Pro Tools - enemy of the self produced singer songwriter?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Inspired by my friends comments on the new Mark Eitzel album, and not having any concrete evidence to back myself up, I wonder about your thoughts on this:

Do singer songwriters/guitar bands trying to 'go electronica' (for want of a better phrase) & get a hold of Pro Tools have a tendency to 'over-egg the pudding' and keep trying to add more & more stuff to tracks, never knowing where to put a stop to things. My friend admits that if he had the technology at home he'd probably be up at 3am working for hours on hi-hat sounds. I guess what I'm trying to ask is: does technology have a positive or negative effect on self produced stuff. I'm talking here of the 'traditional' guitar type musicians here getting to grips with this stuff rather than yer Timbalands etc who obviously work in this way all the time.

Do bands need producers, or can bands/individuals have the necessary discipline/ability to objectively step back from their creations to produce. I guess the other side of the coin is how can producers accurately achieve the vision of the songwriter?

If anyone can make sense of this rambling gibberish, your thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

― Bill E, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I can say that for me despite many attempts to use computers (MIDI, sampling, loops, Multitrack programs) , nothing fucks up the creative process more than error messages and (How did I do THAT?!). Sometimes when you try to be producer, engineer and musician and songwriter...you end up as none of the above. I keep it simple and use my tape 4 track for best results.

― Mike Hanley, Wednesday, 20 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

There's a very very similar thread here. From what I've seen I think ProTools is fantastic. You can lay down anything you want, do non-linear editing, etc. and it's got a nice interface. What's not to like? Most "guitar type" musicians I know would rather play than twiddle around for hours on computers, so a producer's good for that, as well as for suggesting sounds/etc. the band might not have thought of. But how can lots of options be bad? I mean there are a lot of options with an unmiked acoustic guitar too, requiring just as much discipline.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Re Tracer's last statement ('unmiked acoustic guitar') - absolutely!
Acquiring software, for me, was about the equivalent of when as a young guitarist I discovered the brave new world of alternate tunings. Sure, there's a novelty factor for a while, and for weeks I played nothing except approximations of John Fahey and Bert Jansch music, but as in all things stability reasserts itself and innovations (whether simple acoustic guitar treatments or software) simply become other tools in the box, nothing more or less. There's no law saying you HAVE to quantize everything. And so what if the technological gear is more expensive? Some people like to spend money on football tickets or clubbing, I like to spend it on music equipment, and if I spend money on some geegaw I only use once a year (last item bought, a Danelectro Grilled Cheese) I don't worry about it too much.
Mike - having the thing crash every half-hour and losing your minutely-detailed ambient soundscape is a TERRIFIC zen discipline - the ephemerality of all things and the vanity of human wishes, etc. (If you create a masterpiece and it gets wiped off your hard drive before anybody else hears it, why did it exist? DID it exist? Whole new area of philosophy opening up here!)

― tarden, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I won't have Pro-Tools in the house because I know from experience, that when I first got a 4-track, no one even *saw* me for the next 3 years.

However, as a musician obsessed with soundscaping, I would be stupid to ignore the technological benefits of the tool. My solution has been to work closely with an engineer/producer who has Pro-Tools. I sometimes find it frustrating when I want to get in and mess with the computer, but ultimately, I believe that it is *limits* which force artists to be creative. (I once had a very good painting teacher who told me that a painting is never finished- the mark of a good artist is one who knows when to walk away from it.)

With a 4-track, the limits are technological- there are only a finite number of instruments you can pile on with ping-ponging and bouncing before you lose sound quality, so you have to be creative to get the sound that you want to acheive. With Pro-Tools, there are very few limits to the technology, so you must artificially enforce limits (in my case, of time and money) to provide obstacles which force the lateral thinking which makes music interesting or creative.

As to working with a producer, or at least working with an "other" (this other may even be a fellow creative force within the band) - I think that it is almost essential. As seen on another thread, when single-minded creators are allowed to build their own home studios and take single-handed control over a project, the results are disasterous. In some cases (Kevin Shields?) there's no one to tell you when to stop. In other cases, there's no one to pull you back when you've gone too far.

how can producers accurately achieve the vision of the songwriter?

I work with a very good (read: patient) engineer/producer, and I think that the need for communication with him is actually a *good* and *beneficial* thing for the music. I mean, if I can't explain or otherwise communicate my ideas to the producer who has been working as closely as I on the project, then how can I *ever* hope to communicate them to my audience? Sometimes this will be purely verbal, sometimes it is a case of *showing* and me bringing in pieces of music that have the quality that I am looking for.

But all in all, I think that the discipline is good, both for me and for the music that I create.

Gosh, that was a pretentious post. ;-)

― masonic boom, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Re 'losing sound quality on a four-track' - most 70s-era Jamaican dub was produced on four- (sometimes two-)track equipment, and some of the ambience comes from instruments losing sharpness, signals disappearing altogether (or not being erased even when you record other stuff over them), etc, all the weird things that happen when you overload tape.
Which is a big beef I have with my Cubase set- up, if you try and make it do something it's not supposed to, it electronically slaps your wrist by crashing. Sometimes I want to kill the software designers for making things so idiot-proof. Then again, after a few months of abuse the four-track is irreparable and the computer still works, so there you go.

― tarden, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

My completely retarded question: what does Pro Tools DO exactly ?

― Patrick, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Masonic boom wrote:

"In some cases (Kevin Shields?) there's no one to tell you when to stop.

Shouldn't that read START?

― Chewshabadoo, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Tarden - yes, Jamaican dub was mostly recorded on a 4 or even 2-track. As, may I remind you, was most of the collected output of the Beatles, including Sgt Pepper. That's the classic 4-track nerd thing to say. However, despite the fact that the recording equipment only had 4 recording tracks, they were not limited in their miking, their mixing, and other such things that the average home recording enthusiast is. Does a 4-track tape machine recording a symphony orchestra with a host of mics mixed down to stereo really count as a "4-track" as we know it?

Patrick - ProTools, Cubase, all those sorts of "home recording programs" and stuff basically recreate a recording studio with a theoretical infinite number of tracks limited only by the available memory of your machine. The really mind-boggling thing about it is that, once you have digitally recorded your take, it becomes basically, a sample, and you can digitally manipulate it in an astounding ways- digitally correct incorrect rhythem or pitch, cut and paste and move whole chunks of sound. ProTools is to sound what Photoshop was to photography and illustration.

Chewshabadoo - Bagpuss? Stop... start... it's all the same thing in Bagpuss's world. Thing is, I keep hearing rumours of DEMOS which have or haven't been supplied to record companies. That would imply that there was a start made somewhere...

― masonic boom, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Yup its still 4 track, always refers to the number of recording tracks. The trick is in the Mixing desk. Lots of multiple tracks basically allow you to separate everything out. So each intrument, voice, etc has its own track. This allows you to over dub, (record again), sections or whole tracks if you don't like what you've record or allows you to add tracks if you play more than one instrument. Studios do other things like, for intsance, miking up a bass amp in several places plus taking a direct feed from the bass to fatten or emphasise certain bits of the sound.

You can do all of this on a four track, you just have to keep 'bouncng down', mixing 4 tracks down onto one, which on analogue casette involves a severe loss of quality, which may be desirable.

ProTools cubase et al. like mr boom said, basically give you a whole studio in your computer, not just the mixer and the record but also various sound processors and effect, i won't go it to it. They also make editing the audio easier, instead of having to play around with a razor balde or punch in tracks at exactly the right time you can easily copy and paste the music around as needed. Also porform pitch corretions, effects, corect the tempo etc. etc. the idea being to give a perfect result. Which I think was what Bill E was getting at.

Pro tools is different from Cubase and the rest cos until recently it could only be bought with special hardware which did a lot of the processing outside the computer and so can handle more tracks.

So to answer the original question.

Pro Tools basically allows anyone with the right computer qkills to correct the mistakes they make in playing. it means that a record company can select its artists on other factors, appearance dancing skills and gullibility. Pay them peanuts to be the spice girls or s club 7 or whatever. You can even get boxes that can do pitch correction live, thus disguising even the worst voice even live, just link the box into the huge pile of keyboards synths and sequencers under the the spice girls' stage and hey presto they can sing. (I use the spice girls as an example since I've read an interview with the guy who plays said synths etc. for the spicegiels live see Sound on Sound Do a search on the soice girls and it should come up.

In the home such power (PT) can be used to create professional sounding demos or even masters to press up CDs and Lps trouble is when you've got all that kit and its so easy, you might be tempted to add that cheesy string section where it isn't needed.

so PT requires a critical eye and a carefull hand or you will be up to 3 am tweaking hi hat sounds.

I'll shut up now

― Ed Lynch-Bell, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Just a minor concern - I'm a Ms. Boom, not a Mr. Boom. You are confusing me with My Dead Husband(c). ;-)

Also... Sound On Sound have a website...? ::drooling noises:: I'll see you in a couple of years...

― masonic boom, Thursday, 21 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Many Apologies. In my day we drove women off the internet with big sticks.

― Ed Lynch-Bell, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

And out of the studio, as well, if memory serves. ;-)

― masonic boom, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I wouldn't do that 'specially seeing as Sally's the talented one in our collective. I just know how to record things and plug things together.

― Ed Lynch-Bell, Friday, 22 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

No technology is inhgerently bad for creativity. Anything can be played with and interesting ideas forces out on the basis that this bit of technology is different to another bit. Rock musicians might suffer from over-egging because rock is essentially musical gravy, to steal an Eno phrase. All about fullness of sound almost obliterating the original elements resulting on one big block of sound. And any p[roducer who can achieve the vision of the performer is an extraordinarily bad producer.

― matthew james, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

"any producer who can achieve the vision of the performer is an extraordinarily bad producer" = brilliant brilliant theory, but is it what you mean? What DO you mean?

― mark s, Saturday, 23 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Perhaps 'music is the country of the blind and producers are gifted with one eye?' (Murry Wilson!)

― tarden, Sunday, 24 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I think to make sweeping judgements like that about the nature of producers. In some cases you get producers who are almost part of the group, and provide an esential part of the creative process (Andy Weatherall on Screamadelica), totally at odds with each other (practically any jazz artist and producer pair at some point during the 50s and 60s), or be the main artistic inovator on the track (Pete Waterman (artistic is a very broad sense)) or may just act as a money man and a critical eye on the process.

What situation you end up in depends very much on the label, producer and artist, and all of these situations can produce good and bad music. ProTools et. al. give the production tools to the artist in a economic way, and depending entirely on the artist they can either facilate or block his/her/their creative process.

― Ed Lynch-Bell, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

As an avid user of ProTools (and an avid user of Avid, but y'know...) I can safely say that overproduction or over tooling is just the result of someone who thinks and does something simply because he can, without thinking about whether or not he should... sorry for the lack of rhyme.

― JM, Monday, 25 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

WHat really makes for good music is having a secure studio where you can blossom and bloom and "sing your life". I fear there are too many philosopher king demons in my boudiour.

― Mike Hanley, Tuesday, 26 June 2001 00:00 (twenty-four years ago)

six years pass...

Saw this today in a Brian Wilson interview, and somehow it doesn't really surprise me:

(Interviewer) When you were putting together Smile, was there any new technology that impressed you?
(Brian) Pro Tools! Smile was sequenced with Pro Tools—I got somewhat familiar with it, but mostly I got off on other people’s ability with the program. I’d like to learn how to use it now.

― stephen, Sunday, 18 November 2007 17:35 (seventeen years ago)

and, on an unrelated to Pro Tools note, here's another Brian Wilson fun fact circa 2004:

He worries that his music compares unfavourably with that of Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon. Worst of all, it does not offer "the sophistication of Sting".

― stephen, Sunday, 18 November 2007 17:40 (seventeen years ago)

http://advancedtheory.blogspot.com/

― latebloomer, Sunday, 18 November 2007 18:54 (seventeen years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.