Underground Music vs Maintream

Simple Thread Just post 1 example of what real music should sound like and then another mainstream video with the same crap message they try to send. I just want to make it easier for some people to understand the differences. Any genre is welcomed.
Im gonna start off with The Palmer Squares from Chicago.


vs
Lil Wayne

Looks like you forgot to post the real music.

What is your opinion of what real music is?

Oh man

Underground vs Mainstream.

This whole thing will get as old as Conservative vs Labour.

My opinion is this. Make music you want, if you get heard and make it. Well done. If your fans are real fans, they will stick by you.

"Selling out" is not making a dub step tune when all you have done is make house all your life. Selling out is putting your name to a cheese can for a quick buck.


I'm sorry, but I cannot debate on this whole subject anymore. I have friends who will not listen to BBC Radio 1 because they think its all "Commercial" stuff. When actually, some songs that are in the charts, are pretty darn good.

No one blinked an eye at Swedish House Mafia when they stormed the charts... And producers everywhere know how badly they conned other artists and audiences at concerts.

A song is a song. If it's good, it's good. If it's bad.. its bad. Cannot blame anyone if it does not get heard.

Music is exactly like Marmite. You either love it, or you hate it.

This is music with feeling.

[yvid]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNcoPkfoHuk&feature=youtu.be[/yvid]


This is worthless crap.

reply to post by brace22


Yeah your right I ahpuld have gone with real music vs mainstream.
I understand thw difference between someone who makes music for the fame and money and those who do it because its their artistic way of expressing themselves and emotions.

reply to post by bittersylence3


Fix your links. They don't seem to be working for me.

reply to post by ElOmen


Real music?

Well if there were no instruments,
Involved in its creation,
Then what you have isnt music,
Its just an imitation,
A mixing desk just doesnt cut it,
Nor does a PC,
You need a Fender Stratocaster,
Or something heavy from ESP,
And as for drumming,
Do not leave it to machines,
One man,
Two sticks,
Double pedals because they're mean,
And if you're vocal,
Just listen,
The spoken word is turd,
Sing if you want polish,
Or scream if you want it to gleam.
If you are still confused,
Then this is what I mean:

Nice poem. Ironic you said the spoken word is turd when your writing there (I assume) is to be read in spoken word poetic form.

AND

You say about not using a PC


Well I bet you a fiver that all the metal music you listen to is processed through a computer.

I personally feel it is not right to ridicule other forms of music and music production. I make my own music on my computer. All digital. Does not mean I make stuff like Katy Perry an what not.

Hans Zimmer - Probably the greatest film composer alive. He composes ALL his music on a custom computer using samples and what not. The guy can't even read music (According to a conversation he had with Deadmau5)...

Would you call his music real music?

Apologies for saying Metal Music.... I meant to say Rock and so on. I can never tell the differences haha

Originally posted by brace22
Nice poem. Ironic you said the spoken word is turd when your writing there (I assume) is to be read in spoken word poetic form.

No, either sing, scream or growl.

AND

You say about not using a PC


Well I bet you a fiver that all the metal music you listen to is processed through a computer.

I hear this arguement all the time, and its a bloody nonsense. Metal music is written, polished, and jammed out,
in basements, garages, and practice spaces, on actual intstruments. The computers come in later, and are NOT part of the creative process in the same way. However in pop and similar nonsense, the voices, the beats, the melody, virtually everything gets created in some piece of crap program, purely to make money. Thats the other thing, metal heads make music to break a face to, because they want to break a face, and thats honest. Pop stars in the very large majority these days, make music because they love money so much that record deals make them pop boners.One is a legitimate art form, the other is a corperate bloody nightmare.

I personally feel it is not right to ridicule other forms of music and music production. I make my own music on my computer. All digital. Does not mean I make stuff like Katy Perry an what not.

Hans Zimmer - Probably the greatest film composer alive. He composes ALL his music on a custom computer using samples and what not. The guy can't even read music (According to a conversation he had with Deadmau5)...

Well, at least Zimmer has a good ear I suppose. I personally think that sampling is cheating. I remember Fat Boy Slim (aka Norman Cook) famous in the nineties, was lambasted at one point for not giving credit to the person who sung the vocal sample he used on Praise You, one of his most famous songs. Essentially ripping other people off to make the musical equivalent of a kindergarten collage is not what I call talent, and in music particularly, there is so much evidence that people no longer care about creativity, that it has been perfectly fine for a while to leave all the hard work to other people. Its Frankenstien music, and I find it SO ugly.

Would you call his music real music?

Not being able to read music doesnt mean a bloody thing. If you have an ear, you can play an instrument. You dont NEED to know the names of the strings, or the keys you are playing. You only need to do the work, to become familiar enough with an instrument tonally that you can ignore the written version of the music, and just PLAY. Folk is a great example. Some of the best folk music is composed from familiarity with the instruments on which it is played, rather than written down on a sheet.

I cannot read music, and I do not know any music theory of any sort. I can however play a bass guitar, and make music with my friends (which we do, on the occassion that we all have enough money to rent the practice room that we use, which is out the back of an automobile machine shop. Its funny actually, you get inspiration from the sound of angle grinders and metal cutting machinery before you go in, because you have to walk through the garage to get to the room. Its pretty awesome actually!)

Is Hans Zimmerman a musician? Not yet. He is a programmer, a tinkerer. If he applied his undoubtedly wonderful ear to picking up a violin, or a bit of brass, or even a timpani, and learning to apply his ear to that instead of a bloody machine, I would be able to respect it.

Its like that bloody moron Trent Reznor. Everyone was all "Oh my God, your work on the music for The Social Network was amaaaaaazing". It wasnt. He crammed a room in his home with more synthesizers, computers and bloody wires than were strictly sensible, and made NOISES. The work he was acclaimed for was a horrific mess, which anyone who ever sat in front of an electronic keyboard in high school, probably could have written by falling asleep on the keys.

reply to post by TrueBrit


I understand your argument. I wasn't being offensive.. I'm a fan of a friendly debate.

I would like to point our that I am very much aware of what pop musicians do. I am not a fan of pop music, and people like David Guetta really do grind my gears.


But I also fear you maybe a little naive to think ALL people who make music with computers are like that... I can sit at my computer for 12 hours straight making music. I will sit and tinkle with a synth program trying to find a ridiculous sound I have not heard before. You can't be narrow minded and think that only creative music is made with a guitars etc. I completely respect and understand how you feel though. Heck I used to play guitar myself.

I love making music on my computer because it IS a creative art form. It's not as easy as people think. Yes Garage Band makes it easy to make a simple tune to use on your You Tube vids. But people like me who want to make good music and just let people listen, we cannot be bunched in the same group as pop producers who literally do it to make money. I do not care one bit if I make money from music at some point in my life. I really don't. As long as I can sit and play around with synths an what not and make interesting percussion beats... Why isn't that music? I'm doing the same as you guys just not with a guitar?


I am not saying that the music you talk about ISN'T real music. It is, my god it is as real as it gets. But I don't think it is fair for people who have a life long passion for tinkering with software to make noises they like and music they like for fun, to be ridiculed and bunched into the same group with corporate machines.

Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean it isn't music. I don't like all the screaming and shouting etc in your music, do I say that isn't music? No.

Also, what I meant by sampling is not the Fat Boy Slim sampling you mentioned. I meant by he uses recorded samples of say a drum hit etc. that has been recorded specifically for the use in any song required by the producer.

reply to post by brace22


I am sorry if I came off as defensive or aggressive, but this is a subject which throws me into a fit every time I think about it, because although I accept that people like your good self, may make music using programs with a high degree of interest in the sound, rather than in the possible financial outcomes of such sound, the percentage of folks doing it to gain plaudits they dont deserve, and money they havent really worked for, is much greater than that of true artisans in that feild. It makes me volcanically angry.

No not at all my good friend!

I agree with you. This happens a lot in these types of debates. Both people have the same beef with the same stupid corporations, however because they come from a different musical background, it's hard to see the similarities.

I will be the first to shoot down the producers who make what they make purely for money. That is not an artistic natured life. It is a job. They maybe talented in terms of production, but there is no heart or soul in it.

Good stuff.



Really bad stuff.

a reply to: TrueBrit

hans zimmer was/is a musician...he played piano..switched to keyboards....played in a few bands.
now though he is a composer...

i get what you are saying for the most part about making music in a room on a synth.

i feel that to be a musician by definition you have to play an instrument....
i thinkk composers can compose on a synth but in my opiion, it becomes a real musicial piece when real musicians play it. not some midi loop.

towards the end of his life frank zappa composed almost entirely on an early version called the synclavier.

he was always on the hunt for the music to be played perfect. he has said he live bands came close only a couple times. with the synclavier his music could be realized and played in perfect pitch, in perfect time, every time.
i really think all he wanted to do was hear what was in his head played perfectly. i put this together from reading everything i could get my hands on.
in my musical world i give frank a pass because as we all know, frank was a musician and composer. he dedicated his life to it.
this was not a guy that only composed on a synth and didnt play an instrument.

im with you though. im not into the face busting metal like you but i want my music played by real people on real instruments.

also i just wanted to stick up for hanz zimmer