Does music still need big budgets?

[pklima]

Obviously, a lot of big stuff in music was invented by full-time professionals with budgets. Franz Joseph Haydn needed an orchestra of trained professionals with high-quality instruments to come up with a lot of the harmony ideas we all still use today. Cher's "modern" use of autotune as an effect was on a big-budget record, and even a few years later T-Pain popularized autotune after he was signed by Akon - back when it was not cheap and could not be simulated with a free VST plugin. Approve or disapprove of this, that was a big influential change.

But I got to thinking after reading these sentences this morning...

Politics these days is just the old elites fighting to maintain their old privileges in a world where technology has made them obsolete. In principle, art and other culture only improves when it is done as a hobby. We can already see the signs of how much better it is when the authors don't need to produce to make a living and nobody has to take himself seriously even if you made something whose economic yield is not evident to the most short-sighted and greedy.

The Fourth Checkraise: Admire the graph, learn stuff from it

I'll admit I'm biased here, as I sincerely believe that the desire to be respected and taken seriously is the worst, most destructive thing in music, but with that disclaimer out of the way...

Do we still need professionals and big budgets to invent new stuff in music? After all cheap Chinese factory basses are decent, much better than the low-end basses of the 1960s or 1980s. An average computer with some basic software, free plugins and free loops and samples can be used to produce a decent-sounding record. The tools to do the next revolutionary stuff are now cheap and available to pretty much any kid from a First World middle class family and even many in the Third World, aren't they? Sure there's expensive stuff, but it's better than the cheap stuff these days - it's not completely different except for maybe a few things like pipe organs.

I'm not saying we need to pass laws to make it illegal to pay musicians to do whatever we do; I sure like getting paid, and I'm also all for Rihanna getting paid. I'm saying that music has low barriers to entry nowadays, and that is a very good thing. I don't think big budgets are necessary to invent new stuff anymore. Or am I wrong? Is there still fancy expensive stuff out there that's necessary to come up with the sort of musical innovations that many thousands will reuse?

[champbassist]

Speaking primarily about the recording aspect of this, I definitely agree with you and also with the fact that it's great that the entry barrier has been lowered.

I know bands from around here (especially metal bands) who have made recordings with incredible production values. Maybe I don't have a great ear for production, but, listening to many of these songs, I realized that if someone gave me a recording made by one of these local groups and told me it was produced by a studio which produces for first rate metal bands in the US, I would believe him/her completely.

[Chris Fitzgerald]

I think it's a great question. In principle, I think the answer is "no", as long as the innovation under discussion doesn't involve a skill set that that would involve a time outlay that a regular person supporting themselves couldn't manage. And I agree that "to make money" is a horrible reason to create art - although competition can be and is a great incentive to practice.

Technology aside, I can do no better than quote Alan Watts on the subject:

Originally Posted by Alan Watts

What is Scholarship?
"Do you know what Scholarship means? What a school means? The original meaning of a scholar?

Leisure.

Scholarship is to study everything that’s unimportant. Not necessary for survival. All the charming irrelevancies of life.

But you see the thing is this. If you don’t have a room in your life for the playful, life’s not worth living. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. But if the only reason for which Jack plays is that he can work better afterwards, he’s not really playing. He’s playing because it’s good for him. He’s not playing at all!

To be a true scholar you have to cultivate an attitude to life where you’re not trying to get anything out of it. You pick up a pebble on the beach and look at it. It’s beautiful. Don’t try to get a sermon out of it. Sermons and Stones and God and everything be damned. Just enjoy it.

Don’t feel that you’ve got to salve your conscience by saying that this is for the advancement of your aesthetic understanding. Enjoy the pebble. If you do that you’ll become healthy. You become able to be a loving helpful human being. But if you can’t do that, if you can only do things because somehow you're going to get something out of it, you’re a vulture."

[staindbass]

you are correct, you dont need big budgets to invent new stuff. but you need the expensive studios to capture it if you want it to sound like the pro's. people think the plug in on their computer works as well as a 1958 pultec preamp... it doesnt.

[Lambic]

As an aficionado of recordings of the acoustic era, when technology was so primitive that the power and the inventiveness of a record had to come mainly, if not totally, from the performers, I'm more than sceptic towards impressively built and equipped studio's (and stages...), but I feel that a musician being paid or not for what he's doing is a totally different item.

[Jools4001]

Yes you still need a big budget, but it depends what it is you are spending it on.

If you are trying to get a band set up with stage or studio equipment, I agree, it has never been cheaper in real terms to buy equipment that, just a few years ago, would have been considered 'state of the art'. Going over a longer timescale, today's freeware/shareware DAWs are more sophisticated than a lot of stuff that bands had available to them in the studio (the often quoted Sgt. Pepper made on a 4 track). So from a budgetary point of view, do you need to spend more money (in real terms) to get the same level of equipment? Clearly no, but then creating new and inventive music has never really been about how big a gear budget you have.

Where you REALLY need a big budget is in the time that you and/or your band members need to put into the creation of this music. As we all know, time costs money. You want to work full time on your music, well, be prepared to have a stack of money behind you to support yourself while you're doing this (or be prepared to starve). Obviously, big bands with (increasingly rare) record company budgets behind them or large fortunes from previous endeavours aren't going to have to worry about this, so a big budget helps.

Then you've got to promote yourself. The cheap cost of equipment and the availability of the internet means that the task of sifting the nuggets of gold from the tons of worthless rock has moved from the record company's A&R guys to the individual, so if you want to make money to support your music, be prepared to put a lot of time and money into marketing yourself so that you can raise your profile above the internet swamp...even then, be prepared for the fact that nobody pays for music anymore.

So the only way to make money is to put on live gigs, and the only way to do that is back to the days of being endlessly on the road, which all costs money, and if you want to put on a show to pull in the crowds, be prepared to pay through the nose to fund the equipment and people you'll need to make it work...so yes, one of the constant truths of life is that everything is easier with a big bankroll behind you.

[teleharmonium]

This is a strange question. What do you mean by "invent new stuff" ? Are you suggesting that the goal is simply to have new stuff, regardless of quality or specific characteristics ?

[Dirk Diggler]

Just because the gear these days is cheap and workable quality does not guarantee you know how to use it.
I've been a musician and audio engineer for quite a while, and mixing and recording does require some unique and practiced skills.
So bottom line yes you can produce and "invent new stuff" for very little.

Modern pop bands these days rather than spend money on production usually just hire dancers.

Dirk

[pklima]

Originally Posted by teleharmonium

This is a strange question. What do you mean by "invent new stuff" ? Are you suggesting that the goal is simply to have new stuff, regardless of quality or specific characteristics ?

It is kind of a strange question, but to clarify what I mean by "invent new stuff"... I mean come up with a musical concept that thousands or millions of people will reuse. I don't mean new stuff that's new but doesn't catch on enough to be widely influential, like this:



And yeah, that's fake, but clearly unlikely to be influential.

[Martin89]

This reminds me of that documentary with Jack White, Jimmy Page, and The Edge. There are many ways to skin a cat. Sometimes it takes big budgets, other times it doesn't. The Edge's ridiculous pedalboard is what I think about big budgets in music because each song in his set uses a different guitar, amp, such and such effects. But each song is unique and that's important to him. U2 created a lot of inspiring music and is simplistic but effects based to add to the overall feel. But he started out with one guitar and no big budget.

[teleharmonium]

Originally Posted by pklima

It is kind of a strange question, but to clarify what I mean by "invent new stuff"... I mean come up with a musical concept that thousands or millions of people will reuse. I don't mean new stuff that's new but doesn't catch on enough to be widely influential(...)

What do you mean by reuse ? Does that mean listen to, or does it mean create other music under that influence ?

I take it that the idea of being influential is important or interesting to you.

Are you suggesting that the value of music is in proportion to it's influence on other music ?

Just so I'm providing some input from my side of this discussion, I don't particularly care about influence or newness, outside of the thing being created or influenced being subjectively good or important to me in some way.

Bad and mediocre ideas spread like wildfire, I don't consider that a phenomena that requires assistance or praise.

I'm all for the democratization of music production, but that in no way means that the results of low budget projects are the same as those from big budget projects. Either can be good or bad but they both have unique tendencies and potential.

If your goal is to make the next "Raw Power" or "the Message", that should not be a problem on a low budget from an engineering point of view.

On the other hand, if your goal is to make the next "Smile" or "Scott 4" on a low budget, ie involving many world class players of real instruments, you're going to fail, now and for the forseeable future.

Whether this is a problem depends on where your tastes lie on that spectrum, I guess... however, every persons tastes are a moving target, more than most people realize (especially younger people). Selecting a value system about how music should be based on your current tastes may not be a good idea.

[pklima]

Originally Posted by teleharmonium

What do you mean by reuse ? Does that mean listen to, or does it mean create other music under that influence ?

I take it that the idea of being influential is important or interesting to you.

I'm just idly wondering about whether the next big game-changing widely-copied ideas in music will come from some kid messing around on his mom's laptop, or from a skilled full-time professional musician. Who will shape the music that people will be making 20 years from now? Will music be much different if it slips out of the control of skilled elites and is shaped by ideas that came from random kids?

I have absolutely no practical reason for thinking about any of this, though. This is just about what I think I think.

[teleharmonium]

Originally Posted by pklima

I'm just idly wondering about whether the next big game-changing widely-copied ideas in music will come from some kid messing around on his mom's laptop, or from a skilled full-time professional musician. Who will shape the music that people will be making 20 years from now? Will music be much different if it slips out of the control of skilled elites and is shaped by ideas that came from random kids?

I have absolutely no practical reason for thinking about any of this, though. This is just about what I think I think.

I don't have a specific guess, but I will make the point that music and technology and information are connected, but are all different things.

Trends in technology (in some fields, anyway) tend to show rapid, unsentimental changes. Because of the interconnectedness in technology and modern music, music has taken on some of the rapid change dynamic. This doesn't mean it will necessarily continue to do that. Technology is a vehicle for music, it's not it's nature.

Music is old and it connects to larger cultural needs and purposes. Culture can have a different kind of resilience than technology. And it may not always serve the needs of culture to latch onto whatever is new. Newness is fascinating to people, but so are emotion, skill, drama, ways to safely explore other perspectives than their own, and other things that they need.

People without much knowledge of music making slightly cute or clever music on computers won't seem new forever; all of these things are relative and have to do with familiarity and expectations.

Some kinds of pop music are intended to be confections that don't last and are simple light entertainment, and that's OK, but IMO it's a mistake to think that this can fulfill all of the underlying needs that music can serve.

[pklima]

I don't really disagree with any of that, but I think that something like T-Pain's use of autotune is successful and important precisely because it helps music serve and connect to some of those older, larger cultural needs and purposes better than it could without it, just like the use of distortion did earlier to an even greater degree. Yes, seriously.

The technological inventions were useful, but the person who figured out how to use it to connect with the audience better is the most important one... Now money and social status aren't much of a barrier to being that person anymore. Do other big barriers, like doing music full-time, still exist? That I'm not sure about.

That's really what I'm thinking about, and, well, it's not really important at all, haha. Just idle pondering. Thanks for helping me clarify my ponderings.

[teleharmonium]

Originally Posted by pklima

I don't really disagree with any of that, but I think that something like T-Pain's use of autotune is successful and important precisely because it helps music serve and connect to some of those older, larger cultural needs and purposes better than it could without it, just like the use of distortion did earlier to an even greater degree. Yes, seriously.

I'm not really seeing that.

What sort of criteria would you use to define auto-tune-as-an-effect as satisfying fundamental cultural needs as opposed to having novelty (which is always temporary) ?

I would be willing to admit novelty to the list of cultural needs, I suppose, but it wouldn't be at the top of the list.

It seems to me that people that meet basic cultural needs are rewarded with longevity in their appeal. Maybe this isn't perfect, but it's at least a reasonable theory. Great songwriters and singers tend to be remembered.

Stuff that reminds people of a certain time has value, and it doesn't have to be great. How much novelty figures into it is hard to say. As an example of that, consider Peter Frampton, once a very famous musician, he still has a career today but much, much smaller than in his heyday in the 70s. His most famous songs involved the talkbox for some of the guitar solos, which was new to most people when he did it, and is now a dated obscurity. Do people (ok, mostly Americans) of a certain age remember him fondly because of the talkbox sound ? Or is it the songs, or the vocals ? Or is it the nostalgic associations of what their life was like back then ?

It's a hard question to answer. Distinctive sounds can be strong memory triggers. I wouldn't call those songs masterpieces, but they're pretty good simple pop music that sets a mood. It has to be on the short list of definitive music to evoke the time it came out, when most people were busy ignoring punk, when Abba and Captain & Tennille and the like were big if you were a kid with a radio, just before Saturday Night Fever, Never Mind the Bollocks, and Star Wars.

Maybe the real question is; are people going to want to remember the times they think of when they heard a lot of T-Pain ? That's a serious question and it's not really about T-Pain. Maybe this is what will determine whether T-Pain will be a Peter Frampton, or an MC Hammer.

[pklima]

The criterion I have in mind is this - will thousands of people who perform music still be using pitch correction in a T-Painish way 30 years from now? I'd guess that it's already hit critical mass and they will. But forget autotune and T-Pain for a sec.

Distortion effects might be a less controversial example of the same thing, since it's already survived well over 30 years. I don't know who invented it, who first used it, or even who first got famous using it, but it obviously worked well for our culture and changed music for the long term. It turned out to be much more important than the talkbox.

So, the real question I have in mind is: who will invent the next thing that will be as big a game-changer as distortion? A hobbyist or a pro? Going further, will our culture continue to need people who are making music full-time?

[Ed Fuqua]

I think it's interesting that your entire conception of music and culture is centered around the market driven Western centric pop culture. That's not MUSIC, that's ONE ASPECT of music. And, to my ears, low entry barriers equal low quality output. The glut of recorded output by folks who would have never seen the inside of a recording studio hasn't improved the quality of what's available.

Ayn Rand's writing is the worst sort of fiction, but I did think she hit the nail on the head when she was talking about degrading quality; you don't have to convince people that works of genius aren't worth consideration, that's going to be very hard to do. All you really need to do is trumpet mediocre works as genius and devalue what "genius" means in a culture and you accomplish the same thing.

There was a group of artists in New York in the the 70s and 80s that started an independent program in the schools called KAOS (Kids and Artists in Our Schools or something like that) and they had a pretty telling soundbyte at the end of their program; one of the founders was asked about "finding artists in the schools" and he responded "What we found was that pretty much everybody was creative. But not everybody was an artist."

[teleharmonium]

Originally Posted by pklima

Distortion effects might be a less controversial example of the same thing, since it's already survived well over 30 years. I don't know who invented it, who first used it, or even who first got famous using it, but it obviously worked well for our culture and changed music for the long term. It turned out to be much more important than the talkbox.

An interesting example. But in what way and extent has it turned out to be important ? If you look at the cultural meaning and function of deliberate distortion, at one time it was a mostly unnoticed technique, then it gradually became popular and for a while was seen as aggressive and powerful. It expanded into a wider range of flavors.

But what happened after that ? It was coopted and taken for granted. There are kids songs and TV and radio show themes and commercials that use distortion, and people in nursing homes and elevators listening to it.


Looking at is as a whole - not just including Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Jimi Hendrix, but also nameless people trying to sell me electric razors and new cars - I'm not sure if it's a slam dunk that it has "worked out well" for us. It's just another sound, at this point. It can still be done well or poorly, in subtle or obvious fashion, but it has become detached from whatever perceived meaning it once had.

The jury is still very much out on whether distortion is a big deal in the long term. To a culture, 50 or 100 years is not a long time, even though that's an epoch in terms of modern technology.

This is all part of the same cultural process that created these trends in the first place. The foreign, ethnic, subversive, and frightening is transformed into quaint and meaningless over time, and this happens through a series of weak imitations. This is how "Hound Dog" went from Big Mama Thornton to Elvis Presley to the Muppets, getting closer to self parody each step along the way. (The original, of course, is both funnier and way more lowdown than Elvis' version, but Elvis' inferior version had access to a large white audience.)

I don't know if T-Pain was ever considered badass and frightening - I kind of doubt it - but if he ever was, he was that much less so, post Rebecca Black.

Originally Posted by pklima

So, the real question I have in mind is: who will invent the next thing that will be as big a game-changer as distortion? A hobbyist or a pro? Going further, will our culture continue to need people who are making music full-time?

I have no basis on which to guess as to the first question, but it's not so important to me. I'm a lot more into quality and what interests me personally, than I am interested in influence or popular developments. I like some things that are somewhat popular, and many more that aren't.

I just think it's a mistake to place a lot of value on trends. Life, like history, is full of people placing their bets on the wrong horses so to speak. Lots of things that seem important now, or seem like they'll stick around forever, will be in the dustbin fairly soon. Others may have a few decades before fading out. It all fades sooner or later, but key aspects of culture have shown they can outlast, or last as long as the most basic elements of, technology.

[teleharmonium]

Originally Posted by Ed Fuqua

Ayn Rand's writing is the worst sort of fiction, but I did think she hit the nail on the head when she was talking about degrading quality; you don't have to convince people that works of genius aren't worth consideration, that's going to be very hard to do. All you really need to do is trumpet mediocre works as genius and devalue what "genius" means in a culture and you accomplish the same thing.

exactly x 2.

This is my problem with cheerleading local music oriented papers and websites and such; they hype up mediocre bands to the skies, namechecking classic, genre defining artists in the same breath as local schlubs that do little more than wear their few influences on their sleeves. It's really a complete joke.

In the event that a truly important artist or album comes across these reviewers paths, what can they do ? Nobody believes their standard issue absurd hype any more, and even if they applied it, it wouldn't be enough for someone that they can recognize as being in the next level beyond the dross they are used to.

I understand that people want to be positive about their local scene, but don't pee on my leg and tell me it's raining.

[bassbrad]

Originally Posted by pklima

I'm just idly wondering about whether the next big game-changing widely-copied ideas in music will come from some kid messing around on his mom's laptop

Not very likely

Originally Posted by pklima

I'm just idly wondering about whether the next big game-changing widely-copied ideas in music will come from a skilled full-time professional musician.

Perhaps. But more likely from somewhere in between, someone least likely in the minds of most but someone who has put a lot of time and effort into their expression and exploration.

Might as well as who will be the next Coltrane, Parker Hendrix or Pastorious.