Paging Bruce Swedien: Whaddya think of this theory?

[Bruce Swedien]

geekgurl.....                     

 

Thanks geekgurl - I like you!!!

 

Great question --> Is it possible to say something is a hit before it's recorded, let alone put out for the public to judge with their dollars?

 

Ans --> It isn't possible to say something is a hit before it's released. But you can develope and cultivate your instincts, if they are good to begin with.....

 

From my book--> "If we have good instincts to begin with, we must learn to listen to that little voice in the back of our heads, or behind our belly buttons, or wherever it resides and do what it tells us is right. I have always felt that I must maintain a pursuit of the innovative, the experimental. I don't mean only in the technical aspect of what we do but, in the musical and production techniques as well."

 

Good line of thought - Thanks.....

 

Bruce Swedien

[Michelle ggurl]

Cool, Bruce. I hope you have fun with this project, that your honed instinct is right, and that you get your goosebumps!

 

I just got done with a recording project (as the recording artist, I'm no engineer), and I felt it was a great compliment when the producer helping us said, "this is what we live for, right?" However he meant it, heck, I'll take it ...

 

Cheers,

 

gg

[Curve Dominant]

Bruce,

 

I wanna get a closer read at your posts when I get back, but first...

 

My brother Bobby is in NYC with Green Day this week, amazing guitarist...do you want him to peek in on you to say hello?

 

My email: curvedominant@verizon.net

[Anifa]

For your question about synthesizers Bruce......

 

I use synthesizers a lot in my own recordings and I can produce some really cool music with them. Although thousands of people have downloaded tunes from my site and I've received many compliments from friends and etc... synthesizers leave me feeling cold and empty as a whole.

 

Some few years back, I submitted some tracks to a Music Attorney / Artist Management in Hackensack, NJ who in return called me back with a inquiries about the recording process involving the use of the synthesizer. He really liked the materials submitted and told me that if the songs could have the different instruments separated into individual tracks and mixed better to provide a wall of sound, he would pitch the works directly to Mercury Records of whom he stated was always looking for aggressive songs by women artists.

 

Needless to say, in trying to recover from a major financially devastating divorce, I didn't have the funds to walk into a full blown studio to even attempt playing the separate parts real time.

 

Every since that time, my opinion of synthesized music has not been the same and I've began working with other musicians over the course of time in collaborative efforts... which can be frustrating when things began to clash. My daughter has told me several times lately that I made better music when I wrote alone and she encourages me to break out the synths... After I get my garage converted into a studio this coming spring, I may get back into self productions and just layer ambience sounds in on top of the synth tracks that were generated with samples to give the recordings more depth.

 

not to beat an old topic to death, but just a final response the the previous discussion

 

Oh...and no one said that all you need is hype/money and nothing else to make a huge hit record.

What many have said is that once you have the great music...you DO need the hype/money to promote it to the top.

This is where I was coming from!

 

Maybe I did not say it; maybe I did.... but although most of the songs on the Thriller CD did not move me because I've never been much in to beebop POP, the musicians and engineers all gave superior performances in their own right. Because I am more of a person that requires soul-stirring music, such as Dark Side of the Moon; it does not mean that the millions of other people that bought Thriller bought music that was not good. All of my comments have been personal opinion in regard to the song materials and NOT the quality of performance; just not my style. My point being made was all about the marketing end of getting the tunes out there to be heard.

 

I never liked Madonna's "Like a Virgin" or "Lucky Star" and they sold millions; however, there are many tunes of hers that stir the soul such as Crazy for You (the name might be Physical Attraction), Curtain Call, and in my opinion... Live to Tell was a MASTERPIECE!!! I had never given Madonna the time of day until the first time I heard "Live to Tell" and then I began wanting to hear more... She's an incredible artist when you seek beyond the hype and what the Record Labels push.

[miroslav]

Well...there are a lot of us forum members here living/working in the NYC area...

 

...maybe we can organize a group trip and also stop in to say hello...?...

 

...as long as it doesn't come off like shamless kissing-up.

[Anifa]

Yeah, you could do one of those MusicPlayer dinners that we have every so often and give Bruce a warm welcome to New York; that is, if he would be so inclined to want to participate.

 

Maybe give Bruce a little more time to get used to folks so that he feels more comfortable and KNOWS that he would be in good company in a real life setting.

[Michelle ggurl]

Originally posted by Curve Dominant:

Bruce,

 

I wanna get a closer read at your posts when I get back, but first...

 

My brother Bobby is in NYC with Green Day this week, amazing guitarist...do you want him to peek in on you to say hello?

 

My email: curvedominant@verizon.net

Is he the side man who played with Green Day on Dave Letterman? I saw tail end of that and don't know if it's a repeat or new show, but ...

[Bruce Swedien]

Gotta go Kiddies......

 

Hold those thoughts!!!

 

Brucie the Viking!

[Tedly Nightshade]

Bobro who has been seen on these forums creates some incredibly organic synth tones. He dials and dials until he gets earth tones, amber, umber, browns... they sound really more like a musical saw or something. I've never heard anything like it.

 

I really dug the Francis Bacon bit!

 

And I'm all for goosebumps. Tears too.

[Anderton]

First, I think I can safely say that Bruce doesn't have a thin skin. He's not going to get "chased off" just because someone disagrees with something he says. He's here to impart some knowledge and have some stimulating discussions, so as long as that's happening, hopefully he'll continue to drop in on the party!

 

Bruce, quick comment - if you want to start a new discussion, try starting a new thread. I started this thread when the first one started to run out of gas, and it worked to keep things going. Overly long threads tend to degenerate into discussions about teensy points. Start a fresh topic, and it will start off with Big Thoughts. We'll keep the synth thing going here, but keep this in mind for the future.

 

Wow, I can't believe I'm trying to produce Bruce Swedien . Well, this is sorta my studio, I guess

 

The synth thing is a VERY good topic of discussion. When synth recordings first came out, synths were always plugged direct into the board and sounded out of place with the other tracks.

 

Acoustic space is one answer, but I really like running synth through a guitar amp and miking that as if I was miking a guitar. It's not just to get some room sound and moving air in there, the cabinet's high frequency rolloff takes off some of the bite, adds some warmth, and adds complex EQ effects (hey, I'm looping back to the original premise of the thread!) that create "mechanical processing."

 

Here's another thing about synths: I think of them as the sonic equivalent of abstract/expressionist paintings, not photographs. I've never obtained a great string section sound out of a synth, but I've gotten some great sounds that fulfill the same kind of role a string section would.

 

One more sorta random comment: I've been reviewing the AAS Ultra Analog soft synth for Keyboard, and it is pretty much alias free. I really don't like synth aliasing effects, so I'm pretty happy with this puppy.

[Bruce Swedien]

Craig.....

 

You're da boss! I'm just here runnin' my mouth!

 

Bruce Swdien

[Kris]

Off for the holidays and look who comes to town...

 

I just wanted to comment on how much I love Thriller!!!!!!! I have the record and a backup as well... it is the number 1 album thrown on the turntable at my late night living room boogies.

 

Cheers!!!

[Bruce Swedien]

Craig.....

 

Don't forget, I'm not a technical guy, at least not in a big way......

 

Will you please take charge and tell me when to move on to a new thread? And then do it!!!!

 

Soon, I won't be able to be here as much as in the past couple of weeks. I love talking, as you have no doubt figured out by now. Especially about worthwhile subjects.....

 

Bruce Swedien

[KenElevenShadows]

Originally posted by Bruce Swedien:

Here is a quotation from Sir Francis BaconsNew Atlantis . He wrote and published this work in 1624. TheNew Atlantis was an original work by Sir Francis Bacon predicting what life would be like in a Utopian world of the future.

 

"We have also Soundhouses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds, and their generations. We have harmonies which you have not, of quarter sounds, and lesser slides of sounds. Diverse instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep; likewise great sounds as extenuate and sharp; we make diverse tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We have also diverse, strange and artificial echos, reflecting the voice many times...and some that give back the voice louder than it came... We have also the means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances."

I'm going to respond to this thing about recording synthesizers when I have more time - I've been really really busy recording stuff lately - but WOWWW!!!!

 

My very first CD, I quoted that entire, uh, "Bacon Bit" on the inner part of the CD booklet, and named my release "In Strange Lines and Distances". The fact that this was written in the 1600s just blows my mind!!!

 

Another artist who has subsequently quoted this was none other than DJ Spooky!

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

RECORDING SYNTHESIZERS:

I like giving them physicality. I like analog synthesizers as a matter of aesthetic, but sometimes what I like to do is record synthesizers by micing them while they are playing out my small P.A. so that way I get some of the room.

 

The second thing that I like to do sometimes is create a more complex sense of orchestration. I do this by the above method, but also by sometimes playing detuning the synthesizer (or the analog tape machine) slightly with each pass and then playing individual notes, allowing them to cluster together more. This is far more complex-sounding to me, and introduces beautiful, beautiful washes or stacks of notes more akin to a large string section of an orchestra. You also have the added benefit of being able to pan them around a little to create a little space.

 

Time-consuming? Yeah...eats up tracks, takes longer, but sometimes, it's totally totally worth it.

 

BTW, in case this sounds familiar, I was written up in Future Music, a UK publication, discussing this technique a few years back. I won Demo of the Year in Future Music in Issue #50.

 

Okay, gotta go drive in the rain....

[Anderton]

<>

 

Well, that probably goes a long way toward explaining why your records sound so good...you're listening to the performance instead of obsessing over gear!!!

 

Anyway, starting a new thread is easy. Just click on the Post New Topic button toward the top of the page, give the topic a descriptive name ("Recording synths -- your comments" or whatever), enter the text for the first post, and you're good to go.

 

Sorry to hear you won't be able to stop by as much as you get more heavily into work mode. But rest assured we'll make the bed in the guest room at the Hotel SSS, and you can find the key under the rock to the right of the door, so drop in whenever you feel like it!

[Tedly Nightshade]

Isn't Abbey Road one of the first synth albums? Those sounded classic from the get.

I do recall reading where Geoff Emerick said he couldn't conceive of recording an instrument that did not hit the air and then a mic, so I'm guessing they hit the air, then a mic.

[alfonso]

Originally posted by Ani:

I use synthesizers a lot in my own recordings and I can produce some really cool music with them. Although thousands of people have downloaded tunes from my site and I've received many compliments from friends and etc... synthesizers leave me feeling cold and empty as a whole.

Ahhh...Synthesizers,

Ani, you pulled me in the discussion! I have a special relationship with sound synthesis, and such a statement make a very strong alarm sound in the very depth of my soul and feel to react somehow!

 

First of all I've always been a guitarist, acoustic, electric, fretless...no matter what type, but the direct contact with vibrations, resonances, harmonics has always been a primary source of my musical pleasure.

 

I would like to draw a line between what is generally called "synthesizers" and what is for me

"Sound Synthesis".

 

I remember that in the first years of my musical earning money, beside the gigs, I was a lot in the music making for radio plays, and that brought me to approach computers and digital instruments. It was in the early eighties. It was a practical need, I couldn't afford recording studios or musicians or whatever, I could only home-record (on tape) my guitar and make everything else with a dx7 and an Apple IIe midi sequencer.

 

An era was ending. I was then thrown in a consecutive change of electronic instruments, that have been one worst of the other. I really started hating all that wavelet stuff, paradoxically the samplers where much more creative for me, as I started to make my own samples, and nothing in my kitchen was left unsampled. I discovered the incredible effectiveness of wet round glasses played with the finger on the border used as detuned pads mixed with guitar reverse samples, the immense percussive potential of steel and wood objects....

 

at a certain point I owned an M1 and this great Casio FZ1 sampler, and I still remember I could only use M1 sound Fretless bass n.9...all other M1 sounds sucked bigtime to me...poor sound sources, poor filters, dull dynamics....and I'm sorry, but one of the reasons I hated Q.Jones "Back to the Block" was because I could recognize that "synth" everywhere!

 

A revolution came many years later for me. I turned to pc recording very late, in '99, as I was using Atari and tape and later a VS880.

 

I bought a Soundcard with dsp and an innovative software, that I won't mention here again, but they had included some very nice synths, and a Modular synthesizer, with a very nice sound and a great future of developement.

 

I must thank those guys! I felt like a joyful kid again, and I had my Sound Synthesis Master Studies right at home, long nites spent to figure out circuits, subtractive, additive, FM, PhM, AM...modelling...and all the good that could be thought from a bunch of Sharc dsp's!

 

After 2-3 years I became a designer of modular circuits and made almost half of the modular instruments that came from the Company with the version 3 of it.

 

Today I have a pretty decent studio, lot of dsp power, nice converters, good guitars, and a sound arsenal that I can't explain with words. I made myself any type of sound, from birds singing to electric pianos, from classical detuned saw pads to colliding nebulas, from space choirs to under-carpet diving rumours...

 

For me this is synthesis: freedom of sound.

If I had to rely solely on preset synths, with fixed structure and standardized wavetables, I would have quit with "synths" long ago, concentrating on the possibilities of real vibrating objects in front of a mic.

 

Fortunately sound synthesis exists, and it's pure emotion for me.

[Tedly Nightshade]

"nothing in the kitchen was left unsampled."

 

[Super 8]

Well this has certainly been an interesting thread.

 

Guess that's about all I have to say. I mean, what more could be said?

[bearded yeti]

Originally posted by Steve LeBlanc:

now, if you want to talk demographics and all the marketing jazz, well, Thriller gains points in that area but as an album of music it mostly sucked compared to other stuff being released in the early 80s

 

In your opinion. Not mine, and not many others.

 

It doesn't matter if I love or hate "Thriller" as a work of art/music, neither will change the fact that it sounds, very much, like a record that was made to make money, not a record that was made to make the best possible music.

 

In your opinion. Others, including myself think it's a fantastic album of great music. It doesn't sound like it was made to make "money". Maybe it sounds that way to you, because you aren't the biggest fan of that particular sound, but to others, it is clearly an album of great music, that happened to have great success along with it.

 

We might have an album of Michael Jackson music that would get people like me saying "man that MJ, he sang his ass off on his new record, the songs are genius, what a great band he put together" or whatever. But we don't because the last 25+ years have been spent working to make the perfect 'seller', not the musical record...if you know what I mean.

 

Nope, I don't. You obviously come from a different musical breed than most MJ fans, and probably can't identify with those that prefer MJ in this context than one where he heads up his own "tight little band" and "sings his ass off". Just because it sold a lot of copies, doesn't mean it was made to "be a big seller". It was made because they had great music to make.

[Saint Johnny B]

So Bruce will you please check your PM's?

[John Sayers]

may I make a point as a keyboard player regarding putting synths through guitar amps - IMHO it doesn't work very well because gtr amps have severe EQ in the front end to compensate for the dull response from the gtr.

 

It's better to either get a keyboard specific amp with a flat front end or use a PA as has been suggested.

 

cheers

john

[Anderton]

<>

 

Oh go ahead and mention it -- Creamware, right? They deserve the props for their synths, which really are excellent.

 

About the guitar amp/EQ thing -- in my experience, the cab rolloff pretty much takes off any highs that are added early on, especially harmonics. But it depends on what kind of patches you're using, too...for example, I had a whole bunch of patches I programmed for the TX81Z when playing MIDI guitar through it (and going through an amp). They were generally very dull in harmonics, just sine waves and such with little FM modulation. So that kind of supports what John says as well as the idea of using a guitar amp.

 

Of course, the other advantage of using any amp for synth is you can try different miking techniques.

[lrossmusic]

Haven't had a chance to read all of our 'celebrity thread' yet but I too would like to thank Mr.Swedien for taking the time to 'kick it' with us as we say these day. Also big thanks to Craig and Musicplayer as always. This is a great place and is not taken for granted.

 

It never ceases to amaze me how many very smart folks are participating here and how the writing is often incredibly good. A lot of the ideas I am reading are my beliefs as well but I could never begin to express them so eloquently as many of you. (Hell it takes me forever to write a paragraph and an eternity to type it with my two finger technique. And thank God for spellcheck. )

 

Alphonso (in Italy)... man you said a mouthful in one of your posts.

 

Originally posted by Alphonso:

This is the first thread of such length that I read from the beginning to the end, and although so many different ideas and assumptions are constantly crossfading in a more than 3dimensional fractal memory space, I'll try to write down some ideas.

 

First of all the confrontation with the Viking has been very useful and interesting, not so much for the technical diamond drops that bring a lot of light for anyone who will never quit the learning path, but for the help that we all need to keep a strong motivation for dreaming and using our brains actively to express ourselves rather than being passive wheels in a machine.

 

Sometimes the constant mention of the megabucks and the million copies sound a bit out of the core of what I got, both from Bruce and from the other forumites, but it's a bit a typical american thing that I'm getting used to, nice american people that I met at parties here in Italy try to detect my inner identity asking what did I earn this year or the other one, that's something totally out of european "bon ton", but anyway I've learned it's not a malicious thing, it's a way to communicate.

 

What I got really, is that boundaries and rules are something strictly functional, when they become mataphysical you loose the drive for creativity and innovation.

 

The analog vs. digital debate is funny, it's a bit like the pc vs. mac debate, a roboant religious duel without a real question. Here at my personal studio I can choose to record my strat throug an hot rod deluxe, a '64 blackface S.Reverb, or put it in a MiniMe and get some distortion emulation in my Creamware-FleXor modular...well I NEED all of these choices, now that i know them, I love to do it digital when I need it. Assaf Dar, the developer of FleXor modules, wordly recognized as the designer of the most musical, powerful, clean and fat sounding filters ever designed for a dsp environment, with a great sense of humour and some depth of thought had this slogan commenting his FleXor package on ADERN's site: "Do you find our filters sound too analog? Tell us and we will fix them!"

 

Another fact I got, and it's a direct consequence of the functionality and elasticity of boundaries, is that you must love what you are doing to go somewhere, you must be able to listen to the little child inside you that is curious enough to smile and be happy of the possibility to be proven wrong in any moment and to learn something new from anybody. As far as I could feel, that's the only thing that accelerated my learning curve for things that seemed too steep for me at the beginning.

 

Also the debate of Music's substance vs. production is sometimes useless. A great original Barolo wine will always be better than a mixedgrapes industrial wine, but each of them will loose a lot if drunk in a plastic glass. Expecially the good one. No question that I'd prefer the Barolo in the plastic glass instead of the industrial one in a proper glass, but the pleasure will be reduced of a sadly big amount...

 

So, what's the point in such a debate? None.

 

Has anybody here listened to Soft Machine's "Sligtly all the time" or "The moon in June" tracks recorded in the album "Third" (1969)?

These are masterpieces in the higest possible meaning of the word, recorded in the worst possible way in a very limited tape set, with ping-pong techniques and distortion all over. I'll prefer the listening of that record anytime over any Steely Dan (that I love)thing or any Q.Jones, but I would be an idiot to say that a better enginering and quality of equipment was irrelevant for the result. The same things I could say for many Bird's recordings. Imagine that powerful and crazy bop recorded as it should....I'll never swallow the "poetry of crackles and hiss" b.s. thing...

 

So I must thank the Viking for showing me how great can be the results from a mind that will never stop willing to learn and bet for changes.

You are so right about a lot of Charlie Parker tracks. Bird's playing is so astounding that even the often extremely poor recording quality doesn't seem to lessen the impact much. OTOH if the fidelity of those records were of todays standards I probably couldn't take the goosebumps and chills without medical assistance.

 

As far as hit songs and records go though I will say this much. If it was only about musical or technical formuli and methods then it would seem to me that successful artists/engineers/producers/promoters etc. could consistently deliver hits. Obviously even someone with as many hits as MJ probably has as many mega flops as well. To me it appears that the X factor envolved in all of this has a bigger hand than we want to think. Being in the right place at the right time, fate, or whatever you want to call it, is the part that is out of our hands and perhaps the major factor. I read a quote once that was attributed to Quincy that went something like this..."in order for you to ahve a hit record the holy spirit needs to pass through the studio when you are in there doing your thing".

 

Earlier in the thread the discussion also shifted to the playlists on popular radio these days. On this subject I might add what a friend once reminded me of and that was that even the least form of music is worth listening to by somebody.

[Tedly Nightshade]

A lot of times the best keyboard amps are great bass amps. Great bass amps have plenty of highs- they are often flat as could be from very low to very high.

[KenElevenShadows]

A small P.A. can sometimes be a really nice amp for recording bass. And that's what I use for the keyboards as well.