The Rise and Rise of Manufactured Pop

I'm really not a fan of live TV talent shows – I do try to avoid them whenever possible, however after catching a few episodes of BBC's The Voice, I believe it has managed to succeed where others have floundered. Firstly there's the positivity and encouragement that comes across from the coaches. This comes as a pleasant surprise, as it shows that they are taking their responsibilities seriously. However their reactions are quite understandable given the sheer amount of collective talent on display. There's little doubt that the show has put The X-Factor and other Cowell-produced egocentric monstrosities to shame. Even before the live shows started there were several artists who didn't get through that, if placed in other talent shows, would have wiped the floor with the other contestants (I'm thinking of that amazing red-haired 27 year old former backing singer who got beaten in the head-to-head by the 17 year old Irish nose-twitcher...sorry I didn't watch it closely enough to remember their names!). Anyway, I don't give two hoots if some of the artists have or have had recording contracts, it's just refreshing to hear some genuine talent out there. Of course it would be even more refreshing if they were to sing their own songs, but maybe that's asking too much from this type of show...

Another reason (or excuse!) for watching the live shows at the weekend was to catch the performance of Lana Del Rey. I had heard her single “Video Games” a while ago and didn't think much of it to be honest, but I recently bought a copy of Sound On Sound (for the first time in about 10 years!) which featured an article detailing how the song was mixed, so I was intrigued to hear her perform live. The song she sang was a different one, but in a similar style, and I have to admit that it all sounded a bit...well...manufactured. There's no doubt she has a certain quality to her voice (reminiscent of Kate Bush in places) but it was style over substance, and (rather unfortunately) in my opinion she was outclassed by the competitors before her.

This leads me to ask you to ponder the (hopefully rhetorical) question, which is:

What would you rather listen to: an average song with a great mix, or a great song mixed badly?

OATUS: Problems caused by the Internet (part 74)

I'm one of those annoying people that can scan a page of text and instantly spot a spelling mistake. This can prove annoying to someone else who may be reading or writing something (e.g. interrupting my wife while she's busy typing an email without looking at the screen), but it can also distract me from concentrating on what I'm actually reading. Admittedly in the majority of cases it's a non-issue and everyone makes mistakes (even best-selling books contain them), but I do find it worrying how elemental some of the mistakes are. I'm not convinced that dyslexia is the root cause either (on another note why is dyslexia so hard to spell?).

If you're crap at spelling and typing, AutoCorrect is your friend!

There are several common words which, for reasons unknown, are often misspelled, particularly on the internet. Here are some examples that really irritate me (of course, AutoCorrect had to be switched off before typing some of these):

Tounge instead of tongue – why people choose to move the ‘u’ two places to the left is completely beyond me...do lounge, scrounge and tongue rhyme? I don't think so!

Brought instead of bought – this is when the spell-checker doesn’t come to the rescue unfortunately. E.g. “I brought this great new guitar yesterday!” Yes that's wonderful but I'm really not interested that you had your guitar with you or where you were taking it!  By the way, I'm not inferring that guitarists are any worse at spelling and grammar than anyone else, it was just a made-up example - I just wanted to make that point clear before I get any abuse from my guitar-playing friends...;

Opps instead of oops – I can only assume that this was originally a typo but it seems to have been inexplicably adopted by many internet users, particularly those of a younger generation (who obviously make lots of mistakes and have to publicly apologise for them);

Alot instead of a lot – ok this may be just due to carelessness or attributable to 'txt' speak but I do see this alot (sic);

Suprise instead of surprise – this could be accidental, but again, as in “oops”, all people have to do is take a little bit of time to read the word out loud to work out how to spell it correctly...or maybe they now pronounce it wrongly as well?

"Opps...I just brought a new camera, I took alot of pics & found this one with my tounge hanging out - what a suprise!"

I could add plenty of other examples (particularly involving incorrect use of the apostrophe) but I think I'll stop there. Which brings me to my second bugbear, namely the excessive use of acronyms, emoticons and exclamation marks (IMHO!!!! ;-O))) etc. etc. etc.)

Whilst I'm all in favour of adapting and modernising the written English language to accomodate new-fangled methods of communication, some people seem to have got a bit carried away with these newer forms of expression and use them at every opportunity. So what's wrong with it? Well apart from making you look like an over-excited 12-year old that's just discovered internet chat, in most cases it's simply superfluous.  Yes, smileys definitely have their uses, but only if used in moderation.

Some acronyms are also useful, especially when typing quick emails and texting. One of my favourites is RTFM, which is used quite a lot at work. But some are so obscure they seem pointless, especially when you then have to spend time searching Google for a definition, and some aren't really much shorter than the words they replace. My least favourite at the moment though has to be YMMV (which I originally believed to mean “You're Making Me Vomit” because they were the only words I could get to fit). So far I haven't ever found a use for it and don't think I ever will. On a slight tangent, I also find the American phrase “My bad” to be rather irritating (what's wrong with saying “my fault”?).

When driving a car, YMMV.  There, I did it!

In my next blog I will be continuing the language theme by discussing American-English language idiosyncrasies with particular regard to the naming of tasty foods, such as jello/jelly/jam and fries/chips/crisps.

Just kidding...

P.S. I do hope that some of you spotted my deliberate spelling mistake above - if you did then you'll be pleased to know you're officially just as irritating as I am. If you didn’t, I had misspelled the word ‘accommodate’ using only one 'm'... As a disclaimer I should point out that any other mistakes in my post are purely accidental :-))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Using Computers for Music Recording - a.k.a. Entering the 21st Century...

For the last 15 years or so I have eschewed the computer (whenever possible*) as a tool for track laying and basic mixing.  Some of you may find this surprising, given that I work in the field of IT and therefore have a fairly good understanding of how PCs work.  However until recently I’ve always been put off by a number of factors: a) reliability, b) portability, and perhaps most importantly, c) the dreaded latency issue.  Also, I’ve always had a gut feeling that the inherent complexities of a computer-based setup would stifle my workflow.  So, up until now I’ve recorded tracks with real instruments connected to my trusty Akai DPS16.  The DPS deserves some praise here - I’ve owned one for 13 years and I can honestly say I don’t remember it ever crashing, even more surprisingly as it records to a built-in hard drive.  It can record up to 10 tracks simultaneously at 24-bit, it’s easy to control and edit due to its dedicated faders, transport buttons and jog wheel, and did I mention it never crashes? :-)

R.I.P. Akai :`(

So, why am I changing to a computer-based DAW now?  Well, firstly there’s the connectivity issue – because the DPS doesn’t have a USB output (as it’s so old!) it’s not so easy to transfer tracks to a PC or Mac.  Secondly, although it hasn’t crashed yet, there's every chance that the hard drive will die at some point soon – as anyone who has suffered the loss of a computer drive knows, they have a limited lifespan.  But the main reason for starting off my investigations is that my wife is co-renting a new studio which has recording facilities (Pro-Tools), and the engineer would be on-hand to answer any technical questions I would inevitably have.  So, I recently started looking at getting Pro-Tools for my PC (which is a few years old but it's quad-core so thought it should be up to the job).  First snag – PT versions 9 and 10 require Windows 7, and I’m still running Vista.  PT8 then?  Well PT8 and below force you to use proprietary hardware (Digidesign) and I own an E-MU audio interface which I want to use.  Also I had read that PT simply runs better on a Mac.  'Nuff said.  OK so how about Cubase then?  I obtained a trial of version 5, installed it, set up my audio interface and did some test recordings, which seemed to work ok, but then got horrendous buzzing and clicking on playback.  I tried disabling running processes on my PC, tried another ASIO driver, but couldn't get rid of the noise.  I honestly thought my interface must be faulty.

I was about to give up on the whole computer angle again when I read somewhere on the net about an open-source DAW called Reaper, and a lot of people were raving about it.  Intrigued, I downloaded the fully-working trial version (bit dubious about it being only 6MB!), mainly to test my audio interface.  Lo and behold, everything just worked from the off.  I tested recording 10 simultaneous tracks - no problems, and the CPU was barely breaking a sweat.  Even the dreaded latency with my slightly-dated USB audio interface is pretty good.  What’s really impressing me is the intuitiveness of the software – even with my extremely limited knowledge of computer DAWs I’m figuring out quickly how to do stuff – not quite as quick as with the DPS yet, but I’m getting there.  It’s extremely configurable – the screen layout, icons, keyboard shortcuts, mouse-modifiers are all editable.  It's PC & Mac compatible, available in 32 & 64-bit, runs any VSTs, and you can even run it from a USB stick, which is handy.  Can you tell I like it? :-) The official user forum is really helpful, and there doesn’t seem to be any of the bitchiness you get in most online forums these days.  Needless to say I will be buying the $60 licence shortly.  Yep, that’s less than 10% of the cost of an equivalent Pro-Tools/Cubase setup.  I would highly recommend anyone who’s not 100% happy with their current DAW to give it a try.

A toaster - this is not compatible with REAPER

P.S. I’ve not always been “anti-computer” when it comes to recording music.  Back in the early 90s I owned an Atari ST.  It had 512KB (no, not MB) of RAM and didn’t even have an internal hard drive!  I even bought a second one (though I can’t for the life of me remember why) with a mighty 4MB of RAM.  As well as the obligatory gaming use (ah the hours wasted playing Dungeon Master) and basic word processing it was also used for recording my (at that stage very naïve) song ideas.  But how could it record music without a hard drive?  Well, the ST was quite unique at the time due to its built-in MIDI ports.  MIDI files being small could fit quite easily onto floppy drives.  This led it to become very popular amongst musicians, and it really was the forerunner for PC/Mac based studios.

Without this there would be no Cubase or Pro-Tools!

* due to largely historical rather than logistical reasons, most of the keyboard parts for IQ’s Frequency album were recorded via MIDI, and then edited at the studio.  For recording my parts I utilised a free version of Cubase on my PC (1.0LE!) which came with my soundcard.  So, because it was MIDI, the keyboard parts you actually hear on the CD are a) not necessarily my sounds, and b) not necessarily the notes that I played.  In actual fact, at one point I asked my wife to play in part of one of the songs.  Nobody was any the wiser (until now…)