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Sonic Fads in Recording


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It's funny how some fads come and go. Such as...

 

* Back in the 60s, a lot of recordings were drenched in reverb

* Of course...gated reverb on drums in the 80s

* Voice boxes and vocoders were big for a while

* String synthesizers were huge until samplers came along

* Backwards tape was de rigueur at one point in the 60s

* Acoustic guitars that were always super-bright

* Sitars and sitar-like sounds...come to think of it, exotic instruments in general

* Enabling Dolby while recording but disabling it on playback

* Simmons drum sounds

 

You get the idea...any others?

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abrupt '' auto correction '' for vocals.

cher' s fault

 

snare and/or kick drum is twice as loud as any other instrument, plus way louder than vocal

Why fit in, when you were born to stand out ?

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[70's Songwriter]

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Harmony guitar leads. Roots would be Les Paul. Beatles And Your Bird Can Sing a more likely culprit plus Allman Brothers.

 

Melodic slide. George Harrison.

 

Clavinet. Stevie Wonder?

 

Wah wah pedal. Jimi Hendrix

 

Hate songs. Positively 4th Street by Bob Dylan led the way.

 

Straight 4 electronic kick. Dunno, kill them!!!!

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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2 bar samples of other people's music repeated again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again...

 

Not sure of the decade (70s?) analog synth solos, always with portamento

Bob "Notes" Norton

Owner, Norton Music http://www.nortonmusic.com

Style and Fake disks for Band-in-a-Box

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2 bar samples of other people's music repeated

 

How about 2 bars of their own music repeated again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again...? I've had enough of a chorus being composed of nothing more than a short line repeated.

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Ripping off Chuck Berry guitar licks.

 

Stevie Wonder's vocal sound/style. It's a 50-year old fad!

 

Reggae elements in pop and rock. A sign from the 70s that rock was starting to tire out.

 

Disco drum beats. Credit Mick Fleetwood with making them really work in pop rock.

 

Male falsetto harmonies. You know who!

 

The biggest, highest, shreddingist screams possible. Wilson Pickett and James Brown style. There were a lot of great screamers, and a lot of guys trying to do it but not really able to (Mr. Jagger comes to mind.)

 

nat

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Well, so I do I. But I'm not sure about

 

panning ---------------------------------------------------------------panning

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panpan-----------pan----------------- pan-----------------------------panning-----------------pan

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Sampled orchestra hits - early to mid 80s.

Yeah, they sure had their moment in the sun, didn't they? How the mighty have fallen...

 

Here's another one, from ancient times: Answer records. Someone would put out a hit record, and someone would do a response...like the Drifters doing "Save the Last Dance for Me," and Damito Jo releasing "I'll Save the Last Dance for You."

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Here's another one, from ancient times: Answer records. Someone would put out a hit record, and someone would do a response...like the Drifters doing "Save the Last Dance for Me," and Damito Jo releasing "I'll Save the Last Dance for You."

 

My favorite from this category. Peter Frampton's hit single "I'm In You" . Frank Zappa responds with "I Have Been In You".

:nopity:
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Auto-Tune.

Snapping everything to the grid/quantizing.

Having nothing sound like it was recorded in the same room/no natural acoustics.

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Auto-Tune.

Snapping everything to the grid/quantizing.

Having nothing sound like it was recorded in the same room/no natural acoustics.

 

I don't think those are fads, they seem more like the current landscape :eek:

 

Again, I'll re-iterate that Auto-Tune doesn't kill music...people who don't know how to use it do. At least for me, correcting a note often gives better results than punching because the flow/timbre/etc stays consistent, and no one can tell it was corrected anyway. So it actually sounds more "real" than punching a "real" note.

 

But here's a fad I want to have go away: the EDM 1/4 note - 1/8th note - 16/th note - 32nd note sequence of snare hits that build up to something.

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I think Auto-Tune is faddish. The other two, not so much. They're beyond fads. They're just how things are done now.

 

But the reason I said Auto-Tune is because I am referring to the effect being set on "stun". It's being used as an effect like chorusing or flanging, not to correct pitch. I have no desire to begin another tired Auto-Tune debate. I'm simply speaking of it being used as an actual effect.

 

That EDM thing you describe was old twenty years ago. Just. Go. Away. When I hear that, I think of really loud aerobic exercises at the local gym.

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Male Death Metal vocalists singing in that low pitched growly shouting style, just like everybody else who isn't Ronnie James Dio (who could actually sing).

 

Female vocalists who girlishly and wistfully sing "They did me wro-ha-ho-oh-oh-oh-ong." as if they are in the middle of quietly and elegantly dying but still want to be cute in their demise.

 

Those are "styles" that should have come and gone a long time ago, especially the gone part.

It took a chunk of my life to get here and I am still not sure where "here" is.
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But the reason I said Auto-Tune is because I am referring to the effect being set on "stun". It's being used as an effect like chorusing or flanging, not to correct pitch.

 

Totally with you on that. Once "Auto-Tune the News" happened, it was clear Auto-Tune as an effect had reached its zenith, and could only go downhill from there :)

 

However, as a triumph of tag line accuracy, the "T-Pain Effect" is highly descriptive...especially if you take out the T.

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A lot of EDM references, and it reminded me of a period in the early 2010s when dubstep broke into the mainstream and every pop, rock, and even metal record was incorporating dubstep-influenced synth sounds (the hugely gritty, grating kind) and beats. Some records from that period less than a decade ago sound incredibly dated now... there are one or two I can think of that just reeked of 'established artist trying a little desperately to keep up with the times.'

Samuel B. Lupowitz

Musician. Songwriter. Food Enthusiast. Bad Pun Aficionado.

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A few more -

 

- Hyper-compressed acoustic guitar leads (Wish You Were Here, any CSN, etc)

- Guitar amp recorded in a bathroom (at least that's what it sounds like - a 1970's thing)

- Slapback echo on vocals (instant 1950's vibe)

- Lead vocalist overdubbed singing harmony a 3rd up (early 1960's - Ricky Nelson, Annette, Neil Sedaka come to mind)

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- Guitar amp recorded in a bathroom (at least that's what it sounds like - a 1970's thing)

 

Ah yes - the discovery of the "room mic." Unfortunately, some did not choose the room wisely :)

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