CLA at Pensado's Place

[drew_drummer]

That 'super harmonic' nature is exactly the sort of thing that makes the sounds easier to piece together. They are inherently saturated, compressed, lacking in dynamics, or at the very least have predictable, oscillating dynamic qualities. Half the issue of dealing with recorded music is in attempting to handle unpredictable, inconsistent changes.

I'm unsure about where the trance lead/guitar comparison is rooted, but I have never, ever in my life found it even remotely as difficult to process synth lead sounds into an arrangement as I have distorted guitars. I cannot even fathom how this could be the case, unless the person dialing the synth lead sound completely undershot what they were aiming for.

I disagree that it's a 'bullshit distinction'. You can hear the differences at play any time you compare a decent electro mix to a decent metal mix. Under normal circumstances the ability of the electro mix to completely slay the metal mix on grounds of perceived volume alone alludes to my 'headroom efficiency' point. Beyond this it's easy to hear that the electro mixes quite commonly make more effective use of the spectrum, and are subject to less undesirable mid-frequency nodes, which tend to be a byproduct of distorted guitar sounds. Let's not even get into low-end solidity, where predictable single-shot samples, more basic grooves, and undynamic synth basses get a humongous leg up on comparatively handicapped flabby kick drum sounds and woody acoustic basses.

Saying it's essentially 'all the same' is just being neglectful of the existing, observable qualities of both forms of music.

I guess ultimately we will disagree, so I don't mean to rustle your feathers or anything. But in my view, you're off base.

A pure square wave, or sine tone, predictable. Yes. The output of a synth once you account for lfo's, envelopes, non-phase sync'd oscillators, parameter modulation as well as output inter-sample modulation depending on sample-rate... reproducible and predictable? Not so much. Modulated and free running oscillators make a totally mockery of your viewpoint. (As an aside it's these non-reproducible qualities that people look for in synths)

Take your prior notion of a guitar amp output being white noise, then being shaped by a speaker (which is what you've wrote in the past)... this is exactly what you get with a synth without any filters or modulation in the mix - you get a raw tone, a raw oscillator. But once you add in everything else, that sound coming from the synth is not any easier to mix due to the harmonic content - that's just utterly wrong.

You're starting off from the observation that the musical qualities are different, and then working backwards. This is leading you to make some pretty false assumptions.

The low end in a dance track is just as difficult to nail down as it is in a rock-track... sometimes MORE difficult even, because you don't have the luxury of an amplifier, speaker, and microphone, pre-shaping your sound before it hits the DAW/Tape/Console. With a synth you're equally susceptible to transient smearing in the low end due to phase shifts, and depending on what processing you do to the synth, it could be a tougher job to tackle than a single microphone coming from a bass cab.

There are some neat studio tricks you can do, but in the main, dealing with synthetic sources is just as difficult as analog sources - when mixing. Coming up with the raw sounds is a different thing all together.

And no, synths are not inherently saturated or compressed or lacking in dynamics. It depends on the circuit design, the components or DSP used, you're making a crass generalization here.