Do we need portals? Do we need professional help?

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Do we need portals? Do we need professional help?

Post by percussion boy » Tue Oct 18, 2011 4:41 pm

A couple thoughts brought on by the "Don't know where to put this..." thread -- which seemed best left in peace after it finally settled.

THOUGHT #1 -- Do we need portals?

I wonder if there's a need for portals, i.e., mechanisms to offer the work of several artists, based on the individual taste of the person(s) running the portal.

Good record labels, specialty music magazines, and non-corporate late night radio shows used to be portals. You didn't just pay Blue Note Records (or Nonesuch, or Sub Pop, or Deutsch Gramophon) for the slab of vinyl, you paid them for exercising some editing power over what they released. You might even gamble on a new artist because they were on your favorite label.

Portals seem more necessary than ever now, given the glut of recordings. Not everyone's band can be on Pandora. No listener can self-screen all the music that's out there.

(All this assumes that some of us still want to consume music made by others, rather than only play our banjos and four tracks on the porch.)

What would portals look like? Would people pay for them?

THOUGHT #2: It's rarer and rarer for albums to be made by a team of professionals.

Not that this is always a bad thing -- but most of my favorite stuff was made by, at least, pro engineers for tracking and mastering; and a lot of it also involved professional musicians, people who played one instrument over and over and over, for years, and were the best in town.

Sometimes sterility came out of using pros to make music, but a lot of great stuff came out of it too--especially when you had a visionary at the helm to tell the pros what to do -- Miles Davis, Brian Wilson, etc.

Also notice that jazz, classical, and virtuoso folk styles are pretty much impossible without high-powered players; most musicians just can't cut it in those styles.

Right now there's a vastly shrunken infrastructure to train or pay music professionals, and this very likely won't change soon.

I think we as humans lose something when there's no room left in our society for some musicans and engineers to exist as a highly skilled profession.

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What do you think?



[edited in an attempt at clarity]
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

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Post by alcoyot » Tue Oct 18, 2011 8:57 pm

I completely agree about your point on pro musicians, and I'd go as far to say that extends to almost all styles, except those like punk where the whole selling point of it is that you don't know how to play very well.

And it is true that it is virtually impossible for pro level musicians to make a living by performing, even among world class players. To me, actually it seems like if you're TOO good, you've lost the game.

The last guy I met who made a living off playing (session player) was doing gigs as Justin Beeber's keyboard player. Living the dream!! :lol:

Those musicians out there who truly want to get to a world class playing level will find a way to get there, but I guess the thing is, once they do, they won't find any rewards other than the music in and of itself. Which you could say is the greatest reward of all.

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Post by Nick Sevilla » Tue Oct 18, 2011 10:26 pm

I miss Ahmet Ertegun.
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Post by fossiltooth » Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:32 am

I'm definitely in favor of "portals", or as I like to call them, "filters". As musician-types we can lose track of reality sometimes, but the truth is that most of the world experiences culture through a filter. They're still hugely important and always will be. The proliferation of web-based media brought along plenty of confusion and mixed messages, but reliable portals are on the rise again! And for good reason: At their best, medium-sized labels and press publications generate jobs, excitement, revenue, and informed debate.

As for #2, I'm going to have to play the odd man out and suggest that the consensus in this thread so far may be a little misleading. In reality, the majority of releases that most people ever hear about (much less purchase) are still created by professionals.

I've interviewed a lot of artists and engineers about the making of their records. All the releases my readers have actually heard of were created by professionals. This is true even for bands who were lauded for "succeeding without the system". My recent interviews with Cults and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah reminded me of this. Although they did a lot themselves on their early releases, they had expert help in recording, mixing, pressing, promoting and distributing their records. They also practiced. A lot.

It's the same story with all of the most successful home-grown labels and artists throughout history. If you really look at them, you'll realize that true DIY is either a temporary phase or a marketable misnomer. Behind every success you'll invariably find a whole team of smart, hard-working people all focusing their energy in one direction.

As for the question of whether virtuoso music is more or less popular today? My instinct is to say sure... maybe? Like the rest of us messageboard posters, I really have no idea! It's important to remember two things here: A) Virtuoso music becomes popular in cyclical phases, and B) What might seem unpopular from one vantage point can look very popular from another. Without taking a good hard look at the data, we're just guessing.

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Post by chris harris » Wed Oct 19, 2011 6:59 am

alcoyot wrote:except those like punk where the whole selling point of it is that you don't know how to play very well.
Wow. Hilarious. If you don't get it, you probably never will.

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Post by chris harris » Wed Oct 19, 2011 7:07 am

Re: Portals....

The only "portals" of the past that have really disappeared are the influential terrestrial radio DJs. And, that's because NOBODY listens to radio anymore. There are still plenty of incredibly reliable labels that I count on. Slumberland has been super consistent in putting out great records for the last few years. Same with Fat Possum and dozens of other labels. Whatever your taste, there's probably a cool indie label specializing in it.

There are also portals that didn't even exist until recently. I'm still amazed at what I've been able to discover through my friends' public Spotify playlists. And, this is typically more organic discovery than any system where payola is surely involved, or where bloggers all cover the same bands and are afraid to take chances.

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Post by percussion boy » Wed Oct 19, 2011 9:33 pm

Ah! Glad to see we're getting an intelligent discussion out of this. That's why I love this board.

One question that might not have got across in the original post: Does anyone have ideas about NEW portals/filters, or new ways pros might get to develop and make a living more easily, e.g, in some kind of regional recording/performing scene? (This has been touched on a little, e.g., spotify as a new portal).

I have some responses to stuff that's been said but am more curious to hear what others have to say.
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
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Post by Gregg Juke » Thu Oct 20, 2011 12:06 am

A few comments re: Chris' responses...

Re: "Punk"-- I don't think the poster meant that as a slam. Whatever the term means now, I can assure you that many of the original punk-rockers were contrarian to the point of being anti-virtuoso, so the comment wasn't off-base.

As to the idea that "NOBODY" listens to radio, I'm quite sure Arbitron or other ratings and ad sales data could straighten this out for you. I think you mean "nobody of a certain relatively young alternative music-listening demographic," but I'm not even sure how accurate that is...

GJ

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Post by joelpatterson » Thu Oct 20, 2011 5:56 am

I was blessed (?) enough to have been selected last summer to fill out an Arbitron radio survey, and you better BELIEVE I used to it settle scores and craft an altogether political, psychological document. What it had to do with my actual radio listening habits? Look-- nobody can prove ANYTHING.
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Post by fossiltooth » Thu Oct 20, 2011 6:34 am

joelpatterson wrote:I was blessed (?) enough to have been selected last summer to fill out an Arbitron radio survey, and you better BELIEVE I used to it settle scores and craft an altogether political, psychological document. What it had to do with my actual radio listening habits? Look-- nobody can prove ANYTHING.
Haha. This was exactly my experience with Arbitron. Not to go too far off topic, but do they still send crisp new dollar bills in the mail?

percussion boy - I'm always on the look out for more and better filters. At the moment, I think it's still a growth industry. For the time being, I've come to find NPR and AllMusic to be the most thoughtful and reliable outlets for discovering worthwhile national releases. As for great local outlets? Build one! Most of what exists is okay at best.

I suppose you could petition your favorite music website or surviving newspaper/magazine to hire additional reporters to cover individual local scenes... But I doubt we'll see that kind of expansion in this economy. In the meantime, you can always get involved yourself!

Ryan Schreiber essentially did that with Pitchfork. But of course, his site leaves a lot of markets underserved and many contrasting viewpoints unrepresented. Larry did a similar thing with Tape Op. He saw a gap in the market and brought a refreshing perspective to an under-served audience. Right now, there's a lot of room for new voices and different perspectives.

If you don't have the bug to get involved yourself, cross your fingers and hope that passionate individuals will pick up the slack left behind by dying alternative weeklies. With a little luck, some of them might come together in order to create something more inspiring than the average half-baked blog. If you find something you like: read it, share it, keep coming back and be sure to tell our friends. These days, sharing content is just about as important as creating it. It's the new mode of distribution.

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Post by joelpatterson » Thu Oct 20, 2011 8:14 am

fossiltooth wrote:... crisp new dollar bills in the mail?
Indeedy-do! With each new plea to not forget to fill it out and send it back-- the last plea contained TWO dollar bills! And I thought-- aha, some error with the sorting machine, they musta gotten stuck to each other-- I make out like bandit!
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Post by vvv » Fri Oct 21, 2011 5:41 am

FWIW, and re the "portals" concept, I much prefer to read about stuff, whether it's in the newspaper or a magazine (yes, they still exist, including free ones, TapeOp being a fave!), a website or a blog, or even on the sticker on a new CD ("Sounds like ..." - hmm, mebbe I'll get that one next.)

I read a lot of fiction, and there are some authors who have turned me on to cool stuff, also, ex., Vachss and Bruen. Heck, Randy Wayne White even made me appreciate the band, America a little more.

I find that the player-app-prog model takes too much time, and subjects me to too much crap.

Of course, I do a lot of my listening on a Discman, or laying in bed, so I am a bit of a Luddite ...
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Post by percussion boy » Sat Oct 22, 2011 5:52 pm

alcoyot wrote:Those musicians out there who truly want to get to a world class playing level will find a way to get there, but I guess the thing is, once they do, they won't find any rewards other than the music in and of itself. Which you could say is the greatest reward of all.
There are still good players out there -- I know a couple -- and no doubt this will continue while humanity lasts.

I'm not sure there will be the same quality and quantity of great players, without (a) a system of training/apprenticeship from the preceding generation of good musicians and (b) some means of subsisting while playing for a whole bunch of hours to get good. This was a marginal experience even when there was a big post-Beatle music business, cheap gas, and loose money in the industrialized countries.

If the numbers of skilled musicians fall off, I think listeners lose out. Music will go on regardless . . .
fossiltooth wrote:Virtuoso music becomes popular in cyclical phases...
True. And jazz, classical, virtuosic folk musicians kind of know up front that they have a tough row to hoe.

The other part of the picture is that a lot of music that is stereotyped as "non-virtuoso" by the public (rock, salsa, country, etc.) actually IS virtuoso music for the top musicmakers in those styles. I would argue that a disproportionate amount of the great albums that have been made involved players/singers/writers who were the best of the best in their region.

There are always the Sufjan Stevens and the D'Angelos too, but the virtuoso "I-do-it-all" artist is VERY rare.

Justin, I'm actually curious about what you said re dedicated teams still being behind a lot of successful stuff. DIY indy stuff looks genuinely DIY to me, feel like I'm missing your point somehow.
chris harris wrote:There are also portals that didn't even exist until recently. I'm still amazed at what I've been able to discover through my friends' public Spotify playlists.
Yes. And you mention small labels as well. Do these kinds of "micro-portals" point toward a continuing fragmentation of the music audience into lots of little tribes? Not necessarily a bad thing, but more like the way it must have been before mass media, each geographic area did its own little thing.
fossiltooth wrote:As for great local outlets? Build one! Most of what exists is okay at best.
I've got a couple of things in mind, and they seem 'way over my head until I meet the right kindred spirits to share the load. Wanted to see what others here had come up with.

Hope the above makes some sense.
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
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Post by fossiltooth » Tue Oct 25, 2011 12:45 pm

percussion boy wrote: Justin, I'm actually curious about what you said re dedicated teams still being behind a lot of successful stuff. DIY indy stuff looks genuinely DIY to me, feel like I'm missing your point somehow.
I think you got the point just fine! A lot of stuff that looked DIY to me from a distance seemed a whole lot less DIY to me when I finally got to see it up close. A majority of the seemingly DIY artists you've actually heard of hire PR firms, booking agents, lawyers, engineers, distributors and management teams that do a lot for them. They often get professional help in pre-production, recording, mixing, mastering pressing, duplication, or all of the above.

Some artists may be fill one or more of these roles themselves, and some of the biggest names around may have started off in the beginning without much help. But by the time you've heard of them, the story is often different.

As a journalist, it's tempting to tell every story in a rags-to-riches kind of way. Those tales just have so much cultural resonance in our society. But if you take a close-up look at what's really going on, things look different. I love the DIY ethos. In more realistic terms, I think it means: "You don't need permission to be creative". And that's fantastic. I just don't think you can discount the importance of teamwork if you want to achieve anything that resembles sustainable success.

Although a band like Clap Your Hands Say Yeah might be far more DIY than say, Skid Row, ignoring all the hard work and effective strategizing by people who were not band members is misleading at best and dangerous at worst. They had engineers, managers, distributors, publicists, the whole nine yards.

I love the Daptone for instance, and they're as grassroots as it gets. But you'd never hear Gabe Roth saying he did it all himself! They have a lean crew compared to other labels, but there are full time staff members and helpful freelancers working hard to make sure they deliver a high quality product, that the word gets out, that bills get paid, the shows get booked, and that the records are on the "shelves," virtual or otherwise.

The next time you see man pulling himself up by his own bootstraps, look around at the crowd that's gathered to see the spectacle. You may just notice that a couple of them are holding his boots in place, some are handing him the straps, and others are helping to give him a gentle push in the right direction. Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers is a quick and fun study of this dynamic. Totally worth reading.

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Post by percussion boy » Tue Oct 25, 2011 10:34 pm

Ah, gotcha.

So you're talking about "team" in the sense of "all the people around the band who do the stuff that makes the band into a marketable entity" (including professional engineers for mastering, etc.).

What you're saying makes total sense -- "I hired a publicist" is not something the artist would say in their NPR interview, but most DIY music career books talk about the necessity of all that stuff.

I'm still also interested in the possible demise of professional teams in the musicmaking process itself, (e.g., a singer-songwriter recording with high-powered hired rhythm section and trackng engineer) . . . probably because my favorite stuff in a lot of genres wasn't created by self-contained bands. ("The band" is another heroic Three Musketeers bonding concept dear to the hearts of media people, like winning sports teams or the X-Men.)

Anyway, thanks for the thoughts, peoples.

[edited to replace old babble with new babble]
"The world don't need no more songs." - Bob Dylan

"Why does the Creator send me such knuckleheads?" - Sun Ra
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