The main areas covered in this week’s forum embraced 2 aspects of the pop music recording process: what makes a pop song and what constitutes a good recording? I have (co-) written over 100 songs and hope that no-one EVER refers to them as pop music, however, I recognise that there is a formula, with variations, inherent in popular music and present in my own work. Philosophically, I wonder if a pop song HAS to be structured this way to be “popular”. Is it necessary to assume a “lowest common denominator” in our target audience, ie: are the punters really so stupid they can’t deal with any other musical format? Leave it with you. (NB: I remember lessons on music structure when I was in high school and I THINK the technical term for a song made up of verses and choruses is “strophic”.) Regarding recording process, we mused at length about compressors which equipment I have heard of but never really understood the function of before. Great! The underlying premise of quality recording seems to be one of extreme common sense: to ensure high quality recording, you must use high quality instruments, mics, signal processors and recording devices and position your sources with care and thought. Actually, that’s probably a bit simplistic and I’m sure isn’t always the case! The above is a screen shot from Cool Edit of a wave on which I whacked some compression willy-nilly (left channel only) for comparison).
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