Jim of Seattle

So what you're telling me is that there's no way to get out of actual hard work? Damn, I feared as much.

I've been producing my own music for years now, and have learned a lot about production, but it's really not all that fun for me to spend all the time it takes to EQ the bass just right, get the right reverb on the backing vocals, make that bassoon pop out, all that stuff. I would love to have someone else do that part of things for me, but I don't know anyone who would do it. I'm not going to pay anybody, and I don't make any money off it myself. While my work is professionally released on a real label, it's just a fun labor of love, and I'm not trying to "make it". Also, my music can be exceedingly complicated, sometimes using 50 different instruments and 10 vocal tracks, crossing genres, changing keys and time sigs, all this crazy stuff. Which is part of the reason the audio production is such an overwhelming job. I'm thinking about how to improve the voice leading at that minor seventh chord in the brass section at the same time I'm thinking about whether the tambourine needs more rolled off the low end. It can be exhausting, and every song feels like a monster. Are there people in the world who just enjoy mixing other peoples' work? Is that even a thing? I am pretty isolated from the music world, so it occurs to me that maybe there is a group of really talented people who would love to do this that I never knew existed. Or is it a chore for everyone, and no one likes to do it? I'm worried also that my standards are really high and my music is too challenging for anyone to devote the kind of time these things would take. I wouldn't want to use a beginner,because I have a lot f skills myself, but I'm not the greatest in the world at it either. If such people exist, how do I find them? Advice?

Hi all, I'm wondering if anyone has seen the Residents documentary Theory of Obscurity. I've been a big Residents fan since 1980 and they're a huge influence. Are they a band people around here know about at all? They're so niche, and since I've been a fan so long I'm sort of on the inside looking out in terms of how well people know or appreciate them. So I'm curious. The release of this movie as well as a song I'm working on have gotten me to start listening to them again, and I'm finding I am now loving some of their stuff that I used to never notice.

No worries, I was just defending musical analysis is all,

Yeah, I agree with all that. All music lives within a very rich, layered and intricate set of pre-existing expectations. To a large degree, a person's reaction to a given piece of music has to do more with how the piece measures up against those expectations. Maybe it follows them, or maybe it goes against them, maybe it follows too closely, or not closely enough, or it does in some ways but not in others. There's nothing inherently good or bad about an AABA structure, for example, but we all have an enormous backlog in our memories of having heard music in that structure, so the next AABA song we hear will in part be judged in how it stacks up against that backlog. This is true whether or not we even know what an AABA structure is. You don't have to know anything about nerve endings to know that a kitten feels fuzzy, but you will pet a kitten because of your past experience with kittens. And you will choose the fuzzier kitten because that fills your kitten requirement, but if given a plate of calamari, you will (hopefully) not eat it if it is fuzzy. All based on prior experience. Analysis of music looks at those expectations. If some music scholar comes along and says "92% of all popular songs written between 1953 and 1972 used the AABA structure", that's a valuable piece of information in the fact that it tells us where the expectations of people who's bulk of musical experience is in those songs is likely to react to a song that does or does not follow that structure. As people valiantly attempting to entertain listeners with our own musical creations, we owe it to ourselves to know those expectations up front. Not so we will follow them, but so we can be better judges of how our music will be received. Mozart is credited with saying there are only two rules to music composition. 1) You cannot give the audience what they are expecting, and 2) What you give them must be better than what they were expecting. You have to know those expectations first to be able to do that. This is music analysis. If someone asks you to throw a party, you can't even start to plan it without getting some basic questions answered: "What's the occasion?" "What kind of people will be there?" "What kind of party is it going to be?" etc. etc. You are doing this to assess your guests' expectations. The success of the party is not entirely pre-determined by how closely those expectations are met, but it is essential to know what they are before you start planning. Musical analysis says things like "That was a really fun party because the food was delicious" or "I only had an ok time because there were too many little kids there". This is valuable analysis. While it is fine to say "I had a good time and we'll leave it at that", you aren't giving your hosts, or yourself any opportunity to learn.

Actually, I was responding to your implied denigration of "academic analysis", as if it were somehow antithetical to enjoying a song on an emotional level. I've heard this many times before, the "I just know what I like" argument, as if that academic analysis and emotion can't exist in the same room, or that asking why somehow kills the magic.

So... How about those Seahawks, huh?

Guess which one is the Trump supporter.

I don't think I can agree with this statement. I would argue that if someone took those 100 songs you like and "academically analyzed" them, there would be patterns that could point to triggers in songs that hit those buttons for you. I've always loved to ask myself "What is it about that song that works on me in this way?" and more often than not have been able to winnow it down to a turn of phrase, a chord, a vocal inflection, whatever, that is what really did it. Academic analysis of music gets a bad rap for being somehow dispassionate, but to me it's like one person saying "Wow, this song really gets me --right here--" and then another person saying "I know, me too. Why is that?"

Dont worry about stealing a chord progression, those aren't copyrightable. In fact, it can be a great way to start the juices flowing. I can usually tell when I'm borrowing something existing because suddenly the process flows differently, and I notice the next note or chord comes more easily and from a different part of my head. I guess anytime the writing comes in any way easy I get suspicious.

All these mentions are great. Everyone is limiting themselves to pop/rock. There's so much more out there. Sorry everyone, Stephen Sondheim is the best lyricist of all time. Not even close. Oscar Hammerstein Frank Loesser Cole Porter Yip Harburg And no, I'm not 90 years old. With the exception of late Sondheim, all these writers are way before my time. But their meticulous craft is like no others. Although musical theatre is crummy is a great many ways, it brought us an astounding body of song masterpieces.

If you could force everyone on this forum to listen to exactly one song, what would that song be, and why? (And it can't be one of your own songs :-)) (I am not giving an answer myself because then it would seem like I started the whole thread just to get people to listen to the song I picked.)

I would agree that that's the first step in making a song great. It usually has to have all those things, or if one is missing, another aspect has to compensate. But I've heard 57,213 songs in my life that fill snabbu's criteria and are definitely not great. Greatness comes in some sort of undefinable greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts way that is different for everyone and hard to put your finger on.

Since you're talking specifically about vocal harmonies, sounds like, I'll just talk about that, (though most of the concepts apply to instrumental harmony as well). First off, the biggest factor in how harmonies will sound is the voices you have to work with. While the traditional ensemble includes soprano, alto, tenor and bass, that is by no means a rule, and any variation is fair game. I must take issue with some previous comments here that something should be voices a fifth here or a third there. There are no such rules. You'll get the best sound by trusting your ear. The actual note writing for a barbershop is not very different from that of any choral writing, but what makes that barbershop sound is more about the vocal style being sung, the a cappella-ness of it, the fact that it's four men, and the kinds of songs typically sung. Crosby Still & Nash's sound is definitely not barbershop, but it's three men, so why not? Because of everything just stated. What makes CSN sound so good is how in sync they are. Listen to "Helplessly Hoping", how every vowel is voiced exactly the same, every inflection in volume matches, and their cutoffs are in perfect sync. They also were lucky in that their voices just had a nice blend. Peter Paul and Mary were also good for those reasons. Contrast that with something like the BG vocs for the Carpenters, smooth as a baby's cheek, which had to do with how they were recorded and the meticulous nature of the blend. Likewise, Mancini's harmonies for a song like Charade is distinctive because he's got four male parts against two or even only one female part, which gives it that rich deep warmth. As for writing them, first become familiar with the vocal ranges of your singers, and try to stay in the ranges that are most comfortable for them. If any one part gets too low or high, you'll have balance and tone problems. Know the chords ahead of time of course, and then it's a relatively simple matter of making sure every chord is spelled out with at least one voice. Where it gets sticky, and where the real art comes into it, is in the considerations of the HORIZONTAL aspect. Harmonies will sound much better if each part sounds like a real melody that would be OK if sung on its own. Basically, avoid big leaps. Even though our ears may not be able to pick out those melodies when everyone sings together, the fact that they're in there makes a much better sound. Spend a lot of time on that. Also, try to prevent voice crossings (where one voice is higher than another, then their lines "cross" so that that voice is now lower), because that's awkward to hear and also to perform. It's like doing Sudoku sometimes, because you need to make sure all the chords are represented, each voice sounds like a melody, and everyone is singing in their range. But it's not really that hard. The above paragraph is in cases where the voices are doing all the harmonic heavy lifting, but in many cases the vocal harmonies are mostly for color and aren't holding up the whole harmonic structure. In that case you have a lot more freedom, and are probably writing fewer parts, but the same rules apply. Make each line its own melody, try to prevent voice crossing, make them easy to sing. HTH!

There's a terrific homespun songwriting site called *spamming website* where they supply you with a title and you have about ten days to record a song with that title, then everyone posts their songs and everyone gets to vote on their favorite. It's been around non-stop for 15 YEARS! So anyone who participates in Song Fight by default always has a title first!