What also bothers me about NCS is the chord progressions. If I were to play a country gig and the band was playing some classic country, I could probably guess ALL the chord changes and maybe NEVER heard the song before in my life. Now, if you are on the bandstand and you are covering one of these NCS songs, you better know EVERY chord change because they almost make no sense!

It really frustrates me to see Country music get branded like this. Just because you wear a cowboy hat and have a steel player doesn't make you country.

Mark

[This message was edited by Mark Ardito on 22 July 2002 at 08:36 AM.]

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Can we actually define that boundary, in technical, non-emotional terms?

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I'm betting NO .... Is my boundary anything like your boundary? Not likely.

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The "path" comes into existence only when we observe it.

--Werner Heisenberg, in uncertainty principle paper, 1927

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Think he was a musician????

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Home Page

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"Boom-Poppa-CHING-Poppa
Boom-Poppa-CHING-Poppa
Boom-Poppa-CHING-Poppa
Boom-Poppa-CHING-Poppa

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I just keep workin...

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"Boom-Poppa-CHING-Poppa
Boom-Poppa-CHING-Poppa

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• Hardly ANY drums at all, or just a guy using brushes on a snare drum;
  
• Out-of-tune instruments;
  
• Screechy-sounding fiddles;
  
• Poor singing ability;
  
• Songs that are barely 2:00 long;
  
• Not enough steel guitar (yes, it’s true, there were plenty of big hits in 60’s and 70’s without any steel at all – Ray Price, Ronnie Milsap, many others);
  

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Oh, but I can't turn this thing around
And nothing short of breaking down
Is gonna get me off this road I'm on
Oh, and I'm still a far cry from gone

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1. "This thing" she can't turn around is both her car and the relationship;
2. "Breaking down" refers both to a car problem and crying;
3. "This road I'm on" is both the asphalt under the car and the act of leaving her man;
4. "A far cry from gone" means physically not travelled far away yet as well as being emotionally still stuck.

I'm sure double-entendre occurs a lot of places besides counrtry lyrics, but it seems to me to happen in country music more often than elsewhere, and is kind of a signature of well-done country.

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Bill L | My steel page | Email | My music | Steeler birthdays | Over 50?

[This message was edited by Bill Llewellyn on 22 July 2002 at 05:39 PM.]

Specifics:

• Thinness and Brightness of steel EQ. These two often seem to be the only characteristics tolerated in NCS steel sound. Lows are removed robbing the tone of roundness, fullness, and balance. Mids are cut until there is no substance or body. What's left can be as pleasing as a skeeter in one's ear.

• Busy, chaotic arrangements.

• Thunderous mixes.

• Profoundly uncountry grooves.

• Where did your acoustic guitar go? It disappeared into the high hat--just a shimmering wash after being robbed of it's warmth by bright-happy EQing.

Do they think we're all driving around in Barney Fife's '61 Ford with an AM radio and dime-sized speakers? We can hear the treble, y'all; turn it down...please.

[This message was edited by Jeff Evans on 22 July 2002 at 07:21 PM.]

Everything, with some aforementioned agreeable exceptions, sounds EXACTLY THE SAME.

Lyrics are pretentious. Sounds like people aren't REALLY into what they're talking about.

A lot of these singers do not sing with any
real conviction. They're VIDEOS only amplify
this.

All of the truly great artists still alive today, would hardly stoop to some idiotic VIDEO format to promote something which is essentially best left to the EAR.

Music is meant to be listened to. Not watched.

When you sit and watch some video of a song with all the attending 'artistic' interpretations from someone elses mind,
then you are being cheated. Cheated to be left alone to close your eyes and use your own imagery of what pops into your mind/heart
when you hear that sound. You are watching their very subjective interpretation. Who needs it?

I gotta split now.....Thanks 'Uncle b0b'.
I could go on forever with this topic.

"For the steel guitars no longer cry
And you can't hear fiddles play
With drums and rock 'n' roll guitars
Mixed right up in your face"

IThe most memorable thing ever said about "hard-core" pornography in the Supreme Court was the late Justice Stewart's quote "I know it when I see it."

well, I know NCS when I hear it.

I really don't care if folks like it or play it, just don't call it Country!!!

Leave that monikker for the real country s***

maybe "Suburban Con Temporary"?? with the emphasis on Temporary.

Diane Warren should take a long vacation.

[This message was edited by Dave Van Allen on 22 July 2002 at 07:54 PM.]

“It's cheeper(time wise) to lay down rythem tracks and scratch vocal then have the guitar, piano, steel, fiddle or what ever come in one at a time and just play over everything. Then later on the producer can digitly cut and paste the fills and solo parts he likes wherever he wants them, so nothing ever flows musicaly as if it were a real band playing.”

Most of the current tracking sessions I have been around are full bands playing together. Definitely some cut and paste going on, but also a lot of live interplay happening also.

As for the compression thing, yeah radio is smashing/enhancing it pretty hard, but go sit in a mastering studio sometime. The volume wars start there (well, actually at the mix desk first. 48+ tracks with 40+ compressors running, plus another one strapped across the 2 buss). Not to mention the compression that went down on the tracks. It is way smashed before it hits radio. I hear as much enhancement/widening as I do compression. As much as I like compression (I carry over 30 channels of it it my racks, not to mention every channel on high end consoles and/or DAWs has one builkt in), even I am lamenting dynamics these days.

I do like a lot about NCS, and I really agree with Randy P about not liking a lot of the older stuff, too. Crap’s crap, regardless of vintage…

[This message was edited by John Macy on 23 July 2002 at 08:18 AM.]

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“One of the great problems is not that we aren't using good musicians on the recordings today, it is that they have been trained by the young rock producers to come up with the pop sound.”

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It' not the "S" in NCS which is inappropriate--it's the "C."

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Now, hold on... Personally, I have more of a problem with the "N".
Why does adding piano lines that Pete Johnson was playing in 1935, and 70's Motown bass lines make something "New" ?
-John
Maybe the C stands for corrupted...

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Music is meant to be listened to. Not watched.

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It's really interesting about digital recording. I used to just have ear fatigue after a long day--now I add eye and wrist fatigue to the list.

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We now have cultural machines so powerful that one singer can reach everybody in the world, and make all the other singers feel inferior because they're not like him. Once that gets started, he gets backed by so much cash and so much power that he becomes a monstrous invader from outer space, crushing the life out of all the other human possibilities.

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As far as NCS, some I like some I don't. The same for OCS. I agree with Randy Pettit's observations. Some NCS has too many strings. Not enough separation of the instruments.

Just my $.02

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Bill Sampler
Carter S10 Double Body 4p/5k

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Music is meant to be listened to. Not watched.

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I often thought about how much this Video technology changed music. Not for the better either!

I can remember when you heard a song and wondered what the band looked like.

Us ugly folks don't have a chance anymore.
People now "listen with their eyes".

It's not just the kids that do this.

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What's up with the pitch? The first 5 songs are all 30 or 40 cents sharp.

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Yes...at least. The #1 "country" station here does that--putting the pitch between the frets.

My guess is that it's some stupidity about trying to sound or feel more "up" than the other guys.

The same station boosts the treble through the roof. So, if you get your EQ on your vehicle stereo set about right for normal listening and happen to stop on that station, it is glaringly bright. (Just what NCS needs: an even brighter sound.)

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"Ole Brother"

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I'll admit that I first learned of Scruggs Style Banjo when, as a "Rock Guitar Playing Kid", a saw the movie "Bonnie & Clyde" and then Deliverance".

That led me to investigate Bluegrass and follow the trail back to Monroe, the Stanleys,etc.

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As far as speeding up the songs, it isn't done at all to change the sound, but, to get more music in per hour. It means extra music...OR extra commercials.

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Incidentally, there's another mindset out there in broadcasting which boasts about how they DON'T compress or otherwise process the music. Stations like classical, 'adult contemporary', and traditional jazz. I wish they'd all do that.

Specifically what I don't like:
Over produced, over mixed, too many instruments on one song. I counted a banjo, a dobro, a PSG, and a big string section on on a NCS CMT video I saw., in addition to the rock drummer, the tele's, the booming bass.

Another specific, many songs sound too much like rap. Childish rhymes.

There is no way a road band could reproduce all that crap. Might as well lip synch it or do karaoke.

I like to hear each instrument.

Maybe this is way off.....

Before mixing boards and stacks of black speakers, each player was in charge of his own sound. The vocal sounded centered. The bass a little to one side, the guitar man, to another side, the drummer in the middle, piano man way to one side.

The NCS is all mixed and mashed and comes out the big black speakers. Might as well be playing a stereo track from a CD. I think this miixed/mashed sound is what we hear today.

I saw Acoustic Alchemy live a few weeks ago. If you know their music, it is a classical guitar and a steel string guiatr playing great duets. Well, they had the big stack of speakers in a very small venue, with a deaf idiot at the controls of the mixing board. I left after 5 songs. Over mixed Sh** coming out of those speakers.

In contrast, I saw Lyle Lovett and the LArge Band a few weeks ago, in a huge indoor venue, and I could hear every instrument. The volume was comfortably low. Great performance. Not NCS.

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Sorry guys but you need to be aware that Country haters are a pretty large group, and it's mostly old style Country they hate

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