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The wonders of audio.....
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___kaz
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 14:44:29
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With the advent of audio work in cubase, people discovered new parts in musical control. Control, which has always been the sound doctors' greatest ambition has been achieved. You can control everything, add as many effects, tweak it again, and again, and again, and do it ALL without the lack of control caused by manual work.
I'll give credit to Miki Litvak, which first told me this point, and added to it, that it's killing the spirit of trance music. I personally didn't agree 100% at the time (Hallucinogen live, in the beginning of Serge's set)... But hearing the tracks of 2001, after giving it some thought... It's a strong point. Haldolium, Bitmonx, Native Radio, a million others....
You can hear how controlled every beat is, how the whole track is based down to the smallest detail on a certain groove. I like dancing to it. It works, everyone notices that. It's very proffesional, very well produced time after time. But there's a huge difference in attitude over what we got to know a few years ago. No more going crazy with knobs on synths (I fall for it every time I hear it), use a mouse to make it more accurate on cubase. No live work on the synth, you do it perfect once and move it to audio, so it'll be exactly the same every time... You get the point.
There's something very mechanical about the modern sounds in trance. This total control in a way blocks the possibility of going wild to the limit.
Hallucinogen - Trancespotter, Koxbox - Electronic Brainwash... You can hear the game going on there, the human touches which make the tracks so unpredictably RIGHT.
... And in a way, that's lost now. Is it because of the artists today, or because of the tools they use? I really don't think that the total difference in attitude between 1998 and 2002 can be attributed only to fassion in sound and style.
... Or am I wrong? |
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___ChillCrew
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 16:26:22
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what your saying, in a nutshell, is that computers make the man... i disagree. behind every track is a human being, even if he's not Tweaking the knobs real time or playing the synth real time, he's still putting in his soul. |
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___kaz
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 16:34:34
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No, I'm saying that it's a lot more so than it was 3-4 years ago (and a hell of a lot more than before that). You can put your soul in a mathematical formula, but you can't make a mathematical formula for your soul. That's what I'm saying. |
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___OA
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 17:45:30
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I hear ya - Oforia is sounding pretty good - - -
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___ChillCrew
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 17:15:08
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Asaf, now that you made clear of your intentions, I totally agree with you :-) |
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___Karp
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 18:23:14
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I think trance is heading to a diferent direction not because of "audio" there's much more things behind it.... time passes things changes and you feel the nostalgia. Look out of the window. Now what you just saw, already passed, and if you look out again you'll have a different view... |
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___MichaelA
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 20:09:46
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Lemme guess, you were hearing Hallucinogen - LSD while writing this? ;-)
[quote]There's something very mechanical about the modern sounds in trance. This total control in a way blocks the possibility of going wild to the limit.[/quote]I don't think so. Maybe because it is more accurate, it is better. You don't have to waste time on trying to turn the knob right over and over again. Instead of the frustration you get from it, you have time and power to do something useful.
I've tried both realtime knob-turning and computer programmed knob-turning (it doesn't have to be Cubase) and the programmed work sound much more proffesional and "smooth". The emotion is still there, but now better.
It blocks the possibility of going wild to the limit? I don't think so. I don't think that you have enough fingers and control over them to accurately move 20 knobs and play something at the same time. Computers can do it, then why not use it? I think that everything sound mechanical today only because styles changed. I would love to see Goa with today's technology. I think it will sound more emotional than ever, thanks to the more accurate control over sound. |
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___kaz
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 20:07:49
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It's not a matter of taste here.
I do prefer goa to what we hear to day, but I'm over it. I've learned to love minimal and techtrance, Electric Tease with the housy grooves and so on. What I'm saying is that these styles demand control, but people are going overboard with it. Nothing is done realtime, and using a mouse to set something is just not the same as doing it directly. People are making the process between the soul and the music longer and longer, in the name of control and production (which are very important), and it's getting so thick that it's a barrier that's blocking out more and more. And yes, Audio work is one hell of a leap forward for that attitude, and as much as it makes things easier (and affordable), only a few people really shine through that barrier, and even less shine as brightly. |
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___spin@
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Posted : Jan 14, 2002 22:06:15
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asaf... i 2nd u in every word! |
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___mk@y11
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Posted : Jan 15, 2002 02:36:37
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yes audio is great and we are able to do things that weren't possible b4 and audio is making things easier and more mechanical...though i do belive 4 myself midi is a must to have those main synthlines rolling along while be able to tweak them or 4 just live efx...but having that synth and having that sudden impulse of creating something new and on impulse will always be more enjoyable 4 me over fiddling mindlessly with the mouse and software audio... |
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___d-r-o-n-e
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Posted : Jan 15, 2002 03:00:10
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what i don't understand here is why should one prefer live movement from perfect movement.
if you say you believe it's better why do you feel a little dissapointed...
is what you explained here the true reason or is it because you miss "those days"... because you try without knowing it to find faults where there aren't any, just because the feeling is different..
artists like Hallucinogen and Koxbox have mastered their technics throughout the years. i don't believe that most of us actually understood the difference when the "live kickin'" was different from one party to the other and even if some of us did, that surely isn't "the thing" that made the different.
i myself have passed from goa and psy to techtrance. not just listening to it but making it too. like mike said, more perfect knob tweakings can definitely create a better feeling from one or two live plays. |
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___kaz
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Posted : Jan 15, 2002 13:46:41
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what I'm saying is that I know that today music is more proffesional, and I like it a lot. I also said that even though I prefer goa at heart, I don't miss it as a style, I miss it's spirit, which can still be duplicated in other styles (eg. X-Dream - Panic in Paradise), and it's rarely done. There is a growing lack of spontaneus feeling in the music, and yes, even though it's hard to do proffesionally, it's still possible (again, the tweaking in Hallucinogen - Trancespotter is mcuh more "natural" than what we hear today, and at least as powerfull). People just don't bother trying to make it sound richer when it can sound accurate. Letting the machine do too much is just as bad as not using it at all. |
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___TrancEisT
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Posted : Jan 15, 2002 15:05:41
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hah.... what a coinsidence.
i had the same thoughts running through my head the past week....
i started listening again to old goa and i found out that it's not...
not SHARP. it's alive... it's like a living thing that isn't set digitally nano seconds by nano second... you can actually hear some glitches... that are not glitches - they are the music kicking alive.
as you said asaf... the music is getting more and more mechanical and more precise... it's getting tottaly DIGITAL.
along with that amazing precision and the great feel it gives you when you listen to it ( after all, we as humans LOVE things whitch are precise... excellent and perfect ).. but it lacks the living factor...
as everything in life... there are positive sides and negative sides - learn to utilize them correctly and happy you will be.... |
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___GuyShanti
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Posted : Jan 15, 2002 15:52:15
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well Assaf - u can always get an mc505 and tweak knobs for a bit and get it out of your system ;)
I dont think that whats killing the spirit is the advance in computers. whats killing the genre is the music itself - it is not really progressing lately. I think too many people are busy doing the standard rather then experiment with groove. on the other hand we r now in the situation where rock n roll was 8-10 years ago - all the possible chord/rythm/distortion combinations have been done and no space for originality was left. so we had oasis.
what I basicly saying is that music makers should start digging deeper cuz trance is getting boring too quickly.
Guy |
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___kaz
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Posted : Jan 15, 2002 16:19:14
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Actually, what you're saying is from a musical point of view. I ignored the music (since musical style is something that can be argued about). I just pointed out the difference in sound - control vs. spontaneous reaction vs. creativity - and said that control comes instead of spontaneous reaction, and with the advent of total digital control, it also harms creativity in a way.
We get the chicken and the egg here.... what was first? The music which demanded total control, or the tools that give it? And did both of them stop the movement forward that was the definition of the trance scene up to y2k, and replaced it with just being more proffesional at what people are already doing?
It may seem like a small thing - the tools in which artists control sound, but it's implications are much greater. |
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