Originally Posted by ajman:
“Aside from the fact that the majority of electronic music was recorded using multi-track tape recorders up until the early to mid '80s in exactly the same way that guitar-based music was, I fail to see what you think that sequencers added to the ease of making electronic music that wasn't available to someone producing guitar-based music with a multi-track tape recorder. Alright so sequencers allow you to arrange a track but this doesn't add anything to the quality of the music being recorded. Fast forward to today and with the advances in digital audio recording allowing tools such as pitch correction and audio quantising to be available to people making both electronic and guitar-based music your statement is now completely redundant.
So SAW were in it for the money in exactly the same way that Chinn and Chapman were in the '70s. In my opinion the majority of their output was equally mediocre but I'm guessing that you think because their music was played by 'real' bands it was somehow more worthy.”
“Aside from the fact that the majority of electronic music was recorded using multi-track tape recorders up until the early to mid '80s in exactly the same way that guitar-based music was, I fail to see what you think that sequencers added to the ease of making electronic music that wasn't available to someone producing guitar-based music with a multi-track tape recorder. Alright so sequencers allow you to arrange a track but this doesn't add anything to the quality of the music being recorded. Fast forward to today and with the advances in digital audio recording allowing tools such as pitch correction and audio quantising to be available to people making both electronic and guitar-based music your statement is now completely redundant.
So SAW were in it for the money in exactly the same way that Chinn and Chapman were in the '70s. In my opinion the majority of their output was equally mediocre but I'm guessing that you think because their music was played by 'real' bands it was somehow more worthy.”
i guess you fail to see my point entirely. try reading again, and instead of looking for a way to argue against my points, look at how they make sense instead of dwelling on minor points
now we come to an interesting point with mike chapman and nick chinn, as that demonstrates well the differences and my main point. those guys wrote and produced records in the older traditional sense, where the artists would still play the music and even write songs, but with SAW (and others like jam and lewis) became the advent of acts that couldn't write or play, and the producers literally wrote and created entire tracks and the "artists" just laid down vocals, that in the case of SAW were usually highly treated with effects and often smothered with backing vocals from other singers
so getting back on topic, the 80s was a period where the traditional singer/songwriter/musician was replaced by music created by guys in studios who found a commercial formal and used others to front the "product". it wasn't about creating good music, but instead about creating "hits", and as a result the music suffered. artists had little creative input in those situations. the artists didn't jam and find inspiration from improvising during live performances, and the music lacked soul because of that
and just to go back to something earlier that i've said that has been ignored or washed over, you can make both good and bad music from both methods. just because you can play a guitar or piano doens't mean you can create good music, and just because you make music on a computer doesn't mean you can't make good music. my point is that computers, sequencers and samplers made it easier for music to be made, and the downside is that more bad music was made as a result. with SAW a perfect example
