Most forms of music involve extensive use of effects and others tools in the mixing stage. If your experience of recording music i s limited to such purist activities as you describe, then I guess you would be at a loss to understand how most music has produced in the last 40 years.

But you've added a bit of reverb, so you must be starting to get the idea. Individual tracks in large multi-tracked assemblies of music can each involve many in-line or parallel style effects, manipulating tone, dynamics, time-related, and other special manipulations.

geoff

So, what you're really talking about here is a genre of music that is electronically produced - no real-time performance is actually possible. My son is a cellist and recently produced the trailers for a movie (something about Heaven in the title, I never did get the title, although the movie came and went (preceded by his trailers at other shows) - never heard his stuff, either). He went to the studio, read the music line by line, each line to a new take as he listened to previous takes through a set of headphones. Who knows what they did with the final result – but he got paid (woopee!).

I understand that sort of thing - have done it myself to compile pieces where the talent (a vocalist with an extremely small sound) could not overcome the volume of his own accompaniment - so, I used Vegas to separate them, using an original combined recording as playback on one track, then, as he listened through phones, recording separate tracks of his voice, then, his instruments. I could then use the computer to amplify and enhance his voice so that it worked with his accompaniment.

It was a fun project - and the finished CD sounded pretty good - far better than what he can do live - and that, I guess is the point I'm trying to make in this reply. If what you say is true (about how music for the past 40 years has been produced), then, it really is a class of music all by itself - music that can't be performed live.

I do understand that FX would be useful in that situation. In my music school days, I studied a bit of what we then called electronic music - it then became known as avant-garde. I don't know what they call it today. The composers were very serious musicians, and they went to great lengths to get different sounds - prepared piano, for example, where you might alter the hammers before the performance - that sort of stuff. My son plays some pieces where the cello is used as a drum, or the strings are scraped instead of bowed in a manner that makes very weird sounds (well, weird for the cello).

But his stuff, and the stuff back in the electronic music studios was designed for live performance. My take, based on your responses, is that the music about which you speak is not intended for live performance.

OTOH, I know a guy who uses Acid to create all sorts of accompaniment tracks and special fx so that he can then sing to it - he plays along on an electric guitar.

His style is (what do you call it?) rock or pop or whatever. He sounds much like what you hear on the AM radio stations. And he sounds good - so, in retrospect, that is one area where these FX would come in handy.

But, if I were going to record his performance, I would probably have no use for any more fx than what I use now.

That was really my point.

I don't at all disrespect this area of creativity (using computers and software to manipulate sounds into something that doesn't exist acoustically or can't be performed live) - art is art, creativity is creativity. It is certainly different than what I trained for and have worked at most of my life.

Thanks for the responses.

Whether I use fx or not, Vegas is a great program.

Del

Goeff:
"If your experience of recording music i s limited to such purist activities as you describe"

I'm not sure why you consider what I described as "purist." The term tends to paint what I do with some sort of elitist tone. If my original message conveyed that, it wasn't intended.

I'm not a purist - grew up on a farm, my first musical experience was blue grass and German bands (played the tuba) - and I played keyboard in a rock band during weekends and piano bar during the week during college to make ends meet.

My favorite big band was Jimmie Lunceford, and my favorite vocalist of all time was Roberta Flack (great voice - some beautiful arrangements - some of her record pressings IMO were terrible from a technical standpoint - don't know what happened to her - she seemed to fade for no reason).

I don't consider myself purist - just not sure what a recordist would do with all these fx. I wasn't originally referring to studio work, but live recording, no matter what the genre.

Probably I wasn't clear enough in my original message.

Del

FX are just part of the pallet for creating and recording music - regardless of the genre. It is not simply relegated to electronic music. (Would you consider Sgt Peppers electronic music by todays detinition?) [No, this is not a "the Beatles did it with nothing" statement.]

I assure you that Ms Flack had something done to her voice - whether recorded directly, post, or during mastering.

Shure, you can capture a performance and have it stand alone. Even with out the huge flexability with todays modern tools, the use of FX and other signal processing has always been a part of the process.

I believe that today the over use of FX processing - whether for affect or to improve the technical aspects - is overdone and misused. I cringe when I have Vegas and ACID projects sent to me that have 4-5 different FX on each track, massive compression, and other applications of processing.

The tools and technology today permit this where it was never realistic (or possible) in the days of tape (digital or analog).

In the end it is what ever sounds good - though that is subjective. There are techniques - both technical and creative - that processing is just a part of.

Personally, I believe less is more. The performance of the music is the point - at least in my music. The music is still first. I don't believe that the performance is always a musician with an instrument - at least not directly in some genres.

When users ask me, I always tell them to remove as much as they can and listen. Understand how things fit into a mix. Would a doubling of a guitar achieve a better result than an uber chorus or delay plug?

In the end we all use tricks that we have learned or discovered. There is as much style and creativty in mixing/engineering as there is in a performance. A good performance can be ruined by a bad mix. A poor performance can be 'fixed' by a good mix. No amount of mixing or chops can fix a bad composition.

Peter

My reference to 'purist' was in the sense of purely acoustic live and unprocessed performances. From the fact you asked the question, you appeared unaware that most of the recorded music over the last 30 years has not been recorded that way.

Even music recorded in a wholey live in a multi-track manner is routinely EQed, dynamically processed, reverberated if necessary. DAW or tape. Even a basic live-to-stereo recording could be effected in considered beneficial.

The Roberta Flack recordings you mention would probaly have been made in a multi-track overdubbing manner, in order to get the producer's idea of the sound he wants, and the very best performances of each intrument in the ensemble or vocal part.

And sure, most effects can are are used routinely in live performances where desired. As you would have in your rock band ; eq settings on amps, different amps for different sound qualities, waa-waa pedals, distortion pedals, flangers/phasers, leslie speakers, echo, delay, reverb, etc, etc, etc. There are effects that hadn't been dreamed of before. Obviously some are not possible to use live...

Even 'minimalist' recordings my have slight EQ applied to compensate ror mic/room or proximity effects. Other more complex or 'produced' recordings may involve many (or few) effectors, either DAW plugin or hardware. Each track or whole recording can have from zero to many effects used. For better or worse. but because one has 100 effects available doesn't mean that any or are all But it's handy to have the choice !


geoff

I suspect another reason that Vegas, Sound Forge, and ACID have so many effects is because there are a lot of people who would buy other software if they didn't have so many. A lot of folks make their software decision based on the number of toys (tools) included, whether they're actually useful or not.

Perhaps a poorly worded initial post (or badly captioned) served to slightly derail the intent of that post - but what I read since is more in line with the info I was looking for. In the Flack recordings, I can hear the reverb - I hear it a lot with classical piano recordings - that silky smooth reverb that makes a good pianist sound as though he/she has some special way of touching the keys. I'm always searching for that special touch of reverb to make what I record sound that way (haven't found it yet).

So, Goeff, not to hammer away at an already cracked rock, but I do know and appreciate that plenty of fx have been used over the years to enhance the sound of recordings - analog and digital. During some 20 years or so of making analog recordings on tape, I don't think I ever made one without using DBX, my noise reduction tool of choice. That's an obvious FX - and, these days, my reel to reel recorders have, themselves, become a sort of FX.

My real question concerns some of those fx for which I have, to date, not found a use - well, not at least until someone clues me in as to what they are used for. For instance: Sony Distortion-Fuzz, or Distortion-boost positive signal, or Stutter. Sony or, before Sony, Sonic Foundry and other developers have spent tons to develop these plugs, so someone must have had their application in mind during the process.

I could see using them in some movie score, for instance, to create special sounds - but would love to see some sort of primer or other reference explaining where all these effects came from, what influences gave rise to their creation, and why those that I see included across several applications seem to be so popular.

Thanks for all the replies.

Del

DBX noise redfuction is not an effect at all. It goes out of it's way to *avoid* being an effect.

For the possible use of distion-fuzz etc, ask you guitarist o bassist from the rock band. Stutter, check some sci-fi - Headroom springs to mind, not to mention Bowie ! Just more tools for a producer's palette, to use or ignore.

Here's another use for EQ in a fundamentalist classical scenatio - asome low bass cut to reduce room rumble !

geoff

After a lot of fiddling around, usually it always comes doiwn to adding delay to some tracks ( guitars mostly ) and reverb. That's about it ( you can have phaser/flanger things occasionally ).

Playing the same guitar part ( rhythm ) again, and then panning tracks full left and right always sounds much better than cheating and using a doubling effect. I think it comes from the fact that doubler just doubles, while the second recorded track can never be exactly the same and gives a fuller, more distinct sound.

"DBX noise redfuction is not an effect at all. It goes out of it's way to *avoid* being an effect."

Right or wrong, I tend to lump all pluggins under the heading of FX. I suppose you wouldn't consider Sony's Noise Reduction an FX either, but I tend to think of it in that way. I know that DBX is described as a 'compander' in that it compress the signal going onto the tape, then, expands the recorded signal during playback. It's not technically an FX. . .

And, of course, one wouldn't correctly refer to an analog recorder as an effect, either.

But it seems many from the younger generation are blissfully rediscovering that analog equipment has its place - and they are enjoying the effect it has on their recordings.

Del