Is Modern Music Too Clean & Perfect?

One more time. Then we do it one more time. One more time. Spin it, rock, spin it one more time. Hit it, baby, one more time. So we're gonna get into the episode which is about what is lost when music is cleaned up too much in the modern era. But can we talk about tipping culture real quick? Like how we tip at restaurants or precisely. And really not even restaurants, it's like everywhere these days. Just how many iPads do I have to see that suggest an insane tip amount at places where the people don't deserve tips? What kind of places are you suggesting don't deserve tips that are just you know putting this in your face? Okay, well, I mean, yeah, let's start with restaurants. If I'm ordering, if I'm ordering to go, why am I presenting why? For what? I mean, maybe like a five percenter, and I mean nothing crazy. Okay, but they flip you the iPad, the person working there is standing right there, like looking at you. Like, could you fill this out just press the finish this for me? And the recommended tips are 15, 20, 25, fucking 30%. Yeah, but you know how hard it was to flip that iPad around? Oh my god, bro, you're part of the problem.

No, I feel guilty as fuck every time I do it. They're playing off of our guilt. And it's working I know, dude. It's everywhere. Like it's there's a couple companies, it's like Clover. is one of them. you're so invested in this that you know the companies. I've been going in, bro. Like, I'm I'm kind of upset with where we're heading. Like, not everything deserves a tip. I'm always one I'm a big tipper. I used to work at a restaurant, I relied on tips. I get it, but like it's kind of getting out of hand. They're playing off of guilt, and I just I'm not here for it, honestly, Ben. I think it probably has to do with the fact that so many people are ordering like Uber Eats and all these delivery services, right? That are probably taking away from like the in restaurant dining experience. So the people that made a lot of money off of tips are probably struggling with like the the pickup and like to go well and it started with the pandemic. Yeah. That's when it really started getting out of hand. Let's just blame it on that. It kind of, I mean, that was the catalyst. For sure.

If we're being honest. Yeah, we are. But I'm kind of sick of it, man. I just can we like can we cool it with the suggested tipping amounts at like play? I mean, we're gonna be tipping. How long until we're tipping our doctors? You know what I mean? It's just getting out of hand, bro. I'm getting sick of it. Wow, okay. Well, you know, this is a music podcast, Henry. I didn't know that we were gonna go so deep into tipping culture. By the way, you can leave a tip on this video on YouTube. We would really appreciate it. Yeah. If only it suggested like 15, 18, 20% $100 recommended tip amount on this podcast. We appreciate you. So this episode, the topic we want to discuss is essentially based on a New York Times article. Um, let's tell the story of how this even Okay, you go ahead. Uh no, you I think you'll tell it best. No, no, no, you go ahead. No, you know. All right. So somehow my dad is like making an appearance on the podcast way too often. Shout out Pops, man. Yeah, I never thought, I mean, I did get like my interest in music predominantly from my dad, right? Like, he's the dude with the vinyl collection, always playing music at you know, any given moment, right?

Like, had to learn how to use Spotify because he was like blown away by the fact that you could have access to every fucking song on the planet, you know, at the click of a button. Who wasn't blown away? Um, but so he always sends me articles, man. He always sends me like, yo, did you see this? Did you see that? Like, I love it, you know. It it keeps me engaged with him and gives us something to talk about. Um, but the one he brought up to me was this New York Times article, right? And so he had told me about it, but I didn't, you know, look into it yet. Um, but then you know, we're at my son's one year uh birthday party. Shit was a rager. So shout out to Ollie, turned one. Fucking threw a rager of a party. People jumping off the roof, wasted. The alcohol was actually it was flowing. It was flowing. Um, but so apparently on Henry's way out, you know, shout out to Uncle Three. That was right when I got there, bro. Right when you got there. as soon as I said, what's up to him, he wasted no time. Slid me the article. Okay, slid him the paper version. Yeah. No links. No, he got he gets the paper. He snipped it out too. It's like a half of a page. Cut it perfect, folded, snuck it into my pocket like a drug deal.

It was phenomenal. Amazing. So uh, you know, he apparently wanted Henry to read it too. Um, so you know, Henry read it. Uh, I read it actually just when I got here, you know, at the studio. Uh so yeah, what is lost when music is cleaned up too much? So the gist of the article is essentially, not profanity, because it sounds like you know, music is not clean in that sense. It's probably getting dirtier and dirtier about the second. Um, but no, this was referring to uh basically there's a father in the in the article who's taking a ride with his uh his children and he puts on some music from his era, and one of the the kids basically comments like, you listen to this, and the comment was you know, not about like the actual type of music or anything, but it was about the uh sonics being like you know dirty and raw and you know, basically not cleaned up enough, right? Because almost mumbly, some notes are missed. It was a Beach Boys record, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And and so um, you know, the article goes on to talk about like what is lost when that happens, right? Like when engineers and producers and artists are you know putting out music in today's era that basically is perfect uh in in a lot of ways.

Once again, we're not talking about like whether you like it or not, right? But when it comes to like the technicality of the music. Are the notes on pitch? Is the is the record cleaned up? Are the drums quantized? I mean, this dad is coming from an era where you know you're recording directly into a tape machine, and you're not looking at a computer screen. You're just recording, you're not looking at anything. Yeah, you can't see the music. song. You know, there's nothing to see. You just record it and then you listen back, and you're going all off of feeling. And yeah, there might have been something magical about that time because we are in a place where people are making music, mixing music, producing music with their eyes. And I don't know if it's the most beneficial thing necessarily. Yeah, and I think a big point of the article, you know, that they were trying to make was essentially um how relatable imperfect music is. Yes, right. So the human. Yeah, exactly. So it adds this element of relatability of you know, that that humanity, that human touch that, you know, when we hear something that's kind of raw, uncut, um, you know, not perfect, we either subconsciously or even consciously relate to that more, right? Like we're we as humans are oftentimes, you know, imperfect in a lot of ways, right?

Like we have these imperfections. So, you know, the dad was trying to make a point in the article to basically say that like a lot of that uh, you know, relatability and a lot of that like human touch element is lost in today's music. Um, and so you know, without sounding too much like an old head, I definitely see where he's coming from. It's valid, yeah. It's valid. It it's isolating as a listener to hear a perfectly pristine, perfectly pitched, you know, and and and a lot of the music starts to sound the same as well, because when the artist can to your point be in perfect pitch, in perfect tune, perfect spacing, the beat can be perfectly, you know, mixed, et cetera, et cetera. Um, the imperfections were kind of what gave a lot of the variability and a lot of the um you know uniqueness to to music back in the day. You know what I mean? Absolutely, I know what you mean. I mean, yeah, it's it's definitely the it's easier than ever to fix things that you think are wrong, but it's also super easy to get into a mode where you're kind of just on autopilot, where you're just listening for wrong notes, you're listening for timing being off, you're listening for these technical things, and you're ignoring how it makes you feel, which at the end of the day is the most important thing. You should always be listening for the feeling.

And when you're just watching, it's you don't do that as much. Yeah, and it's you get caught in this trap, I think. Exactly. You see the the vocal off a beat, right? You see the vocal pitch off a uh a key, like you know what I mean, or a half note, whatever it is that you know. So I wanted to get your experience, right? Like you are the uh engineer producer of our little duo we got going on here. I do not make music. I've been in sessions though, so I can kind of relate to some of the things we were talking about off camera. But I wanted to get your um, you know, input and I guess your experience, right? Like as an engineer and as a producer, because you live this shit all day every day. Like this is what you do, and I think that you've had some experiences where you like struggle with this exact concept. So many. So, like walk us through when you're in a session and you're recording an artist and you're helping, you know, vocal produce for them, or even if you're mixing a record, like what are some of the things that you've seen, and how do you, I guess, you know, overcome this this challenge of like not making it too perfect while still not having it sound like too raw where it doesn't sound good enough. Yeah, I would say my earliest memory um that relates to this topic is when I first started mixing records and recording rappers, um, I learned very early about flex time.

It's called flex time and logic. I think at Pro Tools, it's called like elastic audio. And essentially with a couple clicks, you can move, you know, one little half a second of audio, one second of audio, and nudge it into place. And my first thought when I just learned how to do that was like, oh, when I record this rapper, if they're not perfectly on beat, I need to nudge their raps perfectly on every syllable is perfectly on beat. Bang, bang, bang, they're hitting it. And a lot of I I would spend a lot of time doing that. I would like be paid to do these mixes. I'm gonna spend like an hour like putting them right on the grid, making their notes perfect, nudging the notes. There's melodyne, there's flex pitch and logic. And but boy, do you lose some of that originality and some of that like some people were pissed, bro? Some of the artists had the mixes back. Like, it sounds like I'm off. Like, why do I sound like I'm in a whole different pocket? It sounds like I'm off. And you're like, And they're no, you're literally on, but you're off because you're on.

So I get it. Holy shit. So that was a big realization moment for me. And uh damn. My default was like, oh, you want to mix for me? Okay, I'm gonna put you boom, boop, boop on the grid, doop doop notes perfect, clean. And it just was not the move. And it took it took a while to learn that, man. I thought I was right. And uh because you were. You were right technically, but technically, but not creatively, not artistically, which is always what matters more. It's the only thing that matters. It's all that matters. So I had to start learning, like, oh shit, like they want that. This is the type of artist. You start to realize the importance of understanding who the artist is, at least from an engineer producer standpoint. It's like, who is this artist? What how do they what does their art sound like? What are they going for? Imagine, like, if Blueface's engineer just put him perfectly on beat. I wonder what Blueface's engineers like. None of his shit would. I have this theory by the way that like the older the artist, the more behind the beat that they rap. I just this is the crazy theory.

Like artists back in the day used to be behind the beat. Yeah. And then like 2000s, people were like right on beat. And now everyone's ahead of the beat. Yeah. I don't know why that happens. But I have this weird theory that that's a true thing. But no matter who they are, how old they are, if you're the producer engineer, you definitely need to understand like what the vibe is, what they're all about, and you have to be able to adjust to them. Because um, let's let's bring our good friend East Rich into the example. Shout out East. Shout out East always. He we did a very emotional song. It was a rich mix, which is like his version of a remix of a song, like it's like a cover. And you know, we had all the lyrics out. We usually, you know, tend to punch in a line, maybe punch in a couple lines, punch this in here. He ends up doing a take that was front to back, all the way front to back. One take Jake, one take Jake, and there was a bunch of spots he like ran out of breath, and he was like choking up, but it was a very emotional song, and it just fit the vibe of the song really well. He's almost like in tears at the end of it, and it was just the most beautiful, perfect take.

And you know, when I'm in sessions with people, the most I'll I'll I'm always like, okay, let's get this part again. I think you can have some more emotion, maybe in this part, da da da-da-da-da. I was like, bro, let's keep that whole take. And the song was fucking done. And and like afterwards, you could have gone into the the mix and you could have fixed a breath, probably. I mean, you've done some like wizard shit of just like taking breaths from other places, putting them in to make it sound like he didn't run out of breath. Yeah, you know, pitching it up to make it sound like it's on key versus off key. 100%. Uh nudging the placement of it to make it sound like it's perfectly on beat and like in the pocket versus like ahead or behind. You could have done that. Yeah, but I just realized in that moment that it gave me that feeling. It gave me an emotion. I felt emotional when the take was over. He was out of breath, he was almost in tears. He just really meant it. And I felt that he meant it. And that mattered more than anything being perfectly aligned to the grid or on key or whatever.

Yeah, do you think it's something where you know, maybe you can listen to both and like find, you know, like the happy medium or something, or like, you know, like what, what's your recommendation to people out there, right? Like when you're making the music, how do you know if you don't hear it maybe like perfected from a technical perspective, right? Yeah, no, you never know. You don't ever know. Yeah, you never know. That stresses me out. Ever. It's my dad was just telling me about like Jack Nicholson shooting a movie. Our dads are making like the rounds in this podcast, bro. They like them on for an episode one time, that would be kind of funny. Jack Nicholson was doing like a warm-up take of a scene um in one of his classic movies. Um, not cuckoo's nest, but one of his movies, and it was like, okay, let's just figure out how the scene's gonna look. And he did it, and they're like, Okay, now let's shoot it for real. And they did it a couple times. And Rob Reiner, the director, was like, you know what? That that first one, like, I don't think we're gonna do any better than that. Yeah, let's keep that.

So it is a gut feeling, I think. A lot of times at the end of the day, you kind of have to just if you feel it, there's a good chance that it's good. And also, the only thing I noticed working with artists is that the more you try to sometimes the more you try to pound out the perfect take, the further away from the raw emotion you get. Oh my god, I've heard that. Yeah, yeah, like it's getting worse and worse and worse almost most times. Yeah, you're trying to just force this emotion, whereas like you had the emotion when you like first heard the beat and you first started trying to hit it. That's when you had it. So trying to recreate it sometimes. It depends on every artist, like I said, just people are different, you know what I mean? Yeah, do you think that the artist uh the artist knows best in this case, or like what's your gut feeling though? That's a good question, right? It's like because you know, to your point, maybe some artists want that like perfect, pristine, I'm never off beat, I'm never off key. Look at Taylor Swift. Yeah, she's not her engineer's not letting her sound like she fucking breathed wrong.

It's that pristine, perfect little image, you know. And I guess if that works for her, it works for her. That's why all of this shit is always gonna be case by case basis. Don't say any, don't take anything we ever say, I think, for permanent face value. Yeah, just not how definitely not us too. Yeah, but not anyone, but definitely not us, too. Definitely not me and Henry. For sure. Like, go do your own fucking homework, do your homework We're just here to like provide you with some like thought-provoking shit. Yeah, that's what we do here. We'd love for you to have some thoughts based on what we say, but like, go listen to other people talk about this stuff. 100% and read the article, yes, yeah. So, you know, New York Times, what is lost when music is cleaned up too much. I think, yeah. Uh, if your dad doesn't have like a paper copy and snipped it for you, you. You could probably find it online. Yeah. If we did find it, we'll link it in the uh you know description of this shit. Because yeah, it was yeah, it was a really short read, but it's good though, got us thinking. And it's so interesting now, too, as a producer. Like, like there's plugins. If you're a producer, you already, I'm sure you know about RC-20.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. All right. Yeah, like RC-20 is the most like the most basic. I'll dumb it down for you. So they they make plugins now that make music sound older and vintage. Wow. It's like so backwards. Here's a brand new shiny plug-in that makes shit sound like it's 30 years old. They're like, we know you sound too new. Too clean. Let's fuck it up a little bit. Yeah. Distortion, like distorting 808s. What do you think distortion is? It literally takes the sample rate, it takes the quality of the audio file, yeah, and lowers it a lot. Oh. It fucks it up so that it's like it's hitting. And so that's what it's doing. That's what it's doing, bro. It's literally lowering the quality of it tastefully. So it's just so funny that we just go so far forward to go backwards now. I'll give one more example too. Shout out Germ. I work with my guy Germ a lot. Check out Germ. He's on G59. Suicide Boys label, yeah. Absolutely. When I first started recording Germ, I was doing my classic like rap vocal, almost like a Drake vocal, a lead vocal down the middle, clean, pristine top end, big body, sitting on top of the beat. Perfect rapper, rapper vocal.

Yeah, yeah. It's almost like pop rap. Yeah. He's so not that. Yeah. I don't know how I didn't hear it at first. I'm not sure how he kept you on as his engineer. I don't understand it either. Yeah. You're a lucky man. He, his style and the boy's style is, you know, dark, um, dark vocal, low, like not as much top end, blends in with the beat. Almost hard. It's it is harder to understand, but it's just the vibe of his vocal, bro. That's what it is. And and you want to know what's perfect? Their audience is full of just, you know, Misfits. misfits that like probably don't feel per. You know, like it just goes back to that related thing, man. Interesting. Like those people, you know, are like oftentimes. I mean, yeah, I mean, you know they're fucking audience. Like, you know, it's like people that aren't like, you know, getting freaking fed by a silver spoon type of folks. For sure. They're a little throwed off. And I think that like the music, they relate to it, bro. Yeah. So make music for you, first of all. Like, you gotta like it.

You know, you have to like it. And there will be an audience. Like, there's an audience for anything. If it's really you, there are more people that feel like you do. Exactly. So, I mean, don't overthink this shit at the end of the day, but don't also feel like you gotta perfect everything too much because you know, once again, there was a unique perspective from this this article that shows that maybe some of these more raw, authentic, you know, records are the ones that you you sit with for for longer. But let me let me also play devil's advocate real quick. Okay. On the other hand, I thought we were wrapping up there, but go ahead. We were fighting technology and fighting advancement is also a losing battle, bro. You can't completely go against what's happening in the real world. Everyone's using auto-tune. Yes, it's cool. But you can also like your auto-tune can fuck up, you know. I'll hear like future or Uzi, like their auto tune like hits like a weird note. I'm like, oh, that was kind of weird. But then I'm like, oh, but it was kind of cool. There's just new new ways to fuck up now.

You know, what I mean, don't go completely against technology. That's a losing battle as well. But what I would say, just for anyone out there making music, engineers, producers, artists, just try and be more conscious on if your fuck up was really a fuck up or if it was kind of a vibe. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Be a be open to mistakes being cool. Because some of my coolest shit and songs I produced and uh songs I've mixed were started as accidents. And that's real shit. That's amazing. Yo, so if y'all fuck with this interview or this episode, excuse me, God, I'm so used to doing interviews, it's crazy. Not interviewing anyone this time. No, I'm just talking to you. Yeah. Uh like, comment, and subscribe. Leave a tip. Tell a friend about this. Until next week, Henry, what are we doing? Getting out of here. Getting the fuck out of here. Peace. Peace, y'all.