The music industry has become utter shit, and I will present you with the reasons why.
One of the major changes to the music industry is that they now use computer programs to determine two factors in songs.
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Is the song catchy?
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Is the song sticky?
Catchiness is based upon an analysis of hits of the past. Most hit songs have a chorus that rises to a VI or vi (if you know chord representations). I'm sure there are several other factors.
Stickiness refers to how comfortable a song is. If a song is uncomfortable, people tend to turn that shit off. In the right context, this means switching stations.
This computer analysis method has produced a highly controlled music industry that is boring and predictable. Combine this with using a small portion of writers that feed their cookie-cutter garbage to professional performers who perform very well and generally look good. You also have a similarly small portion of producers. This results in music where most of the idiosyncrasies that really make it diverse and interesting are filtered out in favor of a uniform, predictable set of songs that zombie-like listeners are perfectly okay with.
This industry has been created by a love for money, and the desire to remove risk and failures from the industry. All of the best studies and tools are used to make the perfect music industry that never pushes a lame song, yet there is no study and no tool but the human experience that testifies to the destructive effect this has. It is akin to considering what will happen to baseball if batters never miss. You might say it is good; you might say it is bad. Ultimately, it is certain that baseball will never be the same again.
I didn't even mention the loudness wars and the destruction that has produced. You can search for loudness wars to verify this. This was based on the studies that mindless radio listeners prefer songs that sound louder. So in order to produce this loudness sound, there is a one click process applied to entirety of the song to increase the levels of everything. The RHCP albums get this loudness boost now. It actually isn't that bad for them since their instruments stay pretty distinct from each other for most of the song. During the loud parts my car's speakers tend to get all rattly from this overproduction method. Compare this to high quality recordings of the 80s that tended to put the sound at a low position. This enabled the sound to be clear and dynamic by allowing sounds to be quiet as well as loud in comparison to typically moderate sound levels. Perhaps the base moderate level has been increased in more modern albums without receiving the loudness treatment.
When Axl was recording Chinese Democracy with whoever was in on the project at the time, there was a someone who created 3 different versions for them to sample. One of them was left as is. The other two had the loudness adjustment, one moderately and one fully. When sampling these three different versions, all the musicians present agreed that no loudness increase sounded the best to them.
Pop music, country, popular rock, popular rap. They're all genres that have been manipulated to be perfect for music zombies with no real refinement. The presence of music as opposed to silence, the motivation to dance, and the love of musically-enhanced, emotional words is what drives these people to turn on the radio. They have no refined or informed appreciation for music and musical creativity. They are responsible for this monstrosity that is the modern music industry. Such people should fuck off.
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[–] wahala ago
Yes! You are totally spot on about the chord progressions. While, yes, they are formulaic, if used well they can be part of very unique and creative music.
So what is it about so many modern pop songs that make them so awful and truly grating on the ear?
I think you may be onto something with levels. Bass should be felt but it doesn't need to rattle screws out of your car to be effective. The mids and highs don't need to be buried into one mushy level either. Sound engineers don't get enough credit for the work they do.
[–] Whitemail [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago (edited ago)
Things that I know of that make music good and interesting:
Timbre diversity (this has been proven to be lacking in the music industry's garbage). When listening to Imogen Heap or Frou Frou, you never know what kind of instruments you will hear. Compare this to country music that is the most narrow and always uses the same old instrumentation. Sometimes it isn't unusual sounds that matter, but the fact that the sound has not been heard on the album previously. If you went 10 songs on an album without a piano, adding a piano to the eleventh song will be fresh and interesting, although the piano sound is old as the hills.
Chord substitutions - using a chord that doesn't fit the Major, minor, minor, Major, Major, minor, diminished framework. Generally that 7th diminished chord is too scary for pop songs. I heard recently it's actually used in some Christmas classics as a ii7 dim in the minor key. Mariah Carey has it in her song All I Want for Christmas is You. Paul McCartney uses a major to minor chord substitution in this song for a drastic effect before switching to the minor key for the chorus. He also uses the major 7th in the minor key, the distinctive part of the harmonic minor scale.
Key changes - this will often be used in bridges with the pop music formula and it's pretty common to do the relative major/minor switching such as Crazy Train going from F# minor to A. Some songs, though, will have drastic key changes and modal shifts in the middle of rifts. Invaders has a whack as key change in the chorus of either 1 half tone or 3 whole tones. I don't remember. Reckoning Day has a modal shift from E minor to F# minor and then returns to E minor. A similar type of modal shifting was used by Iron Maiden in the old days with a shift of one and half tones up.
Rhythms that seem new and interesting. I will use the opening drum beat in this 311 song as an example of this. It's nothing but a relatively simple drum beat, but it sounds fresh and interesting all by itself. Of course this is rather subjective, so I hate to use this as an example. Aside from this the good melodies generally have a rhythmic motif that is established without being so blatantly repetitive and then deviated from. This is used in a lot of traditional songs a lot, and it may be why they endured for so long. In Santa Claus Comes to Town, you can pick up in the repetitive doo-da doo doo rhythm in the initial melody that is repeated 4 times. The following section is similarly repetitive and even has a note out of key but not out of harmony.
Harmony can be thought of as a way of doubling a melody, but outside of that, it is basically how the melodic notes agree with the chordal notes and whether the chord changes are agreeable. This is actually a complicated subject, but the gist of it is that you have to anchor non-chord notes in the melody to ones that are in the chords. The more complex and interesting songs will make clever and intense use of the non-chord tones anchored to chord tones. Marty Friedman likes to bend major 7s in the minor key up to the tonic note, thus going from awfulness to perfect resolution rather quickly.
Using the uncommon modes or uncommon scales. Most songs are in the Major key (ionian) and minor key (aeolian). I think mixolydian would be most common after that. 311 using the phrygian mode. Yngwie Malmsteen also tends to use phrygian a lot, but with the same sharped note in the harmonic minor. I'm not sure what you call this alteration of the phrygian mode.