While pop music may be wonderful in Quincy Coleman’s eyes (heck, mine too), there are some who think the stuff is straight up awful. But please wait before you roll your eyes and think “Been there, done that.” I happened to read an interview on Idolator the other day where an engineer revealed “secrets” about pop music. Secrets? Really? I thought most of the stuff they covered was pretty common knowledge.
Throughout the article they cover some pretty basic stuff, like how often artists will come in drunk or stoned and get all frustrated basically because they are drunk or stoned. Autotune and “fixing it in the mix” is discussed, but supposedly the big revelation of the article (or at least I would assume due to the piece followed by the reaction of “Are you serious?” by the interviewer)…
JoeTheEngineer: so they come in and I play them a reference, which the writer laid down with all the vocal parts
JoeTheEngineer: then the artist goes piece by piece re-singing whats already on tape
Lack of punctuation and grammar aside (also, I hope this engineer’s real name is Joe and not Sam), is this really all that shocking? I’m no recording genius, but this just seems sort of obvious. For one, it replicates pretty accurately what I’ve seen on VH1, MTV and such. Next, it’s pretty obvious that a lot of pop stars have other people writing their music and lyrics. (Remember when Justin Timberlake scored Michael Jackson’s songwriter, thereby crowning a new King of Pop?) Finally, multi-tracking makes this all too easy…and multi-tracking isn’t a new fad like Autotune. It’s been around forever.
However, I can understand the shock. Even though we know pop music is manufactured, we don’t want to believe it. We’d like to believe that it is somehow artist magic not studio magic. That Kanye West never misses a rhyme and that the musical process is more than turning a slider from “suck” to “rock.” A positive way to spin this whole expose is that the musician isn’t the only artist. The work that engineers, producers and technicians put into a record requires just as much talent and effort as the performer. Maybe it’s about time to give them their props.
TOPICS: poingly