Forum Overview :: No Stairway to Heaven
 
More gay descriptions of musical ideas. by Fussbett 03/28/2003, 4:53am PST
FoK wrote:

There's this structural problem I had, which is "How far to stray from the opening section? How fucking long is this supposed to be?" I decided to aim for 3 minutes, try to make Berry Gordy proud. I get bored if songs are longer than that. I disagree about the "not-veering" bit, though. The bridge takes it in another, kind of twee direction for a second or two. That fact that you didn't see it that way is interesting... it's hard to hear how big the different sections loom for other people - I hear them as gigantic billboards and Proustian-scale chapters of musical text (because it took so damn long to program), but in terms of actual length, the bridge proper is only 10 seconds out of 180. Hmm...

That bridge was definately the best part, but regardless of the short duration it felt like one single step forward at the time. Also remember that I said it's a lazy Elfman. It's not a lazy Photek. I've certainly heard a million electronic songs that do much less than your Breakdown opus.

I'd call the song "Breakdown". I know you admitted that it's full of clichés, but the breakdown probably shouldn't be used three times in one 3 minute track regardless of genre. Even one breakdown is suspicious, while two says "I'm out of ideas". Speaking of which, should I count the ending as a fourth breakdown or should I ask you "Hey, when are you going to finished this song?"

See, these are the problems that you run into when you enter a new genre. I know how rock songs start and end, but it seems impossible to start or end one of these electronic things. Listening back to my Squarepusher discs, he doesn't really have coda sections as such. They sort of just end.

I don't know why you'd decide to limit yourself to creating an ending of which the phantom guardians of the genre would approve. You've paid your genre dues up until the ending, why not just end it the way you know how and/or prefer? No one is going to hear a 10 second outro and say THAT'S A ROCK SONG. At worst you'll create something new (GASP), and at best the song will have a solid ending.

In closing, I'd never listen to this song again, but if it was my first attempt at the genre, I'd certainly be proud of it.

Thanks for the reacharound I feel like I should be less understanding about all this, but this type of feedback is definitely helpful. Thanks for taking the time. Myself, I'm happy that I finally got this shit to work together. I basically set out with the mission of "use the drum machine and orchestra rack unit together via MIDI. Do not be a pussy. Learn to operate Cubase." So, at least that's behind me.

The song definately says "this is a test", which is the overall problem from where the other symptoms stem. No heart.

I guess I'm a little fuzzy re: the whole "anemic drum sounds" issue. They are dry as a bone, I'll admit that. And they sound fake, which is on purpose. They could certainly be tweaked to sound "better" but, as I said, since this is a purely queer Squarepusher fanboy epic, I was trying to emulate his drum sounds. I actually tweaked them fakier than they started as presets. Is there some objective standard of drumsound quality before a track doesn't suck?

Dry isn't the problem and fake isn't the problem. Of course I don't have to tell you that there is no wrong, and hell, maybe your signature as a budding electronic musician is a really flat drum sound. For the rest of us, the drum sounds that OTHER people use sound much more alive, present, snappy and interesting. So, by comparison only, your drums sound anemic.

Details? There is no attack on the snare and kick. This sucks especially when you're packing the snare hits in so tightly. Mush. The snare sits pretty high, frequency-wise, and the kick is so muted and low in the mix that it doesn't provide any low support either. This isn't bad, but it's just one more thing that contributes to the no-balls aspect. No-balls drums are fine and everything, but you've sequenced the thing so aggressively that the vibe says CHAOS, while the drums say CHILL. We've also heard all these sounds before, and (here's a big one) you don't introduce any new sounds throughout the track. We're stuck with these unimpressive drums for the duration giving us LOTS of time to meditate on it and say "hey, you know what? I don't like these drums." You've done a decent job of emulating the Squarepusher drum density, but he would switch things up a whole lot more to keep it interesting.
PREVIOUS NEXT REPLY QUOTE
 
My latest. Is this supposed to be in CV, or here? by Fullofkittens 03/27/2003, 3:44pm PST NEW
    review! by Fussbett 03/27/2003, 4:40pm PST NEW
        Re: review! by FoK 03/27/2003, 5:13pm PST NEW
            More gay descriptions of musical ideas. by Fussbett 03/28/2003, 4:53am PST NEW
        Re: review! by Entropy Stew 03/27/2003, 5:52pm PST NEW
            Re: review! by fok 03/27/2003, 6:10pm PST NEW
 
powered by pointy