Innovation and Production

[john]

Hey

 

How much do you feel you innovate through recording and production? Or do you stay safe? The same question can of course be asked about songwriting, but I think it is a more common question.

 

What do I mean about innovation? Well, emulating the production techniques of someone else is staying safe. Experimenting with known techniques is something new for you, but still not innovation. Innovation is coming up with unique, new uses for. The innovation can be small. It can be inspired by something others have done but it is fundamentally that creative spark. Often it ties to taking a risk and finding a new use for something. Using a technique or technology outside expected genres, blending music genres.

 

I ask because innovation almost always hooks me. It makes me want to listen more to an artist, whether it is in songwriting, arrangement, recording or production… something new catches the ear, catches the mind. It makes me think “if they can do something new and unexpected here, what else might they do?”. 
 

Cheers

 

John

[john]

You are absolutely right. I wrote an article for Songstuff, probably 19-20 years ago (Time flies!), Commerciality, Familiarity and Originality which grappled with the issue from a songwriting perspective. Still relevant today, which is why it is still on the site.  Too unusual and it can take so long for people to get into it that it never takes off, a slow burn. Too safe, too familiar and it is easily picked up but completely unchallenging and so people bore of it very easily.

 

A lot of music today is safe. Made that by business men wanting predictable short term money over risky long term money. That goes for labels and publishers but also production companies, advertisers, tv channels etc.

 

In honesty, they do want those big hit moments, but that relates more to riding a wave or being somewhere in the late-early adopters to early bandwagon jumper zone.There is a sweet spot.

 

Artists want hits, but also longevity. Music of the late 60’s into late 70’s is particularly remember because labels and culture was more content to play the long game. Bands were encouraged to experiment, to make mistakes in order to learn. It was common in that time period to get 3 - 5 album deals. That gave artists room to try new things. Now labels (like pretty well everything else) focus on short term goals, maximum return for minimum investment. Pink Floyd are one of the biggest bands in the world, despite having not released a totally new album for a decade, and not having played a gig in a similar time frame. Arguably, talent aside, a major factor in their success was the fact that they heavily experimented in pretty well everything. Sound. Music. Words. Light. Visuals. Graphics. You name it, they tried to innovate. Luckily it was a time when audiences also gave room to artists to experiment.

 

Just like labels, modern audiences are largely demanding and focused on short term gratification. They are a good deal more sophisticated, and as a result demand the same of their artists.

 

For artists it is important to realise that those that are truly remembered, those whose music is celebrated, are those that heavily innovated, and who became masters of “reading the room” and who balance innovation with short term appeal. Being safe might earn you a living, but in the long term it is likely to see your music largely forgotten, drowning in a sea of same-y safeness. Think about it. Nobody every achieved greatness by being ordinary.

 

With music production today, much innovation comes from combination of pre-made. Back when guitar effects were simple, innovation largely came from how the instrument was played. Keyboards had simple capability, but virtually no presets. There were no soft-synths, no sample libraries. People invented their own sounds. Once samplers came along you had to build your own sample libraries, and once libraries were available for sale they were fairly small. Everything funnelled artists towards innovation.

 

Nowadays artists are spoiled by an endless supply of presets. They don’t have even tweak, they just load a new preset. Back in the day keyboard players were embarrassed to use presets… but then there were only a small number of synths and fellow keyboard players could spot preset patches a mile away. Audiences demanded to be entertained with fresh sounds. Necessity being the mother of invention, so artists invented.

 

The issue with today’s off-the-shelf preset nirvana is that nothing really drives innovation. Safe is the name of the game, and that is a big problem. Artists risk being completely forgettable. Grey in a sea of other greys.

 

Like other things in life I think the balance point is given by the 80:20 rule, where 80 is the familiar and 20 is innovation. Taking the innovation 20%, 80% of that should be at the safer end of the innovation spectrum, with only 20% being (ie 4% of the total) being truly innovative. That’s the sweet spot right there.

 

Its just an opinion.

[john]

3 hours ago, VoiceEx said:

Balance is key to all things in life. Though I consider me disliking most modern songs, as being good enough motivation to try to do things differently. Truth be told, I never tried to calculate the exact probability of "perfecting innovation" because it is inherently a variable that cannot be predicted entirely. But hey, if you get it to work on command, why not sell the formula to some random billionaire, and watch the revolution unfold. I would

It’s not a set value, it’s a ballpark. Typically most of a “sweet spot” track would be built on that which is familiar too us, in order that we view that innovation in as good a light as possible. Absolutely. Variety is the spice of life and all that.

 

Even when bands innovate, if they don’t keep innovating they become stale and predictable. If you keep innovating with the same elements, new songs just become pale imitations of the old. So yes, innovate, but vary where you innovate.

 

One if my reasons for starting this topic is that too often it is, as you intoned, artists pay lip service to it. They talk about it, but don’t do it. Hmmm. Maybe a thread or innovation event would be a good idea?

[GregB]

Hi. 

 

"Modern" music has continually innovated sounds and techniques since the early 60's.   With multiple millions of tracks, none of us have heard more than a tiny fraction of what has already been done.  I still continue to hear amazing (new to me) things from the last 60 years and think  ... WOW ... HOW did they do that?

  
"Innovation" for most of us home producers probably just means something that WE've not tried before, but the tyranny of time, inexperience, expertise, lack of help, etc.. all combine to stymie real innovation.  Back in the day, studios had audio techs in white lab coats who could create anything you could imagine ... and the big labels would fund that time/expense.

 

For me, innovation just means trying to invent ways to reduce the likelihood of all my own tracks sounding the same.  But I can only go so far with exploration before frustration kills the motivation, or the experiments kill the music.  Sitting at a computer for hours is not my idea of fun.  As a result, I stick with what few core skills I have and vary tempo, keys, rhythms, arrangement/structure, but mainly varying the instruments used in the arrangements e.g. some tracks do not use bass or drums, tracks use different drum kit libraries, use of sound effects relevant to the song, etc.. 

But then again, don't listen to me!  None of my stuff has ever 'broken through', so who the hell am I kidding?  So, in the end, as long as what I do pleases ME and I've given it my best shot, I'm satisfied  
 

Greg

 

 

[Glammerocity]

When I had a professional studio we tried a guy as an engineer. We gave him a young techno crew, who reported that he refused to have a cymbal play a hi-hat pattern, because it was technically "wrong." He didn't get any more sessions with us.

 

I take issue with the idea that playing safe is a modern problem. We should always think of what our parents said about our music when forming opinions about today's music. "Not proper music, can't hear the words, that's not singing," ad nauseum. Time was when if you had a hit, you made something that was almost a Xerox copy. The Rivingtons followed up Papa Oom Mow Mow with Mama Oom Mow Mow.

 

If I had a pound for every time I've read a complaint about "manufactured" music - they don't play their own instruments, they don't write their own songs, etc etc. One of the greatest eras of songwriting was Tin Pan Alley, when there were singers and songwriters. Cole Porter didn't need to sing his own songs.

 

So there's a svengali label owner, a house band, house songwriters and producers and a stable of singers told what to sing. Is it Stock Aitken & Waterman? Simon Cowell? It's Motown. The band were jazzers who would turn up to sessions drunk and looked down on the music, until it became as cool as it did later, then they tried to claim the credit for it. When it comes to manufactured, the Monkees weren't even on the records, and who doesn't love the Monkees? The SAW, Cowell and modern generations will be as nostalgic for the music of their youth as we are for ours.

 

I started making mashups because I liked that they levelled the playing field of songwriting. I've made more than enough rock to know it's easy to be self-indulgent but writing a good pop song is hard. If it was so easy there'd be more popstars and fewer lawyers. Credibility never wrote a good hook in its life and it's noticeable that the most popular rock songs are the ones with hooks. As a fan of XTC I know Sgt. Rock has far more views than Travels in Nihilon.

 

For the last few years I've been listening to a lot of kpop, which even for me as a defender of pop was a surprise. I had the usual preconceptions it was all Gangnam Style EDM novelty or cutesy bubblegum but there's some great songwriting and production going on. When I first heard Piri by Dreamcatcher I thought it was the closest to prog rock I'd heard since prog rock: quiet drumless piano interlude before the heavy guitars in the hooky chorus? Very prog. They made a trilogy of albums with a unifying concept, which reminded me of Yes's triple album, Tales From Topographic Oceans, but with choreography instead of extended solos.

 

Being in the right place at the right time with the right face is far from exclusive to pop. If Bonehead and Dave Rowntree had been the singers in Oasis and Blur, I'd bet my flat that Britpop wouldn't have happened. I'd say one of these bands was innovative and one derivative but I can listen to both equally.

 

I once saw somebody complain that music nowadays all uses the same chord sequences. Somebody asked if the commenter had ever said that about the blues. Making mashups of kpop, I've found that often they're grooves, built around very few, if any, chord changes. That requires being pretty innovative and creative. Necessity: still the mother of invention.

Edited October 8, 2021 by Glammerocity