo333 That’s fine but I still sure wish they would actually play it through instead of copy and pasting though. Of course they use a computer haha
This is the most I've ever listened to Nickelback😂
Funny how Rick can make even Nickelback sound interesting by looking at this graph.
Oh, that's who they are? I recognize the vocalist. Always hated his voice. He sounds pretentious with contrived, fake grittyness on his voice. Friends of mine who have poor musical taste love Nickelback.
@@PhilipPedro2112 I know. My brother likes them. He gave me a ride a couple of weeks ago with nickleback blasting. It was cringy but I love my brother so I didn't say anything.
@@PhilipPedro2112 hmm actually nickelback was great I would say this video explains why people hate them because they were of the first bands that got big while music was being produced this way.
me too as far as I know I've never heard them before at all.
that chop up at 2 mins is a sweet sweet statement. Many will do something subtle, or subtle-ish like here, but call attention to it just to be sure people got it. You didn't. Thank you.
I knew something happened. I used to be a militant anti-drum machine guy in the 80's. I just thought everybody used drum machines only starting around 2000. This also explains why I love live music so much more now. Thanks Rick. I learn so much here.
"The second is Auto-tune, that killed humanity."- Rick Beato. Word.
haha, this is a great example to show people studying English the use of articles because they don't really exist in their language (e.g. Russian) - the difference a "the" makes can sometimes be genocide :D
Overlaying an Autotuned vocal track with the original vocal track creates some eerie and useful effects.
Hating auto tune is like grandpa from the 50s hating electric guitar. It's an instrument. Too bad rockheads are so stuck up their arse
@flex56k We could argue of what the definition of an instrument is. The voice is an instrument, even when you can't sing. SO why wouldn't auto-tune be an instrument just like the electric guitar is an instrument (it's also "just" a distortion effect on a guitar).
I can already name 3 songs in which auto-tune is used as an instrument :
Bon Iver - Woods
Kanye West - Runaway
James Blake - Lindisfarne
@@lennertd.1372 Justin uses live vocoders, not ramped up auto-tune, but I see your point.
i like how he hated on it but then started having fun quantizing the drums and bass lmaooo lesgettit rick
I have to admit, I would love to be able to fool around with tracks like that. But just because it is fun to produce does not mean that it is fun to listen to.
He showed how non-musicians can have a creative musical outlet with computers, the end result usually being 'remixes', and even those are at the mercy of artistic tastes (which are usually bad, but that is also true with 'real' music)...
Yeah man I wanna hear him put out the Beato remixes of a bunch of old tracks
The point being, that it took him about a second and a half to improve the song.
@Andrei Georgescu The thing about electronic music is, it's not pretending to be human music. You listen to computer generated music and accept the icy sterility and synthetic sound waves are part of the nature of it. When you listen to modern rock, the mind is confounded because you hear the sounds that humans make, yet are still left with a sense of cold emptiness because you are unaware that you are actually listening to the product of a soulless machine
There's a great assimilation between rock and computer found in a band called Igorrr. It is so astounding, that this band is leading experimental music band of this century so far.
I've been learning to play drums over the past couple years, and I've noticed on a lot of the older minus-drums tracks that I play along with that I have to vary my tempo to keep in sync with the recording. The hardest one to keep up with is a live recording of "Sweet Home Alabama" which is all over the place because the band is moving with the music.
@Rick Beato, you should now do an episode of J.Dilla and his M.P.C and how the anti-quantization movement started in R&B/Soul/Funk music.
Such an overdone topic tbh
Im confused though.. Of course the lets say "popular music" world, needs to be perfect everywhere and same patterns and so on.
So that they will have an easy formula for an actual popular song like how despacito became a meme..
But making your own music and not for companies, you dont need to be perfect? Its not everywhere in the music production business right?
I know lo fi producers kind of unquantatize things, warp pitch add noise and sound effects and very raw conversations or singing with all the tsk fpp and imperfections.
Even with electronic. Making a seemingly random glitch effect or synth that goes out random a lot.
So there is a difference with the "popular music" and the other music the people like right?
In a way I would maybe guess, its human nature to try and have no imperfections, making that same habit the most imperfect thing thats aplplied.
You can see it in the classical music scene.
Play it nearly as perfect as it is composed, even rated on how close they do..
@@ARZiehm isn't whatever Rick talks about here also kinda overdone?
Soooo true
I don’t mind drum machines like the LinnDrum or an 808 if that’s what I want to listen to. I know what I’m getting going in. If I’m listening to a band that has a drummer, I want that groove and feel. Thanks for another interesting video, Rick.
It makes a big difference if the beat is laid down and the rest of the musicians play to that beat. The big trouble happens when everything is artificially locked to the same click.
@The Tired Horizon I stopped DJing (market really) and producing EDM for the most part as everything began to sound the same.
It's fitting that you mention the LinnDrum drum specifically, as it had a certain rhythmic feel to it that was due to the processor speed not always allowing for it to be rock-solid in it's synchronization.
I've heard old(er) heads talk about how they miss the "feel" of certain classic drum machines, the LinnDrum being the one most cited. (I think the Roland CR-78 might be another, but i could never afford one so can't speak from experience. My E-Mu Drumulator sure seems to have a feel to it; i bet if i laid the output of it to a grid at the same BPM it wouldn't be right dead on the lines, either.)
The Linn has a great sound, you could just sample the drums individually turn of the quantize and play them any way you like.
I think the influence correction software has on local bands is way more damaging than at the professional level. I used to be in hardcore / pop punk bands back in 2005ish-2015ish and saw correction software start bleeding into local small studios as well as seeing the transition to distribution of music through the internet instead of local storefronts.
I remember playing with a lot of bands with very beginner musicians who couldn't hold a tune to save their LIFE live, but they had these unreal recordings. We ended up using one of the studios these bands had recorded at ( which was sponsored by toontrack who makes ezdrummer LOL ) and I saw how he moved the drums and did tons of takes for our guitar / bass / vocals and spliced everything together. My heart broke as the realization that the saturation of good sounding recordings of bands in the local scene would hide bands who had truly talented musicians from breaking out.
This drove me to start recording myself and as I began understanding how to use auto tune, melodyne, quantizing, drumagog and all the other fun correction toys my eyes were blown wide open to the realization that standing out as a band was going to be nearly impossible based on quality of our recordings. This was especially evident when I played with EZDrummer for the first time.
As someone who has recorded drums on their own in bedrooms / garages / warehouse etc I know how insanely difficult it is to get usable drum tones. Before getting a live drum take you have to account for phase, mic placement, treating the room, tuning the drums, picking the right microphones, using moon gels to quiet ring / overtones, turning off any noise emitters ( florescent lights, air conditioning, fans, etc), picking the right cymbals (if you even get to choose) and so on and so forth. All this has to be just right and then you need a talented drummer behind the kit. Or you can load ezdrummer2, tap to find a groove then copy it to the grid and you have over 15 sets of studio quality drums to pick from that have 1176 compression ready to mix in with a slider BUILT INTO THE SOFTWARE.
When the playing field has been leveled by these insanely modified mixes its impossible for someone with talent to stand out unless playing live (not that I claim I was / am amazing. Our band was decent at best). This was really evident when we would setup tours that would wind us up in towns we had never been with bands we had never heard in person. The advent of this technology is truly what made me quit playing live shows. I couldn't take another shitty blink 182 knock off with out of tune squires through line 6 amps next to a drummer with the rhythm of a 70 year old white republican and a singer who is as tone deaf as Helen Keller.
These days I just record myself and friends for fun and I push myself very very hard to record different parts in one take without using any correction software except to detect what may have been performed improperly and then get another take. Is it perfect? No and that is exactly how it should be.
Side note, a lot of small venues at the time were getting desperate to bring people through the doors so they started having 8 band bills to fill the rooms. Sometimes we would get offered a headliner spots and we would pick the 2nd or 3rd spot because by the time the 8th band comes around, NOBODY wants to hear ANY kind of music anymore.
Everything was ok but you had to inject politics on it 😂 dude, both parties suck ass btw I bet a 70 year old democrat would have an awful rhythm too
man that explains why modern pop rock feels way more "studio" than the older 90's songs, even if you're just a guy you can kinda tell how clean and perfect it is
THISS!!!! I finally found why spanish rock is bad. I guess that all the songs sound the same because they are the same!
Maybe this is why I play my old albums. Modern manufactured music is like art they sell at a furniture store.
Yeah man,the computer messed up,the music business just listen to hot 97most of it is garbage.
We just bought a circa 1965 Magnavox console stereo. Breaking out the vinyl. Clicks and pops and all smiles!!
@Thomas Headley Tom Headley? You don't have a brother named Randy do you??
@Thomas Headley - What were you going to say about the stylus?
@Thomas Headley I couldn't comprehend most of that but I will enjoy!! Thank you :) ;)
First, everyone hated drum machines. Then, they became drum machines.
Phah! I still finger-drum (though I once played the drums, and I have 'drum mentality')...
Eh, I do like the sound of drum machines at times, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Sarcofago and Godfles are some of my favorite bands who use dem drum machines.
I still hate modern production tools...
Very cool Rick. I'm wondering if you can share your experience with software that can "unmix" A finished recording. For example remove all of the tracks except the drums, as a tool that one could play guitar and sing with. There was a radio personality in Chicago named Steve Dahl, who did a bit called "Naked & Afraid" where he would remove all of the tracks from a popular song, leaving only.the lead vocal. You could sure hear who was the talented singer versus who was "hiding in the mix."
Been meaning to add this comment for a while, especially after I found you are based in Atlanta GA. One of the worst gigs I ever had was in the 80’s, at a big club near the Atlanta airport, I think. We were a dance/show band based out of Dallas. Our drummer would vary his tempos all the time, but we would get the dance floor moving nonetheless. We covered the Pseudo Echo version of Funkytown, the DJ at the club just couldn’t hang with it. Every night when we did the song, he would state (based on the original Funkytown by LippsInc version) that it needs to be EXACTLY 126 bpm, and not vary AT ALL. Every time we would play the tune he would complain incessantly that our tempo was varying from 124bpm to 132bpm, and if we couldn’t get it right he would make sure the management would never have us back. I’ve never been so glad to be gone from a gig in my life. Because of this, I find it incredibly amusing that you are based in Atlanta :)
First off, I agree with your point completely. With that said, I don't think you really showed your conclusion in this video. You showed what the software can do. The video was largely examples of how it can change the music. What you didn't do is demonstrate how it is objectively inferior to the unprocessed music.
And again, I agree with your conclusions, and I agreed before I started watching. I just don't think you proved it to others in this video. What would have really sold it would have been a few 'before and after' examples. Take a few songs that are expressive, quantize them, and play the samples back to back. The warm organic next to the cold mathematical. That contrast is what is really needed to make your point.
I thought thats what I was going to be watching.
I don't think he is implying it's objectively inferior
@@tiki_trashIt's different. That's my take on it anyway. It's like comparing orchestral music to rock. But yeah if it's not you're thing fair enough. I feel that you can't really compare electronic music to analog cause it's just a totally different ballpark. But in cases like pink floyd, it really did great things.
@@tiki_trash I agree, I was using them more as an example of something in the middle. A better example would be tame impala i guess
His point is that tempo and music itself is subjective. That's what makes it what it is.
Would this explain why a live performance, well recorded, is better - more engaging than a studio recording?
Honestly IMO this even applies to some older recordings. I think Pantera's performance at Monsters of Rock in Moscow (1991) sounded better than any of their albums. That said, I don't know what kind of post-production was done on the live recording, so I might be talking out of my ass.
Locking to the grid as well as being overly clean/isolated instruments.
For the past 15 years or so... kinda. almost any live performance from any professional level (contracted & signed) band is going to be playing along to samples, backing tracks, and cues. almost nobody just gets up an plays anymore. the guitar/drum techs are such a big part of any show now. probably the place where your idea holds up is that all the musicians are actually playing together and feeding off each others' (and the crowds) energy. rather than one guitar being played at a time to an annoying computerized click. then stacking it with another guitar played along with an annoying computerized click. and another, and another, etc.
the effect you (and all of us) are hearing is probably (i'm not a live sound guy, just guessing) a simpler mix, with mic bleed (ie, the drum mics picking up some of the guitar half stack and vice versa), room ambience, loudness!, crowd energy, and... well a lot of people drink or smoke at shows, so i'm just gonna say it... beer. but you'd be surprised just how much 'energy' a large room can add to a recording. or any room at all. lot of using a digital reverb computer program to simulate a room mic these days. but the chaos of a real room is where the unknown energy is at!
in a lot of cases they'll edit the live recordings quite a bit as well
Don’t be fooled they do the same thing to “live” recordings
Thanks Rick. Another highly informative and interesting video. I just watch you because I am a music lover. I KNEW music sounded fake somewhere, I thought, in the late 90's...now I know it was the early 2000's,..which is why I have no bands since then that I have been passionate about. I do not understand something. When the bands go on tour, do they sound very different than their albums? It seems they would...
You don't hear duff notes anymore, no drop in speed or a vocal mistake. Perfection doesn't equal beauty. Music today lacks soul.
When I encounter people who say stuff like what you said most of the time they are narrow minded old farts that are too lazy to challenge themselfs with new sounds or doesn't spend any time looking for new music. There is so much incredible music being made today. Yeah, if you only like 70's rock you won't find much, but that is a you problem.
I agree with you
@@DAN_I_E_L Some day you'll be old and the kids will say your music sucks, and they'll be right.