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Rick Beato on Quantizisation in Music

Foggy72

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Jun 7, 2010
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442
Rick explains how today's music is essentially a drum machine track, with all other musical parts synced to it. The use of Pro-Tools is explained. This is why today's pop music is so lifeless and sterile. And so annoying.


 

Ed Driscoll

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I'm not sure how much you can blame computers -- bands with live drummers have been recording to click tracks since at least the 1970s, in order to keep the tempos consistent and be able to edit takes together and fly in parts. But something happened around the 1990s where great melodies and/or interesting lyrics seems to have been increasingly jettisoned. I hear new music on the gym's muzak and on Sirius-XM in the car, and it reminds me of the last 20 years or so of superhero movies: the production values are brilliant; mixing has become a science, but it's rare to hear a soul in the machine somewhere. And yes, I know how old I sound typing this stuff.

Or to put it another way:

 

Foggy72

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......but it's rare to hear a soul in the machine somewhere. And yes, I know how old I sound typing this stuff.

Lol...I just turned 70 last week. As Groucho said - " A man is only as old as the girl he feels".

But it's not a generational thing to criticize today's pop music. Rick's video explains it quite clearly I think. And yes, his title had a bit of click-bait to it, so fair enough to him.
:band
 

sonar

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Jan 10, 2003
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Eh...

Most massed consumed pop music has has always kind of sucked, targeting the lowest common denominator. I don't buy technology being the catalyst for sterile lifeless music. The mentioned technology is only a reflection of the programmer.

I like to think people who actually care about music dig deeper than the pap that is fed to them over the airwaves. And there's evidence that this demographic crosses generations...

"Spotify figures reveal that Beatles songs have been streamed nearly 1.7 billion times during 2019 and that 30 percent of listeners were in the 18-24 age group."

 

somebodyelseuk

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Jun 10, 2020
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Don't blame the tools. Blame the users.
Click tracks have been in use since the 60s.
 

Bob Womack

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Early on in the '80s I discerned that the MIDI-based, somewhat mechanistic music makers were using guitar as a "wild card," a non-clocked element to add humanity to the clocked music of the period. You can turn a good guitarist loose over a quantized MIDI rhythm section and suddenly it has a soul again.


It is something I use when I am sent music to "fix" these days. I also specifically don't quantize or snap to grid because it removes humanity. When editing I hand place events on the grid.

Bob
 

Texas Blues

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Apr 13, 2008
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Computers haven't ruined ever thang.


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Love your family.

And love the one you're with.
 

Keefoman

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Nov 4, 2009
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Great drummers (or bands for that matter) can play to a clicktrack and still make it groove, swing or whatever. Using a clicktrack don't mean that a track must be quantizised as Beato shows in the beginning of the clip.
 

metropolis

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Sep 14, 2018
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It is something I use when I am sent music to "fix" these days. I also specifically don't quantize or snap to grid because it removes humanity. When editing I hand place events on the grid.

Bob

I was the same when I did a lot of programming (mainly drums). It's time consuming but can make all the difference with feel.

I find it amazing how many players have no concept of playing ahead of or behind the beat. I must admit the first time I played with a drummer who was deliberately affecting his timing like that it took a while for me to concentrate on him and ignore the click.

It reminds me of Frank Zappa when he first got into the synthclavier and proclaimed he was now delighted he could put pieces out without mistakes (he never wanted people to interpret what he had written). Sadly the technology at the time didn't allow for much in the way of dynamics so that work has dated quite a lot now, but I really see similarities in bands who build completely quantised songs.
 
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