Musical Pet Peeves

I don't follow. Have any audio examples?

To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."

Think Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight", Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" and The Power Station's "Some Like It Hot".

edited 16th Feb '14 8:26:56 AM by tropeslave

Basically, just about every 80s pop song. It's part of the reason you can tell so many songs are from the 80s by the drum sound alone. Just listen to the drums in songs like "Centerfold" or "Hungry Like the Wolf."

edited 16th Feb '14 11:49:06 PM by FingerPuppet

• "I love you" is boring, and so does every other lyric line in love songs that are in 1st-person point-of-view. More people should write love songs in 3rd-person point-of-view, such as the lyric line "He loves her"/"She loves him". It shouldn't be too difficult.
• Loud-quiet dynamic. first,you play it quietly..... Then, you play it LOUDLY IN A SUDDEN!!! This is awfully hilarious if played by an uncreative "extreme" rock band without a new idea, especially a band which abuses every cliche to the extreme.
• Dear musicians, sampling from classic songs does NOT make you appear more sophisticated for knowing the classics. Sampling doesn't make the older generations like you more because they just simply don't care. It doesn't hide the fact that you can't come up with short catchy melodies for your songs. You still want to sample a classic song? Alright. Make sure you sample it more subtly and creatively. Put the sample into a song fittingly as if the the sample actually comes from the song itself.
• Turn down the reverbbbb. We know you turn it up because you want to trick us into thinking that you have a dull voiceeee. Or is it because you want to sound like you're singing in the bathroommmm? This is the effect that made me hate Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes although the band can sing great harmoniessss.
• Some drummers in bands start playing the drums in the second verse, thinking it gives the song more structure although the effect is little. I hope they realise that playing the drums starting from the beginning of the song is a better idea. Almost every Taiwanese pop-rock drummer faithfully does this to the extent that it's slowly turning into a necessity for the country's bands in the genre.

edited 22nd Feb '14 12:01:54 AM by tropeslave

This right here is what pisses me off. Specifically how you think you know why people sample. You don't. Some of us just sample because we *gasp* just like that particular part of the song and/or think it'd make for a nice sample, not because it makes us look "cool" or or some other pretentious reason. Coming from someone who actually does produce, this kind of snooty presumptuousness just drives me up the wall.

To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."

This is the advice I can give. There are some musicians who sample that I like. Some of them are from The Avalanches. Most of their songs have multiple samples playing at once. That's how the samples fit into the songs as if they're not being taken from somewhere else. Another one is Kanye West, whose "Blood on the Leaves" is even structured more heartbreaking than the song he samples - Nina Simone's "Strange Fruit". Musicians just can't simply put a sample into a song. They have to apply some creativity so the sample can suit the song seamlessly. If not, we get songs like Jay-Z's "Young Forever", which so blatantly samples Alphaville's "Forever Young", and "Holy Grail", which contains an out-of-place sample of "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Another terrible song that samples is "Ice Ice Baby". Its "Under Pressure" bass, being the only great unit to be found in the song, is not being served any justice by anything else in the song.

edited 19th May '14 8:40:38 PM by tropeslave

The Jay-Z and Vanilla Ice examples I can understand. You seem to have implied, however, that just looping a single sample is in itself bad sampling, which I don't agree with. For example, Just Blaze's production on Jay-Z, Beanie Sigel and Scarface's "Some How Some Way". It uses loops from Jermaine Jackson's Castle in the Sand, but it's still a lovely beat. Or DJ Premier's production on Skyzoo and Torae's Click. It's a the sample is a 4-bar loop (rounding up), but it's a fantastic beat regardless. There are many other examples, but those are the ones that came top my head while posting this.

I do believe it takes more thought to chop and rearrange a sample to make it work for you, rather than the other way around, and I really like when producers do that, but you can still get a hot beat from looping.

Also, respect for the The Avalanches mention. They are some of the best samplers I've ever heard.

edited 23rd Feb '14 7:23:03 AM by PhysicalStamina

To pity someone is to tell them "I feel bad about being better than you."

Everything about Brain Drill's brand of death metal.

And almost every kind of "modern" metal whose genre can be classified as "technical". And djent. Fuck morse code riffing abuse.

edited 1st Mar '14 6:26:37 PM by StillbirthMachine

Only Death Is Real

Agreed. Chug chug chug on the bottom two strings while tuned to drop Ab is so boring.

And to think I dated somebody who ate that shit up. And before anybody asks, no, he didn't have a single goddamn thing to make up for his shit taste.

edited 1st Mar '14 6:38:28 PM by Scolipendra

I'm honestly fine with stop and go riffing by itself - Pestilence, for example, made it work wonderfully in the past. However the idea of "have riffs with pauses in them" goes as far back as the 70's with pre-metal hard rock and dressing it up with more erratic tempos doesn't make it new as much as more convoluted. It's a useful technique for building up tension but when taken to the level of modern tech/core/djent bands, doesn't result in much beyond really limited, dull riffage.

edited 2nd Mar '14 2:10:43 PM by StillbirthMachine

Only Death Is Real

True. I guess it's just djent and modern br00tal and technical death that peeves me.

Hey, I don't mean to ruin anyone's fun, but isn't this a really blatant complaint thread? Especially when some of the posts just namedrop artists and are pretty much like "man, I just fucking hate that" and that's it. I mean, isn't this against the rules?

If I'm mistaken (which I may be), then that's fine, it just occurred to me a moment ago that this thread really does look like a complaint thread that slipped through the cracks.

I don't think so. Most of us here usually state our personal pet peeves. Then, we discuss them with other tropers, some of them who disagree on our opinions, on why we find our pet peeves unfavorable and being suggested some songs that could change our views. Although there are complaints and hate in the thread, we provide our constructive criticisms that redeem them.

Some of my complaints come across as rude in some of my posts. I will tone it down in my future posts here.

edited 1st Mar '14 11:06:31 PM by tropeslave

If your not on key, It will drive me nuts. I will literally hit people over it.

To the question raised in , I have no issue with this thread as it has remained civil, on-topic, and for the most part there's been actual discussion going on as opposed to just bitching.

edited 2nd Mar '14 8:12:51 AM by Willbyr

Of course, I understand

It's just that I've seen a lot of threads get locked for being "complain threads" even though they were civil and actual discussion was going on over people arguing and what not.

The Music fora in general always struck as a little more relaxed than most of the other fora around here.

edited 2nd Mar '14 11:33:50 AM by DrStarky

Put me in motion, drink the potion, use the lotion, drain the ocean, cause commotion, fake devotion, entertain a notion, be Nova Scotian

Likewise, actually. I don't mind a whole lot, since Music's the only forum I actually post in frequently (barring Western Animation to occasionally remind people to maybe take it down a notch, but I got hounded for that not too long ago because people thought I was acting crazy or something, so I've avoided doing that lately).

I just realised that it bothers me when a band does not involve a drummer when playing songs which are soft/acoustic. I don't know if they think percussion makes a soft/acoustic song less poignant but I don't think so.

I really dislike it when the bass goes between being really upfront and audible at some moments and utterly disappearing at others.

Only Death Is Real

This is more of a live performance pet peeve than anything: Singers whose choreography is so complicated that they can't possibly be singing. I paid to see a raw live performance, not watch them dance to the CD track of an album I already own.

I think music videos are largely to blame for that. For at least certain types of artists the live shows have become more about recreating music videos live than singing/performing live.

and This is a problem when performers want to sing and dance at the same time. It's difficult to sing the notes properly for an hour or more when they have to skip and prance while doing so. Their lungs most probably can't handle that much of burden. It depends on the audience. I think the audience prefers the performers to dance like what they do in the music videos over performing the vocals properly. Most of them would find their performances without choreography for most parts of the shows as inferior. This is quite sad for me because I favor music over choreography and visuals.

I think this could sometimes also be an issue of some bands just not trusting their drummers to be able to play softly and not overpower the rest of the instrumentation. I did hear somewhere this was why when Nirvana did their Unplugged performance, they had Dave Grohl play with brushes. In general, Nirvana has always had at least some percussion on their softer songs though - even "Polly" has at least a few cymbal hits, though it's one of those songs on Rock Band where if you're drumming, you're mostly sitting around waiting 'til you finally get to do something.

edited 31st Mar '14 8:34:10 PM by MikeK

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.