The Problem with Music

Its kind of late and I am not around any of my music equipment, and I'm stuck in a real shitty youtube video vortex, and I guess this blog post is my last attempt to escape it. Basically, I stumbled upon this video after watching a few Glen Fricker vids (real smart dude by the way, even if his aesthetic is a bit overdone, check out his channel here). After reading the comments on said video, I felt a real compulsion to listen to shlohmo and write this post.

Glen Fricker spends quite a bit of time talking about how the human element of music is being "edited out." He spends quite a long amount of time ragging on drum samples, and how they can never have the feel and emotion and subtle variation of live drums. Glen also talks about autotune, and this one comment on the aforementioned boyinband.com video cited autotune as being the one sign of "no talent." Basically, it seems to me like alot of these people are seeing a fundamental issue with alot of music technology that has come out today. They see it as corrupting, or trying to shortcut some essential element of music, and they want to lambast the culprits for it.

First, let me address Glen Fricker. Glen Fricker's complaints about samples make absolute sense, given his exposure to drum samples and how he has seen them used in the studio. If you are a metal band, and you want to get that big fucking drum sound, then yeah sample replacing will make ur drums sound lame as shit, because glen is absolutely right when he says that samples will never have the feel of live drums. Samples aren't live drums, and the idea that supposedly talented musicians are content with having producers sample replace their hits is fucking sad. So in that respect, I agree with glen.

I disagree with the concept that samples in general are always bad in every conceivable way. Like, shit, do you listen to hiphop? Like, come on. Really? You think all hiphop is terrible? Glen probably can tell sampled drums from real drums, and so i guess he is allowed to hate "all hip hop" but the rest of you probs couldn't pass a double blind test. My guess is that all of you are about as dumb as me, and I sometimes wonder if I could truly tell the different between live drums and sampled drums with my eyes closed. But the point, sampling is objectively not a bad thing, and has an interesting aesthetic in its own right. Early hardware samplers in particular have a very interesting lowpass filter (becuz of the lower sample rate) and graininess to them that live drums don't have. Samples can be pitched up, pitched down, reversed, bitscrambled, and enveloped all with relative ease, and that shit can sound cool as fuck. Like seriously, it can. Yeah, samples can't replace live drums, but i'd like to see live drums make some venetian snares.



Like, live drums cannot make that sound. Like, they fucking can't. And I don't mean to say that live drummers can't play as fast, because they can, but live drums will never sound that choppy, never sound that screwed, it will never sound like that. Do you see what I'm saying? And if you wanna say "well sounding like that sounds dumb" then thats your prerogative, but its my right to buy and purchase and share music that I think is cool so I'm gonna do that, but don't go around saying that venetian snares doesn't make music or doesn't have talent. Literally, pull your head out of your ass. It would take you literally a million years to figure out how to make that song, shut the fuck up. And it is music, because a substantial group of people enjoy it like they enjoy other things that you call music, and music is a social construct anyway, so fuck off.

Next, I want to address the complaint by Glen Fricker and millions of other "true music fans" that autotune sucks. Again, autotune sucks when its used to make up for a singer's bad and out of practice singing. But, when autotune is used as an effect itself, it can sound pretty cool. When a singer who can actually control their voice sings with autotune, and the settings on the autotune are just right, then autotune can essentially be used to allow a singer to control a synthesizer. Check this shit out:

   

Like, look at that shit, they took two vocal tracks, ran them both through autotune, and hardpanned them, and you get this fuckin sweet stereo soundscape thing, where the machine processes the voice differently at some points, and the same at other times, and it sounds real cool. You get this weird funky thing which sounds cool. Thats what autotune can do if you use it right. It's like, the song has to be built around the autotune, it can't just be thrown in for no reason.

But lets really address a deeper issue here. People keep talking about a "problem with music" and here is the real truth. There is no fucking problem with music. Or really, put much better, the problem with music is not the fact that people are using samples or autotuning their voice. The problem is that idiots who don't know what the fuck they are talking about say dumb shit on the internet and it makes me get mad and write these dumb blog posts about a topic that everyone already knows the truth about. There is no such thing as "good music" other than music that lives up to its own standards, and its up to us as a society to decide whether artists succeed and fail in doing what they want to do. Some people think very heavily about that, some people don't, but it is all a process, an active interpretation. We all actively contest the definition and value of music everyday by what we listen to, how we listen to it, and how much we pay for it. And its evident that based on youtube comments, some people value music alot more highly than others.

This was a shit blog im sorry just like fucking youtube comments man oh my god.

日本語の練習しましょう！

こんにちは！これのブログのポストを日本語で書くよ！これはインフォーマールな日本語です。でも、いい練習と思います。誰かこれを読めるかもしれませんが、もし読めなかったら、緊張しないでください。そのことはだめです。とてもざんねんですね。

この日本語はちょとう正しくないかもしれませんが、だいじょうぶですよ。それはポイントですから。これはれんしゅうです。将来に日本語が上手になる時、これをみるつもりですよ。私はこれがとても面白くて悪いと思っているでしょうね。ハーハー！

じゃあ、さようなら！読んでくてありがとうございました！

I have a blog

It makes me sad that no one reads my blog because I think that my blog is a good blog. That said, there sn't actually a fair amount of blogging on it. I shall attempt to correct this.

One time, when I was six, I did something that my mother consistently and constantly refers to at every  cocktail mixer she goes to in a pathetic attempt to pretend she is a relevant person as "star shopping." Obviously, everybody failed to realize my real estate genius (when Mark Zuckerburg takes over the world he will need off world mines to make us all slave for him, but if I own the off world mines, then he would have to buy them from me and I would make quite literally a metric anus ton of money) because everyone in my family tells the story as though it was some kind of "silly" thing that I did as a kid but when the cyborgs enslave us all I will be the one with all the prime space real  estate property and none of those fuckers will be allowed to go on any of them. 

Anyway, this story ends with me falling off the roof and busting my face on a railing and crying a bunch. Those were the days.

Anyway, so this Daniel Tosh rape joke thing is like old news I guess but fuck it I just heard about it and I wanna bring up a point that I don't think has been brought up because I haven't bothered to look to see if anyone brought it up.

You do not fucking interrupt a comedian. Don't fucking do it. Ever. You will not get anything out of it except guilt and shame. 

Comedians are supposed to make jokes. When you heckle them, they start making jokes about you. They will all be nasty.

I really hate it when people from the audience heckle, because it's fucking dumb. At that point, you are just trying to make the artist feel bad and that's mean and obnoxious and if you were worth anything you would be up on that stage but no you aren't you are sitting in the crowd getting shitfaced and eating and consuming without making any attempt to contribute something positive to society. Everyone else was laughing and was happy so Daniel still made some people feel good and thats what he was trying to do. But don't be a self righteous prick and insert yourself into someone else because you think their wrong and want to take control of their art.