RANT: Bands and songs

[Loren Littlejohn]

(they had constant changes in tempo and timesignature etc).

God I fucking hate this shit. Yeah 1 or 2 tempo changes, but I have experienced over 8-10 in a single song and most of them just for the sake of weird comfort. And of course they never make any sense, like going from 240 to 180 or something dumb.

Seriously this mentality is retarded (just ranting along with you).

Oh and totally see eye to eye with you on this.

 

[Notuern]

Even in my first band, we lowered the bar so that we all could play the songs live without any problems.
I was a rookie back then(I started playing because the band needed a second guitarist.), so i ended up not following the "lead player" as much, and instead relied more on laying down a background for the "lead riff".
It ended up sounding f-ing awesome actually.. still to this day i think that if we didn't split up, we would have a record deal by now.

But i do remember allot of other local bands that tried to play WAY over their bar, and because of that, only their friends ended up going to their shows, while we became local celebrities after just 2 gigs(Seriously, some people didnt believe me when i said i played in that band.).

 

[Loren Littlejohn]

Damn, old thread is old.

Well at least it was in the last year. Some necro threads are fucking OLD. This one is only dusty.

 

[updog]

Labels should require all bands to play some live performance for them to see... You can't always really tell from modern music, is it recorded like beat by beat, quantized to shit (or just somewhat) or tuned, etc. Getting under a label should require the musicianship to play your own fucking music properly.

 

[El_Gato]

I'm telling my band mates this OP rant FOR AGES!!

But guess what.

NO FUCKIN WAY, they keep on complicating things.


edit: I think many labels ask for live performances.

 

[YoRich]

Some of this echoes some of what I have been thinking about recently after recording some really shitty bands.

Sometimes I think a lot of engineers over produce band demos to a point that the guys in band believe they are good and can play that shit, when in reality they can't.

Sometimes, when a band is shit and you have recorded them, it would be doing them a huge favour to simply mix it to a point where the audio is good, but leave the shitty playing alone, just so they can hear how much they need to improve.

When I started recording in bands, it was all to tape, no beat detective, no autotune, no editing, so we got the idea that if we wanted to sound good, we actually had to know and play our shit, and I think that remains with me today.

Obiouvsly if your being asked to produce something that will stand against a commercial release, then use whatever tools/methods you can..


Basically, as in most threads, bands suck...

 

[drew_drummer]

I think there is something to be said about making the complex sound simple. That's part of the reason I like bands like Tool and Riverside and Opeth.

 

[RemoWilliams]

Also, something that is prevalent today is that people just starting a band wanting like six songs written on one band practice, or in the span of a week. I wouldn't doubt if a first band practice went something like this, "Ok, cool. We should jam and get like a song a day this week. So, next week we can play shows and then the week after that we can try and write some more to go and record with this local guy. Oh, and we're all in agreement that we want to sound like Origin meets Messhugah, right?" (just throwing out two random names this early in the morning). So, you got a garage full of guys who may have been playing half a year or less and they've already aimed pretty high. Plus, their wanting to "hurry up" so they can play some locals shows, get something recorded so they can put it up on myspace and then try to keep going in that hurried state. Never getting a chance to really flesh out anything. Then when they hit the studio, they fumble around, mess up a ton, have bad technique and say they played it better "live". Of course, because live your being covered up by a mesh of sound .........then they just as the producer to fix it in the mix