That's all fine, but Mozart and Miles aren't exactly tearing up the charts in 2024. When was the last time a one-mic take was a chart topping single or album? There are still people out there with a lot of talent making music, but the skill sets have shifted dramatically. Hard to write an opus when the algorithms expect a bi-weekly drop and most all of the marketing is DIY.So did I. I still "fondly" remember those Fostex and Tascam 4 track recorders. I now use Reaper and Live. But we should also realize that Mozart recorded music with a pen. My point is when working with good musicians discussions of which specialized compressor is needed aren't necessary. Miles Davis didn't even need a compressor. A lot of his early recordings were done with one microphone in the middle of the room and a three track tape recorder and are still the most listened to recordings of all time.I started by making music with 4-track cassette recorders. I'd rather not go back.99.9% of today's music is overrated and if you need special, expensive plugins to make your bland cookie cutter songs stand out, it's not the plugins. Good musicians who don't need 100 plugins to sound good are underrated.
This being the Effects forum, the discussion is obviously going to be slanted toward plugins. These days everything chart-worthy is saturated, clipped, ducked, time-aligned, phase-aligned, autotuned, loudness maximized, etc. You need the proper tools to work at the level of the current aesthetic.
And the issue of "cookie-cutter music" isn't even related to the tech at all, it's the listeners. We now have near-perfect data on what people like, and it's mostly highly-processed, electronically-generated music. For better or worse, it just what the majority of people like listening to. There's certainly better stuff out there, but you have to actively hunt for it - still easier than thumbing through a sea of packaging in a record store.
Honestly, I don't look fondly on those halcyon days of yore - paying big money for studio time, programming a Kurzweil k2000, aligning tape machines, dealing with real drummers, etc. We have to live in the day we're in, not the one we wish we were in, and in terms of producing a high-quality product, this day IMO is as good as it's ever been. Sadly the macro environment sucks (and IMO that's where your ire should be directed), but production capabilities have never been better.
Statistics: Posted by billinder33 — Mon Dec 02, 2024 2:33 pm