Ah, you know. When I don't notice autotune it doesn't bother me a bit. It's perfectly possible to use it relatively transparently. Actually it can even be used noticeably and be rad, as long as it's part of an interesting mix of effects and isn't just overpowering.
Anyhow, it's really such a big deal to swap drum hits around? You people with your "live bands" "recreating" "a performance" in the studio are so odd.
For our wedding photos, we told the photographs NO PHOTOSHOP. We knew this wouldn't work, but we thought it would meant they'd keep the modifications relatively limited and unobtrusive. That turned out to be the case!
Not an analogy. A parable!
it's really such a big deal to swap drum hits around?
No, it's completely commonplace, in my experience.
We got married back when they charged extra to photoshop wedding photos. They may have done it with an actual airbrush.
Did you also use the software that makes all the beats fall neatly on a grid?
5: Not this time, no, nor did we play to a click track, somewhat to my dismay, because I couldn't convince certain people they were rushing or dragging some parts.
I have a new DJ doohickey arriving (hopefully) wednesday that lets you align all the beats on a grid and then does the beatmatching for you. Such cheating but 1. you don't have to do that and 2. if you do that it turns out there are all these other awesome things you can do, so fuck it.
The base drum is the really big one, right? I suppose it is easier to miss because you don't hit it quite to often and not harder to miss because it's the biggest one.
When I don't notice autotune it doesn't bother me a bit.
Well, no.
This post reminds me that I was going to mention Frank Zappa in the thread about live versus recorded music as someone who at times went for quite different things in live shows versus the studio. I forget now why that was even a discussion point.
"perfecting sound forever" has a section busting on the Kaiser Chiefs for relying on Pro Tools:
http://books.google.com/books?id=KuPkMAsPDQQC&q=kaiser+chiefs+#v=snippet&q=kaiser%20chiefs&f=false
I have a new DJ doohickey arriving (hopefully) wednesday that lets you align all the beats on a grid and then does the beatmatching for you.
Something other than Ableton?
I've recorded two albums -- one by myself, playing all the instruments besides a few guest spots and programming or looping drums; and the other with my band, with two different engineers in various studios. I found it utterly baffling when we went into the studio as a band how the engineers would talk about wanting to record us on our own instruments, having us play together to get "our real sound." Like, aren't I paying you to make us sound better than we actually are? I realize that some people actually sounds good on their own and don't seek this kind of treatment.
sorry, some peoples actually sounds good.
So, as someone who really has zero experience of studio recording: what's the reason that one wouldn't want the recorded sound to be something you could at least theoretically reproduce, or maybe even improve on, live?
I mean, speaking as an audience member in such cases*, I've seen bands in concert whose recorded sound was obviously light-years beyond what they were actually capable of in a live show (The Black Crowes, Urge Overkill), and I've seen acts (like Radiohead) who could reproduce the recorded sound almost note for note, and I've seen acts (like Spiritualized, or Neko Case) who made it look almost effortless to stretch beyond the recorded tracks. It was only in the latter two cases that I went direct to the merch table to buy their music afterwards. I never, ever bought another Black Crowes record after witnessing their, how shall we say, clay footprint in a live context.
(* Here comes some Full Blowhard just for you, Sifu. I hope you're properly appreciative.)
So, as someone who really has zero experience of studio recording: what's the reason that one wouldn't want the recorded sound to be something you could at least theoretically reproduce, or maybe even improve on, live?
Didn't we just have a long thread on this exact topic? Like, a week ago?
Did we? I missed it if so, which thread?
Starting here and going on for about a hundred comments. There's some pretty interesting discussion and historical context.
So I see.
Ummm. Lana Del Rey sher iz purty. Aaaand I'm off to RTFA.
16.2 Neko Case - yes, so good live her recordings - which I loved b4 - are weak brew indeed.
Red Hot Chili Peppers - can't even shout the lyrics fast enough live but make up for it by jumping around in diapers and socks. And that's ok with me.
Sleigh Bells - fuck it let's just dance around on stage to our recordings and call ourselves punk. Dance punk. Not ok with me.
I've only done a little bit of recording in a serious commercial studio, but, sadly, the resulting demos [which I linked here once before] were almost the opposite of the Black Crowes as discussed by Castock in 16. They were significantly worse than our live performance. Not because of the sort of stretching/dynamic thing that really great live performers have -- we were just a loud proggy pub band, not anything special -- but because the engineers did such a shitty job the result was worse than when we just set up a DAT and a couple of stereo mics in our rehearsal space and recorded live.
That said, I think there is something for the record as a thing separate from and different to live performance. It's just a bit shitty if the band purports to be a 'real' band, rather than a studio creation as the live gigs are inevitably disappointing.
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In case anyone was curious, I did email the woman from Saturday night/Sunday morning, asking if she'd like to hang out again. I floated the idea of meeting at one of the events for this book's release tour, despite suspecting that such a suggestion was going a bit far in the "desperately signaling my edginess, for a straight guy" direction, but oh well--I emphasized that it was only a thought, and that simply getting drinks would also be delightful.
Partly I wanted to show myself that, yes, damnit, I can actually ask someone out, even if I haven't actually done it since Germany (and that didn't count, since I was days from leaving).
Oddly enough, an hour after sending this email, a different woman, one I'd met through a German-language meetup, invited me to a completely-non-German-related event the very same evening I'd suggested for the date with the dance-club woman. I don't think she meant it in an asking-out sort of way, though. I dunno.
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re: live bands
The only bands I've seen in the last few years where I've been really impressed by their live performance haven't really been the kind of transcendent thing I think Castock is alluding to.
A band I've really enjoyed live a few times recently, and didn't think I would, are Metronomy -- both with the current line-up, and when it was just 3 blokes standing looking awkward with lights on their chest. Live much more shambolic and unpolished than their records, but it still somehow good.
Yeah, I've seen live bands who were impressive despite being less polished than the recorded tracks. I guess it's only really a problem for me if they don't have anything live (be it raw energy, earnestness, technical accomplishment, kooky spectacle, or soaring soul) that goes beyond the recorded tracks. I'll admit to a special dislike for the kind of thing that simulated annealing alludes to with Sleigh Bells, "bands" that just go up and vamp to their recorded tracks.
Yeah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-x6nQZGwVg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjLmci-aPqE
Live on TV. Still, to me, pretty good, but the record is definitely a more polished/slick thing [which is partly the point].
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This facebook feature about what news stories people are reading is odd. I don't want to know that my uncle read about "4 things you do to kill her sex drive," nor do I think he'd really want me to know, though his wife is his fb friend and may get the message.
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We went to a surprise birthday/listening party for our friend whose album of mostly jazz standards is almost ready. It sounded very much like hearing her play live in a restaurant as we normally would, only crisper and more lush and sometimes with more backing instruments. It was hard to figure out how not to say, "Wow, this sounds just like you but even better!" without the back-handed compliment.
28.2: "Wow, the restaurant acoustics really undersell how great you sound!" Unless they're her restaurants and have acoustics themes.
I guess it's only really a problem for me if they don't have anything live (be it raw energy, earnestness, technical accomplishment, kooky spectacle, or soaring soul) that goes beyond the recorded tracks that mental whatever-ness.
13: yeah. See the video in 9. The beatgridding isn't terribly different from warping in ableton, but that style of hardware interface makes it a different animal.
There was a good piece in the New Yorker by Jeremy Denk about recording and producing Ive's Concord Sonata. Lots of discussion of the overwhelming multitude of choices. The abstract is available.
re: 12
Yeah, I watched the TV show where they were recording at Abbey Road with Geoff Emerick, using 60s methods, and really struggling.
FWIW, that google books link doesn't work for me. Perhaps an international issue?
Mastering things is really fun. I sort of can't imagine being in a band and going to a studio to record and not having -- if not full control -- at least a very deep understanding of what's being done to all the instruments on all the tracks. It just feels like you're putting so much of the musical creativity involved in the album into somebody else's hands.
2: You might have done better had you instructed the photographers.
35: we had our wedding photographs taken by other photographs, on the assumption that they would really have inside knowledge.
re: 34
Yeah. Although I think the post-final-mix final mastering of records is a real dark art.
37: I don't disagree, but I also think a huge part of that is access to an acoustically good space, multiple sets of good monitors at different distances/amplification levels, and high quality mastering gear. The difference in my own tracks between the ones that I mastered at home with just my (kinda shitty) studio monitors and a hodgepodge of plugins and the tracks that I mastered in a larger room with both my kinda shitty studio monitors and a moderately large PA that I could run things through for test and a single pretty good mastering plugin is absolutely huge.
Of course, mastering primarily for club-style sound systems is a totally different deal than mastering for, roughly, whatever shitty-ass system a random person in the world wants to play your record through. There's interesting material in this book about how early disco producers found it vital to get early versions of their tracks played by DJs, not to build buzz, but just so they could hear them on a big system and get a sense of how they worked. And that's probably the easy case compared to any-shitty-ass-system.
Of course, famously, the latter-day response to shitty-ass systems has been to master everything so it sounds horrible on non-shitty systems, so there's that.
Of course, famously, the latter-day response to shitty-ass systems has been to master everything so it sounds horrible on non-shitty systems, so there's that.
Indeed. I'm struck sometimes by how obvious bad mastering is. I have two recent consecutive albums by the same band on vinyl and lossless digital. One album, released 2007, sounds great in both formats. It's one of the nicest sounding recent vinyl releases I have. The other, released in 2011, sounds noticeably worse in both, and it sounds [to my totally non-expert ears] like the fault is in the mastering.
The compilation they released to go with that Last Night A DJ Saved My Life book is one I listen to a lot. Great tracks on it.
Ok, regarding recording material:
Something about recording equipment makes a dense fog come over my brain. Jammies has a ton of stuff, and it's almost an impediment to me sitting down and working on my songs because I find it so confusing.
(This is the same impediment I had with computers up until the interface became excruciatingly easy in the early 2000s. The problem is that I can't remember a sequence of steps, and I can't remember enough to re-derive it from scratch.)
I LOVED my little 4 track recorder, but it was a big pain for Jammies to convert it to an MP3 (or something, I don't remember.)
Anyway, here's my point:
I'd love a little drum machine where I could get creative, but I'm positive that the features that allow you to get creative will be the same things I find confusing. Is there any perfect machine out there for me?
It's like I want Steve Jobs to design a drum machine for me, please. And make it cute.
I've seen bands in concert whose recorded sound was obviously light-years beyond what they were actually capable of in a live show (The Black Crowes
This is fascinating, because the Black Crowes are the only act I've ever seen live that completely blew my mind. Meaning: I don't even much like any of their recorded music--it's decent but basically boring blues rock. So obviously I wasn't expecting much from a live show, which I mostly just went to in order to kill a Saturday with friends. But to this day it stands out in my mind as the best concert I've ever seen, by a healthy margin. It didn't actually turn me into a fan of theirs--I still don't care much about anything they've recorded that I've heard, but I'd definitely see them live again.
I don't know when you saw them? The show I saw was 15 years ago; maybe they've lost something in the interim. (Or, in my case maybe it was just all the hallucinogens, and they weren't really as good as they seemed to me to be.)
Now I'm wondering if anyone read the thing by Jeremy Denk in The Now Yerker about making a studio recording of Ives' Concord Sonata. It was really smartly written and (I guess this wasn't the goal but) reminded me why I almost never buy studio recordings of classical music. Maybe I am bullshitting myself the way hipsters bullshit themselves they can hear the difference between digital and analog, but studio recordings -sound- like lifeless Frankenstein monsters to me a bunch of the time.
Pwned @ 32.
Also: it is frustrating never having been in a band. And never having had the slightest interest until I was 35 or so and it was way too late.
41: I have some bad news regarding Mr. Jobs.
This thread is really bringing home to me that A. I don't go see live music anymore, B. I'm not even a tiny bit of an audiophile, and C. I can't even imagine having an opinion about mastering. On C, what I can imagine, if I performed music, would be wanting either a. make it sound roughly live, but well-balanced (that is, not just like somebody holding a mic in the middle of the room), or b. to use the engineer's studio wizardry to make it more interesting (that is, offer me options top which I can say yes or no).
Obviously this is completely theoretical, since I don't play music, but, like anyone, I grew up imagining being in a band, and picking out exactly what happens on Track 22 was never part of the fantasy.
picking out exactly what happens on Track 22 was never part of the fantasy
For similar reasons, I don't like Thomas the Tank Engine pr0n.
re: 41
iPad plus apps? There are fun little 4-track type apps and drum machines even just for phones.
re: 43.1
You often _can_ hear the difference between particular instances of digital and analogue. Although that's often just because they've been mastered differently, rather than any superstitious mystic awesometrons that are inherent in analogue media. Notoriously old analogue recordings, particularly of classical music, often have massive dynamic range. Again, nothing to do with the dynamic range of vinyl, which isn't as good as CD. Just different fashions in mastering.
re: 47.2
Just as you often can hear the difference between premium hi-def umptyfoo bit digital files versus ordinary 44.1kjz/16 bit. However, when they did a bunch of double blind testing again that turned out to be mastering.
the post-final-mix final mastering of records is a real dark art
A very deep, very dark, very deep secret that must never be told and is defended in the finest traditions of Freemasonry. If you ever happen to be hanging round in the wrong pub in Soho and say the words "that's all we do! We really do just stick a brick wall limiter on and shove the levels up to max!", then you will probably end up with your tongue cut out and bricks in your pockets, buried below the high-water line.
42: There is the basic feature of the world that people, groups whatever, have good days, bad days, good shows, bad shows, good tours, bad tours etc. We all get to sample small portions of any of it.
Digging in the mud is such a chore. If you've put bricks in the pocket, why not just dump them in the deep part of the water?
re: 49
Yeah, I know this. It's not true _some_ of the time.
A. I don't go see live music anymore
Ah, parenthood. I do so miss seeing live music.
47: Thanks, good explanation of this. Certainly I have enjoyed certain old recordings on vinyl for reasons I couldn't have put my finger on (happy memories of the then-new-to-me Callas/Serafin Tosca on EMI, many people's operatic desert island recording, listened to on vinyl on a rainy day in Austin, much of which fondness seems likely to be extramusical but much of which is what you say) but my bullshit detector always went off when people talked about the coldness of digital. We don't hear in small enough instants of sound to be able to differentiate, as I understand it.
Again, the coldness of digital thing I think largely dates from the period in the early 80s when CD first came in. A lot of those were mastered really bright -- as in the treble frequencies were pushed higher in the mix -- as CD was new, people weren't entirely clear how best to master for it, and also it made it sound really shiny and unmuffled next to vinyl. Those often sound really harsh and cold next to really well-mastered vinyl from the same time period.
There's no reason why CD or any digital format has to sound cold, though. Assuming you aren't the sort of person who buys expensive audio-voodoo gadgets [like audiophile power cables and the like].
53: Yeah, the sad part is that, immediately before buying the house and then having kids, I/we had increased live music attendance, particularly at local clubs (as opposed to larger venues). So it's not even like "Oh, when I was a kid I went to lots of shows, but now I'm a grownup." Instead it's, "when I was 31 I went to lots of shows, but now I'm 39 and I never do."
That said, AB & I have been to 2 excellent performances in the last few months - Gillian Welch and Dave Whatever in an old theater (excellent performance, excellent acoustics) and a couple out of Nashville in some guy's loft studio. I'm not sure we'd seen any live music - even free, outdoor stuff - in the year or three prior to that.
Wait! Not true! Carolina Chocolate Drops, plus some spoken word stuff, last winter. Nevermind, it's like music is our life.
Right, no, I understood. Was referring to attribution of coldness to digital per se, re: bullshit detector.
re: 57
Yeah. I hear audiobullshit even from friends who are quite discriminating in other areas. It seems endemic. I _like_ vinyl. The format is nice to use, good sounding classic recordings are available cheaply if you live in a place with good second hand shops, and so on. But the bollocks that surrounds it is embarrassing.
iPad plus apps? There are fun little 4-track type apps and drum machines even just for phones.
That's probably perfect, actually.
re: 59
You can put Garageband on an iPad.
Instead it's, "when I was 31 I went to lots of shows, but now I'm 39 and I never do."
same here. except we don't have kids.
what kills us is the sheer amount of time it takes to go see a band. it's a 45 minute drive to Chapel Hill; then the opening band(s) have to play. then the pointlessly-long gear swap; then, even when things are set up, the headliners have to hide for twenty minutes; then it's 11:00 before they even start and we have to be at work in 9 hours. and because i always drive, there's a pretty hard limit on how much time i can kill with beer. and half the time, my wife skips the whole thing because she hates the ordeal more than i do.
so, we get real happy when bands play at places like the Carrboro Arts Center, where everything always starts early and on-time.
we're old.
60: what's the equivalent that just runs on a linux box? (trying to avoid the £1k mac-tax)
what kills us is the sheer amount of time it takes to go see a band. it's a 45 minute drive to Chapel Hill; then the opening band(s) have to play. then the pointlessly-long gear swap; then, even when things are set up, the headliners have to hide for twenty minutes; then it's 11:00 before they even start and we have to be at work in 9 hours. and because i always drive, there's a pretty hard limit on how much time i can kill with beer. and half the time, my wife skips the whole thing because she hates the ordeal more than i do.
Back when I was 18 that made me angry ever single time it happened, which was 90% of the time I went to shows. It really seems bizarre that this is the established protocol for how every rock show everywhere has to proceed.
what kills us is the sheer amount of time it takes to go see a band. it's a 45 minute drive to Chapel Hill; then the opening band(s) have to play. then the pointlessly-long gear swap; then, even when things are set up, the headliners have to hide for twenty minutes;
You could just turn up for the main act and skip all that.
I cherish the memory of Marianne Faithfull playing the Royal Festival Hall. She literally hit the stage as the clock struck the hour, catching hundreds of the audience out in the bar, smoking cigarettes in the street, etc.
42: Interesting. Maybe I just saw them on a really bad day, and have been holding it against them all this time? It was a couple of years after Southern Harmony Musical Companion came out, and most of what I remember is them sounding alarmingly like a jam band at a hippie house party (and not in a good way -- too much ambition, not enough musicianship) and Chris Robinson coming off as a complete dick. I'm told they were doing way too many drugs by that time, however, so that was probably a contributing factor.
I've seen worse live shows, mind you.
Faintly on-topic:
Pandora just kicked up Vampire Weekend, and they please me, because while everyone shits on them for basically doing records that sound like unreleased extras from Graceland, I've always wondered why more bands don't do that.
IOW, you have artists do these amazing, stand-alone masterpieces that they never go back to. And everyone agrees they're amazing, and lots of bands are inspired. But very rarely does anyone actually recapture that sound.
Now I understand all the reasons. Artists don't like to repeat themselves (sometimes you'll get a little series of albums in a vein, like Jethro Tull's trio of British folk albums); other artists don't like to mimic, plus of course they've got their own viewpoints; bands that imitate rarely have the chops to sound like anything more than, well, pale imitations.
I guess that part of what seems weird about it is that certain albums/sounds (Led Zep) get recycled endlessly, while others seem to be distanced from the common language.
This would probably be more useful if I could actually name more examples, but my brain is utterly failing me. Also, I suspect that the real answer is that every good album anyone's ever done has inspired at least one or two good imitations*, but you really have to know where to look.
* in a non-derogatory sense; focus on "inspire", not "imitate"
66: Probably just too much success too soon. I don't recall their backstory, but they basically went from zero to arena overnight, and it probably stunted their development, both as artists* and as performers. NOt that that doesn't happen to lots of bands, but some are probably more resistant to the effects.
* I thought they were OK, but repetitive, but there are a few moments in their songs that suggest that there was real talent there, but that mindlessly repeating southern blues rock cliches was easier/more lucrative
while everyone shits on them for basically doing records that sound like unreleased extras from Graceland
I've heard this from a bunch of different people, and I've never been able to figure out where it's coming from. The Vampire Weekend songs I've heard all sound way more twee than anything on Graceland.
Again, nothing to do with the dynamic range of vinyl, which isn't as good as CD. Just different fashions in mastering.
Well, but there are differences in the frequency response of vinyl that require different styles of mastering. Vinyl, if I recall, has enormous bass response, which requires extra compression on the low end to keep from fucking up the cutting machine. (Right? It's something like that. It's related to why phono inputs need a different kind of preamp.)
You could just turn up for the main act and skip all that."
A lot of places will tell you the time that the headliner will come on if you call them. Most places have the headliner come on at or near a fixed time.
I saw Estelle last weekend. She was very good live. She used backing tracks, but had a base player, keyboard player and two backup singers. A certain style of music just can't easily avoid the backing tracks.
Here is what radiohead does:
http://www.dannychesnut.com/Recording/Keyboards/Tech-1.htm
At a certain point you might as well just play backing tracks.
64.
then i'd have to stand in the very back and not see anything at all. if i'm gonna go see a band, i want to see them!
The Vampire Weekend songs I've heard all sound way more twee than anything on Graceland.
Lyrically, this really couldn't be further from the truth. Actually, musically, too. I'm very pro-their first album.
69: Twee? Lyrically, no doubt. Acoustically? It's a little light on the low end (which seems to be a mixing decision, rather than instrumentation - there's some low drums, but they're back in the mix), but I wouldn't say it's out of place relative to, say, Gumboots or Crazy Love.
I should clarify that I've probably only heard 3-5 VW songs; they may be the most Gracelandish of their output.
Ack! Oud-pwned.
Maybe I should read the lyrics. My impression is that they're undergraduate-literate, but maybe I'm shortchanging them.
74: Ha. I think "diamonds on the soles of her shoes" type stuff is more twee than the sappy nostalgia of things like "the afternoon you're out on the stone and grass, and I'm sleeping on the balcony after class." College nostalgia from 24yos is fairly precious, though, I guess.
73: Further from the truth in which direction? They're not twee, or Graceland is twee too?
(I should clarify that it's not that I dislike VW, it's just that I don't hear the similarity to Graceland that everyone else does.)
The beatgridding isn't terribly different from warping in ableton, but that style of hardware interface makes it a different animal.
I could have sworn I'd seen similar controllers that worked with Ableton. Either way, that thing does look awesome, but it reminds me that the thing I find interesting about DJing/mixing is the composition aspect rather than the performance aspect. The thought of practicing to develop the kind of dexterity the guy in the video has just leaves me cold.
Re 70
Yeah, RIAA curves. They cut the bass and boost the treble in cutting and then it gets reversed on playback. Both because of the bass thing and to cut playback noise. But the dynamic range thing is more a mastering choice, or so I've read anyway, although I think brick-wall limiting at 0db is harder on vinyl.
I do not think they are nearly so twee. But this involves buying into my starting proposition that wistful preppie childhood/college/lostlove nostalgia is something other than twee. Mostly though, the lyrics are sort of stream-of-consciousness and odd. Like so:
Walcott, don't you know that it's insane?
Don't you want to get out of Cape Cod, out of Cape Cod tonight?
Walcott, the bottleneck is a shit show
Hyannisport is a ghetto, out of Cape Cod tonight
The lobster's claw is sharp as knives
Evil feasts on human lives
The Holy Roman Empire roots for you
Speaking of music I see tierce was quoted in today's paper on Whitney.
Acoustically? It's a little light on the low end
Yeah, I think this is what I'm responding to. Graceland has way more bass; actually, listening to it again now I'm reminded that the bassline is one of the defining features of the entire album for me. It (and the songs with Ladysmith Black Mombazo) offsets the lightness of Simon's voice in a way that nothing in the VW songs I've heard does.
I was predisposed to dislike Vampire Weekend, but I think their first album is actually very good. I agree with Josh that it could use a little more bass.
I had a very similar experience to Urple at a Black Crowes concert -- based on their album output, I expected the show to be overwhelmingly mediocre, but it was just fantastic. They at least were at one point a great live act.
Unlike Urple, I am not a degenerate. I guess I was a little drunk? But that kind of factors in to most concert viewing, right?
82: As I said, I think that the low end instrumentation is there, it's just mixed differently. An alternate take for "Diamonds" happened to be on my iPhone this morning, and it's practically 100% bassline. But the song that Oud quotes, which is what inspired my initial comment, has a very active, nimble bassline, it's just not as low, nor is it mixed to be the melodic core.
I am always enchanted by the not 100% comprehensible story in "A-punk." Only in part because it ends in my neighborhood.
I propose that 'twee' join 'hipster' in being banned from any serious discussions. They both carry too much connotative weight.
Thinking about it, the fact that second best concert I remember attending (1) also involved a heavy dose of hallucinogens and (2) was some amateur band of high school kids doing cover songs, probably suggests that the first factor is rather seriously impairing my judgment on these things. However, everyone that attended that Black Crowes concert with me that day thought it was just incredible, so I know I'm not completely out in left field on this.
then i'd have to stand in the very back and not see anything at all.
Really? Can't you just wander down one of the sides of the venue and then squeeze into the middle? That's what I do.
I could have sworn I'd seen similar controllers that worked with Ableton.
Oh, almost certainly. But Ableton is a little bit different philosophically; it requires more up-front work to put together a set, and tends to be somewhat more oriented towards live performance of, like, composed original tracks as opposed to a DJ set. The nice thing about traktor is that if you want to just drop in a new track and play it like you're working with vinyl, you can easily do that, but if you want the loops and the effects and all that, you can switch to that.
The thought of practicing to develop the kind of dexterity the guy in the video has just leaves me cold.
Oh, believe me, there's no chance I'm going to do that. But having more expressive possibilities on your interface is fun and allows for more flexibility even if you're decidedly more on the "play other people's music sequentially" side of things than the "remix on the fly" side. Especially if (like me) you're kind of shitty at beatmatching, being able to finesse (aka fake your way through) transitions with effects and so on is really helpful for maintaining continuity.
Whooooo's that kid with the oreo cookie?
actually, I rather like the vampire weekend. also, they're like graceland how now? seriously, wtf? somebody name some songs and related graceland songs, I'm genuinely curious to see anyone defend this theory. I listened to graceland recently after a long time of not hearing it and was struck by how 'cold' the tracks seemed, in the mastering-for-CD way ttam mentioned above. crisp, with every note sparkling, but cold. making ladysmith black mambazo sound cold is some kind of perverse achievement; all those warm harmonies rendered kind of inert. it's a very 80s recording, and not in a good way.
also, it's interesting to me how a band with an inhumanly metronomic drummer (like charlie watts) sounds so different from a band with even an excellent drum machine/drum sample. you would think it would be the same, right there on the beat every time, but the sample or machine doesn't sound anything like the perfect drummer. and it's not just little fills and stuff, you could engineer those in too. it just sounds...different.
42: The Black Crowes used to advertise themselves as "entheogen-friendly" in the late, lamented Arthur magazine.
hi flip! I hope all is well with you and von lunchy, to the extent that gallantry permits you to note. hey, I only sort of have a headache! who knew that all along, all I needed was the blood of a young boy a combination of morphine, oxycontin, lyrica, valium, and topamax. I should go run in the pool while I have the chance. it's the least impact-y exercise around, so the bouncing doesn't hurt my head or my arthritic knees. my pool is kind of humorously tiny, only about 15ft long @firstworldproblems.
the doctor did want to know why my body was so tan given that I've been bedridden; I explained that I tried to get out and exercise if possible but always include lying in the sun even when exercise is difficult. I recharge that way, like superman. it hurts a bit when my eyes are open, but I really do feel as if I'm being filled up with a golden syrup of sun-honey that will allow me to carry on a bit longer. one must have something, after all.
Actually I quite like Graceland. But if the answer is "a hipster version of the Bhundu Boys", someone probably asked the wrong question.
a combination of morphine, oxycontin, lyrica, valium, and topamax
Jesus apothecary Christ. All of that for a modicum of relief? Is that a maintainable regimen?
ummm, not in the long term, no. the hope is that we break the cycle of agony and then back off the meds. at some point we may also try getting rid of almost everything in case they're "rebound" headaches caused by the drugs themselves. but the doctor said that stage is so painful that I would probably have to be hospitalized so I didn't...hurt myself? unclear but the implication was they'd put me in the locked ward and give up if I was really in agony. the sad thing is that I have a headache again now. oh well, it was a good day in general, and my new doctor is very thoughtful and cheering. I got to swim with the girls and play with them, which I haven't done for quite a while, and they enjoyed it very much. I'm going to go hide in sleep. I like to sleep as much as possible because being awake is so painful.
It would appear I'm off to see Scritti Politti at the Lexington next month.
Whose bass player was a don in the same department as toxocaria whizkid Joanne Webster.