Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Everything we can't describe in music

hazlitt.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–117 of 117 posts

Re: Everything we can't describe in music

#111

Post by mp05 »

silver_silver wrote: post #99
mp05 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, well frankly most EDM fucking sucks and that's pretty much why. Your average cool guy "producer" doesn't know the first thing about intervals, counterpoint, or even basics like triads or major/minor scales. But they sure can twist knobs in a way that makes neat sounds!

Judging a piece based on its technical merit or the artist’s education is extremely limited and pretentious. There’s a tremendous amount of beautiful music made on laptops by people who have no formal training or knowledge of theory. Not everything full of synthesisers and samples is “EDM”.

> Not everything full of synthesisers and samples is “EDM”.

I didn't assert this.

Re: Everything we can't describe in music

#112

Post by cromniomancer »

CPLX wrote: post #86
schwartzworld wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when deprived of their attack transient, the sounds of two different instruments may become hard to tell apart A neat trick is playing guitar through a volume pedal. You mute the sound, pluck a string and then swell in the volume pedal. The rest of the ASDR envelope can be created with other effects like delays.

The song Cathedral by Van Halen is a particularly brilliant example of this. Except even more remarkable he used the knob on the guitar to do it rather than a pedal: https://youtu.be/3OqrWUooOJc?si=NJDoNGkSfJu0gM6X

And reportedly killed the volume pot on the second and final take:

"Eddie did two takes, and the volume knob froze completely at the end of the second take due to the heat generated from rolling it on and off."

https://www.vhnd.com/diver-down/cathedral/

His signature Peavy Wolfgang guitars later featured low-friction pots that are still available for sale as individual components

https://www.vanhalenstore.com/page/VH/GG/EVHPOT

Re: Everything we can't describe in music

#113

Post by tech_ken »

midiguy wrote: post #78
tech_ken wrote: post #71

> A vocal timbre can also reveal economic and cultural background. Some singers...were encouraged to either accentuate their timbre...or to abandon what occurred naturally for them Vocal timbre is a big identifier of different rap subgenres and artists, seems like. Certainly seems like much of the vocal delivery on a track explores fluctuation of the timbre, even when the pitch is constant or has little dynamics. It'…

The reason I hate heavy autotune in recent hip-hop is because it destroys all of the interesting timbre that could be there, and reduces it all the same annoying voice

Depends on the usage for me; I think the point of the article was that timbre isn't something that's orderable, there's lots of different timbres and processed vocals are their own thing. Sometimes their texture fits really well into the palette of the song, IM personal O. Thinking of like "Lollipop"

Re: Everything we can't describe in music

#114

Post by sonicanatidae »

mp05 wrote: post #110
irjustin wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, well frankly most EDM fucking sucks and that's pretty much why. Your average cool guy "producer" doesn't know the first thing about intervals, counterpoint, or even basics like triads or major/minor scales. But they sure can twist knobs in a way that makes neat sounds! That's a pretty harsh objective take for a highly subjective topic. A lot of people like it - myself included. Just because you don't like it…

I didn't say I didn't like some EDM. Some is made by very talented people.

At least they have more talent than I've seen in a lot of the newer rap artists, who apparently can't leave home without an auto-tune box handy.

EDM at least has to be considered, and likely, no matter how crap it is, someone put some sort of effort into it. Speaking into a pitch bender takes nothing but breath, and I'm stuck listening to this garbage in traffic every day.

Re: Everything we can't describe in music

#115

Post by julosflb »

elihu wrote: post #49

> "Timbre’s role in music has always been underrated, or even ignored, probably because it is an intangible that’s difficult to describe, hard to categorize, and so far, immune to measurement. " In the mid-to-late 1800s, Herman Helmholtz was building spectrographs of musical sounds by listening to them through a bunch of resonators of varying sizes that acted as band-pass filters, and recording how loud each harmonic…

I visited conservatoire des arts et metiers museum in Paris a couple years ago. It is full of fascinating scientific devices from the past. Among then was the timbre analyser. I was blown away. A purely analogic spectrum analyser.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Timbre_analyser-CNAM...

Re: Everything we can't describe in music

#116

Post by callalex »

mp05 wrote: post #98
peterlk wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quoted section of the article is pretty out of touch with modern music. Many (most?) genres of EDM place the importance of timbre and texture above harmony and melody

Yeah, well frankly most EDM fucking sucks and that's pretty much why. Your average cool guy "producer" doesn't know the first thing about intervals, counterpoint, or even basics like triads or major/minor scales. But they sure can twist knobs in a way that makes neat sounds!

First of all, who cares?

But that aside, this take reeks of sampling bias. Every amateur with a laptop uploads their music to SoundCloud/Youtube/whatever even while they are still learning. You probably don’t have much exposure to the crappy piano fugues and poorly orchestrated droning sonatas that are written by early university students. Trust me there’s a lot of that as well. Everyone starts somewhere after all.

Re: Everything we can't describe in music

#117

Post by tiptup300 »

sonicanatidae wrote: post #114
mp05 wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say I didn't like some EDM. Some is made by very talented people.

At least they have more talent than I've seen in a lot of the newer rap artists, who apparently can't leave home without an auto-tune box handy. EDM at least has to be considered, and likely, no matter how crap it is, someone put some sort of effort into it. Speaking into a pitch bender takes nothing but breath, and I'm stuck listening to this garbage in traffic every day.

That's not true either. Look at something like Carlie XCX - Pop 2, the autotune is doing interesting things. I'm sure it's not just the technology of it, but also the technique.

Also moving back to one of the most well known autotune users T-Pain is a great singer without the technology. It's obvious there's more to it then just auto-aim function.

Some people use it that way, but it doesn't mean the technology is fundamentally limited to that scope.

Post reply on HN