All hazy, all lo-fi
June 30, 2017 5:50 AM Subscribe
Lofi can be fun! Distortion can be fun! But can I appeal to the universe to stop the habit of ducking the other levels on the kick? To my ears, it's diagnostic of a common amplifier fault (basically, not enough energy in the system to maintain volume on a strong bass signal) that I used to have to fix quite a lot, and it's like nails on a chalkboard to me. See also: faux CD skipping noises and sampling artefacts.
I don't know why this in particular renders a track unlistenable to me - I can't take more than a couple of bars of it - whereas stuff like tape wow (if used judiciously) can be pleasantly disturbing (BoC, take a bow). But it does.
Is it just me?
posted by Devonian at 7:27 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
I don't know why this in particular renders a track unlistenable to me - I can't take more than a couple of bars of it - whereas stuff like tape wow (if used judiciously) can be pleasantly disturbing (BoC, take a bow). But it does.
Is it just me?
posted by Devonian at 7:27 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
Devonian I've noticed that on some mixes by artists who certainly can produce beautiful, clear music but choose not to. I guess it's an aesthetic? But yeah I agree.
posted by rebent at 7:30 AM on June 30, 2017
posted by rebent at 7:30 AM on June 30, 2017
I love the extreme compression ducking on the kick. But I like extreme effects in general. It is just an aesthetic choice that will resonate with some people and not others, and is one of the signature elements of the lo-fi beat tape style that Haren is working with on those tracks.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:54 AM on June 30, 2017
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:54 AM on June 30, 2017
Ha, I wasn't going to comment at all because I dig this except for the extreme ducking, but since it's being discussed ...
Yeah, it's an aesthetic choice, but I find it really unmusical here. Maybe it's just a matter of attack/release time, but it drove me nuts and I had to bail on music that I otherwise really enjoyed.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:28 AM on June 30, 2017
Yeah, it's an aesthetic choice, but I find it really unmusical here. Maybe it's just a matter of attack/release time, but it drove me nuts and I had to bail on music that I otherwise really enjoyed.
posted by uncleozzy at 8:28 AM on June 30, 2017
I do the thing, except instead of specifically sidechaining a kick, more often I just ram the entire mix through compression/limiting and let stuff fall where it does. And if it's too much I back it the hell off so it doesn't come off as extreme as, say, Crystal Castles, and I don't do it all the time. (I haven't listened to this quite yet for comparison... maybe after I finish the album that's playing right now.)
posted by Foosnark at 8:55 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
posted by Foosnark at 8:55 AM on June 30, 2017 [1 favorite]
one of my go-to tricks used to be having a second, highly compressed drum rack when I wanted to something extra in the rhythm during the track. I think I picked this from Darkside live, on a few songs the drum is there, sure, but then it's THERE.
posted by lmfsilva at 9:26 AM on June 30, 2017
posted by lmfsilva at 9:26 AM on June 30, 2017
Uncleozzy, I think that's one of the reasons it gets to me. It's used quite a lot on music i don't much listen to anyway, like **t*t*n*, but it also pops up on a lot of EDM where I do pay attention, and here,and it just seems at odds with what I enjoy about such things.
I see from a quick google of sidechain compression and ducking on the kick that there's quite a discussion about whether it's a cliche and whether the effect it's nominally supposed to convey - popping the kick through a dense mix - is perfectly doable in other ways without just throwing this at it. In the case of these tracks, it's clearly not necessary to punch up the drums, so it must be that the maker likes the aesthetic and sees it as an adornment in its own right. But to me, it's just ugly. (It's interesting to compare that with the Flaming Lips treatment of drums on The Castle, which is also fairly intense in the face of otherwise ethereal components, but which to me is also intensely satisfying.)
Obviously, production cliches I don't like are lazy, trite and unmusical and ones that I do are a legitimate part of the toolkit. And I'm in no way against extreme mangling of sound per se, and if someone has a good example of the technique rising above cliche I'd love to hear it.
posted by Devonian at 9:39 AM on June 30, 2017
I see from a quick google of sidechain compression and ducking on the kick that there's quite a discussion about whether it's a cliche and whether the effect it's nominally supposed to convey - popping the kick through a dense mix - is perfectly doable in other ways without just throwing this at it. In the case of these tracks, it's clearly not necessary to punch up the drums, so it must be that the maker likes the aesthetic and sees it as an adornment in its own right. But to me, it's just ugly. (It's interesting to compare that with the Flaming Lips treatment of drums on The Castle, which is also fairly intense in the face of otherwise ethereal components, but which to me is also intensely satisfying.)
Obviously, production cliches I don't like are lazy, trite and unmusical and ones that I do are a legitimate part of the toolkit. And I'm in no way against extreme mangling of sound per se, and if someone has a good example of the technique rising above cliche I'd love to hear it.
posted by Devonian at 9:39 AM on June 30, 2017
so it must be that the maker likes the aesthetic and sees it as an adornment in its own right.
Oh it's very much A Thing by now. It's a "People will pay $25 for a glorified LFO to have it done for them" kind of thing. In fact there are all sorts of plugins out there that will happily let you create a sidechain sound but with twice the setup time of actually just sidechaining :)
Whether it's become a cliche or just another basic tool in the toolbox and something people expect from certain genres (see also overdrive, gated reverb, "8-bit" sounds, tape saturation, etc.) depends on your level of cynicism.
posted by Mike Smith at 11:02 PM on June 30, 2017
Oh it's very much A Thing by now. It's a "People will pay $25 for a glorified LFO to have it done for them" kind of thing. In fact there are all sorts of plugins out there that will happily let you create a sidechain sound but with twice the setup time of actually just sidechaining :)
Whether it's become a cliche or just another basic tool in the toolbox and something people expect from certain genres (see also overdrive, gated reverb, "8-bit" sounds, tape saturation, etc.) depends on your level of cynicism.
posted by Mike Smith at 11:02 PM on June 30, 2017
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posted by grumpybear69 at 6:30 AM on June 30, 2017