FSTDT Forums
Community => Entertainment and Television => Topic started by: Fpqxz on July 29, 2012, 10:46:24 am
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From Reuters newsfeed (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/26/science-music-idUSL6E8IOE3320120726):
Apparently some researchers in Spain used a computer to analyze millions of songs between 1955 and 2010, and discovered that they have gotten louder, but less diverse, over time.
"We found evidence of a progressive homogenisation of the musical discourse," Serra told Reuters. "In particular, we obtained numerical indicators that the diversity of transitions between note combinations - roughly speaking chords plus melodies - has consistently diminished in the last 50 years."
They also found the so-called timbre palette has become poorer. The same note played at the same volume on, say, a piano and a guitar is said to have a different timbre, so the researchers found modern pop has a more limited variety of sounds.
And people wonder why I listen to so much old stuff. 8)
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I'd like to see a specific analysis for dubstep, 'cause I swear, it all sounds the same.
As for the loudness wars... I remember seeing a visual analysis of progressive remasterings of older songs produced which pretty clearly showed a trend towards amplification, sacrificing the quality of the recording in the process (usually in the form of clipping).
Edit: Wiki has a pretty good example of it: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4d/Michael_Jackson-Black_or_White_Loudness.png
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I'd like to see a specific analysis for dubstep, 'cause I swear, it all sounds the same.
It is all the same, in a way. It MUST be 140bpm, have a steady downbeat, buildup and breakdown etc., basically the bar for dubstep is so narrow that the untrained ear has a problem seperating individual tracks.
Still better than most mainstream shit.
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Still better than most mainstream shit.
That's a bit of a stretch. Personally, I'd take even shitty pop music over dubstep, hands down.
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It is all the same, in a way. It MUST be 140bpm, have a steady downbeat, buildup and breakdown etc., basically the bar for dubstep is so narrow that the untrained ear has a problem seperating individual tracks.
My untrained ear can separate the individual tracks, but that doesn't make it any less bland to me.
Also, dubstep is pretty mainstream these days (and I don't mean brostep, either).
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My guess is it's because no one writes their own music anymore. Thanks to auto-tuning, musical celebrities are selected for their stage presence rather than their singing ability, and they merely provide a voice to a pre-manufactured song from a record mill. And thanks to the advent of things like Vocaloid, in the near future the recording industry won't even need "artists" anymore, they can synthesize an entire song from scratch.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTtki7hXC64
Now let's copy/paste the lyrics onto actual pop songs to see how well it fits...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBQFpQ4Ahdw&feature=plcp
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2fODKYG7lU&feature=plcp
I really hope this EDM phase that pop music is going through ends soon.
I'd like to see a specific analysis for dubstep, 'cause I swear, it all sounds the same.
It is all the same, in a way. It MUST be 140bpm, have a steady downbeat, buildup and breakdown etc., basically the bar for dubstep is so narrow that the untrained ear has a problem seperating individual tracks.
Still better than most mainstream shit.
And the "drop" is fucking ALWAYS at 0:55 seconds
Words cannot describe how much I wish dubstep could go back to the days of Skream, Benga, DMZ and Burial. Nowadays I tend to automatically avoid anything with the UKF label on it.
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Yeah I can't tell the difference between songs in dubstep, especially when people this "this artist is good" or "this one is better than that"
How can you tell, its all the same weird...wub wub wub WUBWUBWUBWB WUUUUUUUUB shit
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmnsNs5nMo4
Relevant bit ends at 0:32
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... And thanks to the advent of things like Vocaloid, in the near future the recording industry won't even need "artists" anymore, they can synthesize an entire song from scratch.
They worked very hard on that back in the early to mid 80s. It got at best mixed results.
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... And thanks to the advent of things like Vocaloid, in the near future the recording industry won't even need "artists" anymore, they can synthesize an entire song from scratch.
You know that people still have to make those songs, right? "Synthesized" doesn't mean that they just push a button and music pops out. The people who compose this stuff are still "artists" in the strict definition of the term.
Until computers can figure out how to make music on their own, the recording industry will still need artists to make it.
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Recently, something utterly remarkable happened in the pop music world. This song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY) hit #1 on the national music charts.
One of the most stereotypical hipster things I've ever heard.
And you know what? I'm actually happy with this development. Does this mean that the public is FINALLY getting tired of awful shallow club shit and vapid teen pop stars? Oh god I really fucking hope so.
I don't even particularly like the song that much, and yet I still find myself hoping that this is a sign of things to come. Fucking ANYTHING would be a welcome change from the awful corporate-manufactured sludge that we've suffered through for the past decade.
Because mediocre is a lot better than mind-numbingly awful.
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Recently, something utterly remarkable happened in the pop music world. This song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY) hit #1 on the national music charts.
One of the most stereotypical hipster things I've ever heard.
And you know what? I'm actually happy with this development. Does this mean that the public is FINALLY getting tired of awful shallow club shit and vapid teen pop stars? Oh god I really fucking hope so.
I don't even particularly like the song that much, and yet I still find myself hoping that this is a sign of things to come. Fucking ANYTHING would be a welcome change from the awful corporate-manufactured sludge that we've suffered through for the past decade.
Because mediocre is a lot better than mind-numbingly awful.
Quoted for truth. Because for as much as I hate hipsters and their bullshit, they are still better than "corporate-manufactured sludge" as you so accurately put it.
The problem is that whenever one particular style/genre of music gets popular, it invites a swarm of imitators, most of whom lack to talent and vision of those who originated it. Remember how crappy a lot of the post-1994 alternative rock was?
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Recently, something utterly remarkable happened in the pop music world. This song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY) hit #1 on the national music charts.
One of the most stereotypical hipster things I've ever heard.
And you know what? I'm actually happy with this development. Does this mean that the public is FINALLY getting tired of awful shallow club shit and vapid teen pop stars? Oh god I really fucking hope so.
I don't even particularly like the song that much, and yet I still find myself hoping that this is a sign of things to come. Fucking ANYTHING would be a welcome change from the awful corporate-manufactured sludge that we've suffered through for the past decade.
Because mediocre is a lot better than mind-numbingly awful.
Personally, I like the song because the intro reminds me of 60's pop. We could use an injection of other styles into music. ANY other styles.
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The problem is that whenever one particular style/genre of music gets popular, it invites a swarm of imitators, most of whom lack to talent and vision of those who originated it. Remember how crappy a lot of the post-1994 alternative rock was?
Because that's where the money is. I'm sure a long time ago pop music had quality, artists were talented and innovative (maybe), but then as it became popular record companies churned out shit in the hope of making a quick buck. Then generally over time people change tastes. Anything that gets wildly popular will go through this cycle.
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Because that's where the money is. I'm sure a long time ago pop music had quality, artists were talented and innovative (maybe), but then as it became popular record companies churned out shit in the hope of making a quick buck.
Lol, that's complete horse shit. Music of any genre and any era, be it 60's pop, 90's alternative rock, dubstep or R&B is flooded with absolute shit. For every genuinely talented musician, there's hundreds of others who make the musical equivalent of shovelware. It's just that as time goes on, people still remember the good stuff while the shit fades into obscurity (and more importantly, it stops being published in any form). It makes anything that happened over 10-20 years ago seem like a golden age by today's standards when it really was not.
I guarantee you that in the 2030's, people will be saying today's music is so much better than whatever it is they'll have.
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I would say your and my points are not mutually exclusive.
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I was referring specifically to your claim that "a long time ago pop music had quality".
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It happens all too often that A) shitty music becomes popular for a while, then falls off the charts and is seen as dated and lame just a few years later, while B) truly interesting, innovative music fails to become popular (or is relegated to cult status) only to be rediscovered years or even decades later, when a new generation of kids hear it and think "holy shit, this is awesome, why didn't these guys get bigger?"
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I was referring specifically to your claim that "a long time ago pop music had quality".
I did say maybe. Then again this isn't something I've put too much thought into, my two cents are probably worthless.
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1. Re: dubstep - it originally started in London as an outgrowth of UK garage, 2-step and other obscure breakbeat subgenres that never reached America. Through a game of Chinese whispers, Americans now know as "stuff that sounds like Skrillex". Frankly, this is a tragedy, as Skrillex is an utter hack with one particularly obnoxious trick, and this:
You know that people still have to make those songs, right? "Synthesized" doesn't mean that they just push a button and music pops out. The people who compose this stuff are still "artists" in the strict definition of the term.
...is almost not true in his case. In any event, I invite anyone here to Youtube the following: Skream, Distance, Kode9, Burial, 2562, Scuba. I'm not saying that you have to like the aforementioned, but at least the Skrillex disaster will have been averted.
</rant>
2. I can't help but feel these days that, in any aspect of society that involves wide-scale choice, where it's media, entertainment or (especially) elections, we're starting to get something of a short-circuit society. Because market research has become ever-more sophisticated, it now comes down to the most minute variations in order to grab the last possible vote/viewer from a given demographic, like the Isaac Asimov (?) story about an election where research pulls up one completely average voter and invites him to vote in leiu of everyone else. Politicians used to pitch policies and rely on the strength of argument; musicians would write songs and then hope they sold, but they couldn't have been sure. Now polling has Presidential elections granulated down to county level (in the UK, elections can and do pitch to specific wards if need be), and radios select their playlists on the basis of what a few hundred in a test group thought of 7-second clips of music, and the end result if it persists will potentially be a sort of cultural equivalent of Newspeak, an ever-narrowing mainstream across the board.
</thesis>
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Why does everyone always respond to criticism of dubstep with, "Listen to this --it's real dubstep! It's not the same as Skrillex!"? Even if you're not expecting us to like it, it still comes across as a tad condescending.
Edit: Though I agree that Skrillex is a special kind of evil, and would rather listen to "real" dubstep than his crap, even if I don't care for it.
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Recently, something utterly remarkable happened in the pop music world. This song (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY) hit #1 on the national music charts.
One of the most stereotypical hipster things I've ever heard.
And you know what? I'm actually happy with this development. Does this mean that the public is FINALLY getting tired of awful shallow club shit and vapid teen pop stars? Oh god I really fucking hope so.
I don't even particularly like the song that much, and yet I still find myself hoping that this is a sign of things to come. Fucking ANYTHING would be a welcome change from the awful corporate-manufactured sludge that we've suffered through for the past decade.
Because mediocre is a lot better than mind-numbingly awful.
Quoting my own post to say: Now that I've listened to that song a couple of times, I actually like it a lot more. I think the addition of the female vocalist completely changes the tone of the song. If it were just him, it would come across as a song by a whiny dick who can't handle a break-up. But once you add her verse, it becomes a song about a whiny dick who cant handle a break-up. There's a really nice contrast between his passive-aggressive guilt-tripping and her clear, concise response. There seems to be a lot more thought put into the lyrics than I first gave it credit for.
That xylophone in the background is fucking weird, though.
Also, I'm really glad I check the related videos because holy fuck that music video. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le34ygtODfI&feature=relmfu) I almost expected the words "A Hayao Miyazaki Film" to appear at the end.
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Edit: Though I agree that Skrillex is a special kind of evil, and would rather listen to "real" dubstep than his crap, even if I don't care for it.
Maybe it's just me, but I just get the urge to punch him in the face whenever I see him. Between the hipster glasses, the Emo fringe from hell and the fact that he thinks a Macbook is a musical instrument, he just gives of weapons grade "insufferable twat" vibes.
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Pretty sure if you were to write "pretentious" in sharpie on a blank piece of paper, it would spontaneously morph into an image of Skrillex.
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Edit: Though I agree that Skrillex is a special kind of evil, and would rather listen to "real" dubstep than his crap, even if I don't care for it.
Maybe it's just me, but I just get the urge to punch him in the face whenever I see him. Between the hipster glasses, the Emo fringe from hell and the fact that he thinks a Macbook is a musical instrument, he just gives of weapons grade "insufferable twat" vibes.
"Gives off"? More like "radiates with the force of a nuclear bomb." Then again, you did say "weapons grade"...
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I suppose it isn't just me then. Capital.
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Perhaps I'm just biased against artsy hipsters with Macs because the ones I've met have all been colossal douchebags.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pidokakU4I
Speaking of simiar-sounding pop songs...
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Along the same vein:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM