where is it all going? [rant]

[madtho]

The big guys aren't going to last in great numbers because pop can be produced on a laptop, and because "band" music (alternative/nu-metal whatever) produced in these places sounds like crap. Good sounding "band" music is mostly recorded NOT in these places methinks.

Brittney/Christina may not be remembered, but the Neptunes and Timbaland will, just like whoever produces the karaoke track for my daughter's favorites 15 years from now will. There will be another pretty face singing good pop songs then, too. (ever hear Ben Gibbard or Richard Thompson do Britt/Chris songs acoustic? they're good pop songs)

Where will we record orchestras, chorales and soundtracks? I do not know.

-mad

[A.David.MacKinnon]

You're forgetting that there has always been crappy music. Right now we're in another low point.

Yes and no. I agree there has always been crappy music and there always will be crappy music but I also think there is tons and tons and tons of really great stuff coming out right now. You just have to look for it because it's not topping the charts.

[Scodiddly]

You're forgetting that there has always been crappy music. Right now we're in another low point.

Yes and no. I agree there has always been crappy music and there always will be crappy music but I also think there is tons and tons and tons of really great stuff coming out right now. You just have to look for it because it's not topping the charts.

Good point - I guess I'm referring to a low point for quality music on the charts. There have been periods of good and creative music, though. Like today somebody had a radio on in the office, and one of those old hits from Supertramp (I think) came on. A klezmer breakdown in a pop song? Yes! Never really noticed that before.

[soundguy]

studios are far more than good sounding rooms with gear. They are buildings with vibe. I know bands that dont like to record at a certain place because the kitchen isnt big enough for everyone to eat in at once, and I have heard stories about people booking a certain studio in burbank because the kitchen was huge and the artist's personal chef could prepare meals properly, and thats a true story. Lots of music can come out of spare rooms and stuff and thats great and when you consider the lofi white stripes on one end and the autotuned/edited/beat detectived pop on the other end, its clear that people will pay top dollar for what many folks who love music consider to be "shit". All that said, there is still gonna be some kind of market for a "real" studio that has a compound kind of feel, where people feel secure about the public being locked out, where people feel like they arent gonna be interrupted, where people get psyched because they are going in to a "real" studio, where people feel like its a dedicatd space for creativity and NOTHING else. Bedroom studios that potentially sound a million times better dont offer that mostly, and in an age where EVERYONE has home studio, artists are hopefully going to want "real" studio to feel like they are getting something for their money, those who actually have some money to spend on a recording. There's a place for everything, I think we are seeing the day of the places with HUGEHUGEHUGE overhead sinking simply because there isnt the money coming from the labels that there used to be, but once things even out, people with midlevel pro facilities will hopefully have the room to at least stay in business. It seems to me that the future is in NICE but smaller single room facilities that only need to book a few days a month to break even. There are lots of places like this now, nice, small, but not bullshit "studios" and hopefully they will come out on top once all the dust settles.

dave

[KennyLusk]

There's tons of great music just right here on Tapeop. Who needs a fucking radio when you've got DynoMike and Illumina, etc., etc. the list is long...right here on Tapeop?

Surf soundclick.com and cdbaby. There's great stuff there 95% of the world will never ever hear.

It's the guys doing it at home that are making the really exciting "Art".

The times I've been in a big studio where a lead engineer runs the show, my guitars never really sounded like MY guitars and I'm like "what the fuck?". And there's always an excuse: Well I EQ'd the guitars this way and compressed it that way and blah blah blah.

When I record in my little home studio, my guitars sound exactly like MY guitars. My vocals sound like ME instead of someone else.

Plus, there's a big difference between musicians that have the desire to engineer their own recordings and those that don't. Most people here are engineering their own stuff and have a tendency to be a little more excited about the whole picture - the record. It seems most guys like that produce more intimate recordings because they're directly involved in mic choices and placement. The type of tape used to track with. The editing and the effects and panning and arrangement of the song, etc. You know - the really juicy stuff.

I think we're hearing some of the best music in the world right now - right here.

[8th_note]

2 Points:

1) This is the golden age of new music. There has never been this much new music, with such a tremdous diversity, at such a cheap cost, so easily available, in the history of the earth. The biggest problem I have with this is that I can't keep up with it and I know there's a bunch of wonderful music out there that I'll never hear.

2) The recording industry is going throug a fairly typical business cycle for a mature industry. Whenever there is a huge wave of buyouts and consolidation there is usually a countertrend where small players spring up to fill the void. The beer industry is a classic example. This is called the "barbell effect." The number of recording studios and labels have mushroomed along with the number of bands that record a CD. We will now begin to see consolidation among the small players. Homeless Records just bought Rise Records, for example. The studio scene is a little different but it seems pretty natural to me that some of the old legendary studios are going to close. Times change. The interesting thing to me is that there seems to be more good solid workable studios than ever. Not home studios, but dedicated studios run by competent engineers. I ain't no expert on this stuff but everything I've been reading and hearing over the last couple years tells me that gear manufacturers are having a field day and new studios are springing up all over the place. I just don't see a lot to complain about.

[wedge]

studios are far more than good sounding rooms with gear. They are buildings with vibe. I know bands that dont like to record at a certain place because the kitchen isnt big enough for everyone to eat in at once, and I have heard stories about people booking a certain studio in burbank because the kitchen was huge and the artist's personal chef could prepare meals properly, and thats a true story. Lots of music can come out of spare rooms and stuff and thats great and when you consider the lofi white stripes on one end and the autotuned/edited/beat detectived pop on the other end, its clear that people will pay top dollar for what many folks who love music consider to be "shit". All that said, there is still gonna be some kind of market for a "real" studio that has a compound kind of feel, where people feel secure about the public being locked out, where people feel like they arent gonna be interrupted, where people get psyched because they are going in to a "real" studio, where people feel like its a dedicatd space for creativity and NOTHING else. Bedroom studios that potentially sound a million times better dont offer that mostly, and in an age where EVERYONE has home studio, artists are hopefully going to want "real" studio to feel like they are getting something for their money, those who actually have some money to spend on a recording. There's a place for everything, I think we are seeing the day of the places with HUGEHUGEHUGE overhead sinking simply because there isnt the money coming from the labels that there used to be, but once things even out, people with midlevel pro facilities will hopefully have the room to at least stay in business. It seems to me that the future is in NICE but smaller single room facilities that only need to book a few days a month to break even. There are lots of places like this now, nice, small, but not bullshit "studios" and hopefully they will come out on top once all the dust settles.

dave

I agree with this entirely insofaras the restructuring of the recording industry. You see it all over the internet. Cool, little, real studios that can offer great sound to poor dopes like me, if I save up. Fuck, I don't wanna use a BIG STUDIO, anyway. Too much pressure. Unless, of course, I had a gigantic label deal and they were propfering me up to become rich and famous, but that fairy tale ain't gunna happen.

What I disagree with vehemently is that the White Stripes are shit, on any level. I love music, and I love the Stripes, lo-fi and all...

[Harmony Head]

I think the real challenge for the DIY musician remains distribution. The major labels have a stranglehold on that.

No it's not - it's promotion.

Distribution is easy - getting people to know that they want your stuff, that's hard.

A truer word has never been spoken....

5 albums into my career, i'm now certain that there'd be no problems getting my records into stores if anybody knew who i was. I know this because in the small pockets of the world where a few people do know who i am, my records are in stores.

It's the continuing 'chicken & egg'. If i had a million dollars to promote my next record, i'm pretty certain distribution wouldn't be a problem. But since i don't, my distributors around the world say to me that 'stores are reticent to stock it without a video/tour/article in Mojo'. (For the record, if i had a million dollars, i wouldn't be that worried about this too much )

So, on the cusp of a new record, i'm putting more of my limited resources into promo, just so that ALL the few people who know about me know that i have a new record. They can always buy it from my website, or a few trusted online retailers if they want it. But if they don't know about it, it could be in their corner store in the 'independant' section tucked behind some other band that no one knows anything about, and they ain't gonna buy it..

Times are most certainly changing, just like they have every five years for the last 50 years. And while it's hard to read the changes and the best way to deal with them, i believe that people having the ability to just MAKE records, whenever they want, is making for more creative, better records. Sure.. i agree that there's a heap of people who really shouldn't be making records, and that's frustrating because it muddies the waters for everyone else. But the days of big major label deals being a good thing are disappearing, and i couldn't be happier..

HH

[joelpatterson]

"Real," now there's a word right there, "real." I am sure that the dunderhead who dissed Chris Garges was sure as hell looking for "real."

[Derrick]

And I'm getting state-of-the-art sound IN A FUCKING BARN! I mean look at this place! It's like they shooed out the horses a few minutes ago, and me and my friends set it up to play "recording studio" on a Saturday afternoon.

Do it yourself doesn't mean good enough to use commercially though. That seems to be an opinion in many posts. I've become one of the do it yourself guys as well but I know that this doesn't garante that these recordings will be usable by a many commersial companys to release. At least not until I get myself to that Hit Factory garage sale!

[sthslvrcnfsn]

I guess to clarify what I was saying a little bit:

1) product from so-called home studios doesn't sell, let's face it, at least not like the big guys, and therefore the whole home studio scene will fall under it's own weight. The Bands and people that make stuff in home studios could be making something that would blow the tops off everybody's freaking head, but it is EXTREMELY hard to get anybody to listen to it, even when a lot of people offer up whole albums for free! It may get them heard, a few albums sold, a little tour booked, but then there is the problem with feeding yourself that a couple people brought up.
-> Home recording is excellent, and is where the vast majority of the real ART is today, but the whole idea is a little top heavy - way too much capitol, way too little [if any] return.

2) Those album-studios I was talking about, and that soundguy reffered to as something like (paraphrasing here) "nice little one room places with a good engineer and good gear", are also waning. Thanks again to soundguy for pointing out that they don't make enough money. They creat professional products, but they aren't professional enough for the record companies. Not that I mind a really good polished sound, hell I like when the sound, from absolutely shitty, to crystal clear, is a perfect match for the music within it.

3, a continuation of (2)) Either that or the record companies have deals with the stereotypical autotune/beat detective PT HD studios. It might not even BE about quality for the record companies - it might just be about a business deal. It's hard for those nice medium sized studios to get in with anybody much bigger than the semi-big regional indie label in their neck of the woods. And without that, they just get business out of the phone book or off the street. The owners and the engineers at those places need to eat too, you know...

SO, to draw some conclusions, I think i see the home recording scene caving in on itself soon - which will severly cut the making of real ART. I see the nice medium sized studios getting shafted by no business, and slowly dissapearing. Then I see the big time studios continuing to grow, and possibly consolidate - they are the only ones with a business future... The music recorded for big labels fuels the big studios, who in turn get better, and attract more business. And why shouldn't they do pro-bono work for real ART that has only ever seen a behringer mixer on somebody's bed next to an adat? Because they are better off sticking to their guns. If auto-tuning/extremely isolating/and beat detective-ing is making them money, and getting more business reffered to them, why would they want to change to a different market?

Bad music fueling what I think are bad engineering and producing methods fueling record companies fueling bad artists fueling what I think are bad ... etcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetcetc

And the thing I'm most afraid of is: will the real ART effectively die because there is hardly any way to produce it???

sad,
jim!

[Bear's Gone Fission]

Home and humble recordings aren't off smash sellers, but they can make a dent.

Blood Sugar Sex Magic is pretty much a smash, recorded remotely in a rented mansion.

Chris Whitley's Dirt Floor was a critic's best list fave that year, and that was recorded with a stereo ribbon mic to two track in a barn.

I think Lisa Germano's Geek the Girl was largely home recorded.

Paul Westerberg has done some of his best solo albums in his basement.

Buddy Miller does great altcountry at home.

There are historical roots here. Les Paul and Rudy Van Gelder set the state of the art at home. A hell of a lot of classic albums were done in situations just scraped together. Read Temples of Sound - a lot of the studios seemed primarily to exist just to provide a space for the music to happen.

The other side of that is knowledge. The stuff we have at our fingertips is miraculous in comparison to what the guys had who pioneered all of this. It's not like I have it together to build Universal Recorders from scratch, but it's a hell of a leg up.

Mass produced gear - a blessing and a curse. We have some great tools available for prices that decades ago would have been incomprehensible. Yet everybody has the same tools, and features trump function at times. There's a great array of well engineered tools though, albeit not at entry level prices, and there is a DIY renaisance, were people are once again building the gear they need that fits to their needs. Judiciously used, all these resources are quite powerful.

None of this speaks to the externalities: music and the music business. Keep in mind that the studios of yore came into being because the music did. They prospered because they facilitated music.

Bear

[stillafool]

Who cares? Fuck the radio.

Lets face it, people can create great music in their homes now by buying their own gear and learning to use it. I told my wife a long time ago that I thought most of the music in the future will not involve large studios, it will mostly be done in peoples spare rooms. I think that is coming true.

... Thanks Skeeter.

This was in the topic about the Hit Factory in NY closing. In regards to what Skeeter said, if recording os going to everyman's living room, where is the radio going to go?

What I mean is, if all these people are learning this "easy" task of operating a recording set up, where is this music turning up? Though the old 70s/80s album-studios are falling off the map, and very recently, $1000 home-studios are becoming the norm, the kind of music that makes the most money, is also, coincidentaly, extremely popular. That's a pretty far out statement, so read on; I'll explain...

These singles and albums seem like they are made with mostly PTHD setups in an increasingly smaller number of studios. Not only is tape dead to anybody that cared, but the point of owning a small studio is dead. It was dead before the idea even developed itself. UNFORTUNATELY, and I can't stress exactly how unfortunately, the only music that sees any amount of return on the initial investment is recorded in the aforementioned studios. Anybody making a recording on one of those (average)$1000 home-recording setups is not going to be heard, except by people that care.

I could go on, but I'll end it there.

Sometimes it seems like the greatest scam of unrecognized art in history. It's art versus business in any case. Another case of Xlusion of those without.

rant rant rant, i hope nobody reads my rant.

Thanks PBR
jim!

[joelpatterson]

Ummmmmmm... yes I am saying what I get here is ultra-sonically up-to-the-minute current commerical standards broadcast 50,000 watts music, or at least people hire me to do it, take the CDs and run. Really, "excellence" has very little or absolutely nothing to do with the sonic environment it happened in, or I take that back--any neutral sonic environment will be fine to set the stage for what really matters, which is mixing and asserting some control and sculpting, and, you know, creating something.

As long as your recording medium will give you silence--that's the one thing big old bulky studios used to offer exclusively, silence and powerful tape decks. Now that anyone can get silence and 24-bit power... you don't need these old "studios," they're like the hulk of a vast Soviet war machine time has passed by.

[wedge]

There's no way home recording will fall under it's own weight: It's way too economical to jump in. I'm astounded that there's enough people in this country and at large who have a dream of stardom/wanting to be a musician, to support an apparently healthy economy of guitars and basses, amps & the like. But I guess there is. Home recording is just an extension of that economy. People who hum & strum and play in bands want to record themselves, so they scrape together the funds to do so with this new-fangled, affordable digital stuff, and/or neglected and thus cheap analog gear. I don't see that desire disappearing anytime soon...