leaving mistakes in

[dahkter]

IMO, one of the things you don't hear enough today is mistakes. Every note autotuned and quantized, it's makes music sound fake and plastic.
Sometimes an artist will play one bad note, or come in on the chorus too early. I watch this show on VH1 called Classic Albums, they talk about how some of the great albums of all time were recorded. On both Nirvana Nevermind (Cobain coming in on the vocals a few bars too early, pausing, then coming back in on time) and Stevie Wonder Songs in the Key of Life (one bum note in the harmonica solo on isn't she lovely) , the artist is imperfect, makes a mistake, and the producer leaves it in. It defintiely gives things a human feel, and is something that today's producers should do more of. Leave in the occasional mistake to make the music sound live and organic...

 

[Ash Holmz]

**thunderous applause***

i completely agree

listen to wu tangs albums.. they made so many mistakes it was crazy .. coming in on the wrong cues .. esp rza (holocaust is one example).. he would always come in early.. then back out and come again.... and they always kept the take. I statred a thread smilar to this awhile back but u explained exactly what i was tryin to say right there perfectly. too many overdubs,autotunes, and retakes makes for a great sounding "shit" if u know what i mean... an example of a recent tracks with mistakes that sounds great is the black republicans track with nas and jay .. jay comes in at the wrong time but the shit is so ill u dont even notice it .... and they kept it that way instead of moving his verse over.. and thats a future classic..

 

[dahkter]

Werd bro,
Hip hop is music from the street, imperfect, gritty, live shit, like that cypher on the corner, banging on beats on the lunchroom table, I definitely love that live shit, mistakes and all...

 

[thedreampolice]

I also agree! Sometimes the band does not.

 

[RigorMortis]

word, the perfect sounding track is kinda boring.
keep it raw and yeah wu tang is a great example, the ruff beats, the flows, and the late old dirty's singin...

 

[Relic]

Agreed, but I wouldnt go makin a track that is nothing BUT mistakes....or would I?

I leave lil things in , I think it adds personality to it.

 

[DJ Xsinna]

Public Enemy were masters of this. They had a lot of mistakes in the way samples were dropping in the sequences and so forth (listen to "Rebel Without a Pause"). Hank and Keith Shockley and Chuck wanted all that junk kept in. Those mess-ups is what gave their sound so much SOUL. I keep some of my mistakes as well. Nothing ruins a track (and/or makes it sound mechanical) than a PERFECT track. That's what POP is. Rap music is the opposite of everything that is POP. You've gotta have some balance with that too. Your junk can't come out soundin' all slopy either. To me, the most beautiful sound is a track with dirty, crunchy drums over a sick dirty sample/s composed and sequenced with a human feel to it

 

[Low G]

Sometimes a mistake can help your creativity. The first time I discovered this was when I had a chopped sample that had a touch of a horn at the end so every time it played too long I got a touch of that horn. Instead of going back and clipping it off I tried a lil delay on it and it added a whole new element to the beat that sounded dope. The beat I am talking about is the 4th one in Compilation 1 on my myspace. I posted the link in this weeks beat reviews.

 

[TKNK]

...And the crazy part about it is that we all try to make are music so so perfect.

 

[open mind]

ill find it very difficult to keep the right balance.if u are to perfect they thing u are robot.if u are to much out of time they think u dont have skillz.

 

[Relic]

Good examples of good mistakes is pounding out a beat and the qunatize makes it do somthing even better than what you were trying to do ..

 

[manguino]

A part of this new direction of crisp and perfected production is just the state of Hip Hop right now. Alot of the (more popular) music is very safe, and because there's more money coming from rap and all things hip hop, more money can be invested into production. I think the same can be said with punk music. When it started in the late 60s and 70s it was gritty, live, and full of mistakes but it has evolved into commercialized and mastered material.

I'm not saying stating hip hop / punk was better than compared to now, just what I see is happening with our music.

I think its good at some times but not always, you still need a good ear for the production and know what mistakes can be left in. I'm to the point where I freestyle a lot of my beats, a lot of times I will have this 3 minute melody and i'll just hit record and bang some drums on it in one take and will rarely go in and fix them.

This brings me to another point, I don't consider someone a producer if they aren't touching the keys or some instrument. If you just click your beats in on a piano roll you will never have that live feel and will always have everything dead on and not much soul to it. You can get a good midi keyboard for under $100 to control all your software and its the best investment you could ever make.

 

[WingsOfAnAngel]

Spreading awareness of timeless spiritual truth, life in harmony

Excellent thread dahkter! :thumb:
Right on point!

I've never dug the crystal-clear sound myself... Commercial hip hop is like dermatology, ya know... I love the dirtiness, the rawness, the grittiness... A true artist masters his own music, it can't be the other way around... Nobody knows your music\sound better than YOU... Mistakes are an integral part of music and should definitely be kept (to an extent)... Most artists pay way too much attention to the overall mix\mastering (which is one of the LESS important factors) and USUALLY neglect all the other aspects. There's hardly any creativity put into the music... Music, as is nowadays, is pretty much a neglected art...

Please refer to my thread - Metaphysics Of Hip-Hop: https://www.illmuzik.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17524

One Love Fam,
Wings

"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."
Charlie Parker

"Music has and also is the key to unlock the Heart-Door of the Supreme: According to the esoteric standpoint, music is the beginning and the end of the universe. All actions and movements made in the visible and invisible world are musical. That is: they are made up of vibrations pertaining to a certain plane of existence."

"Music is a higher vibrational transmission beyond words. It enables to touch people's heart and soul; the deepest layers of their inner-self. At first, music always sounds like a 'wall of noise', but once your ears get used to it, you realize that there is a living entity within each sound and tone. You can't help but to connect... "

 

[open mind]

"Music has and also is the key to unlock the Heart-Door of the Supreme: According to the esoteric standpoint, music is the beginning and the end of the universe. All actions and movements made in the visible and invisible world are musical. That is: they are made up of vibrations pertaining to a certain plane of existence."

"Music is a higher vibrational transmission beyond words. It enables to touch people's heart and soul; the deepest layers of their inner-self. At first, music always sounds like a 'wall of noise', but once your ears get used to it, you realize that there is a living entity within each sound and tone. You can't help but to connect... "

WOW.fantastic.

 

[dahkter]

Nice to see that I've struck a chord with this topic.

I like the comments. Regarding Punk going from crappy sounding to studio polished, and hip hop doing the same, good point. Regarding the metaphysics that Wings had mentioned, agreed that you want that soul to shine through, and if it's all sterile, autotuned and stiffly quantized, you're not gonna get that emotive quality. Also agreed that the reality is that it's a high stakes game, if a label spends milions on marketing on promotion, chances are they won't take anything less than a highly polished, sterile, clean perfect studio-magic type recording.

Regarding the cats who did it right, hell yeah:

The Clash - Should I Stay or Should I go - horrible, distorted, overdriven recording, however that shit will rock any house party. It's musicaly perfect, technically imperfect, but it has that magic so you don't fuck with it, you just release it and give it to the masses.

J Dilla and Madlib. Both of them using samplers with no waveform display
(SP12/MP3k/SP303), strictly listening to the sample by ear. Then when tapping out the beat, quantize turned off, let that shit ride. With Dilla, he wouldn't even loop his beat, he would tap it straight out through the whole song. That's another thing that makes him legendary, I can't think of any other prodcuer that would really get down like that. Anyways, when we're talking mistakes with those guys, they're so minor that it just makes you feel that beat more...

Which brings me to my last point. I read somewhere, instead of thinking of the beats as a single specific point in time, think of them as big circles. You can hit anywhere in that circle, a little before the beat, or a little after the beat. Definitely effective way to reduce boredom in your beats and be more you, more human, more soulful in the process...

 

[Sonorous]

perfect example Church preach preach LOL

**thunderous applause***

i completely agree

listen to wu tangs albums.. they made so many mistakes it was crazy .. coming in on the wrong cues .. esp rza (holocaust is one example).. he would always come in early.. then back out and come again.... and they always kept the take. I statred a thread smilar to this awhile back but u explained exactly what i was tryin to say right there perfectly. too many overdubs,autotunes, and retakes makes for a great sounding "shit" if u know what i mean... an example of a recent tracks with mistakes that sounds great is the black republicans track with nas and jay .. jay comes in at the wrong time but the shit is so ill u dont even notice it .... and they kept it that way instead of moving his verse over.. and thats a future classic..

perfect example Church preach preach LOL

 

[Haze47]

sall about the mistakes, for me, i like to leaves mistakes in the overdubs i use, make peeps know i made the effort to double up proper, rather than just taking doubles from the verse you just recorded.....same again with glitches and pops, has anyone ever used the "glitch" find in SF? that thing pick shit up you would never hears, and im thinking, why is this even on the program, ahh i dunno

 

[The Bastard]

i usually leave mistakes in when it comes to recording vocals, beats is a diffrent sory.but i like hearin people fuck up on tracks every now n then, it keeps it real

 

[Cold Truth]

first of all, i think there are "good" mistakes as well as bad ones.. and to me its more about knowing what the good ones are and hat the bad ones are, thus which ones to keep and what needs to be redone.

for example, my engineer at my recording session the other day
my voice got all fucked up in several points in a verse, and he said "oh it hows emotion, its fine"

but, there are "good" vocal imperfections, and there are those that ruin the song. timing was off on a few takes that he wnated to keep, and not in a good ay.

so, i say, you alays strive for perfection, and develop "quality imperfections" during the course of that.

 

[Beatz 101]

I 100% agree with you.


Sometimes i like my shit to sound muffled at times and gritty.

I want my sample to cut off too soon or bleed over n' shit.

Like homey said, it makes ya music sound 'human'.