WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?

May 1, 2003 12:00 PM, The Remix Editors, Robert Hanson Erin Hutton Kylee Swenson

Music isn't about ones and zeros. It's not a collection of soon-to-be-obsolete pieces of gear. Music is ultimately about the performance of a person or a group. It's a vibe; it's an emotion; it's a stupid lyric that means everything; it's a moment in time. These are things that truly matter. We as engineers, producers and musicians get so involved in the technology and the process of music production that we often lose sight of what's important.

For me, Robert, this took a long time to figure out. When I got started, I was an angry 16-year-old enamored of Ministry, Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy who was baffled by the music-making process. When I stumbled upon the idea of making music with computers and the prospect of sidestepping the drama of bands, people and actual musical proficiency, I was sold. Armed with a Macintosh Performa and Passport Master Tracks Pro, a Yamaha General MIDI synth, a 4-track and a $100 Ibanez guitar, I went off to college and spent the next four (okay, five) years locked in my bedroom, making some truly awful music.

When I got out of school and finally made my way to San Francisco, the two best possible things happened to me. To begin with, my computer died, and all of my gear was rendered useless in my eyes. And second, I started playing bass in what essentially amounted to a three-piece punk band. I was hooked. During the next two years, I flirted with a number of bands, playing bass, guitar, keys or whatever, and things finally clicked for me musically. I could take ideas and melodies and finally present them in a coherent way — a crash course in music theory, if you will. This was huge. And with the purchase of a new Mac and a copy of Steinberg Cubase, I got back into production. The difference this time was that I had the correct perspective and a real working concept of a how a piece of music was supposed to flow.

With computers and the countless options we have before us, it's easy to get lazy. When a piece of music isn't working, many of us like to blame the synth patch or the drum sample. Often, the truth of the matter is, if a piece of music isn't working, it's probably something much more basic. Maybe the bass line was sloppy. Maybe the rhythms are clashing. Or maybe the chord progression sucks. Some of the earliest blues and jazz records were often cut on 2- and 4-track tape machines with horrible mics and even worse signal paths. The reason that these recordings still hold up is the musicianship behind them — something that so many of today's recordings simply lack.

I'm sharing all of this because with this issue of Remix, we've attempted to demystify the process of assembling a studio — a process that we hope you'll approach in the correct light. Although it's easy to be seduced by this year's must-have synth or DAW, it's much more important to become proficient with what you already own — a sentiment that is echoed in our Autechre feature story.

Furthermore, with our cover story about Gang Starr, we gain some interesting insight into the process of staying current in the music scene. It's interesting to hear how seasoned professionals still have to wrestle with that ever-pervasive flavor-the-month mentality. All of us are influenced by current trends, and as musicians, we're left to question how much we want our music to reflect that. DJ Premier and Guru feel that within the hip-hop community, it is absolutely necessary to take stock of their contemporaries while continuing to forge their own path.

It's easy to make music with blinders on if that's all you ever want to do. If your goal is to make people stand up and take notice, sometimes it's important to take a step a back and note what worked before and compare it with what's working now — or what isn't. Good luck.

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