a futile plea to producers

zhao

there are no accidents
(dubstep and otherwise)

if you've got half of a luke-warm idea, or better yet, some neat little sound you randomly acheived by piling a bunch of effects on top of each other, please, do us all* a favor: do not repeat it for 4 minutes and send it out to be released. instead, work on it more and if it becomes truly worth-while (trust your own inner voice - don't ignore it), then, by all means, spray it all over the world and we will love it.

but please, try not to clutter up the already way over cluttered global urban music market with your boring, uninspired, frustrated-libido fueled bullshit.

please remember: QUALITY NOT QUANTITY.

and: EDIT, EDIT, EDIT, EDIT, EDIT.

sorry if this is not a positive note but i regularly spend HOURS going through hundreds of new releases without finding a SINGLE good track.



* selectors, promoters, club goers, home listeners, etc.
 

lissajou

Well-known member
(dubstep and otherwise)

if you've got half of a luke-warm idea, or better yet, some neat little sound you randomly acheived by piling a bunch of effects on top of each other, please, do us all* a favor: do not repeat it for 4 minutes and send it out to be released. instead, work on it more and if it becomes truly worth-while (trust your own inner voice - don't ignore it), then, by all means, spray it all over the world and we will love it.

but please, try not to clutter up the already way over cluttered global urban music market with your boring, uninspired, frustrated-libido fueled bullshit.

please remember: QUALITY NOT QUANTITY.

and: EDIT, EDIT, EDIT, EDIT, EDIT.

sorry if this is not a positive note but i regularly spend HOURS going through hundreds of new releases without finding a SINGLE good track.



* selectors, promoters, club goers, home listeners, etc.

whtever dude u cant tell me what 2 do
 

zhao

there are no accidents
whtever dude u cant tell me what 2 do

haha no... all i can do is appeal to your higher sense of aesthetics and... morality.

and i was exaggerating a bit... not quite as bleak as i made it sound above. there are good tunes out there... just sometimes far and few
 

muser

Well-known member
Futile being the operative word as until all the waves of people getting into 'dubstep' and bigging up every single release, rehash of a rehash of a rehash of a tune or any artist that is well known in the scene, are exhausted. People will continue to put out bullshit tunes, which each new wannabe 'dubstep' dj will buy to fill as much crates as possible, and people will still beg for 320's of uninspired cack on dubstepforum and myspace.
 
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bassnation

the abyss
sorry if this is not a positive note but i regularly spend HOURS going through hundreds of new releases without finding a SINGLE good track.

but hasn't it been ever thus?

the democratisation of music production via cheap, software based tools has brought a lot of producers to the fore who otherwise wouldn't have made music - but the flipside is a huge amount of mediocrity.

which is why we have selectors.
 

zhao

there are no accidents
true. but of course the proliferation and lack of quality control is not exclusive to the digital age either... the garage rock scene in the 60s for instance, the countless no name bands churning out essentially endless more-of-the-same -- and that's just judging by all those re-issues. i never saw what people do in those nuggets and pebbles and whatever 37 disc series upon series of the stuff.
 

swears

preppy-kei
It's so subjective though, a lot of the producers making the sort of tracks you describe would agree with you in principle, but it's always somebody else who sucks!

Nobody putting the effort into releasing and promoting tracks thinks they're making crap (unless they're just doing for the cash, and even then they'd have some set of standards in as much as giving their audience what it likes).

I bet a lot of good tracks start out as little half-arsed ideas that the producer just runs with, and as for repetition, well a lot of my favourite tracks are repetitive as fuck. And we'd disagree all day on which ones were trance-inducing minimalist classics and which ones were put autopilot garbage.

I understand where you're coming from, zhao, and we all wish there was less shitty music, but in that respect you're putting yourself in the position of a modern day King Cnut, sitting on the beach trying to hold back a tidal wave of lame mp3s and dubplates that's gonna crash into the shore anyway.

I'm not suggesting it's all relative maaaan, and you can't slag off stuff you hate (for example there was a link on blissblog to a really good essay ripping Girl Talk recently: absolutely OTFM) But asking the producers themselves is a bit of a stretch, better to wait until the tracks exist in the first place before deciding whether they're shit or not.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
I've always felt like this about any genre of electronic music that becomes popular and hyped.

I think like Bassnation said it has something to do with how easy it is to crank out electronic music. And it just keeps getting easier.
 

gremino

Moster Sirphine
which is why we have selectors.
That would be the ideal, but tbh, most selectors plays mediocore stuff. And I really have started to believe that djs even know that themselves! I think social/group pressure has much to do: underground people seems to take granted that they are individiual, not afraided to do what they really want (not being mainstream) etc. But my experiences has shown that that is just b*llshit. Same social pressure applies to producing.

It annoys me when you hear tunes mainly beats and bass rolling (+ being not even that interesting) and some pointless quiet samples and melody/choir clips plays in rotation through big amount of delay and reverb. That's started to be just SO CLICHED. Everyone can put some ragga/diva-sample and add delay/reverb. Okay, some jungle tunes are like that: rolling tunes with delayed soundclash samples playing in rotation. But the thing why they don't suck, is just simply because these samples plays louder; they're crucial part of the track, rather than just some pointless backround noises. It's a crime when some producers take some cool oldskool sample, and rips away all the funk, grit and danger out of it, puts reberb/delay the heck out of it and eqs all the lows and ups down, making it just to some pointless background noise... It hurts me :(

I want to hear dance music with proper content, tracks which also has proper composing rather than just the default beats/riffs/choirs/etc. which has a little different sound design next to other tune. And I'm not suggesting producers should start to compose structures/melodies/dynamics like in jazz/classical. Dance music is, and has to be, simple music in terms of composing, but that doesn't mean you should skip composing. Actually that simpliness, limited "composing palette" is a challenge.

I also want to hear mad sound ideas, rather than just subtle tweaking in sound design. I'v noticed that when tweaking soft synths just for fun, you get the most craziest and interesting sounds, but often you don't take them serious and just laugh at them. It's like tweaking for fun is not making music decently, when it's quite the opposite I think. I'm now talking about myself here, but I got the feel that I'm not the only one doing that.

It's like producers are scared to really let it flow, to make crazy sounds and composing. Strict genre limits are also part of the problem.

Dunno then how's the case in UK where music scenes grows from grassroot rather than just importing existing styles...

*frustration*
 

bassnation

the abyss
That would be the ideal, but tbh, most selectors plays mediocore stuff.

ha ha, well what we need there is meta-selectors. and when they get mediocre we need a further level of arbitration of taste.

It annoys me when you hear tunes mainly beats and bass rolling (+ being not even that interesting) and some pointless quiet samples and melody/choir clips plays in rotation through big amount of delay and reverb. That's started to be just SO CLICHED.

when you listen to a lot of old rave tunes, they pack so many different sections and contrasting ideas in - its almost like an overload. this was looked on as them being amatuers at production, which of course they were, but the passion made up for that. you could hear they were living it. after 20 years of house music though, the degree of professionalism has gone up, and people seem to want to ration ideas, and tweak a couple of hooks. problem is, you have to be a master at production to make that work and for it to be interesting - basic channel, say. even former minimalist masters like mills sounds fucking dull these days. its a malaise that affects most electronic music.

i'm not sure what the answer is, but overall i think the democratisation is a positive thing on balance. you'd never hear people like burial for example, if it wasn't that way. this is a kind of perennial moan with this music but i still hear lots of stuff that excites. then again i'm cherry picking from recommendations on forums like this rather than actively djing which involves listening to loads of shite in the hope of finding one or two decent records.
 
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baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
That would be the ideal, but tbh, most selectors plays mediocore stuff. And I really have started to believe that djs even know that themselves!

So true. It's severely hampered my enjoyment of going out over the past few years. In fact the best DJ set I have heard in God knows how long was at the Heavenly Records bash in London, where they simply mixed in pop classics (Shep Pettibone remix of Madonna), twee-pop (Orange Juice) and acid house mindblowers (Lil Louis and some unknown, super-hard acid record that blew my head off)... Not rocket science, just good music.

Oh, and Marcus Nasty on Rinse/Footloose on 1Xtra. Great stuff.

I can't even believe most DJs like all the records they play... :slanted:
 

DJ PIMP

Well-known member
when you listen to a lot of old rave tunes, they pack so many different sections and contrasting ideas in - its almost like an overload.

its getting back there... fogbank by boy 8-bit has a taste of that non-linearity, or switch's mix of dooms night. or the bass switch-ups in jack beat's mix of jack got jacked by ac slater. or for something a bit tech-houser a lot of the martin brothers tracks have random sections and odd bits to them.

and what about Ritalin by Nadastrom? my god...
 

zhao

there are no accidents
people seem to want to ration ideas, and tweak a couple of hooks. problem is, you have to be a master at production to make that work and for it to be interesting - basic channel, say. even former minimalist masters like mills sounds fucking dull these days. its a malaise that affects most electronic music.

took the words right out of my mouth with the rationing bit. some tracks SHOULD be bare bones simple, with only 1 solid idea hammered home, done correct. but not EVERY track should be like that!!! some should EVOLVE (yes in a "progressive" way), and some should be a mind-fucking juxtaposition of many ideas. and spot on about old rave music being like this... so great. why can't we marry that with the "professionalism" of today's sound design? i guess a few are doing that. don't know some of the names Pimp dropped, will check into them.

i'm not sure what the answer is, but overall i think the democratisation is a positive thing on balance. you'd never hear people like burial for example, if it wasn't that way.

well, (this is unorganized and not worked out), i'm not so sure about this. because i'm trying to think about genres and ways of creative production which is not afflicted with this kind of proliferation of mediocrity, and forms and genres which do not arise from a democratic, individualistic system come to mind. often state sponsored, tightly regulated, and even censored creative environments can produce un fucking believable, mind blowing, life changing art. i'm thinking of Gamelan, i'm thinking of Indian Classical, i'm thinking of Soviet films... in these systems the quality is uniformly high, hardly any shite gets produced at all -- hundreds of thousands of pieces ALL of them amazing.

i think it may be that trying to find 1 Burial in a hay-stack is a situation unique to a democratic, anyone can do anything, system.

this really deserves its own thread in Thought: individual vs. collective art production...
 

mixed_biscuits

_________________________
Mediocre tunes are churned out ad infinitum because there is a demand for them and because there is only so much talent to go round.

Listeners get drawn into a genre by one or two truly inspiring tracks (for them) and then get stuck in a rut, as they get hung up on the idea of becoming part of a 'scene' - staying true to which involves limiting their choices to slight variations on a familiar theme. They then feel obliged to demonstrate their commitment to this limited palette during their weekly observance at the record shop counter or dj booth.

I've produced competent dance music with a professional sheen, but as for using and abusing generic convention truly to communicate emotionally with the listener, I don't think I have it in me and for that reason, I'm ou... erm... I have given up on this particular project.
 

bassnation

the abyss
and spot on about old rave music being like this... so great. why can't we marry that with the "professionalism" of today's sound design? i guess a few are doing that. don't know some of the names Pimp dropped, will check into them.

i think professionalism is overrated tbh - it has overtones of craft, not art. i'd rather see someone who hasn't a clue what they are doing produce something exciting. in the same way that producers who are classically trained (BT for example) have difficulty composing something truly alien because its hard to break those drummed in rules.

but as regards collective evolution or people wanting more of the same for the identity of being in a scene, that hasn't always resulted in average music. looking back at the rave cannon there seems to be an embarrassment of riches - but sure enough there's also loads of shite. but it doesn't tend to be tasteful - more bold ideas that didn't work out.

i've got infinitely more patience for that kind of mistake than i have of a piece of work which is neither bad nor good - but just damned by mere adequacy.
 
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michael

Bring out the vacuum
It's so subjective though, a lot of the producers making the sort of tracks you describe would agree with you in principle, but it's always somebody else who sucks!
Very true... guess this is why "futile" was in the title...

I'm not suggesting it's all relative maaaan, and you can't slag off stuff you hate (for example there was a link on blissblog to a really good essay ripping Girl Talk recently: absolutely OTFM)
That was a fantastic read, cheers.
 

bassnation

the abyss
That was a fantastic read, cheers.

girl talk sounds dreadful. that whole indie posturing djing mashups from a bloody apple mac whilst sporting an asymmetrical hoxton haircut gig was old, old, old about five years ago in london, surely?

peaches geldof probably likes them.
 
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