Music as a function of how many people it takes to make it.

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This is one of those things where I have a theory and a question and then you tell me I'm wrong and/or ignore me. Sorry.

Still, anyway: my sense is that modern "popular music" started out as a cross between two models -- the classical or big-band one (in which one person writes and arranges a piece for a whole bunch of musicians to perform), and the folk/blues/jazz one (in which smaller groups of people improvise, interpret standards and traditional tunes, and write songs to perform themselves). Pop music starts off with a lot of the former (heirarchies of songwriter / arranger / producer / hired performers, arrangements for "background" ensembles, etc.), but uses most of it to pretend to be a bit like the latter (focusing on small combos or feature performers, using the simplified verse/chorus/verse organization of popular formats like folk, blues, and music-hall, etc.).

Right. So. Most of that is still true of the most popular music: American Idol type CDs are still made on basically that model, where hundreds of people all play different roles in the creation of something that's still meant to feel like it's just Clay Aiken doing his thing. Rod Stewart's American Songbook CDs are particularly indistinguishable from how lots of "vocal pop" was made in the 40s/50s/60s.

But apart from that, haven't we also seen a really straight line toward reducing the number of people involved in music-making? First the Beatles model, where the performers are the songwriters again. Then we stop liking the producer, and want bands to shape their whole sound, too. (We call this "indie," kinda.) We get home recording, and we get electronic music, and eventually it becomes possible for a lot of the music we like to have been created more or less entirely by one person.

Which we like, because: well, on some level the whole trend in music over the past half-century has been this massive push toward music as being about individuality more so than community, right? Or at least our notions of making it seem to have gone farther and farther in that direction.

I dunno: talk about this? Correct me where I'm wrong about it? Do you think it's meant anything in particular to have this progress? Has it changed music's purpose dramatically? Does it maybe account for different people's listening, especially with regard to age? Is this just kind of a meaningless observation (I'm afraid it might be) or is it kind of important?

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 10 November 2005 19:24 (twenty years ago)

I think people seek out authenticity and an individual or a small group doing the songwriting is considered to be more authentic mostly because it's difficult for a large group of people to really have the same creative vision, so the most they'd be doing is playing out their roles rather then really "feeling" it. A lot of people are after something genuine, that quality (or at least that perceived quality) tends to foster the feeling of a close relationship between the performer and the listener, and when the source of music is so singular (I'm picturing a guy in a bedroom with his laptop)it would suggest a more pure projection of the creator's intent, or a more precise execution of the "vision."

― Matt McEver (mattmc387), Thursday, 10 November 2005 19:51 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, definitely, it's both an authenticity/meaning-it thing and an auteur thing. But that's kind of a radical break from a lot of the history of popular music, right? Kind of a triumph of the folk/blues model over the other one, which stretches all the way from classical composition through musicals and pop?

Two other questions: (a) Does it matter that there's now a huge split between people who want that one-guy "authenticity" for real (i.e., indies?) and people who get it fine from tastefully-arranged Rod Stewart interpretations (i.e., mainstream)? And (b) what exactly is the difference in realness and number-of-people between a classical composer (sitting alone arranging performances he doesn't "create") and a laptop electronic musician (sitting alone arranging sounds he doesn't create, either)?

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:05 (twenty years ago)

(I mean, programming a bunch of software synth-sequencers is basically the same act as writing a symphony, assuming your symphonies could give ridiculously precise super-human directions to the performers concerning every aspect of their timbre, timing, playing style, etc.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:08 (twenty years ago)

Um, as a "function" of...?

― Butt Rocket, Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:12 (twenty years ago)

The whole "one person did everything and therefore it's the best representation of that one person's vision" is pretty flawed anyway. Consider that a truly gifted director not only knows how to direct actors but how to pick actors, costume and set designers who will bring the director's specific vision to life in a way that the director could never do alone.

I personally can arrange a song so the guitar part is harder than anything I can play. Does that mean my song is less authentically mine when I call my friend over because he's a better guitarist, and I know he can play what's in my head better than I can?

― martin m. (mushrush), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:14 (twenty years ago)

Umm, it's a pretty common metaphor, Butt Rocket, but I imagine it would seem condescending if I explained it in detail. (It's like, you know, a function in math? Only outside of math people use the term more loosely and metaphorically?)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:21 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, question B is interesting. I think a big difference is simply in the creative process, knowing that you might be the only person that ever hears it, much less performs it. That and the kind of people who can create it, it is so much less expensive and requires no support from anyone else--that allows for much more idiosyncratic music(not that I'm any kind of authority on classical music), more introspective, quirky, or just weird.

― Matt McEver (mattmc387), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:21 (twenty years ago)

It's often said of Duke Ellington that part of his genius was that he didn't compose a part for, say, trumpet, but a part for Cootie Williams (Ellington band trumpet-player) - ie., he had a particular player's sound & style in mind as he was writing the part. However, no person is completely a robot, so naturally any group musical effort is going to allow more than one personality to come through. This is especially true in jazz where there are multiple soloists who are frequently given a wide latitude in improvising their parts.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:23 (twenty years ago)

I think the title makes no damn sense is what I'm saying here. I can push buttons and use midi or I can lay down every track separately. Music is the result, not a function of, isn't it?

― Butt Rocket, Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:28 (twenty years ago)

A lot of times what makes music great isn't what note you play, it's the little nuances that come through when each note means something to the person who is playing it. This can definitely happen in a situation where one person is playing music written by another person, but I think it is easier to get to the point when each performer is involved in the creative process.

― Matt McEver (mattmc387), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:28 (twenty years ago)

that point*, not "the"

― Matt McEver (mattmc387), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:31 (twenty years ago)

There's often more than a whiff or loneliness or solipsism that comes through in completely solo, bedroom-recording type of efforts. They tend to raise the question, Couldn't this person find anyone else to be in their band? There is also maybe a hint of monomaniacal hermitude. Sometimes artists intentionally play up this angle, cf. Bob Drake's The Skull Mailbox, where the impression that the artist recorded the whole album by himself in some dark and dank basement studio contributes to the overall sense of creepiness and dread.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:32 (twenty years ago)

Which we like, because: well, on some level the whole trend in music over the past half-century has been this massive push toward music as being about individuality more so than community, right?

To kind of echo what Matt McEver was saying, I think this has more to do with technology and economics than any preference of individual v. community. At least in recorded music, it's much cheaper and easier to approximate a string section or horn section and drums than it is to hire studio musicians.

― Its morph 'em to pun cute (Matt Chesnut), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:33 (twenty years ago)

What's weird to me is that even apart from genre clues and biography music still "sounds" like the number of people who made it. Even stuff like Boards of Canada, which could easily be one guy, still sounds/feels like more. (And even something like Max Tundra, where there are two different singers, still sounds/feels like one person's creation.) And so I can't help but feel like the continual push toward one-person-does-everything is significant, even as traditional lots-of-people productions continue to imitate the opposite model. (Lots of r&b and dance-pop use whole hierarchical armies to create types of music originally conceived in the one-or-two-people mold!)

Butt Rocket your syntactical abilities seem totally lacking here but I think we both have better things to do in life than to argue about it.

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:34 (twenty years ago)

Butt Rocket your syntactical abilities seem totally lacking here but I think we both have better things to do in life than to argue about it.
Then, you are mistaken! I win!

― Butt Rocket, Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:38 (twenty years ago)

(And yeah but Matt, we tend not to think of auteur music as being a cheaper, easier substitute for big productions -- I feel like we've actively embraced and romanticized that model. I mean, we don't just excuse rock bands for producing themselves because, well, they didn't have a big budget -- often we actively celebrate the idea that a good band would be self-sufficient in crafting its entire recorded sound.)

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:39 (twenty years ago)

Music as an Action Script of how many people it takes to make it.
Music as a division of how many people it takes to make it.
Music as a multiplication of how many people it takes to make it.

etc.

― Syntactical Wizardry, Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:41 (twenty years ago)

I was thinking that it was originally DIY out of necessity, then it was romanticized. It became DIY in order to get the lo-fi aesthetic, or not even lo-fi specifically, just the idea of achieving exactly what you want without people saying, "wouldn't it be better with a string section," because I don't want a string section to make my personal struggle seem like a melodramatic statement that laments the struggles of the whole world. I think that's what I was saying.

― Matt McEver (mattmc387), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:51 (twenty years ago)

I think there's also a difference between music that can be made by one person in real-time (e.g, solo instrumental recordings, voice-and-guitar stuff (such as early blues stuff like Robert Johnson)) and stuff that is the result of multi-tracking or sequencing. The former is of course nothing new, and is somehow more acceptable to our ears as an organic and natural way to make music, whereas the second has that sort of Wizard of Oz "Don't look at the man behind the curtain" kind of feel to it.

― o. nate (onate), Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:52 (twenty years ago)

Sometimes you just can't tell. New Radicals sound like a full band. Probably a bunch of studio musicians, I guess.

― Triumph of Will Truman, Thursday, 10 November 2005 20:59 (twenty years ago)

To kind of echo what Matt McEver was saying, I think this has more to do with technology and economics than any preference of individual v. community.

Yeah the economic history of popular music plays a huge part in this, from the jukebox killing off the big band to the dj killing off the teenaged rock & roll dance band. I wonder how the rising cost of oil will affect the 4-guys-touring-the-US-in-a-van model of music making. I don't think you can draw any interesting conclusions about the push toward individualism without tackling the reality of these economic forces.

― walter kranz (walterkranz), Thursday, 10 November 2005 21:05 (twenty years ago)

How does, for example, Late Registration fit into this model? The collabration of Kanye and Jon Brion (as well as a bunch of studio musicians) is more responsible for its sound than any singlular vision by either artist. And I guess another good example is Dr. Dre, who relied on studio musicians to interpolate hooks from P-Funk or wherever. That resembles the auteur model a lot less than say Three 6 Mafia who use a lot of orchestral sounds on synths and do everything "in-house". I'm not sure either one is romanticized in any way. Is it different in the rap world?

― Its morph 'em to pun cute (Matt Chesnut), Thursday, 10 November 2005 21:09 (twenty years ago)

Ha, I was just in the studio with one of the guys who did arrangements for the New Radicals! Definitely a studio product, but oddly enough one of a number of people.

― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 10 November 2005 21:25 (twenty years ago)

lots of extremely popular music still hews to the lots-of-cooks-in-the-kitchen model, including country, mainstream pop and r&b. so i'm not at all convinced that we've moved away from anything.

but inasmuch as some artists in some styles have consciously pursued the reduced-number-of-cooks model, i'd take it back at least as far as the rise of the sheet music industry in the late 19th or early 20th century or whenever that was. the economics isn't so much what it costs to make a recording, but rather what kind of money a recording can bring in. and from sheet music to the radio royalties model to LP and CD royalties, the music biz has always favored songwriters over performers, economically speaking. maybe it goes back before sheet music, i don't know. but in any case, for at least a century there's been a strong incentive for performers to write, or at least get credit for writing.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Thursday, 10 November 2005 21:50 (twenty years ago)

I don't think you can draw any interesting conclusions about the push toward individualism without tackling the reality of these economic forces.

Certainly the "bedroom studio" has replaced the "garage band" for economic reasons, no? Most of my friends live in apartments, and the ones who do live in houses don't always have garages.

― martin m. (mushrush), Thursday, 10 November 2005 21:58 (twenty years ago)

but in any case, for at least a century there's been a strong incentive for performers to write, or at least get credit for writing.

This is very true. There are two kinds of roylaties paid, one paid to performer(s) and one for authorship. After the Gilbert O'Sullivan v. Biz Markie case and others, it's why lifting material from samples became so expensive and it's why Dr. Dre started hiring studio musicians to play samples. This way, the only royalty owed is to the author. There's not a lot of money to be made simply from performing and there's not a lot of attention paid to the guy behind the scenes, so if you want to be rich AND famous, doing "everything" is the best bet.

― Its morph 'em to pun cute (Matt Chesnut), Thursday, 10 November 2005 22:08 (twenty years ago)

but in any case, for at least a century there's been a strong incentive for performers to write, or at least get credit for writing.

Nikki Sixx

― Yo, Thursday, 10 November 2005 22:14 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, FCC, I'm saying it's parallel paths; the Big Team Production model of music-making doesn't seem to be going anywhere, but the reduction model seems to have split off from it pretty significantly. And I wonder if that means something, to have two very different models of music and fandom running parallel? The split seems to matter to people on one side of it in explicit terms (e.g. indie kids complaining about pop productions), but not so much from the other side, since even the Big Team Productions are trying to create the illusion of the whole thing being singular. (Consider the way synthetic production for pop can put a whole team's work into a backing track that doesn't necessarily suggest "people" doing work behind, say, Britney -- it can still "sound" like just her, with some magical or naturally-occurring beat that's treated as a natural extension of her personality, like those synths are just a smell that wafts off of her when she sings!)

I mean I feel like while the many-musicians and hired-musicians model continues, no doubt, for some reason we can still know loads of people who are completely opposed to it, whether they've thought about it or not -- when was the last time most rock fans went to show that casually put 15+ people on stage (i.e. not the Polyphonic Spree), or where the hired-musician status was acknowledged and understood, or where they'd see tricks from that model (like the hired musicians standing out of the way in back, or getting called forward for little spotlight-moment solos, or getting introduced by name, or any of that)?

― nabisco (nabisco), Thursday, 10 November 2005 22:43 (twenty years ago)

Without seeming too cynical, could it be that the ideal of having a small group / individual making music is widespread in part because it is *much* easier to control and market? Whether there is a single singer-songwriter behind a homemade record or its a boy band with a small army of support staff, having a small public face means that whatever image is being used to sell the music can be carefully managed to avoid breaking the brand.

― Rhodia (Rhodia), Friday, 11 November 2005 01:55 (twenty years ago)

Part of the appeal of the few musicians model is probably rooted in the idea of rock music being something that comes from the kids--teenagers who fall in love with music and spend afternoons messing around in their garage developing the new sound that no one else saw coming. It seems like this ideal is just one of those traditions that has become a signifier of authenticy, of some kind of intangible rock n' roll spirit that is held onto pretty tightly by much of the indie community.

― Matt McEver (mattmc387), Friday, 11 November 2005 04:55 (twenty years ago)

There seems to be no interest in content.
The words "make it," that is the emphasis, not quality and not content.
There is no depth of character in most people in modern society.
No thought to content.
It takes very little thought to "make it." And very little talent, content or quality., if any.
People are in denial about our society having no interest in content, and the focus only on big names, making it big and being connected with rich people.
No depth.

― what about talent and quality?, Monday, 21 November 2005 23:52 (twenty years ago)

There doesn't have to be a formula and greed.
There doesn't have to be a focus on youth, children and rock music.
Rock music is good sometimes..but so other music.
They are following a formula because greed has taken over. It is best to ignore people who are greedy and not interested in content.

― rock isn't the only type of music, Monday, 21 November 2005 23:54 (twenty years ago)

Nobody can tell ya
There's only one song worth singing
They may try and sell ya
Cause it hangs them up to see someone like you

But you've gotta make your own kind of music
Sing your own special song
Make your own kind of music
Even if nobody else sings along

You're gonna be nowhere
The loneliest kind of lonely
It may be rough going
Just to do your thing's the hardest thing to do

― A|ex P@reene (Pareene), Tuesday, 22 November 2005 03:24 (twenty years ago)

do you know how conceited you all sound? all you talk about is men and their names..
that is because big names are mostly men who have accomplished something in music. do you know arrogant that is?
you all sound terribly arrogant ..and all you do is talk about men over and over again, and mention only mens names.

try going on the net and punch female composers. there are many of them. you are stunted in your vision., and sexist.

Rob

― is this a discussion about how men are great?, Tuesday, 22 November 2005 03:40 (twenty years ago)

did you know not everyone that has talent is famous?
did you know that tons of female composers are great and ignored?
look on the net.
You are not opened to what women do in life. you look down on women. You think little of them.
YOu think highly of the media and commerialism.
There are many great female composers and writers who have lived and died without being famous, because men like yourself, are conceited, arrogant and bigoted. You really believe you are super smart, and the superior sex.
You aren't.

― men are famous and women have talent, Tuesday, 22 November 2005 03:43 (twenty years ago)

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