What Makes a Sound Cheesy?

[Baldwin Funster]

I propose a jazz doo scat challenge.  Write a song tastefully using the doo scat patch.

Rule 1 . Use of Doo Scat.

Rule 2. The song must be destroyed immediately after composition and not ever heard in public. EVER.

[ElmerJFudd]

Cheesy.  I remember this word being in common use as a kid. Over time other words have come and gone - lame, played out.  Lately I hear cringe a lot.  But I think that one suggests whatever it is your hearing makes you uncomfortable.  

 

In general I feel it has something to do with being dated.   Old skool with a negative connotation.   The sound reminds the listener of some era of corny music that their dad or grandpa would be into.  

[obxa]

I consider playing sax on keyboards the epitome of cheese.  I break out in hives thinking about being forced to play "The Heat is on" or "Careless Whisper" back in the 80s.  Dx7 with a breath controller. ugh.  

 

Just begged an MD (again) to bring a real sax player on some upcoming oldies shows and I would even give up some of my pay to help.    It's for the real version of a 50's group that had signature baritone sax on 90% of their stuff - yet promoter is only providing back up band budget for keys, bass, guitar, and drums.   ugh.

 

 

[jazzpiano88]

2 hours ago, obxa said:

I consider playing sax on keyboards the epitome of cheese.  I break out in hives thinking about being forced to play "The Heat is on" or "Careless Whisper" back in the 80s.  Dx7 with a breath controller. ugh.  

Larry Williams is a counter example.  He plays the lines and articulation really well.  Then again, he’s a real sax player. 

[TommyRude]

the cheese factor increases when the composer / musician are being serious

[CEB]

On 12/15/2022 at 5:03 AM, 16251 said:

 

 

 

Cool.  I thought Kars for kids was just a Chicago thing.  LOL

[ProfD]

We have to keep in mind that synthesizers, samplers and other sources are self-contained boxes of tools that allow us to turn noise into sound. 

 

Whatever becomes of the sound(s) is a function of the talent, imagination and creativity of the individual(s) using it. 

 

The sound itself is nothing more than a crayon or a paint brush. Pick a color(s). The rest is up to the artist. 😎

[kpl1228]

On 12/14/2022 at 8:43 PM, JimboKeys said:

I thought the Jump sound was cheesy even before that song came out.

Thought that sound could blow holes through walls (and does). It (and the 1984 intro) just screams kick-ass Oberheim demo to me, regardless of the song (and I love VH). However, the icky intro to "I'll Wait...." absolutely.

Cheesy to me is a thin, reedy, vibrato-filled 60's organ that screams uncool. It all depends on how its used. One man's "light my fire" or Palisades Park" is another man's eye-rolling loungy ironic snicker-inducer.

But i also think red keyboards like Nord "look" cheesy though they sound great....they just remind me of 60's combo organs, and not in a good way. 

 

 

[kpl1228]

19 hours ago, ElmerJFudd said:

Lately I hear cringe a lot.  But I think that one suggests whatever it is your hearing makes you uncomfortable.  

I just hate the word cringe as it's used now (as a stand-alone adjective) instead of as a verb. THAT to me is cheesy.

[TommyRude]

When I saw the OPs post, some of the examples in this thread came to mind

 

https://forums.musicplayer.com/topic/174089-iâve-discovered-this-keyboard-heavy-genre-called-jai/#comment-2767759

 

[ElmerJFudd]

1 hour ago, kpl1228 said:

I just hate the word cringe as it's used now (as a stand-alone adjective) instead of as a verb. THAT to me is cheesy.

Kidz these dayz.  

[Tusker]

5 hours ago, ProfD said:

The sound itself is nothing more than a crayon or a paint brush. Pick a color(s). The rest is up to the artist. 😎

 

+100 Take that cheesy Supersaw which we have been discussing in another thread. It's about as bad as you can get, right? 

 

But put a closed LPF in from of it, then play it 3-4 octaves below middle C. Best if the filter is slightly resonant. Then slowly open the filter by 30-40%% and close it again. Even without delay/reverb, you just heard volcanic rumbling to shake a room and stun an audience. Vary to taste.

 

 

[Mididude]

I remember reading an article a few years ago where Tom Oberheim spoke at ‘The Red Bull Academy’ or something like that (it was a talk sponsored by Red Bull), and he said that in the early days of his company he would test job candidates out to see if they knew their way around subtractive synthesis signal flow…In the same article IIRC he basically said they flunked if they conveyed that one oscillator run through a low-pass filter sounded good…He said it takes at least two oscillators, preferably slightly detuned against each other, to begin to make a sound that’s not cheesy.  I think he was alluding to the phase cancellation and alternate reinforcement that happens say when you have two detuned sawtooth waveforms sounding, versus the static and ‘plain Jane’ one-oscillator-by-itself thing.  I got the impression that Tom thought the latter approach sounded awful.  

[re Pete]

Acoustic piano sounds thru one amp tend to be stinky cheese to me.

 

There's spacey gas cheese sounds here. But check his rocket blast block chords on BBB at 17:00.

 

 

[Tom Williams]

Okay, I'll bite.

1. As mentioned before, a lack of lows / low-mids.
   1. Does that mean a Clavinet is cheesy?
2. Vibrato, especially if it's faster than 7 Hz.  Hammond Vibrato is cheesy, though the chorus is less so.
3. Among transistor organs I would only include the ones that were exclusively 8' stops and no Leslie.  A loty of those started with a particularly grating sawtooth and filtered it down.  See point #2.
4. Farfisa Combo Compact (my first organ) was only a little cheesy, due to its having 16' - 2' stops and being generated (according to one article) by pulse rather than sawtooth waves.  However, Farfisa's VIP (my second organ) and Professional series had plenty of percussion, drawbars, and mutation stops, and were intended to be played through Leslies, so I would not count them in the cheese category.
5. I would include some electric guitars, especially student-grade Fenders with a timbre like a child's violin, as cheesy.