Bad Reviews

[gavintheaudioengineer]

[teleharmonium]

Music, as much as any other art form, really needs an expert viewpoint in order for a review to be useful and worthwhile. But most people consider themselves to be qualified music reviewers, and therefore they tend to dislike music reviewers that profess more than average dude levels of knowledge or attitude. And the ones that profess anyway, feel the need to demonstrate their power at all times, leaving no knife unsharpened, which plays into the familiar dynamic of competing escalation of harsh rhetoric.

That's a problem with the music criticism market, not musicians, engineers, or producers. Only music writers and their audiences can solve that. You'd think that as it gets harder to be paid for writing due to the death of print media, the problem would take care of itself, but... no. Just like musicians, ego drives music writers even without paychecks and audiences (never mind basic qualifications - we're way too good at rationalizing those away).

Even if they do solve some of those problems, it won't be perfect of course. But at least the default activity in music reviews would not have to be what it is now - hype/press release regurgitation, stupid/least common denominator glib comparisons, and unfounded or sad assumptions about musician goals and what the audience wants.

The comment about a review calling a record "thin" hit home with me. Who said records should be compared to current pop music ? I think current pop music sounds horrible. Sounding "full" by those standards would be a horrible failure for me. I carefully balance my stuff to have no more than early 70s levels of low end and high end; you know, where you can hear what's going on clearly and you don't feel like you are under constant assault.

If a reviewer just listens to it and decides whether they think it sounds "good", that's great.But that's not what happens. Comparing it to current trends (even just in broad terms of sound quality) has a component of arbitrariness, and assumes that whatever else the reviewer is used to hearing is "good". They might actually disagree with that assumption, if questioned on it directly, though; and for most people, there's a lot of crossover between "familiar" and "good". I don't think such a reviewer realizes that with that perspective, how active their role is in encouraging homogeneity by relying on comparison.

If you think that the job of music is to press the buttons in you that you're used to having pressed, you're not open to new things and you may well be missing what is right in front of you. Every style of music implies it's own criteria for success; it can press new or different buttons; it just requires a little bit of openness.
_________________
Sea of Storms: www.reverbnation.com/seaofstorms

[joelpatterson]

[Brett Siler]

Dude you recording job sounds good. The equipment they had to work with is lacking, mostly the cymbals. That's not your fault thought unless you had some good sounding cymbals in your studio to use and could get the drummer to use them. I have a feeling you could have flipped the polarity on the kick and floor tom, otherwise the drums sound good though. The vocals, bass and guitars sound fine. For recording an mixing in all the same day you did a great job.

As far as music reviews go, most of them are dumb and uneducated. If they are somewhat musically knowledgeable it subjective after that. I personally am not a fan of music reviewers for the most part.
_________________
My musical endeavors!

Label: http://www.dyspepsidisc.com/
Band: http://www.stationaryodyssey.com
Studio:Mother Brain Sound Infrastructure

[eh91311]

This is the result of recording, mixing and mastering 12 songs by an inexperienced young band in 1 day? Sounds great to me. I hear the inexpensive cymbals, timing and performance issues but it sounds fine, the songs come across very well. Big, roomy, super-big drum sounds & gobs of reverb on the vocal would sound stupid with their style of music. Wouldn't sound right. Chalk the review up to one cranky, persnickety journalist with crap-ass headphones and a department-store stereo system for monitoring and move forward.

[gavintheaudioengineer]

I hear ya on the cymbals- the drummer was, how do I put it? Crazy. So I let him try out all the studio cymbals, including the bad ones and those were what he picked.

6 songs in 1 day, not 12.

2 days sounds like this (with a little bit more mixing during the week). First track Domino was recorded by me.

https://www.facebook.com/thisboywonders?v=app_178091127385

And these guys were really stoked with it.
_________________
"When you can't find the solution, you can always admire the problem."

[gavintheaudioengineer]

[fossiltooth]

[vvv]

It's been many years now, but I wrote a music review column for a Big 10 college paper. There was pressure (editorial-wise and peer-wise) to more or less conform with other writers, especially re established artists.

And there was deadline pressure, which to my shame I succumbed to on occasion - you know, get it and listen to it 2x and write a review within 24 hours ... (Lemme say while my review would be less than in-depth, I don't think my opinion would have changed with more listening or time.)

But I like the Ebert analogy above: I can usually get some idear from Pitchfork re music, or RS, altho' Spin's new one-sentence format is pretty week sometimes (not always.) Allmusic can be good and we have local rags like the Entertainer and the Reader that are interesting, as well as the local newspapers for very sporadic coverage.

I especially value the Listening to Other Shite forum here, word.
_________________
vlayman; THD; blog; TFP

[teleharmonium]

[teleharmonium]

[Beat Poet]

[vvv]

I think, in retrospect and in that instance, the agenda was credibility and conformance, the latter thought to bestow the former.

I did see some cool concerts for free, with decent seats, and one time took a piss next to The Edge, whose hand I did not offer to shake.
_________________
vlayman; THD; blog; TFP