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A big part of any musician's growth is learning to study their influences and figure out their secrets. I have been making an effort to do this more often as it is very useful, and since I like putting my thoughts into words, I figured I should make a thread for others to do the same. What is this thread for?: Your musings, thoughts, and analysis of specific musical influences. Have you been trying to figure out exactly how the Wu-Tang Clan does that crazy thing that it does on Enter The 36 Chambers? Tell us about how you think they did it and your efforts to replicate it. The idea here is that putting our thoughts into words is not only good practice, but we can chip in to help each other out. This is not a thread to ask everyone how to recreate a specific sound, but a place to discuss your progress and findings as you learn from your own studies. As long as you're actually posting content feel free to ask for opinions. I will go first to demonstrate: I am a big fan of Death Grips, and Flatlander's production makes me giddy. When I decided to first start figuring out how synths work, I tried to analyze some Death Grips and immediately realized it was going over my head. I decided it was because I was so new to synths and would come back to it later. I decided to analyze some Death Grips today so I put on some tracks and started taking notes. The big trouble, I think, is how Flatlander uses the synths. There can be jarring transitions and interesting synth noises, but the way they are cut and pasted together is in time with the groove of the track and in fact is very much a part of giving it the 'oomph.' The synths manage to not only be synths but almost a secondary percussion instrument as well. A good example is here, in Black Dice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8y7ciSJyOQ On top of that, the synths are often mixed in very fluttering, echoey, and haunting ways, making the conventional advice of 'locate where every part of the song is coming from' incredibly difficult. Up My Sleeves, for instance, is mixed in a way so that you almost feel sucked in once the main synths start. Once it gets going it feels like you're being dragged into the song, and everything is swirling around you. It's very tough to identify a specific part and tell where it's coming from, stereo field wise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kDinXI0bxM Flatlander's production has definitely improved as Death Grips continued, and I'm glad I have so much content to learn from, even if it still is a challenge parsing it musicianship-wise. If anyone has any thoughts on any of that, feel free to throw them in. I am gonna do another one of these for YG and "My Krazy Life" later too
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Oct 27, 2014 19:33
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Cool idea for a thread. I've always been into many different kinds of music and have always tried to see and listen to them in different contexts and respond to them based on how they affect me emotionally, rather than thinking in terms of anything objective like "quality". That said, in terms of production values, I have held the belief for many years that Massive Attack's "Mezzanine" is pretty much the perfect album. It is an amazing balance of complex, subtle, and deeply layered electronic music and soulful, accessible, danceable songs that anyone can sing along to. The most fascinating thing about the album to me is just how many different kinds of sounds there are at work in a given song and yet there is absolutely no sense of clutter. Every individual sound has its own place cut out for it in the mix and it sits just right. A very surprising thing, I read an article about the album some years it album came out which said that the members of Massive Attack were barely on speaking terms at the time when they made it. The album has such a cohesive sound, but in fact when they were working on it, generally only one of the three would be in the studio at any given time. Maybe egos were getting away from them and they could not stand to collaborate with the others. And I'm still not sure how that worked, how these guys made something so very solid at a time when they were barely communicating, because I have always thought open communication and collaboration was so important when working as a group. This album has been out for almost 20 years and I am still hearing new things in it. The last time I listened to Teardrop I was focusing on the slightly detuned synth pad underneath the whole thing, noticing there is a chaotic element in it, a slight warble that is not in any kind of rhythm and is barely audible but adds a sense of uncertainty all the same.
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Oct 28, 2014 17:51
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Earwicker posted:Cool idea for a thread.  Earwicker posted:Massive Attack Teardrop is my favorite because I'm a bandwagon hipster dufus but goddamn it is well done. The vocals are amazing, the whole track has this warmth to it. I read somewhere online that they mixed in brown noise (like the frequency) to the track, but I couldn't find anything else about it when I looked. After listening to some brown noise samples, my interest was piqued and I decided to mess around with the idea regardless, crudely layering it onto a gate and a drum sequence (or something) and playing with it. My conclusion? Plausible, it definitely added a bit of extra something to it, even if I mixed it in pretty poorly. In the hands of a real wizard I'll bet it could totally work. Or maybe they didn't, and maybe I'm wrong. But I still learned something, and maybe I'll try it out myself one day. Because now I know. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pele5vptVgc Earwicker posted:The most fascinating thing about the album to me is just how many different kinds of sounds there are at work in a given song and yet there is absolutely no sense of clutter. Every individual sound has its own place cut out for it in the mix and it sits just right. It's surprising but also inspiring. Even under the circumstances they were so hard working and devoted to the craft they managed to accomplish all of that. I see it as a personal challenge to do better and improve myself, but I try to see everything that way musically 
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Oct 28, 2014 19:58
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Digi_Kraken posted:I am gonna do another one of these for YG and "My Krazy Life" later too Better late than never. 2014 is drawing to a close, and one of the producers who has made a hell of an impact is definitely DJ Mustard. His work on My Krazy Life made him one of my favorite new artists, and for a good reason. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLRHiaC_VQo My Krazy Life is certainly rooted in West Coast G-Funk, but Mustard's style places a huge emphasis on simplicity. Each part of a track has been carefully selected and My Krazy Life is a blueprint for exercising restraint and effective minimalism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1aZjlpvpS0 Perhaps it's that minimalism that allows him to have such a huge output? quote:How many beats do you usually make in, say, a week?  We've all been there folks, loving around with a drum loop and bassline and banging our heads against the wall, so drat. Respect. Definitely somebody to study, so I will make a point of doing so. I'll try and do specific track breakdowns on one or two. Always a good exercise!
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Dec 31, 2014 05:29
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This is a good thread idea and I am going to come back and analyze a difficult to categorize band that's close to my heart.
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Jan 2, 2015 01:07
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