WORDS.....YOU LIKE??

[majortom]

Ok, so I've read a lot lately on how some words are hated in descriptions of what people want to hear from a recording...warm,vintage,classic etc...

I read an article on the Mercenary web site by Steve Albini recently that was gushing with hatred for words like these. Taopeop I think had a whole subject called "words we hate"

I've been giving this a lot of thought, i work in medicine in my day job and when people describe how they feel or how they would like to feel they use certain words all the time; healthy, good,fresh,tired,sick etc...

Now i can link almost all of these terms to a number, that is, a blood count, different means to measure infection,cancer etc... Just like music can be linked to a lot of numbers and settings of how it was recorded.

If I asked people to describe how thay felt and NOT use thses terms I would not have the understanding that I need to help them out.

Sorry for the long intro but my question is if you hate all of those catch terms tell me how you would like to hear it described if you were (are) a ME or someone involved anywhere along the chain...Can you get the meaning you would want WITHOUT using those words??

If I have a song that I find "harsh" and want it to be "warm" what other terms can i use that describe it more accurately. Thanks. Tom

[drumsound]

Harsh---pointy
warm--round

?????

[mjau]

Fuck it, I say use them. We need to pry those words back from the hands of the marketing gurus hired by gear manufacturers. Personally, I like to use the word 'warm' to describe music, and I'm gonna continue to do so.

[thethingwiththestuff]

man, i agree with mjau. i use whatever words convey what i'm trying to say to whom i'm saying it, and i am able to understand others and give them what they want when they use those words as well.

if we want to deconstruct everything, then "i" and "agree" mean as little as "warm" and "punchy." "vintage" and "classic" are a bit more nebulous and imbued with marketing hype, where "punchy" quite obviously means "attacky".

maybe a band would roll their eyes at each other if i started talking to them about "transients" and "comb filtering".

[JGriffin]

why should we abandon these words when the wikirecording dude has gone to such great lengths to accurately quantify them?

[thethingwiththestuff]

why should we abandon these words when the wikirecording dude has gone to such great lengths to accurately quantify them?

[dsw]

Cliches exist because they work, and some people will always hate them, but in my job I have to describe gear all the time and so I too get tired of the same old words sometimes.
I tend to use words that are really describing a texture: smooth, gooey, creamy, or hard, brittle, dry, crunchy.
But whatever works works. No point in gettin all bunched up about how people express themselves.

[inverseroom]

Yeah, I am against the whole words-we-hate thing, though of course I don't have to listen to people saying them all day.

Here are some suggestions for new ones, though

doggy
breakfastic
murdery
zorro
peckish
butt
lamplike
friendly
french-toasty
siberian
rubdownic
penile
peaty
grumpy
sleazy
walter-searing

[Oldnsaxy]

Yeah, I am against the whole words-we-hate thing, though of course I don't have to listen to people saying them all day.

Here are some suggestions for new ones, though

doggy
breakfastic
murdery
zorro
peckish
butt
lamplike
friendly
french-toasty
siberian
rubdownic
penile
peaty
grumpy
sleazy
walter-searing

I am going to use zorro, lamplike, and siberian for sure!
I fact, I think I'm going make up a bunch of words like this for a certain producer and director team I work with on a regualr basis.

The dialog is a bit lamplike, I need to work it bit to get more of a siberian/tuna pancake type of sound.

I did have a director say that some bg sound fx I did sounded a bit orange and that they needed to be a bit more green. I plugged in a patch cord and adjusted a fader that wasn't assigned to anything and asked if that was better.
It was.

[GooberNumber9]

Well, I find the Mackie VLZ preamps to be a little doggy, and I'm looking for something kinda peckish but not TOO peckish, maybe with a french-toasty sorta butt to it. Mainly cause my converters are a bit penile, but I like them anyway.

Hmmm....

[;ivlunsdystf]

frosty.

[cgarges]

X2!

Chris Garges
Charlotte, NC

[MoreSpaceEcho]

why should we abandon these words when the wikirecording dude has gone to such great lengths to accurately quantify them?

hahahahahahahaha.

i forgot all about that shit.

i think as engineers we get tired of hearing, say, 'punchy', cause we know it as a marketing cliche, but it's perfectly reasonable for a drummer to say 'can you make my kick sound a little more punchy?'

i mean what the fuck else is the guy supposed to say? i suppose they could say 'can you enhance the attack of my kick?' but to me that's even more annoying.

[JGriffin]

why should we abandon these words when the wikirecording dude has gone to such great lengths to accurately quantify them?

hahahahahahahaha.

i forgot all about that shit.

Hell, how could you forget? Larry plugged his page in this month's letters column!

i think as engineers we get tired of hearing, say, 'punchy', cause we know it as a marketing cliche, but it's perfectly reasonable for a drummer to say 'can you make my kick sound a little more punchy?'

i mean what the fuck else is the guy supposed to say? i suppose they could say 'can you enhance the attack of my kick?' but to me that's even more annoying.

You know, at least there are some of those descriptors that are more-or-less universally used and understood, at least to a small extent. What drives me nuts is when a client comes in and starts throwing around vague pseudo-adjectives that only mean something to him.

[Professor]

I don't know if I get more or less weird descriptions given where I am... probably less when I think about it, and I guess I'm lucky for that. Most of the time, the folks I'm working with like what they hear and just ask for more or less of the various instruments and more or less reverb. Probably because I am generally "producing" the recordings and the students and even faculty players usually don't even hear the sound until after they've played it. Maybe it has something to do with their not being familiar with the terms and buzzwords too.

But when I do have to hear the verbal descriptions, I prefer simple and straight-forward words.
Bright, Dark, Present (or close), Distant, etc.
Those can be positive or negative, because a we may want any particular sound to be more bright, or less bright, and best of all, they can't be confused with each other. Nobody misinterprets "bright" to mean "too much bass".
And I also like loaded descriptors that tell me they don't like something:
Shrill, flabby, 'way out front', or 'lost in the background'.
Except for some really weird special effect thing, I can't imagine someone asking for something to sound more shrill. But when they say, "this sounds shrill" then I know to go to work on that symptom.

I also prefer if the musician says they hear too much of something more than if they want more of it.
I know it's a bit of semantics or psychological nit-picking, but I prefer that they tell me the symptom and not suggest the cure. To relate to medicine, I reall think it's like somebody saying, "I think I need to be in traction" without mentioning they have sore muscles. Similarly, if someone tells me "that sounds too bright" then I know their opinion and I can choose an option that relates to the mix. It might involve an obvious EQ move to reduce the high frequencies, but it might also be something I could tame or adjust by increasing the lows or low-mids, by compressing differently or with a different compressor, perhaps changing a microphone, maybe adding an effect like chorus or reverb, or maybe that channel just needs to be quieter. But if the guy instead says, "you need to take some high-end off that" then it feels more like they are telling me what the cure should be and just not able to figure out which knob to turn.
I know that's kind of ironic. I want them to be concise about their choice of words, but I want them to be more general about describing the symptoms of what they hear without suggesting what will fix it. But it makes me happy.

-Jeremy