Thesis?

[betty182]

Hi everyone

Ive been asked to put forward a possible thesis for my dissertation this year,

Im studying a studio recording degree

But although having a few ideas of where to take it, im struggeling to come up with a solid idea that ensure i will have enough to work with, and will get me a strong mark.

I want to encorporate the social impact that my topic has had, but still keep it technology based.

I am not asking any one to do the work for me, im more than happy to do so, but all i need is a stong thesis to get me going,

I mwould appreciate any help

Thanks

[elektro80]

The best approach is choosing a subject you already feel you understand very well.

As for social impact, I dunno.. but possible subjects could be like microphone techniques for choirs and such and how this has developed since like one mic setups around like 1908 or something like that.

[mosc]

I agree with Elektro80, go with what you know.

As for socal impact, that's a huge subject.

Random thought:

I know a woman singer song writer. I have seen her perform seveal times. She is an OK singer, but not really very good. Her pitch control is not great and she can't control the timbre very smoothly either. Her live performances are what I would call good amature level. Last week she gave me a CD she has produced. I reluctantly listened to it with very low expectations. She had it recorded in LA by someone that does a lot of modern female singers' CDs.

Wow, I was amazed. Pitch correction, compression, eq and other techniques I can only imagine made a tremendous difference. It didn't really sound like my friend - more like one of the modern pop singers. I was blown away. I don't work in vocal production so the state-of-the-art was beyond my knowledge.

From a social perspective, it seems that at least in pop music a persons musical ability is not very important because so much can be done in the recording studio. Pop artists are becoming more and more personalities - actors as it were. I think this has always been the case, but musical skills are much less important now than I would have thought. Well, at least for the performers - the producers are becoming more musical.

[seraph]

[betty182]

Wow that does sound like a great idea, really appreciate your feedback.

So the best way forward now would probably start my research, trying to get a better insight to this area.

I will more than likely look at aspects linked with

How producers can manipulate vocals to make them more impressive

How diffeent producers apraoch different singers to try and get the best performace out of them

What the technology in vocal recording is, and how it has evolved in years gone by



Do you suggest any other areas i could concentrate on to angle my discusion?

Thanks again

[Uncle Krunkus]

[deknow]

...to play devils advocate (and go perhaps a little ot):

uncle k,

you could look at this as damaging, or you could look at it as liberating. personally, i can't draw a straight line with a ruler...yet, with a computer, i've done drafting professionally, and a fair ammount of graphic design. i would have no chance at either of these without "cheating tools" like computers. the only people "hurt" by this are those that have invested a lot of time learning to do these things, and would rather that i hire them to do these jobs.

at the em events, there are certainly plenty of folks that would not be performing their own (brilliant, in my opinion) music in public without "electronic cheating"....laptops, sequencers, backing tracks, big piles of interconnected guitar pedals, etc. i do a fair ammount of volunteer work for our local flute club...and let me tell you, playing a flute through electronics is generally seen as pure blasphemy, and cheating of the highest order.

in the case of the vocalist howard is talking about, it all really depends. is she using this as a demo in order to get live gigs? this might be problematic, as it borders on false advertising (she doesn't really sound like that). on the other hand, if she wants to "produce" a cd of music she loves, and have it also reflect her own tastes and ideas (even if her performance doesn't quite live up to such goals without help), i can't see a problem...would it be differant if she did the studio tricks herself rather than hiring engineers? (i don't think so). otherwise, mastering engineers (which have their hands on virtually every commercial recording) would not have jobs, and it would be "cheating" to have an engineer use mic placement and/or outboard gear (or plugins) in order to fatten up a guitar tone, or make a bass sound fuller.

i do get what you are saying, and i might feel differantly if these studio tricks were really only available to those "in the industry", but we all have access to these tools, it's actually quite "democratic".

of course, it's quite telling that there are virtually no 'ugly' female stars these days, and since i don't think physical beauty is correlated with vocal talent, there is something worth worrying about here. would ella be a star if she was up and coming today? probably not, she might be singing jingles annonomasly.


deknow

[kkissinger]

[elektro80]

[mosc]

[Uncle Krunkus]

The real point I was trying to make was that these "tools", by definition, mean that you don't sound like yourself anymore. I'm a great believer in the shadow, the fuck ups, the bum notes, basically half the things which make life interesting. It would be a shame for these things to be cleaned up, washed away, fixed.

[mosc]

In some cases, sounding like yourself isn't probably what one wants. I don't know what Britney Spears sounds like, but it can't be very close to the voice one hears on her recordings.