Bad Reviews

[gavintheaudioengineer]

... that's something to keep in mind whilst mixing, 'how does this sound to the unknowing ear?'....

I hope this doesn't sound naive or stupid or something, but... isn't that the question you need to keep uppermost in the forefront of your mind ALWAYS?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I'm guessing the number of question marks are relative to the amount of times one should be asking themselves the question during any given session?

I would say your audience is the band, their audience, people like that.

And your right in this case too- a lot of my work up til now has been for local bands who simply need a loud and upfront demo for getting gigs, and so recreating how they sound live has been the remit. But I need to start getting used to the fact that in some cases, people are going to be listening to the stuff I record for enjoyment (?) at home and on the ipod etc.

So being aware that I need to be more aware is a good start

[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.

[joelpatterson]

...

I'm guessing ...

Actually I just kept adding question marks so that the second line would stretch out as long as the first, I think I have some kind of mental condition where equalness and balance take precedence over, well, what would you call it... 'meaning'?

[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.

[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 ... 8091127385

And these guys were really stoked with it.

[gavintheaudioengineer]

equalness and balance take precedence

Touche Mr Patterson, touche

[fossiltooth]

Comparing it to current trends (even just in broad terms of sound quality) has a component of arbitrariness

To be fair, comparing current music to current trends is probably one of the least arbitrary things a reviewer can do. On the other hand, comparing Rhianna's "Umbrella" to Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica -- now that would be arbitrary.

Although yours was a pretty scathing indictment of music writing, I'll be the first to admit that a lot of it is lousy. But the same goes for any kind of writing -- And for music too. That's precisely why reviewers can be helpful to their audiences.

To pick an extremely mainstream example: I don't agree with all of Roger Ebert's tastes, but at least I know what those tastes are, and what his frame of reference is. That makes his reviews valuable to me, even if I don't always agree with them. Similarly: since I share a lot of tastes with the movie reviewers at the Onion's AV club they're valuable to me because of that. (Ironically, I'd say the opposite of their music reviews. Don't like them, don't read them.)

Anyway, it's important to remember that any great, honest review is bound to be somewhat arbitrary by definition. Just so we're all on the same page, here's a definition of "arbitrary":

1 Based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.
2. (of power or a ruling body) Unrestrained and autocratic in the use of authority.

Personal whim is almost certainly a key component of an impartial and honest review. But in a sense, a lot of reviewers could benefit from being more unrestrained and autocratic. Sure, we sometimes criticize reviewers for their arrogance, but whenever that's true, I'm not sure their arrogance often comes from deeply-held personal convictions.

When I interviewed Tim Gane of Stereolab for Tape Op he told me "Largely, they're just responding as a pack." There's a lot of truth in that.

[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.

[teleharmonium]

Sure, we sometimes criticize reviewers for their arrogance, but whenever that's true, I'm not sure their arrogance often comes from deeply-held personal convictions.

I agree, which relates to the point I was making in the second sentence of my post above. I don't think that hate for reviewers is necessarily fair; in many cases it simply comes from the audience being offended at the idea that someone else's opinion could be more informed and useful than their own. If that opinion is in place before the review is read, there can be no fair assessment of the review.

However, I don't have that predisposition. I've seen great and horrible reviews and many in between. I like being informed about relevant context, back story, and meaning, in a way that is not overly presumptive and isn't being parroted from hype supplied by someone with a vested interest.

I am open to value judgements as well, so long as they sound like they make sense and are coming from a person who understands the style and the goals of the music and isn't overly easy or hard to please or using the review to further their own profile rather than to review the music.

[teleharmonium]

To be fair, comparing current music to current trends is probably one of the least arbitrary things a reviewer can do. On the other hand, comparing Rhianna's "Umbrella" to Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica -- now that would be arbitrary.

The thing is, the subject of the review may not have any more to do with current trends than Trout Mask does, making it equally arbitrary. Stylistic differences can create just as large of a gap as chronological (plus stylistic) differences. It's an illusion, to think that closer in time must make music closer in any other way (even though that may often be the case for other reasons).

When something is released, there is no implicit agreement that it has anything whatsoever to do with all of the other records that are coming out around the same time, or to any particular style of music or peer or age group. The info that comes with the record, or whatever is already known about the artist from their other work or other exposure, may (fairly) create such a framework for comparison - but if it doesn't, it doesn't.

I'm not necessarily saying the motivation to do this is evil or always misguided - reviewers want to give people reference points that they will understand. But if you only think the audience is going to understand recent and very well known reference points, this becomes a very coarse process and you may not be giving very much credit to the audience in terms of knowing anything or being willing to look into a reference they aren't already familiar with.

[Beat Poet]

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.

It's no different to newspapers, news channels and all the rest of it, there's always an agenda behind it.

[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.