Here now, to start the festivities, is my new official soapbox issue.
Save The Drummers!
Got that? Keep that in mind. Make it a mantra. Save The Drummers! A call to action, a groundswell, a grass roots movement.
If we do this right, if we raise awareness, the solutions to seemingly larger problems will fall in to place.
First order of business, we have to stop the grid. We need to end it now! No more recording of music with grid-based software. No more after the fact editing, shifting the drums around in cyberspace until they sound utterly inhuman. The placement of individual drum hits should be decided by a human being; a drummer. A guy with a wicked foot not a guy with a wicked mouse hand.
Music has three possible elements; melody, harmony and rhythm. The grid effectively destroys any individual performance characteristics of fully 1/3 of the sonic landscape.
You wouldn’t allow that with other things you enjoy. New Cheetos! Featuring 1/3 less flavor! “Ooh baby, when I see you in that red dress, I just want to make love to you 2/3 of the night long.”
The grid and it’s evil sibling, the click, are so prevalent that, generations now, of drummers have come up hearing nothing but perfectly placed percussive strikes. Consequently, the “best” drummers of this age sound like they are on the grid even when they aren’t. Lifeless, boring, stiff.
Also, we must eliminate the click track from live performance. In order to duplicate the sound of the grid, in a live setting, with the illusion of a human element; the drummer has a relentless, cold, fascist clicking sound piped in to his eardrum in order to keep any outburst of percussive creativity subdued. Tempo shall never vary from one performance to the next. All drum performance shall be uniform.
Live has nothing to do with the rhythm of life.
Listening to music has been transformed in to conformism. That’s what’s wrong with the music! The personality, the life, the soul has been sucked out of it! Life is not perfect. Humans aren’t perfect. Tempo, laid down by a human isn’t perfect but, it can make you shake your moneymaker.
Rhythm is the foundation that the house is built on. Sterile drums+brilliant vocal=boring record.
What set you off, Jack?
Thanks for asking. I saw this article over at Music Radar called “18 Steps To The Perfect Sampled Drum Sound”.
Here’s the thing; the evil is a lot worse than most folks are aware of. See, there is a studio trick that’s used on a massive scale. This is the use of sampled drums. Sometimes, the drummer will actually be allowed on the cutting floor. They will let him set up his kit, throw some mics in front of it, get good signals or, as they say, “good drum information” and let the poor sap bash around a bit.
After the drummer leaves, and after all of his performance on each individual drum has been shuffled around to the proper places on the grid, the producers/engineers/editors will then take the sound of each individual percussive device and replace that sound with a drum “sample”. This sample could be one of an actual drum recorded in an ideal environment, it may be one that is lifted from another record or, it can be a digitally manufactured fantasy drum.
So, what we have is a drummer who has had any individual performance characteristics regarding placement of beats removed then, to top it off, stripped of any tonal individuality.
OK, now back to this piece that set me off, “18 Steps To The Perfect Sampled Drum Sound”. I read through the whole deal and here’s the part that should interest someone who is not a musician or recording engineer…
18. Humanise
While using repetitive, consistent drum hits is OK for dance music, if you’re trying to get a more realistic, human-sounding drum part and your sampler has a randomised ’round robin’ feature, use it to cycle through different drum sounds at random. As long as your drum samples are similar-sounding, this trick will enhance the believability of your drum parts. The more drum samples you use, the more convincing the feel. Subtle timing changes to individual hits can enhance the effect.
The whole idea is to fool the listener. Play the listener for a chump and all hail the omniscient grid.
Conformity! That’s what wrecking this joint! Don’t you see it? Don’t you hear it?
Everything is manufactured. Everything is processed. I’m talking food, shelter, water even body parts. Rampant conformism and we all just consume it.
Conformity and art don’t mix.
The antidote in non-conformism. That’s the only way to stop the poison. Are there going to be boundaries for the looming artificial intelligence? Are there personal places it won’t be allowed to touch?
My friends, the sound of the revolution starts with the thunder of the drums!
Save The Drummers!
I love live performance and what you say about the human characteristics of drumming is true, Jack. It’s “real” and worth every nickel of the cover charge. The guys that show up at my studio don’t fill those shoes. They don’t even come close.
Now that you’ve unveiled all my secrets to making my drum tracks, how can I possibly hold my head up around a real drummer? Trouble is, though, every time I’ve tried to track a real drummer, it ends up being an all day affair, with most of it waiting on him to arrive, get back from lunch, finish his smoke break, etc… Find me a professional drummer who won’t waste my time and I’ll leave all the studio tricks in the box. The best recording gigs are always when the group tracks everything at once and it’s so tight that no one wants any overdubs. How many of these do I get in a year? One, if I’m lucky. Life’s too short to put up with bad drumming. Give me Strike or a bunch of samples any day. And I’m not even going to go into the nightmare of miking the set and trying to get a good sound from drummers who don’t own their own drum keys.
Maybe we should be touting the joys of taking lessons from great teachers. Or set up a licensing procedure for owning a drumset. Or maybe I should move to a big town and stop complaining about the small fish around here.
I’ll shut up now.
-J
OK J, you that I know what you’re talking about. Is it possibly to the point where these guys get away with complete lack of professional mindset, skills and drive to attain them because, they will never be called on to use them?
I also know that you would spot the difference immediately if you heard it. If a guy walked in to your place with a set of old Luds, two racks and a floor tom, crash, ride hat that were tuned and sounding peach; a guy that was instant groove, you could grab three condensers and go to town. Fact is, I know guys that are world class musicians that have no choice in the matter and are forced to play with a click live. How can it be that the people calling those shots can’t figure out that it would be so much better without it?
You make a great point about capable folks having their hands tied in a studio. Many producers expect to replace real sound with samples and will require the tracking to a click accordingly. But any engineer with editing chops can do a manual tempo map and accomplish the same things without a click. The engineer, in the purest sense is just a hired gun; normally they aren’t asked to make those decisions. They just do what is expected. Perhaps we should consider creating the Pribek Producer Training Institute. Many producers have the attitude disease; –you can’t tell ‘em anything. Cesar Milan is probably the only guy that could change their behavior.
Yeah, that’s something that goes on I guess. I like a situation where nobody is hung up on the titles. Engineers produce sometimes, producers engineer sometimes, three hands on the desk if needed, maybe the guitar player has to lay down a clave part.
Cesar may have a spin-off, “The Producer Whisperer”.
The drummer may be the first to complain about the Matrix, but we’re all in there.
We were listening to Duane Allman playing on Boz Skagg’s version of “Loan Me A Dime” last night and I made the comment that I loved his playing because it was so human. There was no way you could mistake his chops for a machine because they weren’t ‘perfect’ in that they sound like a long-haired guy playing an instrument. But therein lies the ‘perfection’ of the listening experience. It’s yet another subtle form of tension.
Then you get players who put so much effort into absolute accuracy as opposed to ‘feel’ that they could be replaced by a machine.
And you get the engineer who quantises your performance and pitch-shifts vocals and bum notes to drag them back in tune.
We’re all in the Matrix. It’s not just the drummers!
Ever since Terminator, we “Toasters” have been getting the worst rap. See my picture, I am more you than you are you…
http://www.wired.com/images/article/full/2008/04/battlestar_galactica_630px.jpg
I know you “skin jobs” are all asking the same question:
You see, drummers have entered the Cylon struggle. Those stage band drummers are now in the “throw away zone” of the “rip and burned” CD industry. We are witness to the “throw away generation.” No one needs the wrapper.
We know no one even cares about the package anymore. We witness those who want music they can upload, show their buddies and just throw away, as they reload another thousand songs… on their “mech devices.”
Drummer, don’t even bother to set up. You won’t be on stage longer than 150 seconds anyway.. we got you covered.
We even have a ticker to sound our “Drums of War” right in our helmets, and it isn’t digital, or atomic… it’s quantum riff. We found out that the Japanese produce 160 grams of gold in every 4 tons of their raw sewage… (China Daily) Tell me if you can find gold in this emotional drivel and nostalgic crap? You are weakling humans… we would exterminate you, if you weren’t such interesting lab rats.
We don’t like something, back into the recyclers it goes.
What, you ask, replicate fade?
No losing the religion over it.
Diatomaceous earth?
What’s that?
Static Dust?
Oh.
Noodle baker:
If a machine were capable of emulating a human with absolute precision, would that precision be what would eventually distinguish it from a person?