Linkin Park

[K9]

All their music sounds the same; O'rly I hear you say...

but I came across these two blog posts where some musical people have messed around with some Linkin Park songs, analysing them and the similarites are rather spooky.

http://www.hometracked.com/2007/05/29/all-linkin-park-songs-look-the-same/

http://www.deadparrots.net/archives/music/0406this_is_how_you_remind_me_how_bad_your_music_sucks.html

the interesting clip is this mp3 

Sorry if this was posted before, it's a little old, but I couldn't find any references to this topic, and thought it was somewhat interesting.

[Merusk]

Heh.. I love when folks mix songs together.  The local rock station used to have a mix of "Back in Black" that meshed with "Master of Puppets" pretty damn well.  (Crap, at least I think it was Puppets.. it was something from Metallica.. )

Anywho, I see no point in criticizing musicians on "oh all your shit sounds the same."  Gee, if it's the same folks writing it, that shouldn't REALLY be surprising.  I'd have to see comparisons of "good" established artists on the same level before I put it down as more than the "wah, they suck ass but are successful and I'm a creative genius and I'm not!" bitching that oozes from all creative industries.

[K9]

...

[lamaros]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print

Rolling Stone, The Death of High Fidelity

You might find that an interesting read. Kind of on the same topic, except being about all music, not just Linkin Park.

[stray]

Heh.. I love when folks mix songs together.  The local rock station used to have a mix of "Back in Black" that meshed with "Master of Puppets" pretty damn well.  (Crap, at least I think it was Puppets.. it was something from Metallica.. )

Anywho, I see no point in criticizing musicians on "oh all your shit sounds the same."  Gee, if it's the same folks writing it, that shouldn't REALLY be surprising.  I'd have to see comparisons of "good" established artists on the same level before I put it down as more than the "wah, they suck ass but are successful and I'm a creative genius and I'm not!" bitching that oozes from all creative industries.

Eh, there's a big difference between having a recognizable style, and literally using the same drum and vocal intros and chord progressions and beats. I mean, at the very least, use the same chords, but change the progression more. Even the most boneheaded band ever (their own words) -- the Ramones -- used A, B, D, E power chord progressions almost all the time, but they at least changed them up in a variety of ways. AC/DC and CCR are some other ones, with many uses of E, D, A, G -- but I swear, Fogerty and Malcolm Young had almost infinite variety with that stuff.

[Hoax]

While they are fun and interesting reads, this whole subject is only good for the interesting results not the critique itself.  Nobody ever gets down on a visual artist for developing a signature style and using it often.  Besides that were dealing with pop music, which is a far fucking cry from high art.  Anything that links me to new mashups is a win+ in my book though.

Nickleback is fucking awful music to be sure, but the Linkin Park guy did go off to do his own solo project (fort minor) which I actually enjoy less then the predictably sometimes fun uncreative stuff he did/does w/ LP.  My lil brother likes both though so I've listened to enough to feel qualified to talk about it.

Anyone getting their panties in a wad */em looks at Stray, whose post he made a point of not reading* over this should take two deep breaths and two steps back.  Art can't be ruined by artists, only by consumers.   

[schild]

Art is actually more often ruined by Agents, Producers, Radio Stations and the artists themselves.

Consumers just make art annoying. They can't ruin it.

[lamaros]

When I went to the sistine chapel there were people everywhere. A sweaty mass of humanity taking endless photos (and getting constantly reprimanded for the fact) that was so noisy and crappy that I left the room quick smart. I would only say they ruined the experience though.

It's prety hard to ruin something, but pretty easy to ruin people's experience of those things. Though, given we live through experience, I guess it can be ruined for us...

Art is actually more often ruined by Agents, Producers, [...] and the artists themselves.

Do you mean that these things stop the art happening to begin with, or that it's there and then gets fucked over?

[stray]

Hmm. It's strange how often my panties are supposedly in a wad at this site. Even more strange, it's supposedly in a wad by someone who says time and again that he goes out of his way to not even read my posts. Someone who's taken that kind of measure obviously has his panties in a wad more than I ever could. He should just air out his grievances instead, either be the bitch that he is or shut the fuck up, instead of pulling off handed moves like the above.

I simply talked about mixing variety with chord progressions and song parts. Which is usually a given even with the most basic garage bands. Ooohh, I'm such a raging cunt.

[schild]

Art is actually more often ruined by Agents, Producers, [...] and the artists themselves.

Do you mean that these things stop the art happening to begin with, or that it's there and then gets fucked over?

Can go both ways.

[lamaros]

Hmm. It's strange how often my panties are supposedly in a wad at this site.

People who aren't used to having opinions often think that when others have them they invest them with deadly importance, probably because they do so themselves. Consequently, they get horribly offended when you disagree with them; they seem to think it implies some kind of personal threat or insult.

[stray]

Well, that's the funny thing. I don't even disagree with Hoax. I think I...umm.. directly corresponded with him once when MxO came out. We both thought it sucked. That was that.

He just doesn't like me for whatever reason. Aww.

/sorry for the derail guys.. my panties are in a bunch. I lose at the internet or something now, right?

Carry on.

[Righ]

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/17777619/the_death_of_high_fidelity/print

I've been harping on about this problem on various music sites for several years. It reached a crisis point for me when I bough Rush's Vapor Trails and found that not only was it a solid wall of compressed noise, but it was clipping all over the place. Just about every album in the past few years that's been mastered by Howie Weinberg at Masterdisk is over-compressed and unpleasant to listen to. And he's just one of many culprits, albeit a high-profile one who is apparently too deaf to notice what he's doing. I'm glad to see that there's a campaign against it now.

http://www.turnmeup.org/

[stray]

We were just talking about the other day, in fact (I still disagree on the particular band we were discussing.. since they were compression laden to begin with, at least in gear).

I agree in general though -- but I think I have a bigger problem with Antares Auto Tuner than any other current trend.

[Righ]

We were just talking about the other day, in fact (I still disagree on the particular band we were discussing.. since they were compression laden to begin with, at least in gear).

That doesn't work though, even though artists may use compressors and limiters to provide certain audio effects, they are not typically applying dynamic range compression across the stereo pair. You have a nicely compressed choppy funk guitar sound, being played alongside bass and drums that aren't limited to the same degree. You mix them to find a nice balance, and then you send it off to the deaf mastering engineer and he works his 'magic'. Hack job compression and level boosting, and you're missing some of the sound because he ignored the bloody great warning signs and went over the red line and lost it, and all the punch in the song's delivery is washed out.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t42376.html

Look at how much better the LP looks. Oh the irony.

[Selby]

It reached a crisis point for me when I bough Rush's Vapor Trails and found that not only was it a solid wall of compressed noise, but it was clipping all over the place.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't hear what everyone is bitching about this album for.  Sure, it's got a solid wall of sound on the guitars with high gain and echo all over the place which leaves absolutely no quiet parts in the song nor much bass coming through at all, but how do I know that isn't what the artist was going for to begin with by experimenting and being "an artist?"  Obviously it isn't what they wanted as the new album is much different (and less intense) in sound...  I'm giving it another listen specifically to hear what all the discussion is about, but quite honestly I'm not hearing anything that doesn't make me think that it wasn't intended to sound the way it does (sonic explosion as opposed to quiet and melodic).

But then I listen to everything on volume 1 of 10 because I have sensitive hearing and it bothers me to listen to loud music.  The only time I have ever noticed clipping in my MP3s is when I used to use the Plugger+ DOS encoder on a few albums way back when and I've just been too lazy to re-rip the album again.  If it is too loud, I just turn it down to barely audible for most people ;-)

[lamaros]

But then I listen to everything on volume 1 of 10 because I have sensitive hearing and it bothers me to listen to loud music.

What do you listen to it on? CD? MP3? It sounds like you're listening to in in some compressed form due to the ripping reference.

Part of the 'logic' of this stupid production is so that the sound translates better to compressed formats (read the article I linked above) and plays better over the radio. If you're used to listening to music in a compressed form them you're not going to notice the difference as much as someone who's used to listening to it uncompressed on quality equipment.

The whole "it's too loud so I turn it down" thing is very odd. Wouldn't you prefer listening to music that is loud when it makes sense and quiet when it makes sense, rather than being always too loud and forcing you to turn the whole thing down?

[stray]

We were just talking about the other day, in fact (I still disagree on the particular band we were discussing.. since they were compression laden to begin with, at least in gear).

That doesn't work though, even though artists may use compressors and limiters to provide certain audio effects, they are not typically applying dynamic range compression across the stereo pair. You have a nicely compressed choppy funk guitar sound, being played alongside bass and drums that aren't limited to the same degree. You mix them to find a nice balance, and then you send it off to the deaf mastering engineer and he works his 'magic'. Hack job compression and level boosting, and you're missing some of the sound because he ignored the bloody great warning signs and went over the red line and lost it, and all the punch in the song's delivery is washed out.

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t42376.html

Look at how much better the LP looks. Oh the irony.

Hmm yeah, sent you a pm about vinyl versions earlier.. That's interesting though, I need to check out a version of that album.

[Selby]

What do you listen to it on? CD? MP3? It sounds like you're listening to in in some compressed form due to the ripping reference.

I listened to CDs for years (my Discman is from 1991 and still works after 16 years of playing on volume level 1 ;-) ), but recently it's just easier to use MP3s (I make my own from the CDs, no downloads for me).  I noticed some slight differences in CD and MP3, but on the car stereo it doesn't sound any different so out go the CDs and in comes the MP3 player.

Part of the 'logic' of this stupid production is so that the sound translates better to compressed formats (read the article I linked above) and plays better over the radio.

Which I can definitely tell a difference in the radio mix vs. a CD.  The radio sounds like they ran it all through an equalizer to make everything 100% the same volume (convenient, but definitely sounds shitty on a ton of songs).  And yes, I did read the article and have read many articles on the subject so I understand what people are saying on it, I just can't hear it.  And getting out my fancy sound system with quality 5-way speakers does result in a nice experience, I just don't hear *that* much of a difference in the two formats to warrant all of the angst, much less retreat into the backroom of my house where the stereo system is just to listen to a CD.  I guess I am not much of an audiophile.

The whole "it's too loud so I turn it down" thing is very odd. Wouldn't you prefer listening to music that is loud when it makes sense and quiet when it makes sense, rather than being always too loud and forcing you to turn the whole thing down?

I don't like loud music in general honestly.  I like to be able to hear it, but the other half goes nuts when we are in the car because I listen to everything so quietly she can't hear 90% of it yet I can.  Of course when the soft parts are soft and the loud parts are loud it is good and definitely contributes to the song.  I am just not sure how much is the sound engineer forcing everything to be loud for the sake of his laziness in just turning everything up to 10 and letting it roll and how much of it is the artist not being as creative or utilizing soft\loud passages.  I don't exactly know how the music recording industry functions with regard to how much say an artist has in their final album product, so that part may be me just overanalyzing the situation and giving the artist more credit than they deserve.

I am finishing Vapor Trails now, and I don't hate the album.  I do feel that it is still a wall of sonic explosion which does make me not necessarily desire to turn it back on, but that may be due to the fact that I don't find any of the songs to be overly catchy nor do I find many of them to be distinct from each other (almost like I've been listening to a single 60 minute track vs. 12 individual songs).  Quite a few albums I am supposed to explode in my pants over according to society I just don't care for nor do I care to hear them again.  Although my ears do feel slightly tired as it is definitely a busy album ;-)  I'm just not sure if that is what the artist wanted or if we have a case of a sound engineer thinking "10 is good, 11 is better" regarding the overall mix of the album.

[lamaros]

I'm just not sure if that is what the artist wanted or if we have a case of a sound engineer thinking "10 is good, 11 is better" regarding the overall mix of the album.

From my understanding a lot of it seems to come from higher up than the engineers. They're usualy smart enough to know what they're doing to the songs, but they get told to produce a certain type of salable product.

[stray]

I do feel that it is still a wall of sonic explosion which does make me not necessarily desire to turn it back on, but that may be due to the fact that I don't find any of the songs to be overly catchy nor do I find many of them to be distinct from each other (almost like I've been listening to a single 60 minute track vs. 12 individual songs).

That's my main prob with Vapor Trails at least (the actual songwriting). It's why I can still appreciate Stadium as well -- the songwriting is good. And for a double disc, it's surprising how many tracks I like. Changing the production would ultimately not change my opinion of either, but I'm curious to hear alternative mastering.

And like you, I jam out mostly on the road these days anyways.

[Llava]

All Signe's posts look exactly the same:

Sample 1a
Sample 2a

Sample 1b
Sample 2b

[sigil]

All Signe's posts look exactly the same:

Sample 1a
Sample 2a

Sample 1b
Sample 2b

Wow, that's pretty good.   

When I think of  bands who sound the same I think of Everclear. Especially anything that got airplay.

[Signe]

[Selby]

When I think of  bands who sound the same I think of Everclear. Especially anything that got airplay.

As far as the ones that got airplay go, I agree.  I still think Sparkle & Fade is one of the best albums written though and World of Noise was pretty good in that time of my life.  I never bought anything after that though, mainly out of laziness.

[Sky]

but the Linkin Park guy did go off to do his own solo project (fort minor) which I actually enjoy less then the predictably sometimes fun uncreative stuff he did/does w/ LP.

And unsurprisingly, I feel that the best move for LP would be to ditch the talentless hack Shinoda. Can't sing or play any instrument well, every time I see them I imagine how much better they'd be if he weren't there.

They also suffer from Modern Rock-ism. I love Amy Lee's voice, and most of Evanescence's music is good until they start churning out those generic modern rock riffs.

[Righ]

It reached a crisis point for me when I bough Rush's Vapor Trails and found that not only was it a solid wall of compressed noise, but it was clipping all over the place.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't hear what everyone is bitching about this album for.  Sure, it's got a solid wall of sound on the guitars with high gain and echo all over the place which leaves absolutely no quiet parts in the song nor much bass coming through at all, but how do I know that isn't what the artist was going for to begin with by experimenting and being "an artist?" 

I believe that the band members have acknowledged that there were 'problems' at the mastering stage and that the final result is not what they wanted. If you want that compressed sound, buy a pre-amplifier with a loudness button on it. Its easy to add dynamic compression, its impossible to remove it.

Mastering is a skill - it takes a good understanding of audio, of quite complex equipment and of the final media. The first generation of compact discs were unsatisfactory because they were simple transfers of music which was mastered for vinyl. Vinyl has a high noise floor and a significantly smaller available dynamic range. The recordings didn't use the available range, but you could at least turn the amplifier gain up to compensate. However, dynamic compression had been applied to constrain the transients within a narrower range and to boost quiet levels above the noise floor inherent with the mechanical noise associated with playing records. The simplest 'remasters' which just boost the levels don't undo the previous mastering. When the mastering engineer has access to the pre-mastered tapes, he can use the full dynamic range available on a compact disc and make a very dynamic and engaging recording. While its a mistake to leave lots of unused range on a CD, its also a mistake to compress the music such that there is no dynamic range left. Most mastering engineers want to be given the freedom to use dynamic range again, and record companies (and artists) are the ones pushing to have 'loud' CDs - but beyond the first impact on compressed radio or myspace, it doesn't help make for engaging, lasting music. If you've ever heard somebody with a pleasant voice and good pitch who sings without any dynamic range, you'll have a sense of how important dynamic range is to sounding musical.

edited to fix quote nest.

[Phildo]

On the subject of Linkin Park, I have a friend who considers their music "everything that is wrong with modern engineering."  They over-compress their music to the point that there is absolutely no dynamic to it whatsoever, it's all at a single volume.  This has always been done to an extent for radio broadcasts (to save on bandwidth), but the fact is that there is no need for it in modern systems other than to allow for it to be played loudly.  That Rolling Stone article is spot-on.  Not to mention the fact that a well-mixed album can sound absolutely nothing like the band itself.  They just taught us how to use auto tune and elastic audio with pro tools to fix timing and pitch errors in just about anything.  Now every record can be a perfect performance, no matter how shitty the band.

Regarding MP3s and digital formats, Bruce Swedien (who engineered Thriller) made an excellent point.  MP3s still sound better than most cassette tapes, and we're lucky to be able to fit so many songs on one little player.  And while we have the capacity to make super-high-quality audio (SACD, DVD-Audio, HD formats), consumer trends are probably going to lead in a (temporary) reduction in general audio quality.  Engineers are still mixing at CD levels, but many are being mixed with MP3s in mind.  I've taken the liberty of cutting the first 30 second of Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult into 128 and 64 bit MP3s for comparison.  I've also taken the audio that was cut out of the MP3s and put wav files together with that.  It's funny what you don't realize you're missing.

Original WAV
MP3 (128)
MP3 (64)

Lost at 128
Lost at 64

(edit for grammatical errors, etc)

[bhodi]

What's lost with VBR? I encode all my crap with a high VBR, so I'm sure it's significantly less.

No, I know VBR isn't the industry standard, but it makes MY stuff sound a whole lot better and I'm sure I have more discriminating ears than most.

[Selby]

Lost at 128
Lost at 64

I had to turn my speaker volume up about halfway just to be able to hear anything on the 128k loss, and it wasn't completely killing the song.  The 64 was more obvious, but then we all knew that it would be ;-)

[Phildo]

VBR is the way to go, it does the best job of maintaining overall song quality.  Of course, we could all just use Apple Lossless compression and save ourselves the headache... but it only compresses around 50% of the file size.  Run through the same test I used on the MP3s (compressing the file, inverting the MP3 and lining it up with the original to cause cancellation) it's absolutely silent, hence pretty much perfect.

And the point is more that you lose coloring and flavor to your music when you use file compression, much the same as with the general wave compression discussed earlier.  MP3 in particular is known for axing your high end past a certain point.  There are better algorithms out there, but we have our standard to deal with for the next few years, hooray!

Also, I think the change would be more noticeable if I'd used something recorded digitally versus an old analog tape recording.  Say what you will about either medium, digital is simply cleaner(before the engineer gets his grubby little hands on it.)

[stray]

Hey, as long as I can still hear the cowbell, I'm fine.

[Phildo]

An example of modern over-compression/clipping (top), when lined up against Don't Fear The Reaper (bottom).

Link

[Sky]

I rip stuff at 192kbps VBR AAC. I can definitely notice cheaply mastered/mixed CDs. I was going through a heavy phase the other night, listening to some of Zakk's live stuff, then some Mercyful Fate, then Deep Purple came up. The DP stuff is from the fiancee's collection, she doesn't research CDs quite as much as I do (LOVE ALLMUSIC), so she doesn't always get the best sounding discs. It was an awful Best Of comp, just garbage, I have stuff pulled from the goddamned 20s that sounds better!

Of course, the downside is I can't fit my entire CD collection on my 30GB iPod...not even close.

[sigil]

Hey, as long as I can still hear the cowbell, I'm fine.

I now hear cowbell  when that song plays on the radio.